Handbook on the Changing Geographies of the State: New Spaces of Geopolitics 9781788978057, 1788978056

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Contributors
Preface and acknowledgements
Cover concept: the state as abstraction • Michael Heller and Natalie Koch
1. Changing geographies of the state: themes, challenges and futures • Sami Moisio, Andrew E.G. Jonas, Natalie Koch, Christopher Lizotte and Juho Luukkonen
PART I: CONCEPTUAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE
2 Introduction: conceptual points of departure • Sami Moisio
3 Cultural geographies of the state and nation • Alex Jeffrey
4 The everyday state • Rhys Jones
5 Feminist geographies of state power • Dana Cuomo and Vanessa Massaro
6 Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state • Jason Dittmer
7 The state and historical geographical materialism • Kevin R. Cox
PART II: NATIONALISM, IDENTITY AND THE STATE
8 Introduction: nationalism, identity and the state • Natalie Koch
9 The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism: on territory, psychology, and communication technologies • Luca Muscarà
10 Indigenous nationalisms as profound challenges to settler colonial regimes • Kate Coddington
11 Orientalist-settler colonialism: foundations and practices of post-9/11 white nationalism in the United States • Christabel Devadoss and Karen Culcasi
12 The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state: sectarianism and state formation in Lebanon • Caroline Nagel
13 Building nations/building states/building cities: concrete symbols of identity • Benjamin Forest and Sarah Moser
PART III: GEOGRAPHICAL POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF THE STATE
14 Introduction: geographical political economies of the state • Sami Moisio
15 Geoeconomics and the state • John Agnew
16 The geography of policy-making: mobile policy, territory and state space • Russell Prince
17 Neuroliberalism in the digital age: the emerging geographies of the behavioural state • Mark Whitehead
18 The combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state and its changing geographies • Bernd Belina and Tino Petzold
19 Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state: gendering the economy and economizing gender equality • Hanna Ylöstalo
PART IV: THE STATE, ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
20 Introduction: the state, energy and the environment • Natalie Koch
22 Governmentality and the global geopolitics of consumption-based environmental accounting • Afton Clarke-Sather
23 Already existing dystopias: tribal sovereignty, extraction, and decolonizing the Anthropocene • Andrew Curley and Majerle Lister
24 Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’: paradoxes of hydrocarbon development in the Russian Arctic • Stephanie Hitztaler and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen
25 Sovereignty and climate necropolitics: the tragedy of the state system goes ‘green’ • Meredith J. DeB
PART V: SECURITY AND THE STATE
26 Introduction: security and the state • Christopher Lizotte
27 Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside: the critical geopolitics of security and the armed forces in Latin America (1960–2018) • Jerónimo Ríos Sierra and Heriberto Cairo
28 The school–security nexus and the changing geographies of the state 3• Nicole Nguyen
29 Spheres of influence • Stefanie Ortmann
30 Cyberspace: the new frontier of state power • Frédérick Douzet
PART VI: TERRITORY, THE STATE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
31 Introduction: territory, the state and urban development • Andrew E.G. Jonas
32 Territory, the state and geopolitics of mega city-region development in China • Yi Li and Fulong Wu
33 Competitive upscaling in the state: extrospective city-regionalism • David Wachsmuth
34 Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling (European) nation-states: algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan and stateless citizenship ideal types • Igor Calzada
35 Post-crash cities: the Great Recession, state restructuring and urban governance • Mark Davidson
36 ‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics: new state spaces in global unsustainability • Yonn Dierwechter
PART VII: SPATIAL PLANNING AND THE STATE
37 Introduction: spatial planning and the state • Juho Luukkonen
38 Private expertise and the reorganization of spatial planning in England • Matthew Wargent, Gavin Parker and Emma Street
39 Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation • Carola Fricke and Enrico Gualini
40 Transforming the geography of the welfare state through neoliberal spatial strategies: the case of Denmark • Kristian Olesen
41 The absolutist city developer: predatory megaprojects and the state–planning nexus in Qatar • Agatino Rizzo
42 State land concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning • Miles Kenney-Lazar
Index

Citation preview

Handbook on the Changing Geographies of the State New Spaces of Geopolitics

Edited by

Sami Moisio Professor of Spatial Planning and Policy, University of Helsinki, Finland

Natalie Koch Associate Professor of Geography, Syracuse University, USA

Andrew E.G. Jonas Professor of Human Geography, University of Hull, UK

Christopher Lizotte Post-Doctoral Scholar, University of Helsinki, Finland

Juho Luukkonen University Lecturer in Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Sami Moisio, Natalie Koch, Andrew E.G. Jonas, Christopher Lizotte and Juho Luukkonen 2020

Cover concept: The State as Abstraction (Michael Heller) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944128 This book is available electronically in the Social and Political Science subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781788978057

ISBN 978 1 78897 804 0 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78897 805 7 (eBook)

Contents

List of figuresix List of tablesx List of contributorsxi Preface and acknowledgementsxx Cover concept: the state as abstractionxxi Michael Heller and Natalie Koch 1

Changing geographies of the state: themes, challenges and futures Sami Moisio, Andrew E.G. Jonas, Natalie Koch, Christopher Lizotte and Juho Luukkonen

PART I

1

CONCEPTUAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE

2

Introduction: conceptual points of departure Sami Moisio

30

3

Cultural geographies of the state and nation Alex Jeffrey

33

4

The everyday state Rhys Jones

46

5

Feminist geographies of state power Dana Cuomo and Vanessa Massaro

61

6

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state Jason Dittmer

72

7

The state and historical geographical materialism Kevin R. Cox

82

PART II

NATIONALISM, IDENTITY AND THE STATE

8

Introduction: nationalism, identity and the state Natalie Koch

9

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism: on territory, psychology, and communication technologies Luca Muscarà

10

Indigenous nationalisms as profound challenges to settler colonial regimes Kate Coddington

v

93

96 107

vi  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state 11

Orientalist-settler colonialism: foundations and practices of post-9/11 white nationalism in the United States Christabel Devadoss and Karen Culcasi

119

12

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state: sectarianism and state formation in Lebanon Caroline Nagel

132

13

Building nations/building states/building cities: concrete symbols of identity Benjamin Forest and Sarah Moser

145

PART III GEOGRAPHICAL POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF THE STATE 14

Introduction: geographical political economies of the state Sami Moisio

158

15

Geoeconomics and the state John Agnew

161

16

The geography of policy-making: mobile policy, territory and state space Russell Prince

173

17

Neuroliberalism in the digital age: the emerging geographies of the behavioural state Mark Whitehead

185

18

The combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state and its changing geographies Bernd Belina and Tino Petzold

198

19

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state: gendering the economy and economizing gender equality Hanna Ylöstalo

212

PART IV THE STATE, ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT 20

Introduction: the state, energy and the environment Natalie Koch

225

21

State of nature: on the co-constitution of resources, state and nation Tom Perreault

228

22

Governmentality and the global geopolitics of consumption-based environmental accounting Afton Clarke-Sather

240

23

Already existing dystopias: tribal sovereignty, extraction, and decolonizing the Anthropocene Andrew Curley and Majerle Lister

251

Contents  vii 24

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’: paradoxes of hydrocarbon development in the Russian Arctic Stephanie Hitztaler and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen

263

25

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics: the tragedy of the state system goes ‘green’ Meredith J. DeBoom

276

PART V

SECURITY AND THE STATE

26

Introduction: security and the state Christopher Lizotte

288

27

Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside: the critical geopolitics of security and the armed forces in Latin America (1960–2018) Jerónimo Ríos Sierra and Heriberto Cairo

28

The school–security nexus and the changing geographies of the state Nicole Nguyen

302

29

Spheres of influence Stefanie Ortmann

313

30

Cyberspace: the new frontier of state power Frédérick Douzet

325

291

PART VI TERRITORY, THE STATE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 31

Introduction: territory, the state and urban development Andrew E.G. Jonas

339

32

Territory, the state and geopolitics of mega city-region development in China Yi Li and Fulong Wu

343

33

Competitive upscaling in the state: extrospective city-regionalism David Wachsmuth

355

34

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling (European) nation-states: algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan and stateless citizenship ideal types Igor Calzada

35

Post-crash cities: the Great Recession, state restructuring and urban governance 385 Mark Davidson

36

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics: new state spaces in global unsustainability 399 Yonn Dierwechter

368

viii  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state PART VII SPATIAL PLANNING AND THE STATE 37

Introduction: spatial planning and the state Juho Luukkonen

414

38

Private expertise and the reorganization of spatial planning in England Matthew Wargent, Gavin Parker and Emma Street

417

39

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation Carola Fricke and Enrico Gualini

429

40

Transforming the geography of the welfare state through neoliberal spatial strategies: the case of Denmark Kristian Olesen

444

41

The absolutist city developer: predatory megaprojects and the state– planning nexus in Qatar Agatino Rizzo

457

42

State land concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning Miles Kenney-Lazar

467

Index481

Figures

1.1

The state as a geographical expression of political power

5

3.1

Under the sea biscuits

4.1

Emotions and state objects: protesting against monolingual road signs in Wales 54

12.1

A statue of the Virgin Mary on a street corner in the fashionable, predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Badaro

140

12.2

Murals commissioned by the non-governmental organization Offre Joie (Farah al Ataa), such as the peace dove with the Lebanese cedar

141

21.1

Bolivian mural depicting the ‘Heroes of the Chaco’ theme

235

24.1

YNAO area

264

34.1

Ideal types of citizenship

373

35.1

US federal government current transfer payments (grants-in-aid to state and local governments, seasonally adjusted annual rate); data in constant 2016 dollars

393

35.2

Year-to-year change in municipal general fund revenue and expenditures in the US (change in constant dollar revenue (General Fund))

394

40.1

The spatial imaginary of Denmark anno 1992

450

40.2

The New Map of Denmark

451

41.1

Metro Doha’s major urban areas and megaprojects

458

42.1

Overlap of land granted as a rubber plantation concession to HAGL and land zoned to two villages

474

42.2

Aerial image showing areas cleared for rubber plantation beyond the boundaries of the allocated concession

475

42

ix

Tables

4.1

Extending and connecting the literatures on the everyday and on the anthropologies of the state

50

7.1

The politics of state structure across different scales

89

17.1

Neoliberalism and neuroliberalism – a comparison

187

17.2

The differences between neoliberalism, neuroliberalism, and neuroliberalism 2.0

190

22.1

Sample comparing an individual’s consumption patterns to global norms

248

24.1

Number of coded segments in news articles about Rodnye Goroda, 2016–18 (n=191 articles)

269

33.1

Claims and reality in competitive upscaling

361

34.1

Four ideal types of citizenship rescaling European nation-states

370

34.2

An illustrative and non-exhaustive list of European nation-states’ rescaling phenomena

379

40.1

Successive rounds of state spatial restructuring in the context of neoliberalization and strategic spatial planning

448

40.2

Spatial restructurings in Denmark, 1990–2018

452

x

Contributors

John Agnew is Distinguished Professor of Geography and Italian at the University of California, Los Angeles, United States (US). A native of Britain, he has taught in the US since 1975. He is the author, editor or co-author of, among other publications: Globalization and Sovereignty: Beyond the Territorial Trap (2018); Handbook of Geographies of Power (2018); and Mapping Populism: Taking Politics to the People (2019). A Fellow of the British Academy, Agnew received the Vautrin Lud International Prize in Geography in 2019. Bernd Belina is Professor of Human Geography at the Department of Human Geography at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. His work, based in historical-geographical materialism, focuses on issues of urban geography, political geography and critical criminology. It has appeared in Political Geography, Antipode, European Urban and Regional Studies, Urban Studies, Geografiska Annaler B, Human Geography and Social Justice as well as in a range of German-language journals of geography, urban studies, criminology and Marxism. Heriberto Cairo is Professor of Political Geography at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He studies political geography with a focus on the study of the geopolitics of war and peace, political identities and territorial ideologies and borders. He has published several articles in academic journals. His main published books are Critical Geopolitics and Regional (Re)Configurations: Interregionalism and Transnationalism Between Latin America and Europe (2018, editor with B. Bringel), Las guerras ‘virtuosas’ de George W. Bush: las transformaciones del territorio, de la soberanía y de los discursos geopolíticos en el siglo XXI (2018) and Rayanos y forasteros: Fronterización e identidades en el límite hispano-portugués (2018). Igor Calzada is Lecturer, Research Fellow and Policy Advisor in the Urban Transformations project at the Economic and Social Research Council and in the Future of Cities programmes at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom (UK) and in the Institute for Future Cities at the University of Strathclyde, UK. His research blends political regionalism and techno-politics of data and focuses on comparing cases of smart cities (www​.replicate​-project​ .eu/​city2citylearning) and city-regions (www​.cityregions​.org) primarily in Europe. Afton Clarke-Sather is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota Duluth, US, where he is also an associate of the Institute on the Environment and a faculty member in the graduate Water Resources Science Program. He received his doctorate from the University of Colorado, US in 2012 and served as an assistant professor at the University of Delaware, US from 2012 to 2017. His research centres on water governance and environmental geopolitics, with field sites in north-western China and the mid-western US. His work has appeared in the journals Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Geoforum, Water Research, Energy Policy and Local Environment. Kate Coddington is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany, US. She examines public policy dealing with migrants and postcolonial governance that influence processes of bordering and citizenship. Her current research xi

xii  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state explores the role of public information campaigns in border enforcement, the gaps in refugee governance in the Asia-Pacific region and the role of impoverishment and destitution in migration control policies. Recent work on refugees, settler colonialism and governance in the Asia-Pacific region has been published in Geographical Review, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Political Geography and in edited collections including Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration (2019) and Territory Beyond Terra (2018). Kevin R. Cox is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Geography at the Ohio State University, US. His most recent books include Making Human Geography (2014) and The Politics of Urban and Regional Development and the American Exception (2016). Research interests include the political geography of the city, uneven development and method. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow. He has a regular blog, Unfashionable Geographies, at https://​kevinrcox​ .wordpress​.com/​. Karen Culcasi is Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University, US, where since 2017 she has served as Associate Chair of Geography. Karen’s research uses critical and feminist geopolitical frames to examine contested places and identities. Her research has examined mappings and imaginings of the Middle East from both Western and Arab sources, and she has published this work in  Political Geography, Antipode and Cartographica. Since 2012, Karen has studied how Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Jordan imagine their sense of place and perform varied identities. This work has been published in Political Geography, Geopolitics and Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers. She has a book contract for her manuscript Displacing Territory: Imaginings and Practices of Refuge in Jordan. She has also been working on two newer projects on Arab migrants in the US. Dana Cuomo is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Lafayette College, US. Her research interests focus on the intersections between institutional and interpersonal violence, and the structural inequalities within experiences of citizenship and security. Dana’s current project investigates the role of technology in facilitating abuse and assesses the needs of survivors whose safety and security are compromised as a result. Her research has been published in Gender, Place & Culture, Progress in Human Geography, Social & Cultural Geography and Geopolitics. Andrew Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona. He studies the social, cultural and political implications of coal mining in the Navajo Nation. His research is on energy transition, resources, infrastructure and development for Indigenous nations in North America. His work has been published in journals such as Geoforum and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and he is currently completing a book on the social impacts of the Navajo coal industry based on ethnographic research from 2012–2014. Mark Davidson is Associate Professor of Urban Geography in the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, US. His current research focuses on urban politics, municipal finance and theories of urban democracy. He has a BA and PhD from King’s College London, UK. Meredith J. DeBoom is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina. Her research analyses the geopolitics of natural resource extraction, development

