Organised by Solomon Benjamin (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) and Tammy Kit Ping Wong (Osaka Metropolitan University)

This session explores the materiality of territory posing spatialities to challenge and extend our understanding of ‘the urban’ (Simone and Fauzan, 2013; Simone and Pieterse, 2017). It connects to understandings of ‘the urban’ being constructed via complex constellations of social relations. This recalls Agnew’s (1994,1999)’s caution of falling into the ‘territorial trap’ and builds on Elden’s (2010/2017/2021) and Weizman’s (2007) framing of territory as political technologies grounded in fine-grain materiality, and historical and processual dynamics. Its problematics include those of indeterminacy and opacity (Simone 2017), and also ‘situated histories’ (Tang et al 2022) wherein territory could be reconceptualized via their situated histories where everyday materialities shaped by multilayered constructs of intersecting social, political, and economic dynamics, foregrounded in lived practices. These dynamics reveal unintended effects in political governance as multidimensional realms, pointing to Yiftachel’s ‘conceptual topology’ exploring ‘displacablity’ within ‘juxtaposed’ cities or ‘juxtacity’(2020a, 2020b). Territory’s connection to everyday life is thus substantively productive to understand the complexities of the urban. The inherent uncertainty encountered in fieldwork could reflect ways to explore shifting terrains, where space and power remain not only to be consolidated or fragmented but also circumvented, contested, redirected. Territorial outcomes can often diverge from their ‘original’ intentions into multiple, conflictual and contradictory ways (Wong, 2023). Its modalities and dynamics include contradictions and potential calling for nuanced grounded theory making, thinking across scalars, and considering spatiality. 

There are various ways in which our conversation that the focus on territory and everyday materiality could take, for instance: on Hart’s relational comparison and non-teleological conception of dialectics (2018); Massey’s (2005) and Kobayashi’s (2022) spatiality challenging ‘the container frame’ enclosing the world into ‘local’ as contingent ‘southern’ categories , while other conversational connects to the ‘thickness’ of property. Rather than seeking complete resolution across theory making, we hope conversations raise questions in making connections between our specific field sites and ways of thinking through their complexity. Thus, we hope to attract co-panelist valuing detailed, however ‘messy and tentative’, unresolved complexity in field work. This forms the basis to explore (however tentative) ideas of territory shaped intersectionality. 

Abstracts of 250 words are sent to Solomon Benjamin (solly.benj@smail.iitm.ac.in) or Tammy Kit Ping Wong (tammywong111gmail.com). 

References 

Elden, S., 2010. Land, terrain, territory. Progress in human geography, 34(6), pp.799-817 

Elden, S., 2017. Legal terrain—the political materiality of territory. London Review of International Law, 5(2), pp.199-224 

Elden, S., 2021. Terrain, politics, history. Dialogues in Human Geography, 11(2), pp.170-189 

Kobayashi A., 2017. Spatiality. In Richardson D et al (eds) International Encyclopedia of Geography, pp. 1–7  

Massey D., 2005. For space. Los Angeles, California: Sage 

Simone, A., and Fauzan, A. U. (2013). On the way to being middle class: The practices of emergence in Jakarta. City, 17(3), 279–298. 

Simon, M and Pieterse E., 2017. New urban words: inhabiting dissonant times. Cambridge, UK Malden, Ma: Polity Press.
Tang, W.S., Gupte, R., Shetty, P. and Benjamin, S., 2024. Land, property, and territory: Mutual embeddedness as understood by the tongbian philosophy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49(3), p.e12643 

Wong, K.P., 2023. The Territory and the State. The Urbanisation of Dongguan. In: Schmid, C. and Topalovic, M. ed. Extended Urbanisation: Tracing Planetary Struggles. Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser, pp. 303-344.  

Yiftachel, O., 2020a. ‘Conceptual Topography’ and the City. Urban Forum, 31, pp. 443–451.  

Yiftachel, O., 2020b. From displacement to displaceability: A southeastern perspective on the new metropolis. City, 24(1-2), pp.151-165