Territorial Politics Research Articles

State transformation and resource politics: Australia and the regional political economy

The fundamental research question we seek to answer is this: why has this resource boom, say in contrast with the Korean War and post Second World War booms, not produced long-term political and policy reforms to accommodate the distribution and uneven impact which are the inevitable consequences of the rise in commodity prices? In answering this question, the argument we advance is that the political and policy responses to the current boom must be located in the context of shifts in power and interests in the domestic political economy and in the broader regionalisation of the political economy that have entrenched new transnational and regional forms of capital. An important dimension of this state transformation is the transformation of subnational state institutions and the emergence of what we call the local regulatory state – and its reflection in the territorial politics between resource-rich Australian states and the Federal government. The recent boom in Australia has seen some subnational states engage in activities that have been, until recently, the preserve of the Federal government, namely a complex of diplomacy and international trade. These recent moves have gone well beyond the past symbolic state/federal tensions based on party politics and the creation of sister cities. The Australian case – a resource boom in a developed country with well-developed and capable institutions – provides us with an analytical framework to move beyond the resource curse arguments.

Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk, Territory and Technology

AbstractIn this essay, we propose the notion of real existing ‘lived’ regionalism as a rejoinder to the normative and ideological debates around new regionalism. Regional forms have shown little convergence in this age of globalized regionalization. Instead of an ideational construct or set of predictable practices, we argue that regionalism is a contested product of discourses (talk), territorial relationships (territory) and technologies (material and of power). The concept of real existing regionalism confronts the tensions between the discursive constructions and normative interventions characterizing much current regionalist debate and the territorial politics and technologies reflecting, generating and directing new state spatial strategic choices. The essay demonstrates the utility of the real existing regionalism framework through an analysis of the greenbelt, transport planning and post‐ suburbanization in Southern Ontario. We argue that regulatory institutions capture the Toronto region in a mix of rhetorical and technological change that complies with neither preconceived notions of regionalization nor the pessimism of total regional dysfunctionality. Rather, the lived experience of regionalization illuminates the emergent assemblages, multiplicity of everyday flows and ongoing multiscalar negotiations of diverse communities that produce the real existing region.

The Moral Meanings of Miscarriage

The Moral Meanings of Miscarriage

Book review: Territory, the State and Urban Politics: A Critical Appreciation of the Selected Writing of Kevin R. Cox

Book review: Territory, the State and Urban Politics: A Critical Appreciation of the Selected Writing of Kevin R. Cox

Human Geography, Cartography, and Statistics: A Toolkit for Geopolitical Goals in Hungary until World War II

After World War I, which resulted in Hungary surrendering approximately two-thirds of its territory, strong support was given to “Hungarian Studies” aimed at strengthening Hungarian identity and justifying revisionary attempts. This paper investigates how geography in general, and statistical and mapping methods in human geography in particular, contributed to the revisionist project in interwar Hungary. To put the story in its disciplinary context, the paper begins by presenting the links between power, territorial politics, and geography that have existed in Europe since geography was institutionalized as academic discipline. Second, the paper investigates how geography and political power became intertwined in Hungary in the decades between 1867 and the end of the peace negotiations after World War I. Third, the main section of the paper employs some case studies to explain how human geographers in Hungary deployed some of their central arguments during the interwar period to delegitimize the post-WWI European order and to substantiate the righteousness of Hungarian revisionist goals.

REGIÃO METROPOLITANA DO CARIRI CEARENSE, A METRÓPOLE FORA DO EIXO (the Metropolitan Region of Cariri, the Metrepolis out of axis)

The present research has as a central motto, the analysis of historical and sociopolitical process that raised the promotion of Crajubar urban agglomerated, these one, formed by the three major cities of cearense Cariri, to a metropolitan condition. In Brazil, the metropolitan region process of institutionalization has become recourse, especially in the last two decades, watt as awaken some perplexities between different territorial politics studious of metropolis and metropolitan dynamic. In the specific case of the emergence of Cariri Metropolitan Region - RMCariri, we have privileged the analysis of territorial and historical attributes that, in a certain measure, legitimated this conception.

