Territoriality of negation: Co-production of “creative destruction” in Israel

Based on an examination of Israel’s territorial conceptions, strategies, and achievements since the establishment of the state, this article shows how state territoriality subsumes ideology and political agendas and may, under certain circumstances, lead the state to negate its very self-conceptions and harm its own perceived interests. Its analysis pays special attention to the state’s inadvertently produced territories of negation, which run counter to its own conception of territoriality, and considers the kind of social–spatial entities produced by the state. It also considers Israeli territoriality’s more recently asserted goal of shaping Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in addition to the goals of controlling Jerusalem and Judaizing the Galilee and the Negev. To illustrate the theoretical assertion that discriminatory and marginalizing state territoriality has the distinct potential to bring about its own negation, the article concludes with two prominent expressions of this phenomenon. The first is manifested in green-line Israel, where the state’s territorial policies and the resulting marginalization of the Palestinian minority has resulted in collective resistance against the state and its policies, basic Jewish-Israeli symbols such as the anthem and the flag, and Israel’s very definition as a Jewish State. The second is manifested in Israel’s inadvertent creation of bi-national spaces both within Israel proper and in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, indirectly promoting the solution of a single bi-national state and posing a serious challenge to the very goals that Israeli territoriality has consistently strived to achieve.     

New borders for new world orders: territorialities at the fin-de-siecle

After decades of relative silence, the study of frontiers and boundaries is resuming a prominent place in political geography. The impetus for the revival of limology (border studies) comes from the global context of a post-Cold War order, which has led to challenges to existing political arrangements, and from the identity turn in human geography and related disciplines. The study of frontiers and borders needs to be integrated into the main theories of the discipline. World-system theory, long criticized for its lack of a territorial footing, offers an opportunity for extension of its three geographic scales (world-economy, nation-state and locality) to incorporate two newly-emerging spatial dimensions at the macro-regional (bloc) and sub-national levels. Global and geopolitical trends, as well as shifting identities at national and sub-national scales, are reviewed and their effects on the changing scales of territoriality are reviewed. A geographic model illustrating the shifting and overlapping nature of borders is developed based on the contemporary developments in Eastern Europe. The case of contemporary Ukraine, as an example of state-and nation-building, shows these geopolitical changes as complex and dynamic. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

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.     

Intergenerational dynamics and local development: Mining and the indigenous community in Chiu Chiu,El Loa Province,northern Chile

Water conflicts are a significant issue in northern Chile, especially when linked to neoliberal economic activities – mainly mining – on the lands of indigenous peoples. In fact, political ecology tends to accentuate the ways in which their communities unite around a water-based territoriality and/or cultural politics when faced with ‘threatening’ outsiders. However, internal differentiation has become especially relevant to enable a more nuanced appreciation of local struggles and claims. Taking a political ecology of water perspective, this article analyses in what ways Intergenerational Dynamics (hereafter IGDs) shape the way indigenous communities articulate their collective vision of development when dealing with mining companies. In addition, it examines to what extent IGDs shape the key elements that constitute different positions regarding territory, and also assesses how such dynamics reflect age-related traditional interests and cultural senses of identity and territoriality.     

Croatia and Central Europe — the geopolitical relationship

The position of Croatia on the border of larger geographic wholes (Central Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkans) makes it a transitional region for these larger areas. However, the Pannonian region of Croatia, as the largest part of its national territory, places it in the ranks of the Central European states. The long historical ties of the Croatian lands with the Austrian and Hungarian centers of Central European power also confirm Croatia's affiliation with Central Europe. The cultural, civilization, religious and other characteristics, which today ease Croatia's communications with Central European countries, are unavoidable. With state independence, Croatia acquired the political sovereignty vital for its Central European orientation and was liberated from the problems of the Balkans, although it is still struggling for its territorial integrity. Croatian statehood was realized soon after the reunification of Germany, which in fact renewed the concept and content of Central Europe. This fact opened many questions tied to the rivalry and political balance of the European powers, which is also connected to the geopolitical position of Croatia.     

