Sovereignty without Territoriality : Notes for a Postnational Geography

Abstract

Deterritorialization, translocality, globalization, postcolonial, postnational, transnational: We are in the midst of a redefinition of space. In the very moment that national and ethnic boundaries are breaking down we encounter paradoxical reinvestments in homeland, territorial integrity, localism, regionalism, and race - and ethnocentrism. How do we make sense of this contradictory mapping of global and local space? How do we understand state and national systems of sovereignty as geographic or place-centered dramas of domination? How do we maneuver between incommensurable histories of the regional and transnational in a postmodern world? The contributors to The Geography of Identity are at the forefront of the new social geography. Their essays investigate a range of topics as categories of analysis we have to reimagine. With its explorations of the urban heteroclite, the postcolony, and nativist ideologies of place, this volume promises to be a groundbreaking contribution to the remapping of global and local cartographies of culture.