kuus agnew theorizing state geographically
TRANSCRIPT
Theorizing the State
Geographically: Sovereignty,
Subjectivity, Territoriality Kuus, Merje & Agnew, John
In COX, KEVIN, LOW, MURRAY,
ROBINSON, JENNIFER (2007) The SAGE
handbook of political geography, London:
SAGE.
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Theorizing the State Geographically
STATE SOVEREIGNTY AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
• Westphalian sovereignty (states exercising ultimate control over
territory) no more than an ideal. Does not capture ‘actual spatiality of
power’ (p. 96)
• Limited number of works in Political Geography with a focus on
state sovereignty: Agnew and Corbridge (1995), Murphy (1996, 1999),
O’Tuathail et al. (1998), Dalby (2002), Kofman (2002), Mountz (2004),
Agnew (2004), Marston (2003), Glassman (1999), Sidaway (2002),
Newman (2001), Anderson (1996), Agnew (1999), O’Tuathail (2000)
• Focus in ‘state as a bureaucracy’ rather than in ‘states as territorial
polities endowed with popular sovereignty’ or how the state is
constituted or takes on meaning (p. 96)
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Theorizing the State Geographically
STATE SOVEREIGNTY AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
• However state sovereignty is which aligns territory, identity and
political community
• Therefore, it is sovereignty which ‘enables narratives of borders,
identity and society’ (p. 97)
• Constructivism/postmodernism/post-structuralism addresses this
issue by taking the state as a historically specific construct
• 2 assumptions to be challenged:
1) states are subjects that express an identity (subjectivity)
2) state power is exercised over blocks of space (territoriality)
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Theorizing the State Geographically
SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTIVITY
• The notion that the states advances its interests in the international
arena rests on the idea of the state as a subject (derived from
modernist conception of the autonomous self)
• The interests advanced are those of a pre-existent subject: agency is
prior to action and action is separated from its agent
• State action is supposed to flow from its subjectivity (the ‘real’
identity and its interest)
• Presupposes pre-given subjects: ‘the ideal of state sovereignty is a
product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to
those actions by those located at the margins of power’ (Biersteker
and Weber)
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Theorizing the State Geographically
SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTIVITY
• The critique from post-structuralism: the state is constituted by its
practices. In fact, the state is its practices (does not pre-exists its
actions)
• The state is not the source but the effect of power (Marston, 2003)
•‘It is through those practices that the alignment between
territoriality and identity is effected’ (p. 98)
• The category of sovereignty is not pre-existent, but constructed
through practices operating in the name of the state
• State power is material and surely exists; however, it cannot be
represented outside discourse, and thus materiality is part and parcel
of the discourse of sovereignty
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Theorizing the State Geographically
SOVEREIGNTY AND TERRITORIALITY
• The 2nd assumption holds that state authority is exercised
territorially (bounded)
• Territoriality emerges as a historical strategy of rule, particularly
after Westphalia
• However, sovereignty can also be exercised non-territorially through
networks, for instance. It has not to be ‘predicated on and defined by
strict and fixed territorial boundaries’ (p. 101)
• Territoriality is only one type of spatiality, implying:
1) blocks of rigidly bordered space
2) domination as the modality of power
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Theorizing the State Geographically
SOVEREIGNTY AND TERRITORIALITY
• However, other forms of space control and power exist:
1) Centralized and diffused power (Mann, 1993)
2) Despotic and infrastructural power (Mann, 1984)
• Based on the 4 forms, a typology of sovereignty regimes emerges:
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State territoriality
Consolidated Open
Central state
authority
Stronger CLASSIC GLOBALIST
Weaker INTEGRATIVE IMPERIALIST
• Ex. Classic (Western states), Imperialist (US & Central America,
France & West Africa), Integrative (EU), Globalist (US today)
Theorizing the State Geographically
CONCLUSIONS
• Key question to address ‘how state power is discursively and
practically produced and spatially operationalized in both territorial
and non-territorial forms’ (p. 104)
• Studying the state as a process in its own right rather than a pre-
existing entity (p. 104)
• Eroding the intellectual division between Political Geography as
concerned with the internal workings of the state and International
Relations with the state system
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