Contributors  xiii and distribution, with an emphasis on Africa–China relations. She is particularly interested in how Africans are engaging with geopolitical and environmental changes to pursue domestic political goals. Meredith’s research has been supported by the American Association of University Women, the National Science Foundation and the University of Michigan Society of Fellows. She holds a PhD in Geography with a Certificate in Development Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US. Christabel Devadoss is Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies and Human Geography at Middle Tennessee State University, US. She received her PhD in Geography from West Virginia University, US in 2018. Her research in cultural and political geography broadly examines South Asia, diaspora, postcolonial geographies, identity, visual methods and sound. She has been a lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University, an instructor for Kent State University’s School of Journalism, US and Mass Communication and a professional photographer for ten years. Yonn Dierwechter is Professor in the School of Urban Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma, US. His research explores the governance of smart city-regions, comparative geographies of regional growth planning and the emerging role of cities in global environment politics. He is currently investigating the implications of global climate change for the Seattle area. Jason Dittmer is Professor of Political Geography at University College London, UK, where he conducts research on assemblage, materiality and geopolitics. His current research is on Gibraltar and the role of materiality in state formation. He is the author of Diplomatic Material: Affect, Assemblage, and Foreign Policy (2017) and over 80 journal articles and book chapters. Frédérick Douzet is Professor of Geopolitics at the University of Paris 8, France, director of the French Institute of Geopolitics research team and Director of Geopolitics of the Datasphere. She is a commissioner of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (cyberstability.org) and a member of the French Defense Ethics Committee. In 2017, she was part of the drafting committee for the French Strategic Review of Defense and National Security. Frédérick was nominated junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2006 and has received several awards for her research, including three book prizes, a best paper prize and the France-Berkeley Fund Award for Outstanding Young Scholar (2014). Benjamin Forest is Associate Professor of Geography, Associate Member of the Department of Political Science and a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at McGill University, Canada. He received his PhD in Geography from University of California, Los Angeles, US in 1997, and was an assistant and then associate professor at Dartmouth College, US from 1998 to 2006. His current research examines redistricting and concepts of political community, the political representation of ethnic minority groups and women, the politics of memory and identity (particularly in the post-Soviet sphere) and various issues of electoral geography, political parties and governance. In recent years, he has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – société et culture.

xiv  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Carola Fricke is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Human Geography at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg, Germany. After her graduation in political science, geography and public law in 2011 she worked as a researcher and teaching fellow at the Chair of Comparative Politics, Department of Political Science at the University of Freiburg and at the Chair of Urban-Regional Policy Analysis at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning of Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. Her research interests are in the comparative analyses of spatial, urban and regional policies in Europe focusing on city-regional and cross-border cooperation. Her recent publications focus on the construction of metropolitan regions as political concepts and spatial scales, and she is author of the book European Dimension of Metropolitan Policies: Policy Learning and Reframing of Metropolitan Regions (2020). Enrico Gualini is Professor of Planning Theory and Urban-Regional Policy Analysis at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. His research interests focus on the social construction of space and the political dimension of socio-spatial practices, the analysis of spatial development policies, the emergence of governance practices and the resulting challenges for democratic politics and institutions. He has been visiting scholar/professor at the University of California Berkeley, US University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, University of Palermo, Italy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, SciencesPo Paris and Collège d’études mondiales – FMSH Paris, France. His recent publications include Planning and Conflict: Critical Reflections on Contentious Urban Developments (editor, 2015), Conflict in the City: Contested Urban Spaces and Local Democracy (co-editor, 2015) and Constructing Metropolitan Space: Actors, Policies and Processes of Rescaling in World Metropolises (co-editor, 2018). Stephanie Hitztaler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland. As a member of the institute’s Research Group on the Russian Environment, she has investigated energy issues, including corporate social responsibility in the hydrocarbon sector, specific to the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region in the Russian Arctic. She is also a team member of the Arctic Partnerships for International Research and Education project, Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. Stephanie received her PhD at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, US. Her doctoral dissertation examined changing forest cover and forest-use patterns in central Kamchatka in the Russian Far East. In this work, she made extensive use of the Geographical Information System to merge ethnographic, ecological and spatial data, which facilitated a more thorough understanding of these patterns. Her latest publication is a chapter in the edited volume Urban Sustainability in the Arctic: Measuring Progress in Circumpolar Cities (2020). Alex Jeffrey is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK. His work examines state formation after conflict and he is author of The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia (2013) and The Edge of Law: Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court (2020). Andrew E.G. Jonas is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Hull, UK. He has published widely on themes relevant to this handbook including conflicts around state territorial structures and the geopolitics of city-regionalism. Andy has published five books, including the International Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics (2018), and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters.

Contributors  xv Rhys Jones is Professor of Political Geography and a former head of the department of geography and earth sciences at Aberystwyth University. He has written extensively about the geographies of the state, nationalism and the behaviour change public policy agenda. Miles Kenney-Lazar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. He holds an MA and PhD in Geography from Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography, US. Miles has been researching the political, economic and environmental geographies of large-scale Vietnamese and Chinese agro-industrial plantations in Laos over the past decade, particularly their threats to peasant claims on land and forested landscapes. He is particularly interested in the capacity of marginalized peasant communities to contest the expansion of industrial plantations into their rural territories despite a restrictive political atmosphere. He is currently expanding his research to examine the politics of dispossession in peri-urban areas of Laos targeted for the development of special economic zones and in post-conflict areas of Myanmar (Burma) for the establishment of oil palm plantations. Natalie Koch is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, US. She focuses on authoritarianism, geopolitics, nationalism and state power in resource-rich states. In investigating how ostensibly positive expressions of state power differentially engage individuals as political subjects, she considers alternative sites of geopolitical analysis such as spectacle, sport, science and higher education, and environmental policy. In addition to a broader study of energy and sustainability initiatives in the Arabian Peninsula, her current research develops a ‘desert geopolitics’ lens on transnational networks linking deserts of the world and explores a long history of connection between the US Southwest and the Middle East. She has published in journals such as Political Geography, Geoforum and Geopolitics, and is the author of The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia (2018) and editor of the book, Critical Geographies of Sport: Space, Power, and Sport in Global Perspective (2017). Yi Li is Associate Professor at the School of Public Administration/National Research Center for Resettlement of Hohai University, Nanjing, China. Her research interests include urban and regional governance, land development and politics in China. She has recently published in Political Geography, Regional Studies and Progress in Planning. Majerle Lister is a member of the Navajo Nation and a graduate student in the Geography Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US. He studies land use, management and governance in the Navajo Nation. His research currently focuses on land use and governance in the Navajo Nation and its implication for future energy and development landscapes. Christopher Lizotte is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His past work has investigated the intersections of philanthropy and school reform in the US, as well as the French concept of secularism, laïcité and how it is manifested through political geographies of assimilation and negotiation through that country’s school system. Currently he is undertaking a project on European nativist and nationalist politics, particularly in how such political movements operationalize borders, territory and other spatial concepts in their pursuit of exclusionary sovereignty.

xvi  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state He has published in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Political Geography, Geography Compass and The Canadian Geographer. Juho Luukkonen is University Lecturer in Spatial Planning and Policy in the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include spatial planning and development policies, political geographies of the European Union, state space transformation and territorial politics. Currently Juho is conducting research on the planning–state nexuses by investigating, for instance, public property transactions in Finnish city-regions. In his current research, he is also developing a practice theoretical approach on studying the constitution of state territories. Juho has published in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning C, European Planning Studies, Geografiska Annaler, Planning Theory and Political Geography. Vanessa Massaro is Assistant Professor of Geography at Bucknell University, US. Her research draws on mixed quantitative and ethnographic methods to explore the way spatially segregated racial minorities, particularly Black people in the US, navigate the intersection of racism with broader forces of economic injustice. Her work has been published in Gender, Place & Culture, Environment and Planning C and Territory, Politics, Governance. She is currently an American Association of University Women American Fellow. Sami Moisio is Professor of Spatial Planning and Policy in the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include state spatial transformation, political geography of economic geographies and urban political geography. His recent book Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy won the Regional Studies Association Routledge Best Book Award 2019. Sarah Moser is Associate Professor of Geography at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she is Director of the Urban Studies Program. Sarah received her PhD in Geography from the National University of Singapore and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US and the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College, US. She is interested in how religious and national ideology are manifested in the built environment, particularly in state-driven urban mega-projects and new cities, and the emerging trend of new cities built from scratch. Her geographical areas of focus include Malaysia, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Sarah has published articles in journals such as Urban Studies, Cities, Area, Social and Cultural Geography, Dialogues in Human Geography, ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe, Urban Geography, International Development Planning Review and Geoforum and has edited New Master-Planned Cities, Islam, and Identity (2020). Luca Muscarà is Associate Professor of Political Geography at the University of Molise, Italy. He holds a 2012 habilitation to Full Professor of Geography, and has been a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles, US, La Sapienza, Italy, Mimar Sinan, Turkey and Pacte, France. From his research on the geography of Jean Gottmann, he developed scientific interests at the intersection of the history of geographical thought and political, urban and cultural geography. With John Agnew he co-authored Making Political Geography (2nd edition, 2012), and has contributed chapters to the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography (2015) and to Geographies of Power (2018). He is currently developing a project

Contributors  xvii with Pacte, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Département des Cartes et Plans), with a Direction d’Etudes Associée from the Fondation de la Maison de Sciences de l’Homme. Caroline Nagel is Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of South Carolina, US. She served as a Fulbright Scholar at the American University of Beirut in 2010–11. Her work has explored themes of migration, multiculturalism, religious identity, citizenship and urban space in the UK, the US and Lebanon. Her current research focuses on the political subjectivities of young Christians who participate in evangelical mission trips overseas. She has also investigated evangelical outreach to immigrants in the US south. Her work has been published in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Antipode, Professional Geographer, Geopolitics and Political Geography. She is also the co-author (with Elizabeth Mavroudi) of Global Migration: Patterns, Processes, and Politics (2016). She currently serves as Associate Editor of Political Geography and on the editorial board of Arab World Geographer. Nicole Nguyen is Associate Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, US. Her research examines the intersections of national security, war and US public schooling. She is author of A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in US Public Schools (2016) and Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (2019). Kristian Olesen is Associate Professor in Strategic Spatial Planning at the Department of Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interest is in the tension field between spatial planning and politics. He has written several publications about the recent changes in strategic spatial planning in Denmark, with a particular focus on how the ideas and practices of spatial planning are being transformed under neoliberalism. Stefanie Ortmann is Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, UK. Her research interests include forms of state power and geopolitical imaginaries. She is interested in how they are expressed locally in different ways, but also in the global reappearance and circulation of geopolitical tropes at the current juncture. She has written about the spheres of influence, embodied sovereignty and Russian power in Central Asia, Russian myths of the state, Russia as a Great Power and network state and conspiracy theories in the former Soviet Union. Gavin Parker is Professor of Planning Studies at the University of Reading, UK. He was an executive director of the Royal Town Planning Institute (2012–14). He is a chartered planner and his research has centred on planning, participation and land-use conflict in urban and rural areas. Gavin has published extensively on participation in planning and on the changing nature of planning. His recent output includes the books Enabling Participatory Planning (with Emma Street, 2018) and Neighbourhood Planning in Practice (with Kat Salter and Matthew Wargent, 2019). Tom Perreault is DellPlain Professor of Latin American Geography and Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence at Syracuse University, US. He received his PhD in geography from the University of Colorado, US, and his research interests are in the fields of political ecology and environmental justice, particularly as they concern water governance, resource extraction, agrarian transformation, rural livelihoods and Indigenous

xviii  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state peoples’ social and political movements in Latin America. He has conducted research primarily in the Bolivian Andes and Ecuadorian Amazon. He has authored over 60 journal articles and book chapters. His recent publications include Minería, Agua y Justicia Social en los Andes: Experiencias Comparativas de Perú y Bolivia (2014), The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology (2015) and Water Justice (2018). Tino Petzold is Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Department of Human Geography at Goethe University, Germany. His research focuses on state finances and legal geographies of the state. He is author of Austerity Forever?! Die Normalisierung der Austerität in der BRD (2018), where he blends materialist state, legal and scale theories to discuss 40 years of normalizing austerity in (West) Germany. Russell Prince is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Massey University, New Zealand. His research focuses on policy mobility and the geographies of expertise. He has published in Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Sociology: The Journal of the British Sociological Association. Jerónimo Ríos Sierra is Doctor in Political Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain and Research Fellow in Political Geography and Geopolitics in the excellence program ‘Attraction of the Research Talent 2018’ co-financed by Comunidad de Madrid, Spain. His main lines of research are political violence and insurgencies in Latin America – with special attention to the case of Colombia and Peru. He has published in journals such as Geopolitics, Rationality and Society and Latin American Perspectives. Agatino Rizzo is Acting Chair of Architecture at Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, where he leads research in the broader domain of the built environment. His main interests are the study of the resource–urbanization nexus and how to build resourceful communities. Cross-cutting themes are resilience, heritage, energy and transdisciplinary knowledge production. His most recent projects deal with energy aesthetics, participatory methods and urban living labs for nature-based solutions, urban farming and eco-districts. Agatino Rizzo has worked in Asian and European universities and his work has been funded by the Qatar National Research Fund, the European Commission’s framework programme, Swedish Energy Agency, Formas and Vinnova. Emma Street is Associate Professor in Planning and Urban Governance at the University of Reading, UK. Emma’s research interests include urban policy, planning and urban design and architecture. She is also interested in diversity, inclusion and wellbeing issues, especially in the context of higher education. Emma has published widely on topics including the privatization of urban planning, design for active mobility and architectural practice and regulation. Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen is Associate Professor in Russian Environmental Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland and a Docent at the National Defence University, Finland in the field of Russia’s energy and natural-resource policy. In 2011–17, he was a professor in Russian Energy Policy at the Aleksanteri Institute. He leads several academic research projects (blogs​.helsinki​.fi/​tynkkynen) that focus on energy and environmental policies, energy security, societal power and culture in Russia. He outlines his multidisciplinary take on Russia in his book, The Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change (2019).

