Category Archives: Scale

A Scale Debate

Marston, Sallie. 2000. “The Social Construction of Scale.” Progress in Human Geography 25: 219-42. Brenner, Neil. 2001. “The Limits to Scale? Methodological Reflections on Scalar Structuration.” Progress in Human Geography 25(4): 591–614. Marston, Sallie and Neil Smith. 2001. “States, Scales … Continue reading

Posted in Gender, Henri Lefebvre, Nation/Nationalism, Networks, Place, Power, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The Body, The State | 3 Comments

Everyday State Formation and Hegemony

Joseph, Gilbert and Daniel Nugent eds. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press. [Front Matter, Part I, Florencia Mallón, Part III] This brilliant collection of essays edited by Gilbert … Continue reading

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Everyday Life, Hegemony, Historical-Geographies, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Nation/Nationalism, Power, Scale, The State, Violence | 2 Comments

Lefebvre: State, Space, World

Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. [Intro, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 11] So far, as this particular reading confirmed, no other thinker seems better equipped than … Continue reading

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Carl Schmitt, Critique, GWF Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Historical Materialism, Historical-Geographies, Karl Marx, Law, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 3 Comments

Nomos of the Earth

Schmitt, Carl. 2006. The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. New York: Telos Press Publishing. Carl Schmitt’s Nomos of the Earth could be called legal genealogy of the territorial spatial ordering of the … Continue reading

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Illegality, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The Sea, The State, Violence | 3 Comments

Sassen: Territory Authority Rights

Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. I could not get into this book. Saskia Sassen’s broader goal in this book is to show the emergence of national and global scales and … Continue reading

Posted in Law, Nation/Nationalism, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The State | Comments Off on Sassen: Territory Authority Rights

Territorial Trap

Agnew, John. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1(1): 53-80. In a more recent piece, here’s how John Agnew described his influential 1994 article on the Territorial Trap: “The purpose … Continue reading

Posted in Historical-Geographies, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Scale, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Production of Territory

Brenner, Neil, and Stuart Elden. 2009. “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space and Territory.” International Political Sociology 3(4): 353-377. I have read this incredibly important article enough times that I hardly need to be writing notes on it. It’s pretty engrained … Continue reading

Posted in Boundaries, Henri Lefebvre, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Power, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Suffering for Territory

Moore, Donald. 2005. Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. This is a hard book to summarize because of the intricacy of the argument, its theoretical architectures, and its deep ethnographic empirics—they are … Continue reading

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Governmentality, Historical-Geographies, Michel Foucault, Nation/Nationalism, Place, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 1 Comment

Foucault and Geography

Crampton, Jeremy W. and Stuart Elden, eds. Space, Knowledge, and Power: Foucault and Geography. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. [Selections] The introduction to this collection lays out plainly the importance of spatiality in Foucault’s work. As early as 1967, when the Heteroropias … Continue reading

Posted in City, David Harvey, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Power, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Territory, Place, Scale, Network

Jessop, Bob, Neil Brenner, and Martin Jones. 2008. “Theorizing Sociospatial Relations.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26(3): 389-401. This is an important article—short and to the point. The authors claim that thinking around sociospatial relations has tended to … Continue reading

Posted in Historical-Geographies, Networks, Place, Scale, Spatiality, Territory | Comments Off on Territory, Place, Scale, Network