The Territorial Factor

Nowadays political territoriality is profoundly put to the test by globalization, the rise of the network-society, international migration and new types of risk that state governments find hard to control. Yet, new political configurations do not invalidate the relevance of territory and territorial identity right away. Moreover, people who want to escape or forget foreign dominace still reach for the traditionally sovereign state (Eastern Europe, Asia).In this book an international group of political geographers analyse the meaning of post-modern transfromation in territoriality at different geographical scales: global, (inter) national and local. They cover such varied topics as the probability of a clash between civilizations, the rise of World-cities, the disintegration of African States, ethnic conflicts and politics in Europe, the meaning of a supranational territorial order (European Union), the end of the welfare state, nation-building and its symbols, Israeli cultural politics, urban regimes and local conflict-defense mechanisms. The perspectives put forward, match more general theoretical geography and political science and involve case studies from different parts of the World.This important new study is of immediate interest to students of all levels of politcial science, sociology, social geography, administrative science, international relations, contermpoary history, and to policy makers and politicians

Just war and extraterritoriality: the popular geopolitics of the United States' war on Iraq as reflected in newspapers of the Arab World

As with all wars, the U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 needed to be portrayed as a just war in an attempt to garner support and legitimacy, domestically and internationally. The United States was acting as hegemonic power in the international state-system and, in light of this role, had imperatives and tools in creating the argument for a just war that differed from those used by nonhegemonic states. The United States acted extraterritorially by diffusing a message of moral right. Arab resistance to the war was evident in the construction of the United States and its leadership as immoral, precluding its ability to wage a just war. This article focuses on the Arab response by analyzing the portrayal in Arab newspapers of the imminent war on Iraq. Sixty-five newspapers of the Arabic language (plus the Iraqi news agency), published in seventeen Arab countries, of which four were Iraqi newspapers, were consulted for the purpose of this study. Interpretation of the geopolitical rhetoric within newspaper reports and political cartoons published in Arab newspapers highlights the way that arguments of morality and immorality were connected to understandings of territorial sovereignty and hegemonic extraterritorial influence into territorial sovereign spaces