Contributors  xix David Wachsmuth is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, Canada. He directs the Urban Politics and Governance research group at McGill, where he leads a team of researchers investigating pressing urban governance problems related to economic development, environmental sustainability and housing markets. He is the early career editor of the journal Territory, Politics, Governance and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Urban Geography and Urban Planning. Matthew Wargent is British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading, UK. A political sociologist by training, Matthew’s research interests are centred on local governance and urban planning, with particular interests in power and decision making at the local level. His research has concentrated on the role of non-state actors in local governance, and he has published widely on public participation in the planning system as well as the increasing role of the private sector in urban planning. Mark Whitehead is Professor of Human Geography at Aberystwyth University and Co-Director of the Aberystwyth Behavioural Insights Research Centre. His work explores the interconnections between public policy, the behavioural sciences and ethics. His most recent work is exploring the connections between the data and behavioural sciences and behavioural government. Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, UK. His research interests include urban development in China and its social and sustainable challenges. He has recently published the book Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China (2015). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Hanna Ylöstalo is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research is concerned with gender, economy and public governance. She is particularly interested in the changing conditions of feminism and gender equality policy in the context of Nordic welfare state reform and economic crisis. She has published her work in a range of academic journals, including Distinktion – Journal of Social Theory, Critical Sociology and International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Preface and acknowledgements

If anything, the state is a geographical expression of political power. Irrespective of the notable development of the geographical research on the state over the past two decades, concise edited collections on the changing geographies of the state are still in short supply. This book aims to fulfil this gap in scholarly literature. It seeks to introduce contemporary geographic debates on the state, and to further these debates on several fronts. What follows is an intellectually stimulating set of chapters that both introduce and contribute to cutting-edge debates in the geographies of the state. The book is divided into seven thematic parts, each containing a short introduction text and substantial chapters. The extensive general introductory chapter lays a foundation for the rest of the collection. Putting together this handbook has been an enjoyable and largely smooth process. We wish to thank our editors Katy Crossan and Barbara Pretty at Edward Elgar Publishing for their very constructive support and feedback along the road, and our copy-editor Dawn Preston for her careful work in putting together the final product. We are also very grateful to our contributors for investing their valuable time into this project. As editors, we would like to extend our thanks to the following institutions. Christopher Lizotte, Juho Luukkonen and Sami Moisio thank the Department of Geosciences and Geography and the Spatial Policy, Politics and Planning Research Group at the University of Helsinki for institutional and intellectual support and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence RELATE for financial support. Natalie Koch thanks the Maxwell School and the Department of Geography at Syracuse University, and support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Experienced Researchers Fellowship. Andrew Jonas thanks Sami Moisio, Anssi Paasi and the universities of Oulu and Helsinki for inviting him to participate in several RELATE events in recent years. He also thanks the Regional Studies Association for a fellowship research grant which laid the groundwork for discussions informing several of the book’s thematic topics.

xx

Cover concept: the state as abstraction Michael Heller and Natalie Koch

With the assistance of colleagues in Syracuse University’s Fall 2019 course, ARC/GEO 500: Lawry Boyer, Anthony Bruno, Aaron Cass, Erin Doherty, Joao Ellery, Demitri Gadzios, Ali Harford, Ava Helm, Emily Hu, Mason Malsegna, Alex Michel, Jason Moline, Kyle Neumann, Miguel Roman, Patrick Smith, Isabel Sutherland, Jan Terwiesch and Ben Wang. From the theoretical starting point that the state is an abstraction, this cover image abstracts our world borders by rotating, reflecting and repeating regions of the earth so that the geographic landmarks are illegible. This was done by sectioning the Mercator projection into a grid of equal rectangles, rearranging each of the rectangles and changing their orientation. This allows the highly recognizable shapes of the Earth’s geography, to instead become something unrecognizable and new. Doing so sheds light on the highly political practice of defining state-based geopolitics through arbitrary lines imposed on our world maps. This delineation often disregards natural habitats, divides people groups and fractures landscapes. On a macro scale, our view of the world map is flawed; as many projective maps skew reality, this cover skews it even more. The image also conjures up the impression of viewing the world state system from behind bars – or what we might understand as the geographer’s traditional grid-making tools – which highlights how we, as citizens and scholars, are prisoners of our culture, tradition, canonized thoughts, as well as of the will to order this messy world we call home.

xxi

1. Changing geographies of the state: themes, challenges and futures Sami Moisio, Andrew E.G. Jonas, Natalie Koch, Christopher Lizotte and Juho Luukkonen

1.1 INTRODUCTION This is the era of the state. Almost all terrestrial space of the earth is claimed by a state or several states. However, contemporary states are different from each other in many respects, while the concept of the state itself has distinct connotations and meanings in different geographical contexts. States differ in terms of their population and the size of their territory within which they seek to ‘master’ space. The relative political and economic weight of states differ, too. Internally, states may be categorized as ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ with regard to the legitimacy they enjoy among their populace, as well as how well they function within the borders of their jurisdiction. Some may even have semi-sovereign territories within their borders, such as Native American tribal reservations in the United States, or break-away states controlled by secessionist movements as in Georgia or Moldova. Governments that speak in the name of a given state struggle with a similarly diverse range of issues. The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo seeks to root out corruption, and improve the quality of roads and street lighting. At the same time, state leaders in Northern Europe are seldom concerned with how providing such physical infrastructure might pertain to the visibility and legitimacy of their governments. Instead, they are struggling with low fertility rates and ageing populations that make it difficult to maintain the existing ‘infrastructural power’ (Mann 1984) of their ‘welfare state’. Given that the histories, development paths, institutional structures and contemporary political issues of states vary considerably, the modern state can be understood as a kind of ideal. As an ideal, the state denotes an effort to territorialize political power around a ‘state-society’ and to establish clear boundaries between the inside and outside of a state. Since the late nineteenth century, the ideal of the state has been nurtured and maintained in social scientific education and knowledge production. Also since the late nineteenth century, the classical division of labour between the social sciences has been associated with the bifurcation of the state apparatus into sectors. According to the ideal division of labour, sociologists examine societies within states; political scientists scrutinize the state as a political system; international relations (IR) interrogates interstate relations; scholars in administrative sciences study the functioning of state-related administrative systems; and jurisprudence investigates laws as manifestations of the historically contingent ‘wills’ of the state. For a long time, geographers mapped out the physical and cultural features of a given state. In the mainstream social sciences, the state is still often approached as a ‘nation-state’ with a national economy and a society as self-evident objects of state intervention. In sum, academic social science has largely reified the state as a territorial idea and ideal. 1

2  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The Handbook on the Changing Geographies of the State: New Spaces of Geopolitics addresses the geographies of the state and how the power of the state brings together territory and populace. Our perspective is critical in the sense of not taking the state as a self-evident object of analysis. Rather, the individual chapters analyse the production, constitution and transformation of the state as a spatial and political form of social organization, as well as how state power operates spatially and manifests in various state-orchestrated projects and strategies. The idea is hence not to reify the state as an ideal political community, but to examine it as a historically contingent spatial expression of political power. In this chapter, we aim to introduce the reader to some basic information and concepts underpinning geographical approaches to the state. The chapter proceeds as follows. In Section 1.2, we make a rudimentary mapping of some of the geographical approaches to the state before the 1970s, while Section 1.3 considers some more recent approaches. In Section 1.4, we reflect upon ‘methodological globalism’ as one of the challenges in a geographical study of the state as a dynamic socio-spatial organization. Section 1.5 outlines research topics that merit attention in future research on the changing geographies of the state.

1.2

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GEOGRAPHIES OF THE STATE

The discipline of geography has long served the interests of the state, ranging from educating teachers about national problems and mapping out its territorial features, resources and qualities, and prospects for growth and expansion. Since the late nineteenth century in particular, geographers have produced knowledge that has been at least potentially useful in either reworking the domestic economic and social spaces of the state or in extending the power of the state beyond its borders. The ‘actual’ impact of the discipline in constructing and consolidating the modern state is impossible to assess, however. The theoretical foundation of academic geography in the nineteenth century, as well as the canonical works of some of the key figures of the discipline during the early twentieth century, nonetheless reveal intimate connections between the discipline of geography and the state. The state-centred approaches of Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, Halford Mackinder and, later, Isaiah Bowman all signal close connections between geographical knowledge and aspirations to state power. From these classical roots, the study of geography was explicitly developed as an aid to statecraft (Parker 1982), while also entrenching a form of epistemological state-centricity within the discipline. The intimate relationship between geography and state power continued after the Second World War, albeit in new forms over the course of the twentieth century. Through their work on spatial and urban planning as well as regional development, many academic geographers in Europe and beyond explicitly contributed to the spatial constitution through applied work, which routinized the ‘state’ as an object of regional planning and development. Prior to the 1980s, explicit attempts to theorize the state from a geographical perspective were rare, but determinist perspectives prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. That is, the state was commonly understood as if it were not only bound to earth but also determined by it (Heffernan 2000). The most influential advocates of this approach in early political geography were Friedrich Ratzel in Germany and Rudolf Kjellén in Sweden, who took their inspiration from evolutionary thinking. In their idealist perspective, the state was a living organism, dependent on external environmental circumstances. Citizens and land together

Changing geographies of the state  3 formed a natural whole, they argued, and each state was said to have a distinct national culture determined by the natural environment. Ratzel and Kjellén’s efforts to theorize the state were rooted in biological fetishism and scientism – the belief that the methods and concepts of physical and biological sciences are equally appropriate for all disciplines – and were not uncommon within European academic circles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This environmental determinism persisted into the first half of the twentieth century, when state development and the existence of different kinds of states were explained as the result of the natural environment. US-based Derwent Whittlesey (1939, p. 7), for instance, asserted that ‘the basic political pattern, that of states, corresponds in varying degrees with the several patterns of natural environment’. After the Second World War, some scholars began to conceptualize the state from a kind of mechanical perspective. They examined the territorial consolidation and fragmentation of states under forces not emanating from environmental circumstances. Richard Hartshorne (1950), for example, analysed the territorial consolidation and fragmentation of the state as resulting from what he called centripetal and centrifugal forces. Centripetal forces, such as a well-founded and widely shared ‘state-idea’, bind the state together as a spatial entity. Centrifugal forces, such as the challenging physical form of a state’s territory or the diversity of collective identities (which can be ‘ethnic’, ‘religious’ or other kinds of groups), potentially pull the state apart. Functionalist or mechanical theories, like Hartshorne’s, presuppose some kind of stable territorial dimension of a state, while also failing to analyse the agency of different societal actors who operate through the state in a given historical conjuncture. As with the determinist approaches before them, these newer theories continued to fail in recognizing the social forces and conflicts that actually produce and reproduce the territory and populace of the state. Jean Gottmann (1951, 1952) also sought to overcome naturalism, idealism and descriptiveness in developing a geographical analysis of the state in the early 1950s. A contemporary of Hartshorne, he instead argued that the partitioning of the world into political entities, primarily states, was conditioned by two forces that work in opposite directions. First, the circulation of ideas, peoples and commodities and suchlike is a force that causes instability. Second, the circulation of iconography, such as cultural symbolism and related national traditions and systems of belief that constitute and maintain collective spatial identities, tend towards stability. For Gottmann, the balance between iconography and circulation delineates the openness or closure of the system of territorial states at a given historical conjuncture. He thus argued, ‘geography demonstrates that the main partitions observed in the space accessible to men are not those in the topography or in the vegetation but those that are in the minds of the people’ (Gottmann 1951, p. 164). Gottmann (1961) further develops his perspective on spatial transformation in his book Megalopolis. Here, he articulates a shift from the system of states to a system of city-networks, which he saw as stemming from the kind of functional needs of ‘real communities’. This argument would later become popular among all kinds of globalization boosters, innovation gurus and scholars on ‘connectography’ (Khanna 2016), who often argue that cities and city-networks are more functional than territorial states in the global economy (Ohmae 1993) or that global governance should be increasingly based on cities and their innovative leaders rather than states (Barber 2013). Such theoretical openings created by Gottmann are why some have even suggested that he was ‘political geography’s first real intellectual’ (Agnew 2002, p. 18). Be that as it may, the state has long been the taken-for-granted territorial unit of society that structures research

4  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state questions, observations and results in academic geography – contributing to the reification of the state as a clearly delineated entity, characterized by its ‘national’ inside and ‘international’ outside (see Agnew 1994). In many ways, this challenge persists today, especially as it overlaps with other idealized cultural-political categories, such as the ‘nation’. Thus ‘methodological nationalism’ (see Koch 2020) and ‘embedded statism’ (Taylor 2003) have long defined geographic approaches to the state – though the situation has shifted dramatically since the 1980s (for an overview of theories of the state in geography prior to the 1980s, see Clark and Dear 1984).

