Territorial Nation-state Research Articles

Tourism and the making of the modern Middle East

ABSTRACT Since its inception the Journal of Tourism History has sought to expand the interdisciplinary field of tourism history to include scholarship from and about regions such as the Middle East. This special issue on ‘Tourism and the Making of the Modern Middle East’ is based on a conference sponsored by the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society (SERMEISS) and held at the University of Alabama in 2022. While mostly focused on developments in Lebanon and Iraq before they gained independence from France and Britain, the essays explore how national actors used tourism to integrate populations within the newly formed political entities of the Mandate era into viable nation-states and to position these emerging states within the international framework defined by expanding tourism economies. Together these studies show how tourism and its impacts in the Middle East are multilayered, transnational processes within and across the emerging territorial nation-states of the region.

Can the umma replace the nation? Salafism, home-making and the territorial nation-state

Can the umma replace the nation? Salafism, home-making and the territorial nation-state

"Zeitenwende" : the retrenchment - or not - of "territorialism"?

‘Zeitenwende’ as announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in relation to Ukraine suggests the retrenchment of ‘territorialism’. I discuss this with a focus on Poland. Western Ukraine has after all been Eastern Poland until becoming part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1939. Enlarged with Crimea, the same SSR declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 at a time when Poland was aiming to join the EU and NATO. Now, Poland is a conduit of assistance, military or otherwise to Ukraine. In due course she may need to reconsider her aspiration, as good as fulfilled now, for being a consolidated nation-state. The alternative in 1919 was something like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of old. That model may become relevant once more. If so, then this would be like my alternative – neo-medievalism – to a territorialism under which nation-states are the exclusive building blocks of the international order. Neo-medievalism stands for political action, including defence, no longer being the exclusive province of the territorial nation-state. If so, then thinking about the state as if it were the owner on behalf of the nation of its territory needs to adapt.

TURKISM IN THE BUILDING OF THE TURKISH NATION AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SINO-TURKISH RELATIONS

The purpose of the research. The article discusses the process of nation building in Turkey. The influence of nation-building on the transition of the Ottoman Empire to a modern nation-state is analyzed. The purpose of the research is to identify the influence of Turkism in the construction of the Turkish nation, emerging in the second half of the 19th century, and its influence on Chinese-Turkish relations. As grounds, the influence of foreign Turkic intellectuals and Turkish intelligentsia on the construction of the Turkish nation is highlighted. Results. As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that Turkism does not fundamentally differ from Western ideas about nation building. It should be noted that the genesis of Turkism became entirely possible thanks to the borrowing of the methods of Western social science and the adoption of the principle of language as the most important. In the conditions of development, Turkism tries to use the principles of Orientalism and linguistics. However, in modern Turkey, Turkism/Pan-Turkism has always shown a tendency towards extremism that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. The author concludes that dissatisfaction with the nation-state and self-identification makes pan-Turkism the desire of many people in Turkey to go beyond the territorial nation-state. A number of examples from the history of foreign policy have emerged and Ankara's repeated gross interference in China's internal affairs for diplomatic purposes.

Decoding the Changing Role of the Neo-Liberal State in a Globalising World: Convergence of Public–Private Partnership in Innovative Governance

Ever since the concept of territorial nation-state occupied the centre stage of global politics, the international community has witnessed different political and economic systems being introduced from time-to-time to cater to the needs of the global community. Since the inception of the Westphalia State System (Treaty of Westphalia 1648), nation states have reinvented themselves and re-imagined their political and economic trajectories to adapt themselves to the changing needs of time and circumstances. In the contemporary international political economy, one finds a paradigm shift towards the convergence of interests between private and public, where the states across the globe are striving to achieve common good and promote public interest by creating a synergy with the private stakeholders. This article aims at decoding the circumstances and explaining the rationale behind the changing role of the state, while redefining its economic strategy and priorities in the era of globalisation. It further tries to examine the areas of convergence and issues of divergence in public–private partnership in pursuit of the goals of development and progress. The conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the article are conceived around the philosophy of liberalism and democracy, on the one hand, and the institutional framework of free market capitalism, on the other, as envisaged in the doctrine of globalisation.