Debating American Identity: Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration by Linda C. Noel (review)

Reviewed by: Debating American Identity: Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration by Linda C. Noel Miguel A. Levario Debating American Identity: Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration. By Linda C. Noel. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014. Pp. 264. Notes, bibliography, index) Linda Noel’s Debating American Identity is a comparative study that brings to light the fluid and highly complex strategies of political and cultural identity formation in New Mexico and Arizona during the first third of the twentieth century. Noel focuses on four national immigration debates of exclusion, assimilation, pluralism, and marginalization that erupted after the United States’ expansionist wars of the nineteenth century. National political leaders and anti-immigration groups voiced their reluctance in admitting New Mexico and Arizona into statehood due to their ethnic Mexican and American Indian populations and cultural differences. People of Mexican descent and their mixed heritage disrupted the nativist concept of a homogenous Anglo-Saxon citizenry unified through the English language and customs. As Noel points out, New Mexico and Arizona’s political and social elite formulated differing strategies, pluralism and marginalization respectively, in seeking statehood. The evolving nature of their political strategies and cultural identities is outlined in three parts that follow a trajectory of accommodation and assimilation as political, economic, and social landscapes shifted in the early decades of the twentieth century. New Mexicans and Arizonians were concerned that their territorial status would lump them with the island territories acquired after the Spanish-American War and delay their admittance into statehood since exclusionists adamantly wanted to preserve national homogeneity and unity. The principal strategies of exclusion and assimilation were argued at the national level forcing the former Mexican territories to adapt or risk prolonging their territorial status. New Mexico’s political elite adopted a pluralistic strategy of inclusion that would demonstrate the better [End Page 331] qualities of Americanism, such as European ancestry and class, while allowing New Mexicans to preserve key cultural qualities, such as the Spanish language. On the other hand, Arizona adopted a marginalization approach that reflected the political and economic base dominated by Anglo transplants into the territory. Debating American Identity effectively contrasts the political strategies by Arizona and New Mexico. The political, economic, and social context of each territory yielded to the differing approaches of pluralism by New Mexico and marginalization by Arizona. New Mexico had a bigger and much more politically active Hispano population that was economically versatile. The conflation of middle-class status and an emphasis on Spanish ancestry projected an acceptable image of prosperity and modernity sufficient for statehood. In contrast, Arizona did not house a large Mexican population and Anglos almost exclusively dominated its territorial politics. Marginalization served as a more effective approach towards statehood. In other words, an effectively controlled and marginalized Mexican community coincided with national ideas of Anglo-Saxon homogeneity and unity. Noel effectively portrays the differing political strategies by New Mexico and Arizona seeking statehood. On the other hand, a closer review of the political debate in Washington could shed light on the effectiveness of the differing strategies. Noel does offer some insight to the consequences of marginalization and pluralism after 1912, but it should be understood that these concepts of identity and culture are highly politicized. Nevertheless, Noel offers a keen analysis of demographic change in both states in the 1920s and 1930s and its effect on the ideas of Spanish heritage and class difference. Overall, Noel tackles an incredibly difficult and complex history with great nuance and clarity. Defining American Identity contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussion of the fluidity and potency of political and cultural identity. Readers are privy to a better understanding of the heterogeneity of the American Southwest by reviewing New Mexico and Arizona’s respective political strategies to obtain statehood and their approach to identity formation. Defining American Identity makes a significant contribution to the studies of identity, race, southwestern history, and Mexican American history. Miguel A. Levario Texas Tech University Copyright © 2014 The Texas State Historical Association

West-östliche Divan and the “Abduction/Seduction of Europe”: World Literature and the Circulation of Culture