1.3

TOWARDS SOCIAL THEORETICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF THE STATE

Why does the state exist? Whose interests does it serve? What is the relationship between economic and political power in the context of the state? What is the historical relationship between the state and capitalism? How are different kinds of elites entangled with the state? How have techniques of state-orchestrated spatial governance changed over time? What should the state do and how should it be developed as a spatial enterprise? What is the role of bureaucracy in reproducing the state? How has the capitalist state been transformed over the past decades and how does state power manifest itself spatially today? What is the relationship between the territorial state and the transnational hubs and flows of money capital, talent and ideas that characterize contemporary neoliberal globalization? These are the kinds of fundamental questions that researchers of the geography of the state have been examining since the 1980s. In the early 1980s, Ron Johnston (1982, p. 1) argued that geographers ‘have paid little attention to the state and have not subjected it to rigorous analysis’. This situation changed dramatically in the 1980s, when human geographers began to engage with social theory. If the earlier scholarship had analysed the state either from environmentalist or mechanical (functionalist) perspectives, the social theoretical geographical analysis of the state explicitly engaged with state theory and political economy (for an early account, see e.g. Taylor 1982). The changing geography of the state was now examined in relation to broader societal change and economic development. The territory of the state no longer signalled a sort of passive physical background or side-product to more fundamental societal developments. Instead, state territory and territoriality were approached as distinctly political processes. From this point onward, geographers and other spatially attuned social scientists have conceptualized state spatiality as a fundamental dimension of social, cultural, political-economic and geopolitical processes (Moisio 2019). The contested territorialization of political power around the state is now an important topic in human geography and beyond. Recent studies emphasizing contextuality, relationality and contingency have sought to denaturalize the state as an ontological category of analysis. In these studies, the state is conceptualized as a constantly changing set of relations that extend beyond present political conditions, hierarchically scaled structures of governance and territorial boundaries. Accordingly, the state is studied primarily as ‘a particular way of being and relating’ (Ince and Barrera de la Torre 2016, p. 13). Figure 1.1 illustrates some dimensions of the state as a geographical phenomenon. Population, territory and state apparatus are obviously key constituents of the state. These

Changing geographies of the state  5

Figure 1.1

The state as a geographical expression of political power

parts are, however, conjoined and only analytically separable. The state apparatus can be understood as a set of (banal) bureaucratic practices, as an embodiment of bureaucratic ‘state work’ and as a field of interbureaucratic conflicts and contestation. The state apparatus is also a site of tensions that emanate from struggles between all kinds of social forces that seek to operate through the state. The state exercises both biopolitical and geopolitical power that can be understood as particular modes of social regulation. These forms of power, in turn, affect the relationship between the populace and the territory – and ultimately ossify in and through particular regimes of capital accumulation and state sovereignty (Agnew 2005). The multi-layered nature of the state mentioned above is important to recognize in a space-sensitive analysis of the capitalist state. It shows that the state is an inescapably fluid and pluri-centred ensemble that both conceals and reveals different contradictions (cf. Sharma and Gupta 2006). The state can thus be conceptualized as an ongoing process of ‘state work’ and ‘state effects’ rather than a static thing. To grapple with the complexity that this theorization entails, we sketch below several key threads in how contemporary geographers have sought to do so: understanding the state as a social relation, as an effect, as a (gendered) social construction and as a social organization under neoliberalization. 1.3.1

The State as a Social Relation and the Geographies of Regulation

Since the 1980s, many geographers have taken their inspiration from various forms of historical materialism. This structuralist perspective highlights the nature of the state as a relational social organization. Viewed through this lens, the strategies, calculations and interactions of state management and capitalists come together in the context of the state. Capitalists need the regulative power of the state for several reasons, most importantly but not solely to enable accumulation. At the same time, however, the power and legitimacy of a given state’s management is dependent on the generation of economic value in the process of capital accumulation (see, Block 1987) – not least to secure tax revenues. In other words, to maintain the power of the state, state management has to focus on ‘guaranteeing and safeguarding a “healthy” accumulation process upon which it depends’ (Offe and Ronge 1982, p. 250). A structural interdependence between the state and capital thus defines the state in capitalism. Even though the management of a capitalist state embodies a particular autonomy from the fragmented capital class, the state nonetheless tends to guarantee the basis of capitalist society. The Greek social theorist Nicos Poulantzas (1978, p. 129) famously argues that the state is ‘the specific material condensation of a relationship of forces among classes and class

6  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state fractions’. Viewed thus, the state is conceptualized as a social relation: a terrain, source and outcome of political strategies (Jessop 1990). Accordingly, the capitalist economy and society result in different groups – classes and class fractions – with different and partly antagonistic interests. The clash of these interests may involve counter-strategies and tactics of fractions. This is the reason why state power is inescapably ‘relational’ (Jessop 2008). To prevent the collapse of the existing societal order, the state apparatus organizes social classes in a way that includes the interests of relevant fractions and classes into the regulation of society, without tearing down class society as such. Social relations are hence ‘condensed’ in the state apparatus in a way that grants influence to all relevant groups (and particularly to the hegemonic fraction) to pursue their interests. Regulation theory follows some of these basic tenets of materialism to provide a stylized conceptual frame for examining the temporal evolution of capitalist growth and crises (for a comprehensive overview, see Jessop and Sum 2006). This approach is premised on an insight that the general tendencies of capitalism can be modified in a number of ways, and these modifications produce different ‘phases’ of capital accumulation. The concept of regime of accumulation stands for a phase of capitalist evolution in which the schema of social reproduction is in ‘harmony’ and in which capital accumulation takes place in a more or less crisis-free environment. The regime of accumulation brings together the dominant forms of economic growth and distribution, as well as modes of social regulation. The functional coupling of these at the scale of the state is often conceived as a prerequisite for a stable regime of accumulation to exist (Peck and Tickell 1992), while also forming a more or less consensual hegemonic project that guarantees the internal unity of the state (Jessop and Sum 2006, p. 98). Regulation theory also emphasizes how capitalism requires an intensive ‘extra-economic’ management of the populace by the state in terms of reproduction, skills, capacities, orientations and loyalties. Partial and temporary as they may be (Jessop and Sum 2006), these forms of social regulation work to avert the inherent crisis tendencies of capitalism, while also ‘internalizing’ the inherent crisis tendencies of the process of capital accumulation. The most discussed shift in regulation theory is the one between the Fordist and the post-Fordist regimes of accumulation. Fordism unites certain institutional mechanisms for reproducing semi-skilled labour, wage relations, and forms of mass production of standardized goods and related consumption (Jessop 1992). Demanding a specific state–society relationship to confine capital circuits within national borders, Fordism was produced by a particular kind of state. This was historically based on a ‘national’ compromise between organized labour, the state apparatus and corporate capital (Harvey 1990), and related Keynesian ideas regarding the management of the ‘national economy’ through managing demand and redistribution. The Fordist mode of accumulation began to unravel in the 1970s, however, and was gradually replaced by ‘flexible’ processes dealing with labour, finance, production and consumption. With circuits of capital no longer confined within state borders, this ‘post-Fordist’ regime of accumulation hastens the geographical mobility of financial capital and highlights entrepreneurialism, the role of skilled labour and the idea of spatial competition, including the international competitiveness of states, regions and cities. It is defined by the growing importance of cities in the accumulation process that occurs through global value chains, as well as the increased power of financial services and financialization more generally. The geographical take on regulation theory is concerned with how space, social regulation and accumulation come together, and how they represent a particular kind of ‘geography of shifts’. In other words, this research examines ties between changing regimes of capital

Changing geographies of the state  7 accumulation and states’ spatial patterning (cf. Scott 1988). Geographers have shown how the state, as a social relation, is the result of practices related to accumulation and social regulation that obtain a certain spatial fixity or what Harvey (1985) calls ‘structured coherence’. Spatial fixity, in turn, structures social practices at a given time. For example, if the Fordist mode of regulation manifests itself as particular national spatial patterning (‘national’ division of labour and particular ‘national’ systems of redistribution), the post-Fordist regime of flexible accumulation results in a sort of transnational state with new patterning of uneven development. Moreover, geographers have argued that there exists a series of state-specific and region-specific couplings (variegations) of accumulation systems and modes of social regulation both in the context of Fordism and post-Fordism, and that the coming together of systems of accumulation and social regulation must also be scrutinized in the context of local states and regions, as well as urban politics (Lauria 1997). One key insight of geographical regulation theory is that uneven geographical development is one of the forces that may lead to the breakdown of the existing regimes of accumulation. One of the recent geographical debates on the state therefore touches on contemporary processes of knowledge-intensive capitalism that produce striking forms of uneven development. Indeed, as geographers have shown, the post-Fordist knowledge-based economy is productive of and is produced through new spaces of the state, including new ‘global’ urban spaces and urban subjectivities (Moisio 2018c). And if cities have been developing from a managerial to an entrepreneurial form since the 1980s (Harvey 1989), the same can be said about the state. The neoliberalizing entrepreneurial city and the neoliberalizing entrepreneurial ‘innovation state’ are co-constituted phenomena. This process has fundamentally highlighted the role of major cities and city-region urban spaces in fostering states’ international competitiveness (Jonas 2013; Rossi 2017; Moisio 2018b; Luukkonen and Sirviö 2019; Olds 2001). Many of these state-led boosterist projects have focused explicitly on knowledge-based economization, which recent geographical analysis has traced to processes whereby the state is constantly reterritorialized both socially and spatially to better respond to the assumed new logics of capital accumulation, as well as its contradictions (Koch 2018a; Moisio 2018a). As these processes continue to shift, the co-constitution of the ‘national state’ and ‘local state’ in the context of reproducing capitalism will remain an important theoretical and empirical question long into the future. 1.3.2

The State as an Effect

The state, conceived of as a coherent entity separate from society, has proved a remarkably elusive object of analysis. Geographers have thus sought to conceptualize the state and state territory as an effect of social practices. This approach is premised on a few key theorems regarding the nature of the state. The British sociologist Philip Abrams (1988, pp. 82, 75–6) argues that the processes and relations that make up the ‘palpable nexus of practice and institutional structure centred in government’ do not result in the object of the state, which is ‘an essentially imaginative construction’, but only in the pervasive idea of the state which legitimizes domination. Accordingly, the state is a powerful spatial imaginary and a mystifying idea, an abstract-formal object that comes into being as a structuration within political practice. The French philosopher Michel Foucault (2007, p. 144) similarly argues that the state is only ‘a composite reality and a mythicized abstraction’. For him, ‘the nature of the institution of the state is a function of changes in practices of government, rather than the converse’

8  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state (Gordon 1991, p. 4). Viewed thus, concrete institutions and practices of state institutions and related discourses about the state are ‘real’, but there is no state ‘essence’ that exists beyond social practices. The state here is conceptualized as a political ‘artefact’, an effect that is made out of processes, which involve both discursive and material components (Mitchell 2002, p. 82; see also Lemke 2007; Mitchell 1999). A theoretical perspective that highlights the everyday nature of the state redirects attention from the assumed ‘intentionality’ of state power, typical in the historical materialist approach, to the operation of state power in the micro-geographies of the state. Research on this kind of ‘state work’ underlines three interrelated issues. First, that the primacy of the state is constantly reproduced in banal bureaucratic practices. Second, the sphere of mundane practices is the primary field on which individuals experience the state or learn something about the state. Third, the statization of social life involves the state-orchestrated gathering of knowledge regarding the mundane lives of population itself. Overall, approaching the state as an effect has allowed geographers to overcome the persistent state/civil society binary through inquiry into the everyday spaces of stateness. These quotidian micro-geographies – the ‘everyday prosaics of stateness’ (Painter 2006) – point not only to the inescapably uncertain and potentially unexpected spatial outcomes of state-related actions, but also to the spatial unevenness of state effects. The prosaic geographies of stateness have been explored in various studies on everyday state formation (e.g. Ballvé 2012; Staeheli et al. 2012; Neves Alves 2019), everyday nationalism (e.g. Jones and Merriman 2009; Benwell et al. 2019), the embodied presences of the state (e.g. Prokkola and Ridanpää 2015; Secor 2007), as well as on the affective implications and constituents of the state (e.g. Woodward 2014). By focusing on the ‘ordinary’, these studies have foregrounded the experiences, subjectivities and emotions of individuals drawn into the orbit of the state. They do not imply, however, that macro-geographies such as global economic fluctuations, financial crises or international diplomacy have become irrelevant. Rather, this work underlines that all kinds of ‘small matters’ such as policy practices or the experiences and emotions of state personnel have significant implications for the workings of state apparatus. The doings and sayings of prominent political leaders still matter greatly, but the doings, sayings and emotions of the ‘petty bureaucrats’ of state apparatus are also an essential part of the construction and performance of stateness (e.g. Kuus 2015; Jones 2007; Medby 2018). The goal of the work on the state effect is thus to make visible ‘the intensification of the symbolic presence of the state across all kinds of social practices and relations’ (Painter 2006, p. 758). In short, the statization of social life (and space) proceeds through and thus also depends on quotidian practices undertaken by citizens and state officials alike. What the state actually means to government officials, those involved in various government programmes and projects, or citizens, is drastically shaped through the repetitive, routine and ‘ordinary’ bureaucratic procedures of the state (Sharma and Gupta 2006). Given that the legitimacy of the state as an embodiment of social power is dependent on what the state actually means to the citizens of a state, it is essential to ask how the state comes to be experienced, encountered and reimagined by the population of a given state. Moreover, a close investigation of the ‘actually existing’ bureaucratic authority of state should also pay attention to how different government programmes and state policies are enacted in daily routines by state bureaucrats such as officials, teachers and health-care professionals, for instance. These enactments are highly interesting also in the context of transnationalized state apparatus: how state bureaucrats enact particular globally circulating policy models and knowledges remains an

Changing geographies of the state  9 important topic in the geographical investigation of the state. It is equally important to notice that because the existence of the state in people’s lives is dependent on the banal practices of state bureaucracies, these bureaucracies potentially become sites of cultural contestation. Bureaucratic authority plays a pivotal role in the ‘territory work’ (Moisio and Luukkonen 2017) of the state. Bureaucratic practices offer important insights for understanding how ‘state territory’ is delimited, internally and jurisdictionally ordered, and how it takes on the appearance of existing as a coherent functional and bureaucratic whole (Bourdieu 1999). The emphasis on the bureaucratic authority of the state signals that the territory of the state should be conceptualized as a relational space, a set of bureaucratic processes that together have territory effects. For state territory to exist, it must be measured, analysed, addressed and objectified through bureaucratic knowledge that grasps it in its entirety (Hull 2012). Mapping and surveying the territory of the state is thus about enabling the state to see and govern different people, phenomena and processes (Hannah 2000, 2009; Kivelä 2018; Painter 2010; Rose-Redwood 2012; Tyner 2018). As this work shows, the simple act of imagining the territory of the state as a coherent whole requires forms of knowledge that constitute it as a delimited ‘unit’ or block of space. To sustain the state territory effect, the delimitation, contiguity and coherence of political space must be constantly reproduced through mundane governmental technologies and associated practices. This ‘territory work’ perspective to the state combines the idea of state territory as a particular type of political technology for controlling space and populations with the role of political agency in the production of territory as an ‘object’ – an effect of networked social practices (Moisio and Luukkonen 2017). 1.3.3

