"Geopolitic Renaissant: Territory, Sovereignty and the World Map”, David Newman
Newman D. (1999), “Geopolitic Renaissant: Territory, Sovereignty and the world Map”, Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity, Frank Cass Publishers, London, pp.1-17
Most recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the territorial reordering of Central and Eastern Europe, together with the impict of globalisation and supra-national processes on what is traditionally seen as the Wesphalian territorial compartmentalisation of the world into sovereign states, has raised a host of new questions concerning the nature of the world political map.
p.1-2
The collapse of the bi-polar world which dominated our perception of global politics since the end of the Second World Word necessitated a rethinking of the dynamics of state formation, the relationship between states at both global and regional levels, as well as the changing nature of war, peace, shatterbelts, rimland, superpower domination, and a host of other concepts which had been normative for most western thinkers on the topic during this period.
p.2
Key themes
1. Globalisation and the changing of state sovereignty. The impact of globalisation has raised major questions concerning our state-sentred approaches to understanding the world political map. For some, this has developed into the ‘end of tha nation state’ thesis as the world is see (particulary by economists) as a single corporate conglomerate. This largely ignores the process of territorial reordering which is taking place as groups seek their own alternative identities, at both regional and global levels, the dual dimensions of ‘globalisation’.
2. The deterritorialisation of the state and the associated changing roles and functions of international boundaries. Notions of state deterritorialisation largely follw on the ‘end of the nation’ thesis, and assume that the era of ‘territorial absolutism’ in ended. By association, boundaries, the demarcators of territorial compartmentalisation, have also disappeared. While the functions and roles of boundaries have indeed changed as they become permeable to trans-boundary movements and flows, they continue to display a powerful impact on the world map, with more boundaries of territorial separating being erected between ethnic and national groups seeking their own respective self-government and independence. These two themes, the impact of globalization on the state sovereignty, and the deterritorialisation of the state thesis, form the core of what has been called the postmodern debate in geopolitics and form the theme around the contents of this volume.
3. The study of geopolitical texts, narratives and traditions. The texts and narratives of geopolitical discourse are varied. They range from the memoirs of policy makers ansd statesmen, past and present, to the analysis and deconstruction of that most basic of geo-texts, the map. The villains of the geopolitical story, such as Mackinder and Haushoffer, are now legitimate subjects for study, not simply for the ideas they own positioning with respect to the academics and national communities within which they worked; academics in service of their states, feeding on and, in turn, promoting notions of imperialism, geostrategic power, and attempts at global dominance. The politics of map-making is another area that is beginning to attract significant interest, as the power of maps in the formation of foreign policy is reflected in the scaled used, the semantics and naming of places and the extent to which they are used as part of a wider process of cartographic propaganda and territorial socialization. The geopolitical texts and narratives of the non-English speaking world are also of great importance in any attempt at understanding how the complex system of states undergoes constant positioning and re-positioning in the re-ordering of the world political map.
4.The geopolitical imagination. The relative location of a state in the global system is a function of the position accorded it by the other states within the system, as well as the imagined preferences of its own citizens. The geopolitical imagination follows on from such notions as ‘imagined communities’ and ‘banal nationalism’ which relate to the national imaginations held by citizens of the state, at both the individual and collective level, and which reflect, in turn, the preferred geopolitical location of these group within the global system. The fact that the position accorded the state, as reflected in its geopolitical imagination(s), may often be cause for the conflict end tension within the global system. These last two themes are grouped under the term of ‘critical geopolitics’, a label which is likely to disappear as the singular use of the name ‘geopolitics’ reasserts ints academic legitimacy.
5. The ‘re-territorialisation’ of the state and the emergence of new ethnic, national and territorial identities. As globalization and boundary permeability affect the state at one end of the spectrum, so too di the emergence of new states and the associated creation of new boundaries responsible for a parallel increase in ethnic identities at local and regional levels, with the demand for autonomy, self-government, secession and independence becoming stronger, rather than weaker. This is as true of such ‘stable’ political units as Western Europe and the emergence of ‘fourth world nations’ (Basques, Catalonians, Scots), as it is, albeit at a different intensity, of state-less nations, such as the Kurds, Palestinians and ither ethnic minorities. Territorial ideologies remain strong at both the concrete and symbolic levels. . Ethnic and national groups are still prepared to fight and die for their territorial homelands, as well as to practice policies of ethno-territorial exclusion, cleansing and purification as they seek to erect new territorial boundaries and fences of separation. Geopolitics should focus on the geographic differentiation of these processes along a continuum from de-territorialisation to re-territorialisation and the way in which globalization effects different state activites unevenly, if it seeks to reflect the whole global picture rather than regional and time-specific case studies.
p.3-5
Boundary penetration is simply the re-introduction of a pre-modern (pre-Westphalian) system of spatial organization in a post-modern (post-Westphalian) ara.
p.8
This describes the parallel impact of the global (macro) and local (mocro) at the expense of the meso (state) level of political and territorial ordering. It is reflected in the global impact of economic and information spaces on the one hand, and the emergence of local and regional ethnic identities, on the other.
p.8
Rather than understanding territorial change as part of a ‘zero sum’ game in which global spaces expand, at the expense of the relative power of State spaces, the notion of ‘glocal’ spaces is seen as part of a process through which territorial reconfiguration takes place at a number of scales.
p.8
The papers in this volume both present and, to a certain extent, deconstruct much of the contemporary discourse of a postmodern geopolitics, inasmuch as this discourse relates to a deterritorialised world in which the nation state is no longer, boundaries have disappeared or, at the very least, are in the process of disappearing, and the world is searching for a new form of post-sovereignty, control and power hegemonies.