Revolutionary Self-Defense as a Rival Ethics of Nonviolence: Rojava and Kurdish Liberation

Rojava has recently received significant global attention thanks to the victories achieved there by the revolutionary Kurdish militia controlling the region and its Women’s Protection Units against ISIS. An international community that has long been silent about Kurdish oppression was suddenly fascinated by the Rojava revolution and its potential for women’s liberation. But this current interest elides vital political and conceptual contributions of activists in Rojava and elsewhere in Kurdistan, and reinscribes the orientalist and imperial scripts invoked in the representation of the emancipatory politics of the region’s peoples. Pushing against these frameworks, this paper examines the new method of Kurdish decolonization, “democratic confederalism,” as a distinct and perhaps novel contribution to the global repertoire of anticolonial thought and practice, especially with its re-envisioning of the revolutionary role violence and nonviolence can play in liberation. Tracing the intellectual and political process that turned decolonizing Kurds from the pursuit of a territorial nation-state towards the revolutionary and feminist transformation of colonized sites and lives, it distinguishes this decolonial politics and its central means of community self-defense from both its reactionary opposites and revolutionary siblings. Foregrounding its foundationally anti-nationalist character, the paper proposes to approach this revolutionary, egalitarian, and community based self-defense as a rival ethics of nonviolence.

COVID-19 geopolitics: silence and erasure in Cambodia and Myanmar in times of pandemic

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has become a global public health pandemic which requires scientific, technical, public policy and health system responses at multi-scales. COVID-19 is also a pandemic that is impacting socio-economic and political systems in profound ways. This paper briefly outlines why and how pandemics may expose uneven socio-economic geographies of vulnerability and risk, and also be thought of in relation to environmental and non-human challenges to our geopolitical map of territorial nation-states and sovereignties. In relation to Southeast Asia we argue that preexisting and ongoing political-economy linkages are shaping key responses to COVID-19. In particular, we consider the geopolitical and geoeconomic reasoning of Cambodia and Myanmar, and their relations with China. We reflect on the factors that shape their national responses in response to the pandemic, characterized by certain silences and erasures to their local geographies.

Borders and boundaries in the state-making of Eritrea: revisiting the importance of territorial integrity in the rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia

ABSTRACTIn this article, the author analyses Eritrean state-making and its foreign policy as driven by the quest for territorial integrity. The article first demonstrates the importance of creating a territorial nation-state for Eritrean nationalism. It subsequently provides an interpretation of Eritrean foreign policy through the lens of the importance of territorial integrity. The article then reflects on how this has underpinned the recent rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. It ends with some thoughts on what these developments might mean for the future of Eritrea and the wider geopolitical environment of the Horn.

Populism, Sovereigntism, and the Unlikely Re-Emergence of the Territorial Nation-State

In the last three decades, the rise of a populist challenge to the liberal political mainstream exposed how shallow the supposed victory of global liberalism was, even in its heartlands in Europe and North America. Exclusive nationalism and nativism, identity politics, critiques of globalisation and internationalism, and calls for democratic re-empowerment of the demos have converged politically on a new locus of inflated territorial, indeed ‘border’ sovereignty, aligning the call of ‘taking back control’ on behalf of a radically re-defined community (‘we’) with a defensive re-territorialisation of power along existing fault lines of nation-statism. In this paper, I argue that the very same call has become the new common political denominator for all populist platforms and parties across Europe. I argue that populists across the conventional left–right divide have deployed a rigidly territorialised concept of popular sovereignty in order to bestow intellectual coherence and communicative power to the otherwise disparate strands of their anti-utopian critiques of globalisation. In spite of significant ideological differences between so-called right- and left-wing populism, in the short-term the two populist projects have sought to stage their performances of sovereigntism on, behind or inside the borders of the existing nation-states.