The State as Socially Constructed and Gendered

Constructivist studies of the politics of identity and the geographies of nationalism form one branch of the geographies of the state. In this approach, the ideology of nationalism and the discursive practices of nations can be understood as important ‘constituents’ of the state and state power. Social constructivist examinations of nation building, nationalism and national identities became increasingly popular in human geography in the early 1990s, as scholars began to take their inspiration from cultural sociology, cultural theory and discourse studies. Benedict Anderson’s (1983) concept of ‘imagined communities’ became a central theoretical frame applied to analysing how nations and national identities are constructed through representations across geographical contexts. While this early work rightly and readily analysed the social construction of national identities, it often stopped at the moment of deconstruction and failed to directly engage with interdisciplinary state theory debates. Constructivist research has taken new forms since the 1990s, however. For the contemporary scholars, one important task is to demonstrate how seemingly ‘apolitical’ social practices related to nation are essential to perpetuating state power. The contemporary constructivist scholarship crosses into many topics, but is most commonly encountered in political geography today in efforts to analyse nationalism, identity politics, geopolitical cultures, borders and bordering practices and more (for an early account, see e.g. Paasi 1996). Largely positioned within the subfield of critical geopolitics, this research shows how nationhood and statehood are imagined, consumed and reproduced through popular media like comic books (Dittmer 2005), film (Funnell and Dodds 2017), television (Jones 2014), mainstream news and satire (Falah et al. 2006; Holland and Levy 2018) and sport (Koch 2013, 2015a). This work also focuses our attention on the entanglement of the ‘nation’ and the ‘state’, which scholars have

10  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state explored around themes like religion and the military – both of which are treated as central to national identity construction and the statization of society through a range of national institutions and related practices (Bernazzoli and Flint 2010; Woodward 2000). Drawing inspiration from both Judith Butler’s (1990) work on performance and Anderson’s (1983) work on ‘imagined communities’, this research aligns with other critical research in nationalism studies to show how the ‘nation’ is a performed and embodied identity construction (Edensor 2002; Mayer 2000; Yuval-Davis 1997). Geographers working on the production and reconstruction of the nation have also drawn from Michael Billig’s (1995) Banal Nationalism, which articulated an approach to nationalism focused on the banal elements of its symbology, performance, rhetorics and everydayness that directed attention in nationalism studies away from commonplace analyses of nationalism as resulting from ‘postcolonial’ anxiety in the non-West or as a ‘wartime’ phenomenon in the West. Instead, work on banal nationalism has approached it as a global phenomenon that is rooted in the mundane, everyday performances of the state and nation-ness, which must be constantly reproduced (Koch and Paasi 2016). Developing in tandem with research on the state effect, feminist branches of constructivist geography has offered many insights fundamental to critical theories of the state. This strand of research is rooted in the key feminist rejection of masculinist definitions of politics, predicated on a distinction between the ‘private’ and the ‘public’. This premise is important in the subfield of critical geopolitics, for example, which took much of its early inspiration from feminist international relations scholars’ efforts to retheorize the state (Dowler and Sharp 2001, p. 166; see e.g. Enloe 1988; MacKinnon 1989), and continues to be influenced by feminist geography today (Dittmer and Bos 2019; Dixon and Marston 2011). Feminist scholars had long interrogated state processes and strategies that manifest in the ‘private’ and ‘everyday’. An important principle in such an approach is to decentre the state as a ‘national’ fixed territory within which sovereignty is smoothly performed. Feminist scholars often destabilize the state as an a priori object of analysis, and rather conceptualize ‘state power’ as diffuse and pervasive (Chouinard 2004). In so doing, they underline that the private, informal and everyday are key spaces through which state power operates. By refusing to take for granted the public/private divide, and giving more attention to the everyday state, this approach opens up a number of significant research topics and research questions. Rather than treating the state and civil society as two distinct spheres, feminist approaches to the state illustrate how embedded power relations position individuals and groups of people in different hierarchical relations, but ultimately work to cast the state as an imagined collective actor. And yet, as this work shows, it is within the ‘intimate’ spaces of life that the power of the state is not only condensed but also potentially challenged (Smith 2020). Feminist geography examines the social aspects of nation building and state building. For feminist scholars, bodies signify an essential scale at which the nation is enacted and state-orchestrated geopolitical processes resonate. This work has ‘embodied’ the state, and demonstrated how the state is constantly performed in all sorts of social practices ranging from the extra-economic to the economic (Dixon 2015; Dowler and Sharp 2001; Mountz 2003; Smith 2020), as well as the gendered nature of state bureaucratic practices (Tynen 2020). Feminist-inspired scholarship thus challenges the conventional analysis which views the state as a coherent political entity that exists independent of configurations of the everyday and related gendered social practices, while also showing how state performances and imaginaries reproduce patriarchal relations in the most mundane ways (Staeheli et al. 2004).

Changing geographies of the state  11 Feminist geographers have also investigated the state as a set of institutions and institutional practices that are gendered, racialized and classed – shifting attention from the world of production to the processes of social reproduction that help maintain the capitalist state (Mitchell et al. 2003; Winders and Smith 2019). Viewed thus, the state is a form of potential domination – a complex mixture of social practices that are potentially spatially discriminating and marginalizing (McDowell 1999). The focus may be, for instance, on how certain identities are privileged in state strategies and how the structures of the state tend to reinforce gender biases, as well as how patriarchal relations make a difference to state spatiality and the construction and management of state territory (Jackman et al. 2020). This is particularly important in some policy sectors such as security policy, where women’s voices are not only excluded from professional discussions, but also in terms of how key questions around whose security is at stake are negotiated (or neglected) in both war and everyday life (Dowler et al. 2014; Enloe 2000; Fluri 2011; Hörschelmann and Reich 2017). Feminist scholars destabilize the conceived coherence of the state by inquiring into the ‘silenced’ voices and discussing, for instance, mundane aspects of security of the private (home), as well as human security-related issues like immigration or labour mobility rather than overly militarized versions of state security (Mullings 2012; Sharp 2007). In sum, one of the political goals of feminist scholarship is to challenge the ongoing militarization and structural violence of states and to develop a politics of security at the intimate scales of the home and body (Koopman 2011). Political geographers working on nationalism and nation building also tend to be critical of the state and the (symbolic) violence wrought by its daily performance, from the mundane to the most elite and global level, though they are often less inclined to define a particular political agenda for their critiques. For decades, this has been a point of anxious discussion among scholars in feminist and critical geopolitics – largely centring around a question of how to imagine a better world outside the oppressive power structures embedded in the statist system (Bachmann and Moisio 2020; Ó Tuathail 2010; Sharp 2000). For some scholars, such as those working in border studies, conflict or settler colonialism, giving voice to the voiceless actors affected by state-controlled decisions is a crucial goal (e.g. Culcasi 2019; Dempsey 2020; Gentry et al. 2019) – a theoretical and methodological impulse that again returns to a feminist ethic of research (Coddington 2017). For others, however, the constructivist lens on the state remains more loosely about understanding basic processes, like why it is that we still take such elusive concepts as the ‘state’ and the ‘nation’ for granted (Koch 2015b; Murphy 2013). 1.3.4

Neoliberalization and the Rescaling of the State

Although the constructivist approaches arising from human geography’s ‘cultural turn’ in the 1990s became deeply influential in geographic research on the state, political-economic analyses have remained steadfastly central to disciplinary efforts to retheorize the state. In particular, scholars have accorded a great deal of attention to the neoliberalization of the state, which has proven to be a compelling and impactful set of processes unfolding around the world. In many advanced capitalist states, neoliberalism began in the form of proto-neoliberalism of the 1970s and then manifested itself in the 1980s as the destruction of Keynesian welfarist social and spatial institutions (‘roll-back’ neoliberalism) and related deregulation. Neoliberalization took an increasingly consolidated form (‘roll-out’ neoliberalism) in the 1990s through various state restructuring processes and associated modes and reasonings of governance (Peck and

12  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Tickell 2002). In the frame of historical materialism, neoliberalism is understood as an attempt to restore class power at the global scale (Harvey 2005), while others have approached it as a form of political rationality and form of governing, premised on particular ideational elements and ways of reasoning (Foucault 2007). As a form of political rationality and discourse, neoliberalism highlights the virtues of free trade, privatization, free markets, proactive statecraft, state downsizing and related public-sector reforms, lean government, austerity measures, flexible labour processes, competitiveness, individualism, entrepreneurialism, policy experiments, innovation and opening up state spaces for the movement of capital and goods. Neoliberalism is a programme of resolving problems of, and developing, human society by means of competitive markets, which are framed as the key to promote economic and organizational efficiency and individual freedom and self-fulfilment. Often accorded a sort of gospel-like prescriptiveness by proponents (such as institutions like the International Monetary Fund or international consulting companies like McKinsey), neoliberal political rationalities spread rapidly around the world from the 1980s onward – especially because they are built on invoking a kind of constant ‘crisis’ condition or ‘state of exception’ for the state (Ong 2006). The neoliberal political rationality has thus been deeply influential as a transnational process of policy evolution and learning (Bunnell 2013; Hsu and Hsu 2013). Indeed, neoliberalism could well be the most significant political-ideological rationalization for state restructuring over the three past decades across geographical contexts. Scholars of neoliberalization have pointed out that it is analytically problematic to treat neoliberalism as an external force or thought virus that exists solely in the sphere of markets. Rather neoliberalization should be conceptualized as a political process of state transformation. The term neoliberalism thus indicates that the state must construct and construe itself in market terms (Brown 2006, p. 694). In neoliberal governmental rationality, the regulation of spatial relations is espoused as the mechanism of competition; the conditions in which the dynamic of competition can exist must be promoted through active state intervention. Neoliberalization thus involves less state intervention to redistribute wealth and more intervention to create markets, support commodification and protect property rights. In neoliberal governmental rationality, ‘optimal’ political power is thus constituted on the basis of idealized market principles. Neoliberalization can be equated to the desire to organize social life according to the principles of competition as well as to attempts to encourage enterprising subjectivities, thus resulting in a sort of ‘competition state’ (Cerny 1990) that is premised on specific geopolitical rationalities (Moisio 2008). The realization of these competitive relations would not have been possible without establishing (transnational) rules and associated performance indicators for interspatial competition, but has largely been reflected in a ‘growth-first approach’ to urban and regional development. The growth-first approach not only actively supports private interests through the bureaucratic system of the state but also implies a kind of regime of enforcement. This competitive logic has thus gone hand in hand with a wide range of punitive measures for governing people, cities and regions. Overall, the neoliberal logic treats territory, population and state institutions as governable reserves that should be subjected to rational choices grounded in market principles (Ahlqvist and Moisio 2014). The state hence appears as an enterprise association which promotes the commodification of its own activities and structures. The process of commodification also includes privatization and financialization of

Changing geographies of the state  13 state-owned assets, including public land and the related rise of market players and speculators of land and real estate (Christophers 2018). Like the commodification of public land, neoliberal logics have been jointly harnessed by those acting ‘in the name of the state’ and in the ‘private’ sector to promote extractive industries through land sales, leases and other market-based contracts to exploit the natural resources of a state’s territory – or what lays beneath it. This is often articulated through the language of ‘resource nationalism’ (Koch and Perreault 2019), supposed to enrich a nation by filling state coffers, but these extractivist enterprises are also promoted through the pro-market language of new or reformed states ‘joining’ the international market economy. This was especially evident in the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe of the Soviet Union as they transitioned to market economies (e.g. Kovács 2015; Quinn 2017; Rogers 2015), but also in other neoliberalizing contexts like Latin America and Africa in the wake of debt crises or regime changes over the last decades (e.g. Andreucci 2017; Emel et al. 2011; Ferguson 2005; Marston 2019). In addition to targeting natural resources, in some contexts, the neoliberalization of the state has been marked by ‘strategic urbanisation’ (Moisio and Rossi 2020). In these cases, city-regions and innovative urban spaces emerge as key sites of economic development, spatial planning and the territorial management of the state. State-orchestrated urbanization has become a selective strategy to increase the profitability of capital. The recent proliferation of city-regionalism and start-up urbanism are two examples of state-related ‘globalizing’ projects that attempt to leverage the infrastructure and human capital of existing urban agglomerations in order to attract investment and create internationally recognized ‘hubs’ for industry and education. The ‘spatial selectivity of the state’ (Jones 1997) under neoliberalization can also be understood as partly resulting in often highly economized spatial exceptions such as ‘special economic zones’ which treat different segments of population differently in terms of rights and privileges (Ong 2006). All of these neoliberal transformations are encompassed in the ‘rescaling of the state’ thesis (Brenner 2004), which draws our attention to the spatial changes resulting from and in the formation of the neoliberal state. In Brenner’s view, neither what he terms territorial globalization nor deterritorialization are satisfactory: the former simply considers the global scale as a sort of state, but larger, while the latter paradoxically reifies the power of the modern territorial state by heralding its inevitable decline. Rather, the state is best understood as reterritorializing. That is, it is reorganizing the economic and political functions traditionally attributed to the national scale both in terms of rescaling (e.g. strategically devolving regulatory functions to subnational regions and urban agglomerations) and in terms of emphasis (e.g. reducing welfare functions relative to immigration enforcement). These processes have involved new ‘competitive’ spatial arrangements and transnationalizing state projects that seek to capture global capital flows. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the neoliberalization process is marked by a salient spatial privileging: the concentration of particular types of public investments, economic activities and skilled labour in certain privileged city-regions globally and within states. Within this system, cities and city-regions with a higher concentration of activities producing economic value (as measured in hegemonic financial terms) are able to maintain and even strengthen their advantages compared with ‘left-behind’ regions – themselves pressured into undertaking ‘place branding’ or other such market-oriented schemes to ‘keep up’. States have nonetheless remained nationalizing projects that aim at both managing societal tensions within state borders and reterritorializing ‘global flows’ (i.e. managing mobility of

14  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state individuals, goods, ideas and more). Indeed, late neoliberalism is marked by deepening inequalities not only between states, but within states. Recent developments both in Europe and in North America indicate that neoliberalization is producing inequality-related contradictions that make neoliberalism vulnerable in new ways. As a consequence, ‘xenophobic populism could well triumph at the ballot box and initiate changes that will destroy the global, hypercapitalist digital economy’ (Piketty 2019, p. 2). Uneven geographical development is actually an inherent tendency of contemporary transnational forms of knowledge-intensive capitalism. It may well be one of the emerging contradictions that destabilize the contemporary neoliberalizing knowledge-based economy as a regime of accumulation. Indeed, as part of the recent wave of nativist and populist politics sweeping the world in the last years, neoliberalism has been challenged in new ways – and so too has the state (Brubaker 2020; Jessop 2019; Hart 2019).