p.8
Most recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the territorial reordering of Central and Eastern Europe, together with the impict of globalisation and supra-national processes on what is traditionally seen as the Wesphalian territorial compartmentalisation of the world into sovereign states, has raised a host of new questions concerning the nature of the world political map.
p.1-2
The collapse of the bi-polar world which dominated our perception of global politics since the end of the Second World Word necessitated a rethinking of the dynamics of state formation, the relationship between states at both global and regional levels, as well as the changing nature of war, peace, shatterbelts, rimland, superpower domination, and a host of other concepts which had been normative for most western thinkers on the topic during this period.
p.2
Key themes
1. Globalisation and the changing of state sovereignty. The impact of globalisation has raised major questions concerning our state-sentred approaches to understanding the world political map. For some, this has developed into the ‘end of tha nation state’ thesis as the world is see (particulary by economists) as a single corporate conglomerate. This largely ignores the process of territorial reordering which is taking place as groups seek their own alternative identities, at both regional and global levels, the dual dimensions of ‘globalisation’.
2. The deterritorialisation of the state and the associated changing roles and functions of international boundaries. Notions of state deterritorialisation largely follw on the ‘end of the nation’ thesis, and assume that the era of ‘territorial absolutism’ in ended. By association, boundaries, the demarcators of territorial compartmentalisation, have also disappeared. While the functions and roles of boundaries have indeed changed as they become permeable to trans-boundary movements and flows, they continue to display a powerful impact on the world map, with more boundaries of territorial separating being erected between ethnic and national groups seeking their own respective self-government and independence. These two themes, the impact of globalization on the state sovereignty, and the deterritorialisation of the state thesis, form the core of what has been called the postmodern debate in geopolitics and form the theme around the contents of this volume.
3. The study of geopolitical texts, narratives and traditions. The texts and narratives of geopolitical discourse are varied. They range from the memoirs of policy makers ansd statesmen, past and present, to the analysis and deconstruction of that most basic of geo-texts, the map. The villains of the geopolitical story, such as Mackinder and Haushoffer, are now legitimate subjects for study, not simply for the ideas they own positioning with respect to the academics and national communities within which they worked; academics in service of their states, feeding on and, in turn, promoting notions of imperialism, geostrategic power, and attempts at global dominance. The politics of map-making is another area that is beginning to attract significant interest, as the power of maps in the formation of foreign policy is reflected in the scaled used, the semantics and naming of places and the extent to which they are used as part of a wider process of cartographic propaganda and territorial socialization. The geopolitical texts and narratives of the non-English speaking world are also of great importance in any attempt at understanding how the complex system of states undergoes constant positioning and re-positioning in the re-ordering of the world political map.
4.The geopolitical imagination. The relative location of a state in the global system is a function of the position accorded it by the other states within the system, as well as the imagined preferences of its own citizens. The geopolitical imagination follows on from such notions as ‘imagined communities’ and ‘banal nationalism’ which relate to the national imaginations held by citizens of the state, at both the individual and collective level, and which reflect, in turn, the preferred geopolitical location of these group within the global system. The fact that the position accorded the state, as reflected in its geopolitical imagination(s), may often be cause for the conflict end tension within the global system. These last two themes are grouped under the term of ‘critical geopolitics’, a label which is likely to disappear as the singular use of the name ‘geopolitics’ reasserts ints academic legitimacy.
5. The ‘re-territorialisation’ of the state and the emergence of new ethnic, national and territorial identities. As globalization and boundary permeability affect the state at one end of the spectrum, so too di the emergence of new states and the associated creation of new boundaries responsible for a parallel increase in ethnic identities at local and regional levels, with the demand for autonomy, self-government, secession and independence becoming stronger, rather than weaker. This is as true of such ‘stable’ political units as Western Europe and the emergence of ‘fourth world nations’ (Basques, Catalonians, Scots), as it is, albeit at a different intensity, of state-less nations, such as the Kurds, Palestinians and ither ethnic minorities. Territorial ideologies remain strong at both the concrete and symbolic levels. . Ethnic and national groups are still prepared to fight and die for their territorial homelands, as well as to practice policies of ethno-territorial exclusion, cleansing and purification as they seek to erect new territorial boundaries and fences of separation. Geopolitics should focus on the geographic differentiation of these processes along a continuum from de-territorialisation to re-territorialisation and the way in which globalization effects different state activites unevenly, if it seeks to reflect the whole global picture rather than regional and time-specific case studies.
p.3-5
Boundary penetration is simply the re-introduction of a pre-modern (pre-Westphalian) system of spatial organization in a post-modern (post-Westphalian) ara.
p.8
This describes the parallel impact of the global (macro) and local (mocro) at the expense of the meso (state) level of political and territorial ordering. It is reflected in the global impact of economic and information spaces on the one hand, and the emergence of local and regional ethnic identities, on the other.
p.8
Rather than understanding territorial change as part of a ‘zero sum’ game in which global spaces expand, at the expense of the relative power of State spaces, the notion of ‘glocal’ spaces is seen as part of a process through which territorial reconfiguration takes place at a number of scales.
p.8
The papers in this volume both present and, to a certain extent, deconstruct much of the contemporary discourse of a postmodern geopolitics, inasmuch as this discourse relates to a deterritorialised world in which the nation state is no longer, boundaries have disappeared or, at the very least, are in the process of disappearing, and the world is searching for a new form of post-sovereignty, control and power hegemonies.
p.8