A controversial natural border: The making of the Spanish-Portuguese boundary along the Minho River (1855–1866)

The paper intends to consider how territorial, political and legal culture dominant within mid-19th century Iberian Peninsula influenced boundary-making state practices, and to what extent a complex understanding of natural border areas -and particularly of river boundaries- emerged during this demarcation process. We draw on recent insights about, on the one hand, the important link between territory, nature and law within territorialization processes and state-making and, on the other, intrinsic problems of modern legal categories and juridical practices concerning river boundaries which are argued to be part of territorial ideologies associated with modern states.Within this framework, the paper initially addresses main practices and discourses about territory in this particular Iberian context, regarding both the enduring relevance of theory of natural boundaries within European history of modern state-making and legal codification of river boundaries delimitation by Spanish and Portuguese law internationalists. The following part of the paper presents main historical problems and territorial border disputes along the Minho River which the 1864 Spanish-Portuguese Boundary Treaty attempted to settle. Discussions and negotiations taking place within the Joint Boundary Commissions in charge of examining, delimiting and demarcating this stretch of the border are analysed as to consider how diverging interest and competing discourses about this fluvial space were displayed and related eventually to the solutions adopted by the Boundary Treaty. In that sense, state-driven boundary-making proved to be an important tool for territorial management of this border space.     

Transformation in territorial concepts: from nation building to concessions

The transition to globalization, socio-cultural fragmentation and an era of peace all constrain Zionism to a restructuring in its territorial perspectives. In the nation-building era, Zionism made the territory the focus of Zionist activity, which necessitated seizing territory, controlling it, and creating an affinity and attachment and a bond of identity between the nation and the territory. Pure colonization as a central strategy for realizing these national goals originated mainly from the unique historical circumstances of Zionism and from the adoption of an ethno-national ideology. This also led to the Palestinian-Jewish conflict that concentrated on the control of territory. The national economy regime that influenced Israel in different ways also served the territorial ideology to a great degree. Peace borders will require Israel to cooperate closely with Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon in managing resources, external influences and additional common interests. The peace economy will integrate with the multi-national economy. Furthermore, in the reality of peace, Israel will have to abandon the internal colonization of areas populated by Israeli Arab citizens and give greater legitimation to their more prominent inclusion the Israeli identity. It will also become difficult for any elite group to dictate the national agenda to other marginal groups, such as Israeli Arabs, and Sephardic or Orthodox Jews, each group creates for itself considerable degree of autonomy in its own territory. In the main, the national periphery divides into an Israeli Arab periphery beside the periphery of the traditionally religious Sephardic Jews. The ultra-Orthodox Jews take control of increasingly larger Israeli space and expanding the horizons of their public involvement beyond their traditional ghettos. Each group creates for itself a different symbolic space with differing views concerning the limits of Israeli sovereignty.     

Syria and Iraq —the geopathology of a relationship

The decision by Syria to support the anti-Iraq coalition during the Gulf War has to be understood within the wider political geographic and historical regional context. While the two states have many common characteristics, such as the respective power of the Ba'th Party in each country, mutual feelings of territorial injury in the demarcation of the states' territory and centrifugal forces threatening the continued integrity of the state, intense ideological and territorial disputes have resulted in bitter inter-state enmity. Disputes have arisen over Syrian closure of Iraqi oil pipelines, the allocation of water flowing from the Euphrates and Syrian support of Iran during the Iraq-Iran war. The collapse of Syria's superpower ally, the Soviet Union, resulted in Syria supporting the anti-Iraq international coalition during the 1991 Gulf War, in an attempt to regain wider international legitimacy.     

Issue indivisibility and territorial claims*

Early research on contentious issues in world politics suggested that there is an important distinction between largely tangible and largely intangible issues. Tangible issues are thought to be easier to resolve, while intangible issues can fester for long periods of time through fruitless negotiations and repeated armed conflict. Research on territorial issues has suggested that many territorial claims are driven by both tangible and intangible concerns, though, which complicates the analysis of issue tangibility. The authors argue that territorial issues with greater intangible salience (e.g. historical possessions, important homelands, sacred sites, identity ties) should be harder to resolve peacefully and should produce more frequent and severe militarized conflict. Empirical analyses of 191 territorial claims in the Americas and Western Europe (1816–2001) provide mixed support for these expectations. Territorial claims with high intangible salience are significantly more likely to experience militarized disputes and wars. Surprisingly, though, states are much more likely to strike peaceful agreements with their adversaries over territories that are valued for intangible reasons. *This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants SES-0079421 and SES-0214447.     

