Sovereignty and Territory: Stakes and Perspectives. Issue 2 (June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Barreyre, Nicolas; Verdo, Geneviève; Krieger, Angela
• Is Part Of: Annales. Volume 69:Issue 2(2014)
• Page Start: 179
• Page End: 185
• Publication Date: 2014-06
• Subjects: History -- Periodicals; Historiography -- Periodicals; Social history -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Periodicals; 900
• DOI: 10.1017/S239856820000073X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2398-5682

Abstract

Abstract : Over the course of the last twenty years, two historiographical movements have challenged the notion of sovereignty, particularly that of the "natural" anchoring of an absolute, statal form of sovereignty in a uniform territory as its perfected model. On the one hand, the experience of globalization that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall—and which fed talk of the "end of nation-states"—led to a new examination of the political organization of the contemporary world, which in part "deterritorialized" the issue of political control. On the other hand, the extraordinary rise in studies of colonial empires has established that sovereignty, far from being the homogeneous block of the jurist's refined concept, could be exercised in varying degrees and even be conceived as multiple and "layered."