The nation and property in Vattel’s theory of territory

ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis of Emer de Vattel’s theory of territorial sovereignty. It argues that Vattel’s theory cannot be reduced to the agriculturalist theory of property, with which he is often associated. Instead, he draws from Christian Wolff and Samuel von Pufendorf for a conception of the nation as a complete moral person. Through an examination of the exceptions Vattel carves out for nations, it becomes clear that his defense of territorial sovereignty depends more on the nation’s claim to natural liberty that a duty to cultivate, placing Vattel’s ideas within a tradition of critiquing empire. He presents a theory of the territorial nation-state situated in a ‘native country’ that holds both rights to sovereignty and ownership, which are naturally connected through the moral person of the nation. This suggests that the normative foundation of the territorial state depend on a theory of naturally free pre-political nations.

LANGUAGES OF FREEDOM IN DECOLONISING AFRICAThe Gladstone Prize Winner

ABSTRACTThe ‘triumph of liberalism’ in the mid-twentieth-century west is well known and much studied. But what has it meant for the way the decolonisation of Africa has been viewed, both at the time and since? In this paper, I suggest that it has quietly but effectively shaped our understanding of African political thinking in the 1950s to 1960s. Although the nationalist framing that once led historians to neglect those aspects of the political thinking of the period which did not move in the direction of a territorial nation-state has now been challenged, we still struggle with those aspects of political thinking that were, for instance, suspicious of a focus on the individual and profoundly opposed to egalitarian visions of a post-colonial future. I argue that to understand better the history of decolonisation in the African continent, both before and after independence, while also enabling comparative work with other times and places, we need to think more carefully and sensitively about how freedom and equality were understood and argued over in local contexts.

Michael Herzfeld. Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016, xii+267pp.

Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok Michael Herzfeld Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016, xii+267pp.Heritage is not the first thing that springs to mind when people think of Bangkok. Rather, modern skyscrapers, traffic snarls, glitzy shopping malls, chaotic markets, red light districts, and ornate temples dominate its popular image. Yet, the city's pulse beats strongly in vibrant pockets of life that are often hidden amidst the urban sprawl. These distinctive localities give Bangkok a richness and complexity that make it one of the most fascinating cities in the world. Michael Herzfeld's new book focuses on one of these neighborhoods, Pom Mahakan-a tiny community of 300 people adjacent to the fortress built in 1783 after which it is named. For almost 25 years, city authorities attempted to evict the community's residents in order to replace Pom Mahakan's artisans and traditional wooden houses with a public park paying tribute to the monarchy and nation.Although heritage conservation policies existed since the early twentieth century, these efforts been directed primarily toward monuments, temples, buildings, and sites of royal significance (Askew 1996, 190). Simultaneously, local neighborhoods or urban communities (yarn) have borne the brunt of the urban changes as the city undergoes increasing development and modernization (ibid., 194). Siege of the Spirits is therefore a significant contribution to the scarce literature on heritage and urban conservation in Bangkok. Herzfeld's focus on grassroots activism is particularly important, as local public participation has crucially been lacking in this area in Thailand (Tiamsoon 2009). One of the few recent examples that does exist is the major public outcry over plans to demolish the Art Deco Lido and Scala movie theaters, two unique and wellknown Bangkok institutions. However, in general there are a lack of financial incentives combined with lack of enforcement of conservation laws, meaning there is little to prevent Bangkok's historic monuments, buildings, and neighborhoods from fading away.In the first chapter of the book Herzfeld introduces the large cast of actors involved in the conflict, including the bureaucrats of the Rattanakosin City Project, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA), NGOs, activists, political figures, academics, students, foreign and middle-class supporters, and more. He also describes the circumstances of his initial contact with the Pom Mahakan community, as well as the trust that he gradually earned from the residents and relationships that grew from his involvement in their struggle. This engagement included getting to know leaders and residents of the community, attending protests, writing op-eds and letters to politicians, speaking to journalists on behalf of the residents, and even making signs to help attract tourists to the neighborhood's museum spaces.In their efforts to survive, residents strategically focus on making the claim that the community is a microcosm of the Thai nation and its Buddhist heritage. In the second chapter, Herzfeld explores the notion of Pom Mahakan as a miniaturized version of the nation in further detail, arguing that such a perspective provides clues not only to the nature of Pom Mahakan as a community but also to the nature of the Thai polity itself. This polity, according to Herzfeld, comprises two polities, mueang and prathet, the former the historical, galactic form and the latter the modern territorial nation-state (p. 44). Reproduced from the local to the national level, the mueang model of polity signifies a sense of community in contrast to the bureaucratic, clearly demarcated prathet. The key to the Pom Mahakan residents' strategy therefore lies in this reproducibility of mueang on multiple levels. This is captured in material form by the many shrines throughout the community. Residents connect the shrines with not only their own ancestors but also a past population that includes the original royal bureaucrats who settled in the area. …

NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE CONDITIONS OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION: CASE OF SPAIN

The processes of regional integration transform the model of traditional territorial nation-state, create favourable conditions for building- up of new macropolitical (macroregional) identity, and change the existing multiple identity of individual and collective state and non-state political actors. National (or national-state) identity as self-identification of the citizens as collective members of national-state community turns out especially vulnerable in the issue of regionalization. European integration with its unique decentralized multilevel system of governance has given new areas of transnational political interaction for subnational actors, in the first place for regional authorities. Seeking to increase their own actorness at national and supernational levels, regional authorities of the EU member- states use including various instruments of mobilizing of the territorial consciousness and of politicization of the ethnicity, aggregating the interests of the territory. The Spanish case is interesting due que the political system of the country is localized, and the model of governance is multi-level. Spain as one of the oldest European state is an example of unaccomplished nation-building by virtue of territorial diversity and significant influence of regional nationalisms. The factor of European integration proves itself visually in relation to Spain, affecting in a variety of ways, directly and/ or mediately upon directions and dynamics of political processes of different levels in the country, mechanisms and instruments of interethnic relations and of immigration of different culture background, construction of new national-state identity during the post-Francoist period, rise of regional nationalism and particularism, specific character of postimperial identity.

‘Germany Has Become Mohammedan’: Insurgency, Long-Distance Travel, and the Singapore Mutiny, 1915

The mutiny that took place in Singapore in February 1915 is usually dismissed as a footnote in the history of empire. One reason why it is marginalized is because the mutiny does not conform to a politics that seeks the formation of an independent territorial nation-state as its inevitable conclusion. This article returns to that initial moment of insurgency to argue that the mutiny offers a unique window into the political imaginaries of British Indian soldiers, seen as military migrant workers. A close reading of soldiers’ letters against the Rowlatt Committee's Sedition Report suggests a politics of equality and emancipation uncontaminated by the desire for national liberation. Two kinds of insurgency thus become visible: international space as an unsettled zone of attraction and desire and a nascent political subjectivity that rejects the disciplines of imperial military labor. The primary causes of these transformations, I argue, are the insurgent effects of long-distance travel.

Between the metropole and the postcolony: On the dynamics of rights’ machinery from the northwestern tribal belt to the “mainland” Pakistan

Recent analyses have critically evaluated the connection of abstract rights with territorial nation-states. This article extends those findings by analyzing the way discourses of rights (human, political, national) are interconnected. It is argued that the system of relations that rights establish between their norms and concrete sociopolitical practices allows rights to function as overall machinery, one that both produces and governs subjects. From this perspective, this article establishes that: (a) since rights depend for their legal guarantee on the power of nation-states, they are a normative standard which coincides with the political power of a nation-state; (b) since rights require a certain ethic from subjects in order that their exercise of rights be legally protectable, they govern subjects through inclusion, that is, by structuring fields of action in order that a certain “proper” conduct may take place; (c) since the nation-state framework with which rights are connected operates in a postcolonial order, the functioning of rights is also connected with the discursive dynamics of postcoloniality. The empirical focus of the discussion is on Pakistan. The first section focuses on the use of human rights’ discourse in order to counter drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal belt. The conundrums that human rights in this context generate are then filled in by acknowledging “rights” of a state (i.e. political sovereignty and territorial integrity), which is the focus of second section. The third section comments on the way national and political rights correspond to the notions of “citizenship” and “belongingness,” which in turn shapes the conduct of subjects in a contextually apt manner.

