1st Edition
Territories, Environments, Politics Explorations in Territoriology
This collection seeks to illustrate the state of the art in territoriological research, both empirical and theoretical. The volume gathers together a series of original, previously unpublished essays exploring the newly emerging territorial formations in culture, politics and society.
While the globalisation debate of the 1990s largely pivoted around a ‘general deterritorialisation’ hypothesis, since the 2000s it has become apparent that, rather than effacing territories, global connections are added to them, and represent a further factor in the increase of territorial complexity. Key questions follow, such as: How can we further the knowledge around territorial complexities and the ways in which different processes of territorialisation co-exist and interact, integrating scientific advances from a plurality of disciplines? Where and what forms does territorial complexity assume, and how do complex territories operate in specific instances? Which technological, political and cultural facets of territories should be tackled to make sense of the life of territories? How and by what different or combined methods can we describe territories, and do justice to their articulations and meanings? How can the territoriological vocabulary relate to contemporary social theory advancements such as ANT, the ontological turn, the mobilities paradigm, sensory urbanism, and atmospheres research? How can territorial phenomena be studied across disciplinary boundaries? Territories, Environments, Politics casts a fresh perspective onto a number of key contemporary socio-spatial phenomena. Refraining from the attempt to ossify territoriology into some disciplinary straightjacket, the collection aims to illustrate the scope of current territoriological research, its domain, its promises, its theoretical advancements, and its methodological reflection in the making.
Scholars interested in social research will find in this collection a rich and imaginative theoretical-methodological toolkit. Students in human geography, anthropology and sociology, socio-legal studies, architecture and urban planning will find Territories, Environments, Politics of interest.
Introduction: The stake of territories
Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm
1. The state of territory under globalization: Empire and the politics of reterritorialization
Stuart Elden
2. How the non-human turn challenges the social sciences: The case of environmental struggles at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France
Sylvaine Bulle
3. Commercial drones and the territorialisation of the air: Towards an aero-volumetric understanding of power and territory
Francisco Klauser
4. Inhabiting together: Manure contracts and other territorial compositions between pastoralism and agriculture in Western Burkina Faso
Alexis Gonin
5. Territory glimpsed through Lache Eyes: A tale of non-Euclidean and symbolically authentic excursions in liminal space
Les Roberts
6. Affirmatively reading deterritorialisation in urban space: An Aotearoa/New Zealand perspective
Manfredo Manfredini
7. Rendering territory (in)visible: Approaching urban struggles through a socio-territorial lens
Anke Schwarz and Monika Streule
8. The territorialisation of the grocery shopper: Eco-ethical asceticism and environmental nostalgia
Mattias Kärrholm and Anna Petersson
9. The territories of music in public space: Scenes from Warsaw and Lisbon
Cláudia Casquilho, Pedro Gonçalves, Caio Mourão, Paula Nunes and Daniel Paiva
10. Passage territories: Reconstructing the domestic spatiality of an Indonesian urban kampung
Kristanti Dewi Paramita
11. Dodging rocks and baseball bats: Stories of territory, tourism and trespassing in Detroit neighborhoods
Paul Draus and Juliette Roddy
Biography
Andrea Mubi Brighenti is Professor of Social Theory and Space and Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. His research topics broadly cover the relationships between space, power and society. His most recent book is The Crowd’s Common. Towards Canettian epistemology (forthcoming 2022). His research website is www.capacitedaffect.net
Mattias Kärrholm is Professor of Architectural Theory at the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, Lund University. His research areas include: architecture, social sciences, territoriality, public space, urban design, architectural theory, space & culture. Monographs include Animated Lands. Studies in Territoriology, co-authored with Andrea Mubi Brighenti, and Retailising Space (Ashgate 2012, second ed. Routledge 2016).
"This thoughtful and rich volume is edited by two of today’s foremost scholars of territoriality and the city. It offers a novel re-visioning of issues of territorial complexity and a wide range of urban examples of spatialised social life across different scales and cultural contexts. A very timely and highly original publication that will be a source of inspiration both for researchers and practitioners across disciplines." Albena Yaneva, University of Manchester, UK
"As evinced by the scope and depth of the contributions to this volume, Kärrholm and Brighenti’s program for a "non-reductive territoriology" offers a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of territories which promises to provide inspiration and creative openings for groundbreaking research on the nature and implications of territorialization process and practices for many years to come." Jonathan Metzger, KTH Stockholm, Sweden
"In times of dramatic planetary changes, it is all the more urgent to reflect on the ontological grounds that orient thinking, sensing, and acting in the world. This volume is a convincing move in this direction. Against the grain of decades of reductionist and politically ambiguous interpretations, Brighenti and Kärrholm prompt us to rethink what territories are, how are they made and by whom, by drawing the lineaments of an original Science of Territory that is transversal to hard and soft science, art, politics, and the everyday. This transdisciplinary ambition is reflected on the impressive theoretical, empirical, and methodological diversity of the original contributions that compose the publication, making it an invaluable tool for conjuring new ways of speculating, researching and imagining the material complexity of socio-natural life." Andrea Pavoni, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