The politics of identity: Ethnicity, minority and nationalism in Soviet Estonia

Identity has become one of the core concepts of political geography. This reflects the wide recognition of a post-structural conception of society and space, as well as the acknowledgement of the political character of identity. The present article focuses on the politics of identity, and discusses the politicized forms of identity as related to the Soviet state building policies and the Estonian spaces of resistance. It will be argued that neither identity nor the political demand in Soviet Estonia can be viewed in isolation from their historical and social contexts. Both Soviet state politics and the Estonian spaces of resistance reflected the prevailing conceptions of past and the contemporary political realities. This article examines those preconceptions of the political and territorial development in Soviet Estonia, and also illustrates the interdependent character of state politics and non-state activism. The first part of the article concentrates on the Soviet state building practices – the use of power, symbols, education – and the second part examines the various forms of non-state activism of Estonians.     

Fruit of the cyclone: Undoing geopolitics through geopoetics

How can a geopolitical worldview be undone? Can it be undone? These questions have played a central role in critical geopolitics, particularly with feminist and postcolonial authors who seek to show how geopolitics are constituted through everyday processes. This article puts this work into dialogue with a relatively recent strand of geopolitics that attempts to re-examine its environmental foundations. What role might geophysical forces play in challenging hegemonic geopolitical worldviews? The role of materiality in geopolitics will be examined through the work of Guadeloupian author Daniel Maximin. In his book Les Fruits du Cyclone: Une Géopoétique de la Caraïbe, Maximin argues for the unique position of a Caribbean geopoetics, channelled into the figure of humanity as the ‘fruit of the cyclone’, to challenge contemporary geopolitics. In turning to both the natural and the political disasters that visit the Caribbean, he illustrates how impoverished understandings of the geophysical lead to a continuation of colonial patterns. Against this background, Maximin calls for a decolonisation of the coloniser through unsettling their geographical imagination. This decolonisation utilises the geophysical not as a model for human or human–world relations, but as a tool for re-situating oneself and for reimagining global divisions.     

The Upper Adriatic borderland: From conflict to harmony

The paper presents an overview of the Upper Adriatic as a contact area between different cultural, social, economic and political entities, producing potential conflicts in the last century. The first part of the 20th century represented a classic example of geopolitical conflict through two World Wars and their related Peace Conferences that deeply impacted the region. Conflicts arising from the mid-century solution of the Trieste question transformed the Upper Adriatic into a laboratory of contemporary political geographic transformation. Changing geopolitical patterns have also modified the political, social and ethnic construction of the Upper Adriatic. The process of creating new international boundaries in the region ended in 1991 with the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Through these geopolitical transformations in the Upper Adriatic, new political geographic attitudes evolved. Early on, Ratzel's geopolitical principles of defining borders as power barometers between neighbors dominated. More recently, attitudes have reflected modern integrative ideas with a focus on looking for harmony and the elimination of international conflicts. Greater attention has thus been given to the political geography of `everyday life', inter-ethnic relations, and cross-border contacts. Hence, `new' borderlands of the Upper Adriatic are more receptive to integration because they seek to overcome conflicts caused by the division of traditionally homogeneous spaces as local level political and ideological hindrances disappear. The region divided among Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is becoming a new and special type of European borderland in the new century.     

Gezira Scheme between state and market: some remarks on the privatization of irrigation in Sudan

This paper is a study of so-called privatization of the great Sudanese Gezira Scheme, under the structural and budgetary problems of the country. Nothwithstanding the official declaration, in reality privatization affected the project just in nominal way. Indeed, two factors play against it: the resistance of the State, which wants to hold the management of the national strategic resources, and the resistance of the territory itself which — as autopoietic system — reacts against any attempt to change its own structure. The islamic renewal(tajdid) can be considered as a way to solve the dilemma between development and social consent, under these new conditions.     

