Embedded borderings: making new geographies of centrality. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sassen, Saskia
• Is Part Of: Territory, politics, governance. Volume 6:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 5
• Page End: 15
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: operational spaces -- territorial insertions -- multi-state geographies -- transversalities; 运作空间 -- 领土性介入 -- 多国地理格局 -- 横贯性; espaces opérationnels -- insertions territoriales -- géographies multi-états -- transversalités; espacios operacionales -- inserciones territoriales -- geografias multi-nacionales -- transversalidades; Political science -- Periodicals; Jurisdiction, Territorial -- Periodicals; Territory, National -- Periodicals; Regionalism -- Political aspects -- Periodicals; Political geography -- Periodicals; Geopolitics -- Periodicals; Geopolitics; Political geography; Regionalism -- Political aspects; Territory, National; Periodicals; 327
• DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2017.1290546
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2162-2671

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Embedded borderings: making new geographies of centrality. Territory, Politics, Governance . The organizing thesis posits the emergence of specific operational spaces that recur in country after country but are not necessarily framed by national or international law, or by visible legal markers, even as they use particular national institutions such as laws and courts. These operational spaces contribute to the making of cross-border geographies that include only parts of national territories, often excluding most of the pertinent 'sovereign territory' that houses them. These operational spaces look like they belong to those countries as they are marked by thick territorial insertions: whether it is financial centres with their massive concentrations of buildings, or human rights activists tracking tortured bodies in prisons or abandoned fields. Yet, they are in fact tightly bordered territorial fragments that keep out what they do not want in. This specificity holds even for actors operating within a given economic sector, such as finance, where the two cases examined here – the financial 'system' and so-called 'vulture funds' – each has its own operational field. But it also holds for the operational spaces of actors as diverse as human rights activists and ISIS, to mention extremes, which I do not focus on here. The result is a proliferation of cross-border geographies constituted via specific components of each country; these geographies weave themselves across old divisions – north, south, and east–west. The actors in these new types of transversally bordered spaces range from small resource-poor organizations to powerful corporations.