Standing different ground: the spatial heterogeneity of territorial disputes

Recent developments in spatial analysis and spatial data have allowed researchers to investigate various geographical factors in the quantitative analysis of conflict and war (Ward in Polit Geogr 21(2):155–158, 2002). Despite the importance of territory in interstate conflict, there has been a limited interest in the application of spatial analysis to the study of territorial conflict. Using geographically weighted regression (GWR) we evaluated the existing explanations of territorial conflict provided by a global scale analysis that assumes a spatial consistency in the explanatory variables. Specifically, we revisited Paul Huth’s foundational work by using GWR to examine the spatial pattern in the sign and significance of the variables. The result of GWR shows that the escalation of territorial conflict cannot be fully explained by one universal model. There is a high level of spatial variation in the regression parameters and the explanatory power of the model varies over space. A k-means cluster analysis was implemented for a further investigation of the regional pattern of the underlying causes of territorial disputes. The result of our GWR suggests the necessity and possibility to pursue a local or regional scale approach to the study of territorial conflict, an approach that challenges an epistemology of seeking a single explanation for the causes of conflict that neglects regional context. The spatial heterogeneity in the causes of territorial conflict escalation we find is framed within a narrative of the intertwined processes of colonialism, Cold War legacies, and competition for resources.     

Destabilizing the identity–territory nexus: Rights-based discourse in Sri Lanka’s new political geography

This paper describes the changing discourses of territory in Sri Lanka and their utility in conflict relations. The primordial homeland has been at the center of Sri Lanka’s armed struggle, in which both Sinhalese and Tamil nationalisms have used claims of ancient and ethnically determined territories to justify their right to self-determination, territorial sovereignty, and armed struggle. This identity–territory nexus based on historical argument has been destabilized in Sri Lanka, however. Scholarly findings suggest that historical linkages between ethnicity and territory in Sri Lanka are highly problematic and are no longer effectual means for adjudicating territorial desires in Sri Lanka and producing stable homelands. I argue that rights-based territorial discourses have emerged to enhance the old historical justifications for territorial authority. New narratives based upon fulfilling or denying human rights have been put to work linking authority to territory based upon moral fitness and unfitness, political legitimacy and illegitimacy, and ultimately, upon which political actor deserves to rule the territorially bound population under its control. The first part of the paper examines historical narratives linking national homelands to identity as well as scholarly work that deconstructs this linkage. In part two, external sovereignty and political legitimacy are discussed as the starting point for understanding how rights-based discourses justify territorial claims. In part three, accusations related to human rights violations are described as an important vehicle for shaming political adversaries, undermining their legitimacy, and making and unmaking territorial claims in Sri Lanka.     

From national to post-national territorial identities in Israel-Palestine

Territory remains a central component of national identity in the contemporary political discourse between Israelis and Palestinians, both populations opposing power sharing within the same space, for fear of the other's domination. The contemporary political discourse relates to conflict management and the desire for separate spaces within which national identities are strengthened through territorial/national homogeneity. The Zionist national ideology of most Jewish citizens of Israel has strong territorial roots; hence they reject the post-Zionist post-nationalist ideology, regardless of whether they accept the possibility of change in Israel's territorial configuration or of a diminishment in the importance of the territorial dimension of national struggle. The rights of residency and citizenship even of second and third generation Jewish citizens remain linked with the territorial configurations of a State that will continue to be called Israel and have a national anthem expressing the aspirations of a single, exclusive, national group. But within territorial readjustment, issues of configuration may become less relevant and in it is this sense that post-Zionism focuses on a discourse of territorial pragmatism, rather than the disappearance of territory from the nationality-citizenship debate altogether. It is part of a process of re-territorialization and spatial reconfiguration of political and national identities, not a reversal of territorialization, if only because there is no such thing as a post-territorial notion of the organization of political power. The boundaries of national identity become more permeable, more inclusive, but they do not disappear altogether.     

