Territory, Globalization and International Relations: The Cartographic Reality of Space

This book addresses one of the core concepts across the social sciences: territory Social theory has struggled to conceptualize territorial space in the nexus between the 'state' and 'global change'. This innovative book argues that the discussion of territorial change remains trapped within a dual tension between subjectivist and objectivist accounts of space and a flawed dichotomy between global and territorial space. In order to address these problems, this book analyses the history of cartography as a way to understand the nature of modern political space. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century European cartography underwent a transformation establishing an new reality of space that conditioned the possibility of developing centralized sovereign territorial states within a unified global framework. This so-called modern cartography produced space as an autonomous sphere based on abstract mathematical principles. To Understand the relationship between territory and globalization we have to understand that both depend on a cartographic reality of space. This has profound implications for our understanding of political identity, changes associated with globalization and explains why state territory has proven such a persistent dimension in global politics.