The new state flags as the iconographic symbols of the post-Soviet space

State flags may be appreciated as iconographic symbols according to Jean Gottmann's definition. Especially interesting is to analyze the state flags in the moment of their creation – as for example on the territory of the former Soviet Union where almost all the new independent states have to create or restore their state symbols. On many of these flags we can see the historical elements, the political and geographical situation of a new state or even religious beliefs of most of the inhabitants. On the state flags we can also observe the state ideology, but its interpretation may be ambiguous, e.g., the green color on the state flag means either that the state is proud of its rich nature or that Islam is a state religion. Ambitions are expressed on the flags of the entities, which are fighting for their independence.     

The new state flags as the iconographic symbols of the post-Soviet space

State flags may be appreciated as iconographic symbols according to Jean Gottmann's definition. Especially interesting is to analyze the state flags in the moment of their creation – as for example on the territory of the former Soviet Union where almost all the new independent states have to create or restore their state symbols. On many of these flags we can see the historical elements, the political and geographical situation of a new state or even religious beliefs of most of the inhabitants. On the state flags we can also observe the state ideology, but its interpretation may be ambiguous, e.g., the green color on the state flag means either that the state is proud of its rich nature or that Islam is a state religion. Ambitions are expressed on the flags of the entities, which are fighting for their independence.     

Geopolitics in the nineties: one flag, many meanings

This article provides an overview of recent publications on geopolitics. The diversity is overwhelming. Publications are therefore divided into four schools: neo-classical geopolitics, subversive geopolitics, non-geopolitics and critical geopolitics. These four schools are distinguished on two dimensions. The first is the distance to the object under study (practical/applied versus academic/reflective). The second refers to the position towards the state system (states as the principal geopolitical actors versus attention for other political actors and interests). Despite their differences, the four types of studies share a growing interest in geoeconomics.     

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.     

For a Europe of flexible regions and not of region-states divided by ethnicity

Discussion of the future of Europe continues to be a marginal political issue, partly because of the resistance of states, on both the practical (bureaucratic) and conceptual levels, created by the government leaders and heads of state. In turn, the nation-states are challenged from within by independent and separatist movements that have laid bare the fundamental hypocrisy of rhetorical discussions of the principle regarding the self-determination of peoples; interfering with states (and their borders) has proven to be a taboo for Europe. The growing flexibility of the globalised economy should be paralleled by a growing flexibility in the conception of the division and political organisation of territory, but this is not the case. Further inflexibility stems from the socio-economic inequity that we accept in our daily lives as normal, in particular as regards inequality in the use and division of territory. Equality, or better egaliberté (equality and liberty), is a sufficiently dynamic and flexible concept to be taken as a point of reference in envisaging the society, Europe, and world of tomorrow. It is only through the concept of egaliberté that we can imagine a Europe based on relations between regions that are conceived and organised on multiple scales and not as region-nations conceived on the basis of ethnicity or in the name of supposed cultural homogeneity.     

For a Europe of flexible regions and not of region-states divided by ethnicity

Discussion of the future of Europe continues to be a marginal political issue, partly because of the resistance of states, on both the practical (bureaucratic) and conceptual levels, created by the government leaders and heads of state. In turn, the nation-states are challenged from within by independent and separatist movements that have laid bare the fundamental hypocrisy of rhetorical discussions of the principle regarding the self-determination of peoples; interfering with states (and their borders) has proven to be a taboo for Europe. The growing flexibility of the globalised economy should be paralleled by a growing flexibility in the conception of the division and political organisation of territory, but this is not the case. Further inflexibility stems from the socio-economic inequity that we accept in our daily lives as normal, in particular as regards inequality in the use and division of territory. Equality, or better egaliberté (equality and liberty), is a sufficiently dynamic and flexible concept to be taken as a point of reference in envisaging the society, Europe, and world of tomorrow. It is only through the concept of egaliberté that we can imagine a Europe based on relations between regions that are conceived and organised on multiple scales and not as region-nations conceived on the basis of ethnicity or in the name of supposed cultural homogeneity.     