For Reza in Gottingen1World literature does not require that its readers travel; instead, the texts are brought to us, so that we do not need to go out into the world to find them.1 By the nineteenth century, several generations of academics had already compiled and translated narratives acquired through global exploration. Enlightenment scholars gave precedence to travelogues and memoirs when formulating their own anthropological theories about distant societies.2 To be sure, armchair anthropologists were always subject to criticisms from world travelers, yet at the start of the nineteenth century Europeans interested in learning Mandarin, Persian, or Sanskrit were more likely to visit the royal libraries than they were to cross the Indian Ocean.3 A parallel emerged between Europeans' consumption of Asian luxury products and their reading of foreign literature. Already at the start of the eighteenth century, the consumption of fine goods such as tea, porcelain, spices, and perfumes set an aesthetic precedent for the intellectual engagement with foreign literature. Paris and London were the most important nodal points in the European network that amassed books, goods, and art together in large collections. These concentrations allowed consumers to see a material world culture before their eyes-yet front the start Goethe and his contemporaries juxtaposed the benefits of such large agglomerations against the injustice perpetrated in their acquisition. In the West-ostliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan, 1819) Goethe raises the question of how to treat foreign treasures, literary and material, as he formulates an aesthetic that intertwines the public presentation of poetry with luxury consumption. Even as he eschews the strict separation of art from commerce typical of Weimar classicism and finds inspiration in Hafez's ghazals, he continues to rely on Greek epics and myths as representations of the violence and robbery that precede the idyll.In proclaiming the era of world literature, Goethe stresses that the end of the Napoleonic Wars has renewed communication and exchange between European nations and the world at large.4 Many types of exchange are assumed in such a generalization. One of the complexities within Goethe's idea concerns the exact relationship between the circulation of culture and the demarcation of political territories. World literature, as Goethe states quite clearly, becomes conceivable only after the lifting of strict enforcement of territorial boundaries, in this case the British assertion of its control over the flow of goods to the European continent. Translations attempt to cross linguistic and political boundaries through philological negotiation, a model of international relations that Etienne Balibar presents as an instrument, as well as a regulative ideal, of multiculturalism.5Running parallel to the media flow of communication are commercial trade networks. The lifting of England's blockade after Napoleon's fall allowed continental Europe to import commodities from abroad again- not just newspapers and books but also consumer goods and raw materials. However, the movement of world literature cannot be reduced to international commodity exchange. As Napoleon's amassing of art in Paris demonstrated to his contemporaries, the circulation of cultural artifacts does not always include only legally sanctioned, open-market purchases but may also, of course, encompass the spoils of robbery, administrative transfer, expulsion, exile, and so forth. The ancient definition of translation as the transfer of sacred relics from one church to another included furtive stealing and political threats. The stealing of Saint Mark's bones in 828 from Alexandria by Venetian merchants and Barbarossa's gift of Milan's relics of the Three Kings to the Cologne cathedral are just the most famous examples of forced translation. Napoleon's military acquisition of art from across Europe and its eventual repatriation after his defeat were widely discussed as Goethe was writing the West-ostliche Divan. …

REGIÃO METROPOLITANA DO CARIRI CEARENSE, A METRÓPOLE FORA DO EIXO

O trabalho que ora apresentamos tem como mote central a analise do processo sociopolitico e historico que suscitou a promocao do aglomerado urbano Crajubar, este formado pelas tres cidades mais importantes do Cariri cearense, a condicao metropolitana de carater institucional. Isso significou por em causa os atributos historicos e territoriais que ambientaram o projeto de institucionalizacao da Regiao Metropolitana do Cariri-RMCariri. Trata-se de De modo especial, focalizamos o recorte territorial situado no extremo Sul do estado do Ceara, denominado pelo Governo cearense de “Cariri Central”, mais precisamente o aglomerado urbano-regional formado pelas tres maiores cidades desse conjunto sub-regional, a saber, Crajubar - denominacao resultante da reuniao das silabas iniciais das cidades que o integram, a saber, Crato, Juazeiro do Norte e Barbalha.

