Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

Elden, S.

doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00148.x

Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

Elden, S.

Authors

S. Elden

Abstract

This article provides a critique of a dominant strand of the literature on globalization – that which suggests it can be understood as deterritorialization. It argues that suggestions that we have moved away from territorial understandings of politics fail to conceptually elaborate the notion of territory itself. Drawing parallels between mathematics and politics in the seventeenth century, the paper claims that the notion of territory is dependent on a particular way of grasping space as calculable. This way of understanding space makes bounded territories possible, but also underlies new global configurations. In other words globalization is a reconfiguration of existing understandings rather than the radical break some suggest. The article concludes by making some comments on this reconfiguration, and suggesting that further historical and conceptual work on territory is necessary before it can be thought to be superseded.

Citation

Elden, S. (2005). Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(1), 8-19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00148.x

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	2005-03
Deposit Date	Oct 2, 2008
Publicly Available Date	May 26, 2009
Journal	Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Print ISSN	0020-2754
Electronic ISSN	1475-5661
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	30
Issue	1
Pages	8-19
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00148.x
Keywords	Territory, Globalization, Geometry, Descartes, Leibniz, Westphalia.