Practices of Hospitality in a Sovereign World

INTRODUCTIONDue in large part provocations from Jacque Derrida's writings on topic, concept of hospitality has taken a prominent place in discussions on ethics, human rights and social justice. This is especially case with issues that pertain an increasingly globalized and interconnected world but one which is still characterized by strictly enforced territorial borders. Questions have been raised as whether there exists a right hospitality, what tins might look like and what limitations exist when we think of hospitality in certain ways that are connected sovereign, territorial nation-state. This article examines concept of hospitality and suggests that idea of unconditional hospitality is particularly appropriate for consideration of ethical dimensions in responses undocumented migration. Unconditional hospitality is a borderless hospitality that calls for absolute, unqualified welcoming of the who is neither formally/officially invited or expected. Claviez asks Can a place possibly be imagined where unconditionality, which both Levinas and Derrida helped us think, can play a role-let alone be exercised-or does such an idea of hospitality represent a genuine utopia: a u-topos, a nonplace, in which by definition, nothing, can 'take place'? This article suggests that we can imagine places of unconditionality and that we can point concrete practices of hospitality without conditions. While Derrida refers unconditional hospitality as an impossibility, a promise, a to come, he also speaks of possibility of impossible. This phrase is only contradictory if we restrict our thinking and our imaginations regarding possibilities and impossibilities and close our minds what Derrida is attempting get at. Unconditional hospitality is in fact impossible if we look for it in realms of policy, law, and sovereign state edicts. However, if we refuse limit our scope official governmental realms and codifications of accepted courses of action created therein, we can locate practices that approach Derrida's possibility of impossible, impossible that just might happen, impossible that may alter our thinking as what is possible. I show this by examining instances of pro-immigrant activism in United States on part of those who cannot and do not wait for policy changes and who engage in practices which I argue approach a kind of hospitality without conditions.NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE RIGHT TO MOBILITYHospitality is intricately connected human rights and especially pertinent right mobility, a right that is readily accorded some but denied many.3 This right is enshrined (in part) in Article 13-2 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that everyone has right leave any country, including his own, and return his country. This right emigration, i.e. leave, is recognized as a fundamental human right. However, without corresponding right immigrate, i.e. enter another country, right leave becomes extremely problematic, potentially meaningless, and exposes contradiction between regarding right leave a country as a basic universal human right issue and right immigrate another country as a matter of national sovereignty.The human rights aspect of mobility becomes especially significant when we consider reasons individuals leave their countries of origin, including war and violence, persecution, gross economic inequality and inequality of opportunity amongst countries of world. Movement in general is an intricate part of globalization, which continues apace and has given rise on part of much of world's political and corporate leaders support free circulation of goods, services, and capital throughout world, but near complete lack of support for free movement of human beings. The European Union is only region in world where trade and other economic agreements have been accompanied by a degree of free movement for people. …

Making borders and identities in South Sudan

In newly independent South Sudan, the state's not yet fully demarcated territory plays an intriguing and in certain aspects contradictory role in shaping and defining personal and group identities. While neighbouring states’ armies and their proxies interfere with South Sudan's international sovereignty, Juba is itself active beyond its borders by supporting Sudanese rebels. Nonetheless, the ruling elite hold onto the model of the unified and centralised territorial nation-state with clearly demarcated borders. Alas, the state's failure to territorialise its authority creates hybridity with regard to territorial control, which impacts negatively on the state's domestic legitimacy but also weakens attempts to propagate a national identity that transcends ethnic ties. Instead, the current civil war and calls for a decentralised federal structure are evidence of the continued salience of subnational loyalties while those non-state actors, like localised militias, that fill the areas void of government presence are generally themselves sources of insecurity.