Resource concerns for territorial conflict

The objective of this paper is to engage constructively with literature on armed conflict and resources in order to draw attention both to assumptions that hinder a more accurate or useful understanding of natural resources and their role in territorial conflict as well as to aspects of this field of research that merit further work. In much of the literature on resource conflict, territorial aspects are either implicitly or explicitly tied to resource conflict largely through the assumption that the value of territory is intrinsic. Little of the literature attempts to advance theory, specifically, either on the particular role of resources or on the meaning and objectives of conflict beyond a one-dimensional objective of maintaining or securing control of territory. The paper considers themes of resource scarcity and resource abundance in conflict. A third section focuses on an analysis both of natural resource databases and of conflict databases (both international and civil) which emphasizes problematic results of blending these databases to demonstrate correlations. UIUC territorial conflict management workshop     

Environmental risk management of urban growth poles regarding national importance

Urban settlements of regional importance from Romania impose within the national settlements system by their ability to converge material and human flows, leading to important unbalances in the relationships between the components of territorial systems. The status they held, both in the communist period and at present, made the economic activities developed in a short time exceed the adapting ability of the other components of the territorial system, the natural environment strongly feeling the industrialisation pressure. Identifying the specificities of the environmental risk management at the level of development poles of regional importance was done by detailed analyses accomplished in Craiova, a representative town for the high concentration of economic activities strongly pressing upon the natural environment. The construction of the model of environmental risk management supposes the classifying of risks by a series of criteria, a model which constitutes a useful instrument for the decision factors. The management of unbalances from the territorial systems determined by industrialisation is one of the major preoccupations of the decision factors from Romania, in order to be aligned to the European environment standards.     

Critical legal geographies of possession: Antarctica and the International Geophysical Year 1957–1958

This is an article about the politics of territory in Antarctica. It revolves around what at first seems like a very simple geopolitical question: who owns Antarctica? As this article demonstrates, this seemingly simple question is far from easy to answer: it cannot be answered with a straightforward list of states, nor by conventional geopolitical understandings of territorial possession (Agnew and Corbridge, Mastering space: Hegemony, territory, and international political economy, 1995). Struggles between states for territorial possession has characterised much recent geopolitical history; struggles for Antarctica do not entirely follow this pattern, and revolve instead on the nature and the concept of territorial possession itself. The article focuses in particular on the debates about, and changes to, Antarctic legal and geopolitical territories triggered by the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year: before the IGY Antarctica was an unstable composite of state claims, unclaimed terra nullius, and terra communis or land unavailable to state claim. By the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, this unstable composite legal and geopolitical geography emerged as a new form of territory, one in which the conventional global mode of territory—state possession—was no longer dominant. Understanding Antarctic legal geographies adds depth to critical geopolitical studies which focus on the ways in which space is actively constructed by specific discourses, understandings, and groups.     

International boundaries and territorial stability in the Middle East: an assessment

International boundaries in the Middle East are less likely to represent a major source of international stress than is generally perceived. Formal treaties exist for 80% of the regions' land boundaries and current political processes seem to be working in favour of the status quo and territorial stability. Regarding maritime boundaries, over 60 such issues have yet to be delimited throughout the region. Of these, the major maritime boundary disputes are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, while the boundary between Greece and Turkey remains a focus of regional conflict in the Mediterranean Basin. Although the function of international boundaries are changing, the delimitation process can be expected to continue in the Middle East. Given political will to resolve problems of delimitation, the ultimate demarcation of boundaries should progress without serious conflict between states in the region.     