1.4

DIFFICULTIES OF STUDYING THE STATE: SOME NOTES ON METHODOLOGICAL GLOBALISM

The state remains both an object of analysis and a constituting force within human geography. Over three decades of considering the state as the constellation of forces holding together the political economic arrangements of late modern capitalism, political geographers and geographically minded social scientists have problematized the state, but have also struggled to break free from its conceptual inertia. In the ensuing pages, we consider ‘methodological globalism’ as one of the challenges that the scholars of the changing geographies of the state may consider when formulating research questions and operationalizing research. As we have already noted, the early geographies of the state understood the state largely as a natural unit of political organization and, in so doing, depoliticized and reified the state as a unit of analysis. This ‘methodological nationalism’ (see Koch 2020) has been criticized by those who conceptualize the state as socially constructed, contested, contingent and relational – a site and a process rather than a thing. In the context of this handbook, we refer to ‘methodological globalism’ as the tendency for social scientists to prioritize the analysis of globalization processes over and above knowledge of the variety of socio-spatial structures, processes and practices that shape state forms and functions at various territorial scales. Many contemporary approaches to economic development, planning and governance take as a pre-given the role of economic globalization as the pre-eminent societal force which moulds, transforms and, increasingly, undermines the state and its constituent national and subnational branches. In some cases, globalization is actively hollowing out the territorial state from above and fostering new subnational and transnational territorial formations – notably, regional industry clusters, global cities, mega-urban regions, etc. These formations, in turn, increasingly contrive to circumnavigate the power and authority of the state. In other approaches, globalization poses an ever present threat to the state’s existence as sovereign territorial structure and raises questions about the intellectual efficacy of received understandings of national political citizenship, sovereignty, economy and territorial integrity. Meanwhile, the state remains a largely invisible spatial category in mainstream urban and regional economic analysis (Storper 2013). Instead, the emphasis in much urban and regional planning and policy is on mapping and measuring the flow of capital, knowledge and information through cities and regions as if these ostensibly global flows operate in a ‘borderless

Changing geographies of the state  15 world’ (Ohmae 1995). Despite occasional calls to ‘bring the state back’ into contemporary spatial analysis (Wissen and Brand 2010), even economic geographers and regional social scientists remain somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that the study of national and subnational state structures and territories offers a stable launch-pad for contemporary critical geo-economic and geopolitical analyses. From a critical realist perspective, methodological globalism can be regarded as containing a set of ontological assumptions in which causal powers are pre-assigned to various global political and economic actors and institutions somehow operating ‘above’, or apart from, the state. Such powers – and the corresponding liabilities – derive first and foremost from the putative global reach and influence of various non-state actors rather than from any material attachment to places, regions and territories – for example, a stake in the fiscal capacities of local or metropolitan government jurisdictions (Cox and Jonas 1993). These actors, it seems, have the capacity to exercise their powers unmediated by those of state actors. At best, the state is treated as a contingent effect, or by-product, of societal processes which are conceived of as essentially non-territorial or (in current terminology) relational. Whereas the state was once the very essence of territoriality, much of social theory today is constructed around relational processes and their non-state-centric effects and outcomes. Nonetheless, there may be ways of (re)positioning the territorial state within these ostensibly relational narratives; ways which are implicit in extant state-theoretical approaches. For example, in world systems approaches states are treated as pre-given territorial structures that operate within, and respond to, the global system of exchange in a quasi-autonomous fashion. Likewise, in regulation theory, subnational state competitiveness reflects how the national state itself has responded to wider political and economic trends, such as the rise of neoliberalism, by rescaling its internal powers and capacities (Brenner 2004). Even in actor-network theory, collective action inside the state is not simply an effect of relational processes; it often depends upon how political actors assemble wider infrastructural resources within territories (e.g. cities and regions) that nevertheless possess fixed political boundaries and often limited fiscal capacities (Sassen 2013). Such varied perspectives on the role of the state and its constituent political actors, networks and spaces ultimately hint at the near impossibility of separating knowledge of the essential territoriality of the state from relational understandings of globalization and societal change. Nevertheless, the recent ascendancy of methodological globalism is perhaps understandable given that state theory had reached something of an impasse by the end of the twentieth century. At that time, Marxist state theorists in particular had been locked into quite intractable debates, not the least of which was the question of the relative autonomy of the state from the capital–labour relation (see e.g. Poulantzas 1978; Jessop 1990). When judged by today’s standards, state theory could not be accused of overly territorial thinking at the time; yet it seemed to some that the only way of overcoming this theoretical impasse was to de-essentialize knowledge of the capital–labour relation. As Kennedy (2006, p. 182) has argued, ‘the state has a capacity for relative autonomy premised on the negation of capitalism and, therefore, the negation of the basis of capitalist ruling class’s rule over the form of labour extraction … the social space for the state’s relative autonomy emerges on the basis of the suppression of the categories of capital and labour’. However, many others – especially political geographers – have since argued that it is necessary to think of capitalist relations of production not so much in an abstract sense as being devoid of any necessary spatial content but instead to show how space and territory (at least in a more general sense) make a fundamental difference to

16  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the manner in which capital and labour are materially and socially constituted. Cox (2002), for example, argues that capital requires the production of certain spatial forms (e.g. land, buildings, infrastructure, housing, etc.) in order to accumulate. By the same token, it can be argued that the state requires certain territorial forms – e.g. local fiscal arrangements, regional land use plans, local electoral districts, etc. – in order to facilitate accumulation and political participation. In his early forays into state theory, Lefebvre had already proposed a potential solution to the challenges of essentialism (a.k.a. methodological globalism) by drawing a distinction between capitalism’s mondialité, which roughly means the ‘worldness’ or general character of its underlying social relations, and mondial, which in this context refers to capitalism’s ‘worldwide’ reach – i.e. its expansion on a planetary scale (Lefebvre 1976). Lefebvre emphasized that globalization is not pre-given but evolves and morphs spatially in response to various tensions and contradictions expressed at urban, national and international scales. In economic geography, there have been similar calls to de-essentialize knowledge of global capitalism and class relations by exploring the diverse concrete economic forms and practices that operate and exist within and between localities and regions (Gibson-Graham 2006). Given all of this, the intellectual challenge to state theory posed by methodological globalism results not so much from its ignorance of the various territorial structures and properties of the state – in fact, a vast corpus of state theory has scant regard for the geography of the state – but rather its failure to address the relationship between capitalism’s diverse spaces of globalization (Cox 1997) and the state’s ever fluctuating internal and external geographies. One potential solution to the problem of territorial non-coincidence (Murray 1971) and its geographical equivalent, the ‘territorial trap’ (Agnew 1994), considers how the state is positioned vis-à-vis extra-territorial threats, such as globalization, by adjusting its geopolitical configuration. However, such geopolitical analysis itself confronts an equivalent challenge of essentializing the causal importance of state territory at the expense of knowledge of non-state spatial formations and flows. For instance, traditional understandings of geopolitics often took the territorial state and its borders as fixed or pre-given spatial entities from which political power and control emanate outwards into the wider world of international relations. Accordingly, a state’s geopolitical influence could be measured against its ‘mastery’ of (state) territory within and especially beyond its (national) borders. However, critical geopolitical scholars, including Agnew and Corbridge (1995), challenge this traditional viewpoint by addressing a government’s desire to control not just a state’s territory but also spatial flows of money, capital, knowledge and material resources. Out of this a more critical understanding of geopolitics has emerged, whereby the international competitiveness (or resilience) of the modern state is secured not so much by the control of state territory and borders as by the state’s capacity to mobilize and harness flows of capital and knowledge around new spatial formations, including cities, city-regions and especially mega-urban regions (which might themselves transcend national borders). As Moisio (2018a, p. 4) argues: ‘the preceding state-centered era epitomized by the term geopolitics has been replaced by the notion of the international competitiveness of the state based on generating competitive advantages (of nations) through different kinds of spatial formations as well as new kinds of citizen subjectivities’. This leads to the insight that a state’s ability to corral global flows both within and beyond its borders can serve as an instrument of exerting international influence, which is mobilized by ruling national elites to reassert the geopolitical authority and territorial integrity of the state notwithstanding the ‘hollowing-out’ effects of globalization.

Changing geographies of the state  17 Finally, it is worth noting that the incorporation of non-essentialist renditions of territory into state theory is not without its challenges. Here we highlight two potential issues. The first relates to the question of national territory. The second relates to the question of scale. With regard to the first, there is the question of how to investigate the state’s internal and extra-territorial powers, structures and processes without essentializing their ‘national’ territorial origins and reach. The functional approaches in political geography, as discussed above, tended to separate out the state’s internal and external functions. That is, they attributed the organization of the state’s internal territorial structures to countervailing forces of national integration/fragmentation, on the one hand, and its external relations with other states and economies to wider geopolitical factors, on the other. Instead, we need to consider how the state simultaneously projects both internally and externally often quite different material and discursive representations of national territory as it engages with processes of economic globalization and various social, environmental and distributional problems (Jonas and Moisio 2018). For example, how and why did the idea of a ‘national economy’ emerge under Keynesianism (see Radice 1984) and what geopolitical myths and imaginaries have in the meantime replaced this particular representation of national territory? Challenging methodological globalism involves rethinking the geography of the state not in terms of an internal versus external duality but how the very essence and idea of the ‘national’ is mobilized through all sorts of geopolitical practices and imaginaries. The second issue concerns what Lefebvre (1976) referred to as the ‘politics of space’ – how the state manages national and urban spatial structures to accommodate the worldwide expansion of capitalism – but today would be more commonly described as the ‘politics of scale’. For contemporary state theorists, the language of scale is often interchangeable with that of territory (Jessop et al. 2008), especially when it comes to undertaking a serious analysis of the state, its changing structures, functions and capacities, and its evolving relationship to the global landscape of accumulation. Scale-sensitive state theory immeasurably helps to shed light on how state territory adjusts to changes in capital’s accumulation strategies and, crucially, vice versa. In contrast to a methodological globalism that essentializes the causality of the global scale, we would always advocate a scalar method or ontology that does not pre-assign causality to any specific territorial scale either within or without the state – such considerations are instead questions requiring further empirical investigation rather than matters demanding strident and uncritical a priori assertion.

1.5

THE FUTURE: NEW SPACES OF GEOPOLITICS

We conclude this chapter with introducing eight themes that we believe merit attention in taking the geographical analysis of the state further. First, Indigenous geographies need to be foregrounded in future scholarship on the state. As Velednitsky et al. (2020) have recently noted, the most significant ‘present absence’ in political geography today is a serious engagement with settler colonial theory. Until now, there have only been modest efforts to integrate into mainstream discussions of state theory the vast and crucial research in Indigenous studies scholarship on sovereignty, state power, settler colonialism and modes of relating to the land within and beyond the territorial state (e.g. Bonds and Inwood 2015; Busbridge 2020; Curley 2019; Grydehøj and Ou 2017; Naylor et al. 2018; Nicol 2017; Norman 2014). As this work shows, the contemporary state cannot be understood outside of colonialism – but that coloni-

18  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state alism is not just a past, but a present. A key challenge for future scholarship on the state is to understand the ongoing renewal and/or contestation of Indigenous forms of self-determination within settler colonial states. Doing so, Michelle Daigle (2016, p. 261) suggests, demands a close study of everyday geographies and the ‘lived practices of Indigenous self-determination’, but that this need not mask how these practices are ‘nested’ within and a part of ‘the sovereignty of the settler colonial state and capitalist structures of accumulation’. Rather, as discussed throughout this chapter, these broader structural forces cannot be understood without the grounded perspective of the everyday, and vice versa. Indigenous geographies are political geographies, so understanding the spatial and conceptual shifts of the state requires listening to and raising these perspectives. Second, we are witnessing a particular ‘ecologization of politics’ that demands sustained academic attention. This is a process whereby the state is also spatially transformed, as individuals, institutions and other political structures are called upon to adopt and internalize a particular logics of environmental ‘sustainability’ (Whitehead et al. 2007). This kind of ‘sustainability state’ nonetheless remains largely a capitalist state, which is now being tailored to counteract the crisis tendencies of late capitalism which emanate from global climate change (Ioris 2015). Indeed, many of the material and policy shifts seen under the banner of the ‘ecologization of politics’ in recent years actually do little to improve environmental problems, and instead reinforce state institutions’ hegemony and their relation with private interests – albeit in innovative ways and through ‘eco-friendly’ rhetoric. This is particularly problematic in certain authoritarian states and institutions, as well as sites targeted by extractive industries (e.g. Belcher et al. 2020; Curley 2018; Koch 2018a; Marston 2019; McCreary and Milligan 2014; Zhou 2015). In other contexts, however, some political leaders and citizens have drawn upon the ideals of social justice to advocate for ‘just transitions’, i.e. the reorganization of human activities within particular ‘environmental limits’ while ensuring that the policies introduced are societally legitimate and fair (Jasanoff 2018; Routledge et al. 2018). When advanced around an ‘eco-welfare-state’ ideal, these changes may facilitate a transition towards the next phase of knowledge-intensive capitalism (Moisio and Rossi 2020), or some as yet unknown form of ‘eco-state restructuring’ (While et al. 2010). Whatever the case may be, the ecologization of politics and its relationship with state spatial transformation is a theme that merits rigorous research in the future, whether under the rubric of political geography, political ecology, environmental geopolitics or some critical environmental combination of all (Dalby 2020; Death 2014; Loftus 2020; O’Lear 2020). Third, there is a need to continue theorizing the local state in late neoliberalism. It is pertinent to examine how the transformation of cities and states is a co-constituted process, and how the ‘national’ is being built into the local state in different geographical contexts and in various political projects dealing with issues such as housing, economic development and policing urban space in the name of ‘security’ (Coleman 2009; Kaufman 2016). In other words, the state often plays a role in transforming cities during the age of neoliberalism, but these state-orchestrated projects often occur in extra-local relations beyond the localities so impacted. This kind of national-state orchestrated politics of the local state manifests itself in projects that bring together the national state apparatus, transnational actors that seek to financialize the urban environment and consultancies that mobilize transnational circuits of knowledge. The relationship between the local state, the national state and circuits of financialization is thus a topic that merits rigorous geographical research.