Political ecology of movement: trekking and territoriality among the Kayapó

One key strand of political ecology inquiry draws attention to different scalar aspects of territorial control and environmental governance, especially as they relate to inequity, power, and marginality in the rural South. Simultaneously, in the past several decades scholars have argued for a more meaningful engagement with space and place, as global forces of capitalism and geographies of difference make and unmake places in surprising and often violent ways. In this article, I interweave political ecology and anthropology of space and place approaches to territorial practices in the Brazilian Amazon to demonstrate how multiscalar politics of territorial retention and use are layered alongside local, spatial practices. In the Brazilian Amazon, indigenous rights are closely linked to the territorial demarcation and protection of federally defined Indigenous Lands. To that end, a general pattern has been observed across Amazonia that colonization and state-making agendas regarding territorial control have coincided to an increased sedentism of indigenous peoples. This narrative elides the present and ongoing importance local ideas about territories and place have for indigenous communities. Ethnographic data from research with the Kayapó, an indigenous group in Brazil, is presented to draw attention to the complexities of the local responses to the past several decades of change that have resulted in a federally defined territorial homeland and shifting spatial practices within those lands. The Kayapó response is a particularly well-suited case study for this type of analysis, as the tribe is known ethnographically for their fissioning and trekking patterns. I show that movement, mobility, and travel still figure into everyday practices in meaningful ways. While far from homogenous, movement through the landscape is part of responding to current demands to their ways of life. I also argue that travel also affirms the Kayapó notions of knowing (kukradjà), beauty (mê), and strength (tycht).Keywords: political ecology, Amazonia, travel, territoriality, space and place

The Breton Model Between Convergence and Capacity

Drawing upon mainly qualitative inquiry with political, associative and economic actors over a two-decade long period, the article seeks to provide answers to a key conundrum that challenges, in different ways, territorial politics scholars, as well as those working primarily on France. What are the conditions for a successful form of regional advocacy in a unitary state? The French region of Brittany has a specific mode of operation, one based on mixing identity and instrumental claims, and accessing a repertoire of responses that are not naturally open to other French regions. A related question follows logically from the first: Can a specific territorial model developed in one set of conditions adapt when circumstances change? The Breton case demonstrates limited evidence of endogenous change (a central tenet of discursive institutionalism), though it does admit a continuing capacity to filter external pressures in a way that makes sense to regional actors. Analytically, the article develops territorial political capacity as a part material, part constructed framework that can be used for comparing regions at a particular point in time, as well as for capturing the evolution over time of a specific region.

Territorial Politics after the Scottish ‘No’

Territorial Politics after the Scottish ‘No’

Book Review: Perspectives on Chinese Urbanization

The scale and speed of migration into Chinese cities is unprecedented in modern times. Consequently, no single state has ever been pressed to alter its built environment so drastically in just one generation. Much has and will be written about this critical period in urban history. Three timely recent books stand out. The Concrete Dragon by Thomas J. Campanella lucidly describes the broader aesthetic alterations in Chinese cities during this planning and building boom. Shanghai Rising, a volume edited by Xiangming Chen, explores the complicated nexus of state power and global forces that underpins growth in the eponymous business capital. The Great Urban Transformation by You-Tien Hsing explains China’s furious territorial politics from a geographic perspective. Together these interdisciplinary works speak to the broader aesthetic, cultural, and territorial dimensions of urban China’s (literal) ascent. While urbanization is hardly unique to China, these books all give sufficient emphasis to the national context. They grapple with the requisite role of global forces in reshaping local environments, but in toto they tell a story of urbanization with Chinese characteristics.