巴伦西亚水法庭处理农村水事纠纷的经验借鉴

巴伦西亚水法庭是欧洲最古老的机构之一,其形式和内容一直延续至今,并对国际水法产生重要影响。针对我国越来越多的农村水事矛盾、水事纠纷事件,巴伦西亚水法庭处理水事纠纷的特点具有重要借鉴价值。研究表明:可以通过借鉴巴伦西亚水法庭重视农村水事纠纷特点的基础上处理好相邻关系;充分发挥民间调解在水事纠纷调处机制中的重要作用;增强用水自律意识;及时解决农村水事纠纷等措施,为充分发挥我国民间社团组织在处理农村水事纠纷的积极作用提供有益参考。     

Large-scale farming as a cultural dilemma in U.S. rural development— The role of capital

Although agressive economic traditions have benefited U.S. agricultural fortunes enormously in the past, expanding farming scale now also seriously threatens equally-prized rural traditions extolling the values of family farming. To see in detail how strongly and in what ways large-scale farming is exerting its influence across the nation, a multivariate model was applied to county census data. Emphasized were forces of capital accumulation rather than traditional single criteria like farm size or incorporation. Results uniformly dispute the argument for continued vigor of the family farm. Smaller operators are not only disadvantaged in all production factors, but also are no longer protected by such traditional recourses as labor intensification and production efficiency. Far more farmers are also subjected to large-scale farming pressures well beyond the “factory farm” areas, and in several places to pressures as intense. One of these centers is the Western Corn Belt, a bastion of both technology and rural tradition, and thus quite possibly the place where the foremost dilemma in American agriculture is finally resolved.     

Geopolitical codes and popular representations*

Geopolitical codes – intellectual tools for practising statecraft – share a certain basic understanding of the world with less articulate, popular representations. Both are influenced by national geographies and histories. The international power game may (particularly in large countries) temporarily alienate codes from popular representations but the ensuing conflicts also prove the solidity of popular visions about the world order. Change is nevertheless possible and should be one of the central themes of research in geopolitical representations. This article concludes with specifying five perspectives that can be adopted in cross-national research: time/space models of the world, national myths, territorial narratives, active/passive approach of international relations and reactions to international crises.     

International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry: a history

The International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry (I.A.G.C.) was formally founded on 8 May, 1967. Prior to that time the organization of international geochemical affairs was largely carried out through the Inorganic Chemistry section of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (I.U.P.A.C.), with liaison with the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (I.U.G.G.) starting in 1960. However, it was at the Twenty-First International Geological Congress (I.G.C.) at Copenhagen in 1960, when the International Union of Geological Sciences (I.U.G.S.) was formally established, that geochemists formed a close bond with the world geological community. Earl Ingerson, as Chairman or Secretary to three of the then existing international geochemical organizations, coordinated a meeting of members of the committees on geochemistry of the I.G.C., I.U.G.G. and I.U.P.A.C. in New Delhi in 1964, but was himself unable to attend. This meeting, chaired by Ken Sugawara, drew up draft statutes and nominated temporary officers, with the result that in November 1965, Earl Ingerson called a meeting in Paris to name the association, complete the statutes, elect temporary officers and apply to I.U.G.S. for immediate affiliation. The first Council meeting was held on 8 May, 1967 at U.N.E.S.C.O. headquarters in Paris, presided over by Earl Ingerson.The Association's governing body is the General Assembly which meets during each I.G.C. The main internal financial support is provided by National Members (currently 18) who vote at the General Assembly. Major outside funding comes from U.N.E.S.C.O. and I.U.G.S. Day-to-day operations between each General Assembly are carried out by a Council of five officers and eight Council members. Currently, there are nearly 450 individual members.During its nearly 20 years of existence, I.A.G.C. has, through its various working groups and members, sponsored or co-sponsored more than 40 international meetings, which represent its main financial expenditure. Many of these meetings result from close cooperation with other associations affiliated with I.U.G.S. and I.U.G.G., as well as various international, national, provincial and academic organizations. Proceedings of these meetings are usually published, and now (1986) I.A.G.C. has launched its official journal,Applied Geochemistry.     

