Toal G., “De-terriorialised Threats and Global Dangers: Geopolitics and Risk Society”
Toal G., “De-terriorialised Threats and Global Dangers: Geopolitics and Risk Society”, Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity, Frank Cass Publishers, London, pp.17-32
In a prevalent geopolitical version of this narrative, the modern is associated with the establishment of the Westphalian state system in sixteenth and seventeenth Europe. It gave rise to what Agnew terms the ‘modern geopolitical imagination’. One of its most distinguishing features is a ‘state-centric account of spatiality’ characterized by three geographical assumptions: first, that states have exclusive sovereignty power over their territories; second, that ‘domestic’ and foreign’ are separate and distinct realms; and third, that the boundaries of a state define the boundaries of ‘society’.
p.17
The postmodern in this narrative is a post-Westphalian world where states are no longer as sovereign as they were, where transnational actors and forces are problematising domestic/foreign borders, and where transnational media and networks are creating a ‘global society’. Postmodern geopolitics is a new moment in the relationship of geography to power, a new discursive formation concerned with the problems generated by the breakdown of the Westphalian model (state implosion and failure), the globalization of economies and the advent of a ‘borderless world’ in many domains and, finally, the emergence pf a new ‘global’ category of threats, dangers and risks associated with globalization, informationalisation, the end of the Cold War, and the contradiction, broadly described as ‘environmental’ generated by the triumphs of modernity.
p.17-18
Even in the past, the Westphalian model of the interstate system, and the subsequent hegemony of the normative ideal of a ‘nation-state’ (a state characterized by a homology between cultural identity and political institutions) was never an adequate representation of the complexity of geopolitical organization across the planet. The modern geopolitical imagination is not a correspondence conceptualization of world politics but a powerful Eurocentric discourse of power that seeks to interpret world politics within territorial, nation-state and strategic categories.
p.18
In a prevalent geopolitical version of this narrative, the modern is associated with the establishment of the Westphalian state system in sixteenth and seventeenth Europe. It gave rise to what Agnew terms the ‘modern geopolitical imagination’. One of its most distinguishing features is a ‘state-centric account of spatiality’ characterized by three geographical assumptions: first, that states have exclusive sovereignty power over their territories; second, that ‘domestic’ and foreign’ are separate and distinct realms; and third, that the boundaries of a state define the boundaries of ‘society’.
p.17
The postmodern in this narrative is a post-Westphalian world where states are no longer as sovereign as they were, where transnational actors and forces are problematising domestic/foreign borders, and where transnational media and networks are creating a ‘global society’. Postmodern geopolitics is a new moment in the relationship of geography to power, a new discursive formation concerned with the problems generated by the breakdown of the Westphalian model (state implosion and failure), the globalization of economies and the advent of a ‘borderless world’ in many domains and, finally, the emergence pf a new ‘global’ category of threats, dangers and risks associated with globalization, informationalisation, the end of the Cold War, and the contradiction, broadly described as ‘environmental’ generated by the triumphs of modernity.
p.17-18
Even in the past, the Westphalian model of the interstate system, and the subsequent hegemony of the normative ideal of a ‘nation-state’ (a state characterized by a homology between cultural identity and political institutions) was never an adequate representation of the complexity of geopolitical organization across the planet. The modern geopolitical imagination is not a correspondence conceptualization of world politics but a powerful Eurocentric discourse of power that seeks to interpret world politics within territorial, nation-state and strategic categories.
p.18