A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania

Currently, hegemonic geographical imaginations are dominated by the affective geopolitics of the War on Terror, and related security practice is universalised into what has been called “globalized fear” (Pain, 2009). Critical approaches to geopolitics have been attentive to the Westerncentric nature of this imaginary, however, studies of non-Western perceptions of current geopolitics and the nature of fear will help to further displace dominant geopolitical imaginations. Africa, for example, is a continent that is often captured in Western geopolitics - as a site of failed states, the coming anarchy, passive recipient of aid, and so on - but geopolitical representations originating in Africa rarely make much of an impact on political theory.This paper aims to add to critical work on the so-called War on Terror from a perspective emerging from the margins of the dominant geopolitical imagination. It considers the geopolitical imagination of the War on Terror from a non-Western source, newspapers in Tanzania.     

National idea, state-building and boundaries in the post-Soviet space (the case of Georgia)

The emergence of the Newly Independent States at the end of 1991, although due to the coincidence of historical events, was a logical outcome of the political crisis within the USSR. The nations had been actively formed during the Soviet period and they considered their homeland the territory which bore the name of a definite nationality. Since all the Union republics were multi-ethnic entities it is rather hard for them to form the nation-states up to present. Citizenship is just being formed and in many areas the state-idea is still to emerge. Georgia, a NIS in the Transcaucasus, bears most of the common features of the post-Soviet political space. But it has distinct peculiarities in state-building due to its location and historical legacy. The national self-identity of the Georgians was formed quite a long time ago, but some geopolitical problems may temporarily hinder the formation of stable boundaries of this NIS.     

Mundane diplomacies for the practice of European geopolitics

This paper offers a practice-based account of diplomacy given that diplomats are central to the production and circulation of geopolitics. We contend that there is a changing geography of diplomacy underway from state-centred to “integrative diplomacy”, prompting the need for reorganisation of the modalities that shape and regulate state presence. Such reorganisation brings with it the challenge of fashioning new pathways of diplomatic engagement to counter the disordering of routinized mundane diplomatic practices, alongside new possibilities for diplomatic space to be used by various actors and interests. In sum, the move to integrative diplomacy commands closer academic attention to the contemporary geographies of diplomatic practice, and how these practices are transacted in diverse spatial settings, sites and domains, under conditions of multiple contestation of state authority and legitimacy. Using extensive European empirical materials, we argue that the ways in which diplomats devise, trial, make claims and counter-claims about geopolitical representations are ripe for practice-based analysis. We do this through an exploration of diplomacy’s geographical dimensions, that is, its everyday spaces and places, orderings and transactions and show how practices can go awry in the move to integrative diplomacy.     

Ethnicity and geography in Jewish perspectives

It is said that the Jewish people has had a surfeit of history but not enough geography. Deprived of its independence, expelled from its homeland, and dispersed among other nations, Jewish communities internalized different socio-cultural manners and customs. Throughout history, Jewish leaders — political and rabbinical — expresssed various attitudes toward territoriality and political aspirations for Jewish independence. As Zionism and the return of Jews to the Land of Israel became a real movement, those different attitudes had to confront a new reality, in which Jewish history meets Jewish geography. This paper discusses the encounter of a Jewish culture that developed under Diaspora conditions with the new reality of Jewish territoriality and sovereignty.     

Planning in Jordan: Coping with uncertainty

Jordan is an Islamic state with planning based on Islamic principles. The execution of plans, though, has been constrained by geopolitical realities. In the last decade Jordan has moved from strictly sectoral planning to a strongly focused system of regional planning in order to achieve more growth in less developed regions. The prospects for these regions and the country as a whole will turn on the success of the peace process in the region.