La integración de Tarrakuna y su territorio en al-Andalus (s. VIII)

At the beginning of the 8th century, the ancient regnum gothorum seemed to be fragmented in several political territories, as the coexistence of two different kings (Roderick and Akhila) within the years 710-711 would show. As a consequence of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and the formation of al-Andalus, those regions would suffer different fates: some would come to an agreement with the conquerors, some would be subdued by force; but traditional historiography has seen an exception in Tarragona. The aim of this paper is to present a new hypothesis, according to which madinat Tarrakuna would be part of the Andalusinian State during the 8th century, just as the rest of the Wisigothic sees did.

An ethnonational perspective on territorial politics in the EU: east-west comparisons from a pilot study

This paper examines the relationship between European integration and ethnonational demands with the example of selected regions in the European Union (EU). It follows the theoretical premises of new regionalism and explores the ways in which ethnonational groups use the opportunities and resources of European governance to express their identities, material interests, and political demands. Methodologically, it conducts a plausibility probe of the potential effects of European integration on ethnonationalism by testing for regional differences in identities, interests, and political attitudes. The case studies are drawn from the UK (Wales and Scotland), Belgium (Flanders), Austria (Carinthia and Burgenland), Romania (Northwest and Center regions), and Bulgaria (South-Central and South-Eastern regions) as a representative selection of regional interests in the EU. The paper finds that European integration affects ethnonational groups by reinforcing identity construction in the direction of inclusiveness and diversity. Although regional actors are more supportive of the EU than the European publics in general, they also seek access to representation in the authority structures of the state. Based on these findings, the paper concludes that European integration facilitates a growing public acceptance of its resources, in parallel with persisting allegiances to the nation-state, the community, and ethnoregional distinctiveness.

Expanding the strike zone: baseball in the age of free agency

With its iconic stars and gleaming ballparks, baseball has been one of the most captivating forms of modern popular culture. In Expanding the Strike Zone, Daniel A. Gilbert examines the history and meaning of the sport's tumultuous changes since the mid-twentieth century, amid Major League Baseball's growing global influence. From the rise of ballplayer unionism to the emergence of new forms of scouting, broadcasting, and stadium development, Gilbert shows that the baseball world has been home to struggles over work and territory that resonate far beyond the playing field. Readers encounter both legendary and unheralded figures in this sweeping history, which situates Major League Baseball as part of a larger culture industry. The book examines a labor history defined at once by the growing power of big league stars - from Juan Marichal and Curt Flood to Fernando Valenzuela and Ichiro Suzuki - and the collective struggles of players working to make a living throughout the baseball world. It also explores the territorial politics that have defined baseball's development as a form of transnational popular culture, from the impact of Dominican baseball academies to the organized campaign against stadium development by members of Seattle's Asian American community. Based on a rich body of research along with new readings of popular journalism, fiction, and film, Expanding the Strike Zone highlights the ways in which baseball's players, owners, writers, and fans have shaped and reshaped the sport as a central element of popular culture from the postwar boom to the Great Recession.

‘God Save Our Queen!’ Percy Bysshe Shelley and Radical Appropriations of the British National Anthem