The significance and modalities of internet abuse as the primary global communication computer networks in cyberspace

Along with the rapid development of computers, computer networks have also been developed. Computer crimes are carried out in a specific environment - cyberspace, whose important characteristic is transnational scope, which goes beyond the control of the territorial nation-states. There is no doubt that computer networks can be subject of various abuses. They appear in a triple role: as a target or object of the attack, as a means or a tool, or as a framework of the offense. This kind of crime rapidly changes forms and forms of manifestation, the border between the states and the other injured. The biggest problem in this area is the misuse of the Internet, as the main global computer network communication, which has fundamentally revolutionized many areas of human life and work. The subject of this paperwork is analyzing the most important modalities of Internet abuse, as well as the scope and importance of using the Internet in a modern society. A separate section is dedicated to case studies of judicial authorities in Republic of Serbia.

Democratic Experimentalism

As developed by Sabel, Dorf and Cohen, and John Dewey before them, democratic experimentalism is based on premise that current democratic practices are no longer able to deal with central and pressing social and political problems. Beginning with criticism of democracy as command and control, Dorf and Sabel show how current democratic practices are part of problem rather than solution. Even as democratic experimentalists have successfully explored democracy beyond state in European Union, I argue that they have not fully transnationalized democracy or fully appreciated the new circumstances of politics. With emergence of pervasive forms of interdependence, Rousseau's conception of democracy as self-legislation is no longer adequate, despite its cogent normative assumptions. Instead, new transnational circumstances of justice suggest stronger conception of democracy as self-determination. In order to minimize domination and maximize self-determination, cross cutting constituencies must achieve shared democratic minimum, through which democracy may once again become means to justice.One of distinctive features of recent political order is that democracy is no longer confined to national state. More than being applicable in variety of contexts, democracy is no longer about the People, whoever they are. Rather, it must be applied in complex, pluralist, globalized contexts characterized by extensive, multiple and overlapping constituencies that cut across boundaries as well as space and time. Democracy can no longer be thought to be sole provenance of territorial nation state. While many emphasize new non-state forms such as European Union, it could be done so more consistently and rigorously by seeing these developments in context of larger shift away from long held view that democracy is self-legislation, act of constituting a People that is subject and author of law. However much we have presupposed self-legislation in thinking about democracy at any level, it is not only misleading under current circumstances; it is also no longer best way to realize democracy under current circumstances. Rather, it has become increasingly clear that self-legislation has now become more regressive than progressive, in that its current realizations now promote rather than minimize domination. Indeed, primary goal of current theories of democracy is to identify progressive possibilities as they emerge under new and still emerging circumstances of politics.In arguing that self-legislation is no longer progressive, I do not mean to deny its normative power and historical significance as practical conception of democracy. Rousseau provided perhaps first and also clearest statement of this view. Here law that we give ourselves collectively is same law that we would each give to ourselves individually, assuring basis for shared self rule. Democracy is accordingly based on ideal of equality, in that all are protected from arbitrary laws to extent that each has an equal chance to influence collective decision making. Indeed, this conception of equality is present in both participatory theories of democracy as well as most forms of deliberative democracy. This particular idea of self rule based on equality is also at core of social contract theory, although they have been realized primarily by voting and representative democracy. As much as this conception has long guided our practices, it is now unable to deal with problem of very mutual vulnerability on which it was founded. Indeed, political equality has long been solution to fact of shared vulnerability, even as putative democratic polities are no longer able to maintain their conditions of equality across various territorial constituencies. Once these more directly deliberative features are lost, higher level forms of decision making begin to predominate, often based on delegation of citizens as principal to agents who execute decision as well as its implementation. …

Capital and the territorial nation-state: a multilectical approach

Capital and the territorial nation-state: a multilectical approach