Writings on Territorialization
Writings on Territorialization
Annals of The American Association of Geographers.
2024, VOL. 114, NO. 8, 1888–1899
This article attempts to further develop the positionality of place through aggregated effects of vision construction by different positioned actants. We attempt to integrate two concepts: the feminist positionality that stresses the subjects’ situatedness in networks and their relational power of vision constructions in host places and the networking behavior of brokers with their exclusive connections to small world clusters, as argued by international relations network analysis. Our attempts at the bodily level of situated and subjective vision construction aim to address two challenges: first, how to address the entanglement of geopolitics and biopolitics, and second, how do encounters account for the power of a place premised on its areal resources through the behavior of brokers. The institutionalization of special economic zone development in Cambodia, from the introduction of new norms to law-making and planning, is chosen as a case for its dynamic process.
Key Words: Cambodia, network, positionality, special economic zone, territoriality
Territory, Politics, Governance,
2024, VOL. 12, NO. 1, 153–169
While the scholarship on volumetric territory is now gaining momentum, our knowledge of the in-betweens of spheres is still limited. This paper studies the voluminous territory through a new lens: the deep interface as a destabilizing ontology that invites, enables and disciplines movements across the different spheres. The conceptualization of the deep interface unfolds in three layers: (1) an effective territory that treats territory as formed by the mobility of disruptive object–spaces; (2) a deep interface constituted by a series of gates distributed in various spheres for the succession of a relay along particular paths; and (3) the striation of smooth space by imposing the ‘royal science’ on the moving things, translating voluminous space to be a vector of political–rational calculations. Tracing the moving aeroplane as the disruptive object–space, we demonstrate how the three gates of the Air Silk Road scheme, Dara Sakor Airport and the mangrove forests constitute a deep interface after the construction of their interdependence by instantly allied forces.
KEYWORDS voluminous territory; effective territory; deep interface; smooth and striated space; Air Silk Road
International Journal of Urban & Regional Research
45(4), 716–731.
In this article I aim to tackle two binary readings of scale: the networked/ hierarchical and the political/economic. By revisiting and reframing the concept of the archipelago, I develop a framework of relational hierarchical networks that foregrounds the mutual constitution of networks and hierarchies through a processual examination of scale production, taking the Shenzhen Fair as a case study. The fair is a valuable site for interrogating the issue of scale politics––that is, how to catapult a city into China’s trading circuit, while simultaneously allowing a new epistemological construction of nationhood. I present two arguments in this study: first, territorial logic and capitalist logic are entangled in constructing networks for flows of discursive and material things, and these networks form new hierarchies of place. Second, various political and economic interests might gravitate towards different geographies through the same process of networking. I also assess how the newly produced state space is a relational archipelago that unifies formerly disparate places and sectors and enables the mobility of discursive and material things, and how the redistribution of these discourses and materials reconfigures the state space.
keywords: Scale, Archipelago, territorial logic, capitalist logic
ABSTRACT Relational heritage sovereignty: authorization, territorialization and the making of the Silk Roads. Territory, Politics, Governance. The gaze towards the Silk Roads was first initiated by UNESCO’s heritage project in tandem with its new category of cultural routes. The idea of a cultural route as a form of heritage, as well as the associated procedures of nomination, registration and conservation, entails rulemaking by international organizations. A route that transcends national boundaries triggers concerns about state sovereignty and international knowledge. Drawing insights from critical heritage studies and political geography, this study proposes a relational heritage sovereignty measured by two axes: the power of an expert apparatus of rulemaking and territorialization. By examining the heritage nomination process of ‘Silk Roads: Chang’an-Tianshan Section’, the paper interrogates the politics of assemblage, knowledge and territory. In particular, it explores how a cultural route offers space for international and local experts as well as political and economic organizations to collect, compare, categorize and reassemble sites/places, historical episodes, and technical knowledge to legitimize an imaginary territory with new power relations in the present. The relationality of heritage sovereignty pushes for more serious attention to be paid to the politics of assemblage and the ongoing process of power–territorialization reconfiguration.
KEYWORDS: assemblage; sovereignty; territory; knowledge; Silk Roads; heritage
关系性的遗产主权：丝路的授权、领域化与打造。Territory, Politics, Governance. 对丝路的注视，最先是 由世界教科文组织（UNESCO）的文化遗产计画，及其崭新的文化路径类别所发起的。文化路径的概念 作为一种遗产形式，及其提名、登录和保存的相关过程，需由国际组织制定规则。超越国家边界的路 径，则引发了有关国家主权和国际知识的考量。本研究运用批判遗产研究与政治地理学的洞见，提出由 两大轴线衡量的关系性遗产主权：规则制定的专家机构之权力，以及领域化。透过检视 ‘丝路：长安天山段’ 的遗产提名过程，本文探问凑组、知识与领土的政治。本文特别探讨文化路径如何提供国际与 在地专家，以及政治和经济组织用来蒐集、比较、分类和重组场域／地方、历史阶段和技术知识的空 间，以合理化当代新权力关系的想像领域。遗产主权的关系性，推进对于凑组政治以及持续进行的权力 —领域化重构，投以更为严肃的关注。
关键词 凑组; 主权; 领域; 知识; 丝路; 遗产
After being showcased during Shanghai EXPO2010, Dafen village has been put forward as an example of “best practice” governance that has transformed a backward urban village into an art cluster. Behind this glorified image is a continuously re-constructed social landscape. In this study, we adopt the approach of state territorialization, drawing insights from the Foucauldian concept of governmentality as disposition of things—in particular people and their relations to land. At issue here is how the dynamic process of territorialization, combined with the Chinese version of moral citizenship, serves the remaking of subjects, landscape, and their relations. In Dafen village, the experiment of fabricating conditioned welfare within China’s welfare system conjures up a new hukou arrangement and new forms of inclusion and exclusion. By exercising the technology of self-regulation, the state seeks temporal and fragile alignments with selected social groups. The outcomes are contingent and frequently take the form of new configurations of power.
KEYWORDS: Territorialization; governmentality; moral citizenship; cultural cluster; China
This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavor in Jiyuan in relation to the city‟s changing administrative position, and is one of first attempts to understand how entrepreneurial policies are mobilized, mutated and diffused in a small inland Chinese city. We interpret Jiyuan‟s evolving development strategies and trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lens of policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism, bridged by the analysis of the politics of scale. Over the past three decades, governance strategies in Jiyuan have evolved from policy imitation under the germination of urban entrepreneurialism, to policy mutation and diffusion under the amplification of entrepreneurialism, as the city moves up the administrative level and urban hierarchy. Involving a multi-scalar process, policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism in Jiyuan are being shaped by the interactions between the city, the region, the central state and global capital under the confluence of globalization and marketization. The “successful” story of a small entrepreneurial city tells a new tale that can inform wider contexts, through painting a fuller portrait of the evolvement of an entrepreneurial city across different scales and time, and bringing cities “off the map” back into the picture of urban entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of globalization.
Key words: entrepreneurial city; policy mobility; politics of scale; administrative hierarchy, small city, China