Variegated borderlands governance in Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture along the China-Myanmar border

International borders and associated borderlands—especially as viewed at the national and international scales, and via regional and global-scale maps—are generally thought of as being primarily governed by national governments. In reality, however, national borders and associated borderlands are complex and varied spaces, ones that are governed not only through national laws and regulations, but also an array of policies and localized practices, both formal and informal, conceived and implemented by government agencies and other non-government entities operating at various scales. This is especially the case for the borderlands we are focusing on. In this article we conceptually apply Agnew’s idea of the ‘territorial trap’, Ong’s notion of ‘graduated sovereignty’, Laine’s conceptualization of the ‘multiscalar production of borders’, Amilhat Szary and Giraut’s concept of ‘borderity’, and Brambilla’s understanding of ‘borderscapes’ to consider the multiscalar and multi-sited nature of borderlands governance along the China-Myanmar border in Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. Focusing on the China side of the border, we emphasize how different scales of government agencies and non-government entities variously interact. Ultimately, these different actors create multiscalar borderscapes dependent on various situational factors, ones which are more complex than is typically acknowledged by national governments.     

“Of outstanding universal value”: The challenge of scale in applying the World Heritage Convention at national parks in the US

This paper explores the operation of the international World Heritage Convention in the national context of the United States. Although an early advocate of the national park idea and among the earliest proponents of the Convention, the US has shown increasing ambivalence towards the World Heritage Program since the mid-1990s. Through in-depth interviews with expert informants and a questionnaire survey of 406 visitors at four US World Heritage Sites, this study considers whether combining national and international conservation designations provides valuable reinforcement of conservation goals, or leads to unnecessary overlap and even challenges to sovereignty. The majority of my expert informants were supportive of the Convention, related to philosophical and practical benefits that they believed to be associated with the World Heritage label, although most identified few tangible influences of the World Heritage Program itself. Several noted hostility to the Program from a nationalist fringe, which fears international involvement in land use decisions. Such concerns were reflected in questionnaire responses, which revealed some distrust of the Convention and misunderstandings of its operation. I conclude that the scalar mismatch of implementing an international convention at the national scale inevitably involves challenges, but that country-specific factors are important in explaining why the Convention has been particularly controversial in the US. Education is integral to addressing these challenges, as well as reengagement with the Program by both the National Park Service and the federal administration. Intangible values associated with World Heritage mean that the Convention still enjoys considerable support in the US, providing a solid foundation for such a reengagement.     

Resolutions of the Twelfth Session of the Committee on Absolute Dating of Geologic Formations,Division of Geologic and Geographic Sciences,U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences 13 May 1964

Eighteen resolutions were adopted by the 12th Session of the Committee on Absolute Dating of Geologic Formations of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. The resolutions report on the activities of the Committee on age dating and efforts being made to standardize methods and procedures of age dating. Of particular interest are 1) the resolution recommending a proposal to the International Geological Congress and International Geological Union for international unification of the calculation constants required in the potassium-argon method and 2) a recommendation concerning a more detailed breakdown of the Precambrian. — F. E. Moore.     

Programme-objective approach and mathematical models in research of development perspectives for Siberia

Economic geography has been enriched by modern scientific methods based on the ideas of systems analysis, optimisation, and economic-mathematical simulation. A system of models proposed by the Institute of Economics and Organisation of Industrial Production (IEOIP) of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences has as its methodological basis the programme-objective approach. It is national economic criteria that are used for selection of optimum alternatives of interregional proportions, development of each region being appraised according to its contribution to development of national production. For each region, in accordance with the place occupied by it in the territorial division of labour, complex programmes are drawn up, situational analysis being used widely with different probabilities of particular events being taken into account. The system of models of the IEOIP reflects interactions of two hierarchic structures of the economy (production and territory), includes five subsystems (blocks), and covers three main echelons of national economic planning. Two blocks of spatial models are intended for optimisation of schemes of locating productive forces of the nation, particular regions, and parts thereof: territorial-production complexes (TPC), zones of complete assimilation and industrial centres. The optimisation problems of national economy spatial structure, of production and spatial structure of the economy of particular regions are solved in co-operation with national economic models, models of separate sectors and multi-sectoral complexes. The main tool for optimising spatial structure of the national economy and regions are various versions of the intersectoral interregional model and a group of models for optimising creation of TPCs. With the help of these models a series of practical problems has been solved at the IEOIP, the findings of which are a basis for some propositions relating to development of productive forces of the nation, of Siberia as a whole, of particular regions in 1975, 1990, and 2000.