Changing geographies of the state  19 Regarding what we argue above, local and national spatial development and planning policies offer an interesting entry point into the ways in which the local state, national state and transnational finance come together in the age of late neoliberalism. The rise of the ‘intangible economies’ and rapid urbanization have initiated a large-scale revaluing of national real estate assets – land, buildings, infrastructures, natural resources, etc. – and the redistribution of the rights to extract them. The economic consequences of such revaluing and redistribution have been remarkably different. In growing urban areas the real estate industry has expanded significantly (Stein 2019) while in the declining periphera and deindustrializing regions real estate values have decreased dramatically. Both of these contexts have nonetheless faced similar consequences: the growing influence and interest of transnational finance in planning and development policies. In urban centres, planners and developers are increasingly involved in cooperative development projects with transnational real estate investors and business angels who seek to benefit from inflated real estate prices (e.g. Hyötyläinen and Haila 2018). In the declining regions and localities in turn, lower prices and decreasing real estate values also attract investors and speculators. In both spatial contexts, planners and developers seek to produce value through planning and developing milieux which attract investments. Harvey (1973) noted some five decades ago that planning is a political activity in the service of capital and capitalist state. In the same spirit, we argue that the ongoing valorization of urban and peripheral spaces by public authorities, large-scale revaluing of national real estate assets under late neoliberalisation and the increasing influence of transnational actors in local and national planning policies deserve rigorous scholarly attention. Fourth, there is a need to continue investigating the role of the state in the process of contemporary knowledge-based economization and its qualitative shifts. The privatization of governance, the processes of datafication and digitalization all merit close scholarly scrutiny – particularly under new regimes of ‘surveillance capitalism’ (Zuboff 2019). This form of knowledge-based economization is built on a kind of ‘epistemic inequality’, whereby a fast-growing cleavage is now appearing between what we know and what is known about us. As sources of potential insecurity proliferate across biological, technological and climate realms, constellations of states and non-state actors will construct problems and solutions that seek to render these as legible subjects of the state security apparatus. While the state has a major role to play in these securitizing processes, the private sector is becoming increasingly prominent in shaping threat definition and response by supplying, and in some cases controlling access to, infrastructure and resources. Drawing on new tools of digitalization and datafication, surveillance capitalism operates through technologies such as facial recognition and other privatized technologies, while also uniting corporate and state power in new combinations (Glasius and Michaelsen 2018). State-orchestrated efforts to reterritorialize the state at the age of digitalization and datafication remain important topics in the study of state transformation – vividly illustrated by the COVID-19 crisis unfolding across the world at the time of writing. State health agencies are, in some cases, relying on private-sector clinics or testing facilities to bolster their capacity – illustrating how the state’s incomplete grasp in this area of ‘security’ provision cannot be understood as the sole purview of the state, even where such claims are made. Fifth, the transformation of the state as a geopolitical persona remains an important research topic in geographical studies of the state. It is highly likely that the social organization called the state will not exist, say, in the year 2500, or that it will exist in a fundamentally altered form. It would be important to examine various geopolitical utopias in the present, utopias that

20  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state either portray new kinds of statehood or seek to build new kinds of political communities as alternatives to the contemporary state. As Frederic Jameson (2004, p. 44) has argued, narrating a kind of utopia involves constructing a discursive realm in which ‘political institutions seem both unchangeable and infinitely modifiable’, and are thus transformed in ‘the object and raw material of ceaseless mental play’. Some urban utopias, for example, might thus reveal how the logics and techniques of territorial governance could be reimagined. These range from ‘green utopias’ (Garforth 2017) to globalizing city imaginaries whereby the global city network and ‘great cities’ are represented as if they were more ‘functional’ political communities than ‘dysfunctional’ Others (Datta and Shaban 2016; Pinder 2005). Utopian narratives thus call our attention to deep social and political divides of who gets to imagine and share their vision of an ideal future. It is thus essential that future research on the shifting geographies of the state attend to the fact that for many actors, the celebratory discourses of utopia – and the dystopian discourses of environmental catastrophe motiving projects of ‘eco-state restructuring’ – overlook what Curley and Lister (this volume) refer to as the ‘already existing dystopias’ common to so many Indigenous peoples. As they and other Indigenous scholars have argued, the settler state is an already existing dystopia, as these groups have had their lands and territorial regimes subjected to world-changing catastrophes for centuries – but they nonetheless continue to be written out of visions for a ‘green’ or otherwise-defined utopian future (Barker 2005; Blackhawk 2006; Daigle 2016; Nicol 2017; Whyte 2018). Sixth, the events of the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century show that even in cases where state functions have proven to be weak or unreliable, the ‘allure’ (Murphy 2013) of the territorial state is as stronger as ever. What is perhaps most surprising is that the desire for a stronger, more authoritarian state is coming in some cases from electoral majorities and pluralities. Across Europe and North America, voters are choosing parties and leaders that promise an end to partisan gridlock and a solution to the excesses of globalization – if only they will support draconian policies to exclude newcomers and renew an idealized national culture (Brubaker 2020; Lizotte 2019). We should also be attuned to situations in which non-state actors attempt to ape state mechanisms for reproducing its territory and enforce a politics of exclusion. Vigilante territorial policing is one form of this, found in settings such as the United States (Williams and Boyce 2013), Bulgaria (Krasteva 2017) or Lebanon (Sanyal 2018). Such acts depend on existing mechanisms and technologies of state territory, but take their exclusionary potential to a logical extreme. We should also inquire into attempts to remake state territoriality while retaining the basic conventions of state territoriality. More traditional kinds of authoritarian politics have not gone away, however, so it remains important to understand how actors in these states have reacted to open borders and footloose capital by reaffirming territorial control – not just over physical but also psychic national space, in addition to trying to capture capital themselves through all range of ‘spectacular’ developments (Koch 2018b). These developments merit careful scholarly attention if we are to understand how governments secure support for state power in a concrete way, and how it is made coherent and present to the everyday lives of political subjects. Seventh, we invite further scholarship on state–city relations. We suggested above that the consolidation of global neoliberal capitalism has led to a significant reterritorialization of the state around all sorts of new and ostensibly competitive urban spatial forms (e.g. global city-regions, rescaled modes of urban governance, etc.) along with transnational state projects that seek to capture global capital flows. At the same time, states have pursued often overtly national(ist) projects of territorial redistribution and social control, which strive to manage

Changing geographies of the state  21 growing societal tensions and inequalities within national state borders. This is seen, for example, in the way that certain authoritarian states across Asia, from Qatar to Myanmar to Kazakhstan, ruling elites have built spectacular capital cities to secure a degree of loyalty from their populations – while also monopolizing the right to act in the name of the ‘state’ that allows them to exploit resource wealth for themselves (Koch 2016, 2018b). In these places and elsewhere, politicians and managers engage in various forms of urban diplomacy that enable cities to reach out far beyond national borders and access global flows of information, capital, resources and policy knowledge (Phelps and Miao 2020). To the extent that such internationalization agendas of states are aligning with those of cities, city-regions and mega-urban regions, it raises questions about how various urbanization strategies are used as geopolitical instruments for states and other actors working within capitalist circuit networks, supranational organizations and beyond. Finally, scholars need analytical skills to think beyond the state. This requires not only an empirical assessment of state functions but also a critical recognition and examination of what Jessop (2016) calls the state idea. There is broad agreement that what we understand as the state is a constellation of forces held in fragile relationships with one another through historically and geographically specific circumstances that must reproduce itself ideologically if it is to endure territorially (Herb 2004). The intention of these social forces – the state idea – has been to ‘establish, exercise, and consolidate political power over the population of a specific territory (Jessop 2016, p. 19). Herein lies somewhat of a conundrum, as recognizing the contingency of the state, for most scholars, is accompanied by the twin recognition that this contingency has proven to be remarkably firm and infirm over time and across space. But as our Indigenous colleagues have long argued, other sovereignties are possible (Daigle 2016). The ‘settler cartographies’ of the state should never be taken for granted, so the question for us is how to think beyond the state, without reproducing the colonial erasures that it is built upon, for ‘when we engage in dialogic narratives through counterfactual space, we can connect ourselves to the errors of our ancestors and work to change how we do things today so as to learn needed lessons to pass on to future generations’ (Whyte 2018, p. 238).

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Changing geographies of the state  23 Daigle, M. (2016), ‘Awawanenitakik: The spatial politics of recognition and relational geographies of Indigenous self-determination’, Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien, 60 (2), 259–69. Dalby, S. (2020), Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Datta, A. and A. Shaban (2016), Mega-Urbanization in the Global South: Fast Cities and New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State, New York: Routledge. Death, C. (2014), Critical Environmental Politics, New York: Routledge. Dempsey, K. (2020), ‘Spaces of violence: A typology of the political geography of violence against migrants seeking asylum in the EU’, Political Geography, 79, 102–57. Dittmer, J. (2005), ‘Captain America’s empire: Reflections on identity, popular culture, and post-9/11 geopolitics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95 (3), 626–43. Dittmer, J. and D. Bos (2019), Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Dixon, D. (2015), Feminist Geopolitics: Material States, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Dixon, D. and S. Marston (2011), ‘Introduction: Feminist engagements with geopolitics’, Gender, Place and Culture, 18 (4), 445–53. Dowler, L. and J. Sharp (2001), ‘A feminist geopolitics?’ Space & Polity, 5 (3), 165–76. Dowler, L., J. Christian and A. Ranjbar (2014), ‘A feminist visualisation of the intimate spaces of security’, Area, 46 (4), 347–9. Edensor, T. (2002), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life, New York: Berg. Emel, J., M. Huber and M. Makene (2011), ‘Extracting sovereignty: Capital, territory, and gold mining in Tanzania’, Political Geography, 30 (2), 70–9. Enloe, C. (1988), Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives, London: Pandora. Enloe, C. (2000), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Falah, G.-W., C. Flint and V. Mamadouh (2006), ‘Just war and extraterritoriality: The popular geopolitics of the United States’ war on Iraq as reflected in newspapers of the Arab world’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96 (1), 142–64. Ferguson, J. (2005), ‘Seeing like an oil company: Space, security, and global capital in neoliberal Africa’, American Anthropologist, 107 (3), 377–82. Fluri, J. (2011), ‘Bodies, bombs and barricades: Geographies of conflict and civilian (in)security’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36 (2), 280–96. Foucault, M. (2007), Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Funnell, L. and K. Dodds (2017), Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Garforth, L. (2017), Green Utopias: Environmental Hope before and after Nature, Malden, MA: Polity. Gentry, B., G. Boyce, J. Garcia and S. Chambers (2019), ‘Indigenous survival and settler colonial dispossession on the Mexican frontier: The case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous communities’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 18 (1), 65–93. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006), A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Glasius, M. and M. Michaelsen (2018), ‘Illiberal and authoritarian practices in the digital sphere: Prologue’, International Journal of Communication, 12, 3795–813. Gordon, C. (1991), ‘Governmental rationality: An introduction’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–51. Gottmann, J. (1951), ‘Geography and international relations’, World Politics, 3, 153–73. Gottmann, J. (1952), ‘The political partitioning of our world: An attempt at analysis’, World Politics, 4, 512–19. Gottmann, J. (1961), Megalopolis, New York: 20th Century Fund. Grydehøj, A. and Z. Ou (2017), ‘Deterritorialization of indigeneity: Indigenous territory, development policy, and the Dan fishing community of Hainan (China)’, Political Geography, 61, 77–87. Hannah, M. (2000). Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

24  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Hannah, M. (2009), ‘Calculable territory and the West German census boycott movements of the 1980s’, Political Geography, 28 (1), 66–75. Hart, G. (2019), ‘From authoritarian to left populism?: Reframing debates’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 118 (2), 307–23. Hartshorne R. (1950), ‘The functional approach in political geography’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 40, 95–130. Harvey, D. (1973), Social Justice and the City, London: Edward Arnold. Harvey D. (1985), ‘The geopolitics of capitalism’, in D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds), Social Relations and Spatial Structures: Critical Human Geography, London: Palgrave, pp. 128–63. Harvey, D. (1989), ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, 71, 3–17. Harvey, D. (1990), The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heffernan, M. (2000), ‘Fin de siècle, fin du monde? On the origins of European geopolitics’, in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds), Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, London: Routledge, pp. 27–51. Herb, G. (2004), ‘Double vision: Territorial strategies in the construction of national identities in Germany, 1949–1979’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 94 (1), 140–64. Holland, E. and A. Levy (2018), ‘The Onion and the geopolitics of satire’, Popular Communication, 16 (3), 182–95. Hörschelmann, K. and E. Reich (2017), ‘Entangled (in)securities: Sketching the scope of geosocial approaches for understanding “webs of (in)security”’, Geopolitics, 22 (1), 73–90. Hsu, J. and Y. Hsu (2013), ‘State transformation, policy learning, and exclusive displacement in the process of urban redevelopment in Taiwan’, Urban Geography, 34 (5), 677–98. Hull, M. (2012), Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hyötyläinen, M. and A. Haila (2018), ‘Entrepreneurial public real estate policy: The case of Eiranranta, Helsinki’, Geoforum, 89, 137–44. Ince, A. and G. Barrera de la Torre (2016), ‘For post-statist geographies’, Political Geography, 55, 10–19. Ioris, A. (2015), ‘Theorizing state-environment relationships: Antinomies of flexibility and legitimacy’, Progress in Human Geography, 39 (2), 167–84. Jackman, A., R. Squire, J. Bruun and P. Thornton (2020), ‘Unearthing feminist territories and terrains’, Political Geography, 80, 102–80. Jameson, F. (2004), ‘The politics of utopia’, New Left Review, 25, 35–54. Jasanoff, S. (2018), ‘Just transitions: A humble approach to global energy futures’, Energy Research and Social Science, 35, 11–14. Jessop, B. (1990), State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jessop, B. (1992), ‘Fordism and post-Fordism: A critical reformulation’, in A.J. Scott and M. Storper (eds), Pathways to Regionalism and Industrial Development, London: Routledge, pp. 43–65. Jessop, B. (2008), State Power, Cambridge: Polity Press. Jessop, B. (2016), The State: Past, Present, Future, Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, B. (2019), ‘Authoritarian neoliberalism: Periodization and critique’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 118 (2), 343–61. Jessop, B. and N.-L. Sum (2006), Beyond the Regulation Approach, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Jessop B., N. Brenner and M. Jones (2008), ‘Theorizing sociospatial relations’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, 389–401. Johnston, R.J. (1992), Geography and the State, New York: St Martin’s Press. Jonas, A.E.G. (2013), ‘City-regionalism as contingent “geopolitics of capitalism”’, Geopolitics, 18, 284–98. Jonas A.E.G. and S. Moisio (2018), ‘City regionalism as geopolitical processes: A new framework for analysis’, Progress in Human Geography, 42, 350–70.