Introduction When Percy Shelley wrote ‘A New National Anthem’ in the months following Peterloo he was contributing to a tradition of radical appropriations of ‘God Save the King’ which had proliferated in the 1790s. Following the summer of 2012 in which the British national anthem was played on numerous occasions to celebrate the longevity of a monarch and sporting success, it seems pertinent to consider the provenance of this song. When the song ‘God Save the King’ emerged in the London theatres in 1745 under a new arrangement by Thomas Arne, it was as an anti-Catholic, xenophobic song aimed at boosting English morale following a defeat by Bonny Prince Charlie. What is less well known is that it was in fact an appropriation of an earlier Jacobite drinking song. This essay charts the evolution of this song through radical and loyalist incarnations thus illustrating the development of many popular ballads and songs during the eighteenth century and the ongoing battle for the ‘ownership’ of folk culture between the forces of radicalism and conservatism, a battle still being waged today. Radicals used the national anthem to harness the immediacy and accessibility of oral popular culture in order to disseminate ancient ideals of nation and liberty. Conservative appropriations, however, were designed to celebrate and support notions of monarch and empire through the creation of Self and Other. Different versions of ‘God Save the King’ originated in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the United States, as well as England, thereby demonstrating widespread knowledge of the song and a desire to appropriate it for mainly radical purposes. Although ‘God Save the King’ is arguably a trope rather than a distinct genre, I demonstrate how, through an exploration of its literary evolution, it fulfils the function of a genre. According to Tilottama Rajan and Julia Wright, writers, including Shelley, were seeking to ‘alter the sociopolitical domain by using genre as a form of cultural intervention’ The intertextual dialogue created by these texts and their dependence on readers’ ‘horizons of expectations’ are illustrative of how many genres functioned in the Romantic period. The anthems share the framing device of a specific tune, which demonstrates both their inter-relatedness and how they reflect the shifting nature of national identity during this turbulent period. As Robert Branham aptly observes: ‘National songs inevitably occupy contested political territory and are frequently objects of contention between groups competing to define the nation’

Tourism as a territorial strategy: The case of China and Taiwan

This paper examines the cultural and territorial politics of the rapid post-2008 growth in tourism from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to Taiwan. Additionally, this paper presents an innovative theoretical argument that tourism should be viewed as a technology of state territorialization; that is, as a mode of social and spatial ordering that produces tourists and state territory as effects of power.Based on fieldwork conducted in Taiwan in 2012, it explores the engagement of PRC tourists with Taiwanese hosts, political representations of Taiwan and China, the territorializing effects of tourism, the production of multiple sensations of stateness, and the possibility that tourism is aggravating contradictions between the different territorialization programs of China and Taiwan.

Multi-tiered Governance of the Rio Grande/Bravo Basin: The Fragmented Water Resources Management Model of the United States and Mexico

The Rio Grande/Bravo (RGB) Basin governing structure is characterized by the absence of a governmental entity providing an entire basin vision. This research argues there is a fragmentation in the basins water resources management (WRM) due to the allocation and distribution regime of surface water between and within both countries. This has caused a hydrological disconnection of the river and the proliferation of stakeholders and institutions that only have partial competence of the WRM. We provide a descriptive analysis of the current WRM, as well as the institutional and organizational framework which clearly exhibits governance fragmentation. A qualitative assessment of interviews conducted with experts in the RGB Basin supports these findings. WRM in the RGB Basin consists of a collection of regional governments that handle only the water resources issues affecting their regional political territory. This multitiered, mosaic governance structure reinforces the hydrologic disconnection within the river, and the fragmentation of the stakeholders.

Envisioning the Third Sector's Welfare Role: Critical Discourse Analysis of 'Post-Devolution' Public Policy in the UK 1998-2012.

Welfare state theory has struggled to come to terms with the role of the third sector. It has often categorized welfare states in terms of the pattern of interplay between state social policies and the structure of the labour market. Moreover, it has frequently offered an exclusive focus on state policy – thereby failing to substantially recognize the role of the formally organized third sector. This study offers a corrective view. Against the backdrop of the international shift to multi-level governance, it analyses the policy discourse of third sector involvement in welfare governance following devolution in the UK. It reveals the changing and contrasting ways in which post-devolution territorial politics envisions the sector's role as a welfare provider. The mixed methods analysis compares policy framing and the structural narratives associated with the development of the third sector across the four constituent polities of the UK since 1998. The findings reveal how devolution has introduced a new spatial policy dynamic. Whilst there are elements of continuity between polities – such as the increasing salience of the third sector in welfare provision – policy narratives also provide evidence of the territorialization of third sector policy. From a methodological standpoint, this underlines the distinctive and complementary role discourse-based analysis can play in understanding contemporary patterns and processes shaping welfare governance.