Changing geographies of the state  25 Jones, M. (1997), ‘Spatial selectivity of the state? The regulationist enigma and local struggles over economic governance’, Environment and Planning A, 29, 831–64. Jones, R. (2007), People/States/Territories: The Political Geographies of British State Transformation, Oxford: Blackwell. Jones, R. (2014), ‘Border Wars: Narratives and images of the US–Mexican border on TV’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 13 (3), 530–50. Jones, R. and P. Merriman (2009), ‘Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales’, Political Geography, 28 (3), 164–73. Kaufman, E. (2016), ‘Policing mobilities through bio-spatial profiling in New York City’, Political Geography, 55, 72–81. Kennedy P. (2006), ‘Marxism and the relative autonomy of the capitalist state’, Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 34, 179–96. Khanna, P. (2016), Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, New York: Random House. Kivelä, S. (2018), ‘Constructing the territorial state through the mundane: Statization of everyday population health’, Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, 100, 25–41. Koch, N. (2013), ‘Sport and soft authoritarian nation-building’, Political Geography, 32, 42–51. Koch, N. (2015a), ‘Gulf nationalism and the geopolitics of constructing falconry as a “heritage sport”’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 15 (3), 522–39. Koch, N. (2015b), ‘“Spatial socialization”: Understanding the state effect geographically’, Nordia Geographical Publications, 44 (4), 29–35. Koch, N. (2016), ‘Is nationalism just for nationals? Civic nationalism for noncitizens and celebrating National Day in Qatar and the UAE’, Political Geography, 54 (1), 43–53. Koch, N. (2018a), ‘Green laboratories: University campuses as sustainability “exemplars” in the Arabian Peninsula’, Society and Natural Resources, 31 (5), 525–40. Koch, N. (2018b), The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Koch, N. (2020), ‘Nationalism, methodological’, in A. Kobayashi (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2nd ed., Vol. 9), Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 245–8. Koch, N. and A. Paasi (2016), ‘Banal Nationalism 20 years on: Re-thinking, re-formulating and re-contextualizing the concept’, Political Geography, 54, 1–6. Koch, N. and T. Perreault (2019), ‘Resource nationalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 43 (4), 611–31. Koopman, S. (2011), ‘Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening’, Geoforum, 42 (3), 274–84. Kovács, E. (2015), ‘Surveillance and state-making through EU agricultural policy in Hungary’, Geoforum, 64, 168–81. Krasteva, A. (2017), ‘If borders did not exist, Euroskepticism would have invented them or, on post-Communist re/de/re/bordering in Bulgaria’, Geopolitics, doi​.org/​10​.1080/​14650045​.2017​ .1398142 Kuus, M. (2015), ‘Transnational bureaucracies: How do we know what they know?’, Progress in Human Geography, 39 (4), 432–48. Lauria, M. (ed.) (1997), Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory: Regulating Urban Politics in a Global Economy, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lefebvre H. (1976), De L’Etat, Paris: Union Général d’Éditions. Lemke, T. (2007), ‘An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 8 (2), 43–64. Lizotte, C. (2019), ‘Where are the people? Refocusing political geography on populism’, Political Geography, 71, 139–41. Loftus, A. (2020), ‘Political ecology II: Whither the state?’, Progress in Human Geography, 44 (1), 139–49. Luukkonen, J. and H. Sirviö (2019), ‘The politics of depoliticization and the constitution of city-regionalism as a dominant spatial-political imaginary in Finland’, Political Geography, 73, 17–27. MacKinnon, C. (1989), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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PART I CONCEPTUAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE

2. Introduction: conceptual points of departure Sami Moisio

From a historical geographical perspective, most of the social sciences have effectively reified the state as a neatly delineated unitary agent that both expresses and serves a set of common interests in a given territory. Social sciences, therefore, have contributed to the territorialization of power around the state, effectively reproducing the state as both an idea and ideal. The act of reification continues to characterize scientific practice in the contemporary conjuncture. This is irrespective of the fact that critical scholars have long underscored how the practices, data and ways of asking social scientific questions indeed disclose ‘embedded statism’, as Peter J. Taylor (2000) would have it. How one conceptualizes the state in scholarly practice depends upon the perspective from which one approaches it. Human geography, the history of which was highly state-centred up until the 1970s, has become a significant discipline in unravelling the pervasive state-centricity in social sciences. From the perspective of human geography and spatially attuned social science more generally, one important point of departure is an understanding that, as a spatial entity, the state is under nearly constant transformation. The state is not fixed in space but is constantly reworked and transformed. The state is hence a flexible social organization: a spatial process rather than a spatial thing (Moisio 2018). Another important founding premise pertains to the very reality of the state. As Philip Abrams (1988, p. 82) emphasized some time ago, the reality of the state ‘is the ideological device in terms of which the political institutionalisation of power is legitimated’. Even though the purported reality of the state appears to the naked eye as obvious, one may argue that its reality as a form of social organization results from action and agency: state-related practices constantly produce the state as reality. The two abovementioned premises – (1) the malleability of the state and the processual nature of the state as a geographical entity, and (2) the existence of or making up the state in ‘state-practices’ – have formed the primary springboard for the geographical analysis of the state over the past two decades. Touching upon some of the recent developments on the interface of spatial theory, state theory and social theory, this part provides some relevant conceptual and theoretical approaches that scholars are currently taking to the study of the changing geographies of the state. These approaches range from structural Marxist conceptualizations of state space to the deciphering of the constitutive role of what Painter (2006) calls ‘prosaic geographies of stateness’. The 1990s witnessed a rise of political geography research focused on nation building from both constructivist and constructionist perspectives. One of the founding principles in the context of such scholarship is to question the state as a unified, autonomous agent acting in a world of clearly delineated common interests, often dubbed ‘national’ interests. In the opening chapter of this part, Alex Jeffrey reheats these older debates by providing a spatial reading on the cultural-political production ‘nation-states’. Importantly, bringing together work that is often kept apart, his chapter explores the parallel intellectual developments in scholarly work studying the social construction of the state and the emergence of modern 30

Introduction: conceptual points of departure  31 nationalism. Jeffrey highlights that ‘imagination’ is central to both of these processes whereby the ‘nation-state’ becomes a powerful cognitive framework in everyday lives of ‘citizens’. In such a view, the banal symbols of everyday life, and the enactment of ceremonial practices, for instance, are important events in the production of nation-states. Chapter 4 by Rhys Jones further explains how the state is both present and constituted in our everyday lives as citizens in different ways. Jones makes a useful distinction between the implementation of state policies, the structuring force of state ideologies (structuring the way in which ‘citizens’ understand and act in the world), and the constitutive role of various state-related infrastructures. In addition to that, he discusses the everyday qualities of the state with respect to the everyday practice of governance by individuals and groups. In such a view, the state comes into being as a spatial entity through the everyday and embodied practices of state personnel and citizens alike. This part also covers approaches to scrutinizing the changing state spaces from feminist perspectives, and through the lens of the increasingly popular concept of assemblage. In their chapter, Dana Cuomo and Vanessa Massaro offer a systematic reading of feminist approaches to understanding state spatialities. They review both historic and recent developments in feminist approaches to the study of state power in particular and highlight the importance of a multi-scalar feminist reading of state processes and projects. In their view, these often manifest themselves in private spaces, such as the home and the body. Moreover, Cuomo and Massaro elaborate upon the feminist geographical scholarship on the state and on how state governance manifests itself in everyday experiences of security and insecurity, policing, detention, bordering, social reproduction, and intimate violence. All their examples highlight the power of feminist political geography in decentring the state in scholarly analysis. In his chapter, Jason Dittmer scrutinizes the cultural-political construction of state space from the perspective of ‘assemblage thinking’, which is an increasingly popular approach in the contemporary post-structuralist political geography. He introduces recent developments in the study of the geographies of the state, and recognizes a shift from a narrative/discourse of the state to an ‘everyday state’ that underscores the performance of individuals located within it. Dittmer goes on to argue that the concept of assemblage actually offers a possibility to inject a dimension on materiality and the agency of objects in our understanding of state power, and of what Dittmer conceptualizes as ‘state potentiality’. He renders these conceptual points of departure visible in an analysis of the assemblages formed by multiple states as they engage in different forms of diplomacy with one another. Dittmer highlights the potential of assemblage thinking to disclose the various material more-than-human dimensions of state spaces that are often neglected in the anthropocentric notions of power common to understandings of the state as a geographical entity. In the historical geographical materialist approach to the state, one of the key contentions has been that the actions of state apparatus are, in spite of the relative autonomy of this apparatus, fundamentally structured by the needs of the circulation and accumulation of capital. Moreover, different factions of capital utilize state-led projects and developments to pursue their own goals. The state is hence a crucial social organization in maintaining capital, but the maintenance function also needs to be legitimate for the unity of the society. In the final chapter of this part, Kevin Cox highlights that the state is an essential aspect of capital’s division of labour, for it lays down necessary conditions for the accumulation process. By following some of the classical tenets of materialist geographical conceptualizations of the state, Cox shows how the state is a geographically fragmented entity, and that this fragmentation boils down to

32  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the process of uneven geographical development. In his view, periodic attempts to reorganize the state’s territorial structure, stemming from the contradiction between the spatial fixity and mobility of capital, should be regarded as fundamental class issues. Taken together, the points of departure offered in the chapters of this part are ones that can be found throughout the chapters that make up the remainder of the book. They are not exhaustive of approaches taken by the authors, but rather help give theoretical context to the book’s larger goal of exploring the breadth of contemporary state spaces.

REFERENCES Abrams, P. (1988), ‘Notes on the difficulty on studying the state’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1 (1), 58–89. Moisio, S. (2018), Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy, London: Routledge. Painter, J. (2006), ‘Prosaic geographies of stateness’, Political Geography, 25 (7), 752–74. Taylor, P.J. (2000), ‘Embedded statism and the social sciences 2: Geographies (and metageographies) in globalization’, Environment and Planning A, 32, 1105–14.

3. Cultural geographies of the state and nation Alex Jeffrey

3.1 INTRODUCTION How do we know a state exists? This is a point of philosophical conjecture, of course; but we can also identify moments when it is a more practical question. Perhaps we should look to when a state has ‘failed’ and its absence makes us sure about what is missing. Exercising the rule of law, organizing the regulatory and legislative aspects of government, and controlling entry and exit over a given territory all seem to point to a state’s existence. In a similar vein, we may look to moments of political and military breakdown: for example, in the wake of violent conflict that reorganizes the boundaries of states, or where competing claims to the state coexist, or where international administrative agencies have taken on the functions of the state (or all three of the above). Each of these aspects of state existence seem to accord with an interpretation, made prominent through the work of Max Weber (1958), of the state as a human community with a monopoly of legitimate physical violence over a given territory. In this light we can see the existence of the state as the emergence of a repressive apparatus that claims superiority over other systems of control. But such straightforward accounts of existence are troubled by a subsidiary question: why are certain institutions or actors considered legitimate representatives of the state? This question has what we could call ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ aspects (see Ferguson and Gupta 2002). In terms of ‘verticality’ it urges us to think through how specific institutions and actors are granted the authority to exercise sovereignty over a specific territory and peoples. This process requires a group – let’s call them citizens – to surrender aspects of their liberty to the state by observing the rule or law and agreeing to form a conscription and defend the interests of the state in times of need. In return citizens are granted specific rights that stem from their membership of the political community, variously including the right to vote, to security, to social welfare, and so on. In tandem with this rather procedural notion of citizenship, political elites also undertake a series of cultural and social practices to perform a separation between what is purportedly ‘the state’ and ‘society’. Much anthropological and geographical work has been conducted into this process of separation, examining the exercise of bureaucracy, the performance of diplomatic relations, the formality of state pageantry, and so on. This work has argued that these practices draw on the political and cultural resources of the state to enact a distinct set of institutions ‘above’ the society it serves. Of course, a key spar of this work has been to challenge, rather than reify, this distinction, exploring the presence in everyday life as a prosaic and improvised set of agencies, defying the imagination of the state as a singular and immutable political actor (Painter 2006; Jeffrey 2013). This turns attention to the question of ‘horizontal’ aspects of state legitimacy: what mechanisms cultivate shared ideas of solidarity amongst a human community? This is where we move deliberately beyond a repressive imagination of a state military infrastructure and think instead of the sites, identities, and events that produce a sense of ‘the nation’. This phrasing is used deliberately to draw attention to the sensual and affective ways in which the state 33

34  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state circulates through atmospheres and affiliations (Closs Stephens 2013). Of course, in so doing we enter a realm of debate as to whether the idea of the nation pre-dates that of the state. For those that seek to promote ethnic understandings of nationhood our commonalities stem from kinship and blood ties that pre-date the emergence of the state in the seventeenth century. For example, the prominent scholar of nationalism Anthony Smith (1998, p. 12) proposes the existence of ‘ethnies’, collective identities that pre-date the state, arguing that ‘most nations, including the earliest, were based on ethnic ties and sentiments and on popular ethnic traditions, which have provided the cultural resources for later nation-formation’. Such an approach sees the political settlement that we understand as ‘the state’ as an apparatus that emerged to serve the requirements of a specific group of peoples located in a specific territory. Or do we, as modern and post-modern theories of the nation would argue, view nations as the products of state elites, an act of creation that seeks to engender solidarity and promote loyalty? Adopting this position, the production of the nation is an uneven and emergent process, a product of cultural practices that engender feeling of loyalty through shared experiences, dispositions, and occupations. The nation is not, in this sense, a pre-existing human condition but a dynamic entity that requires constant reassertion (Billig 1995; Closs Stephens 2013). To be sure, the separation of ‘verticality’ and ‘horizontality’ is simplistic, but it draws attention to certain commonalities in the study of the nation-state. These two areas of political and geographical study are often kept separate: verticality dealing with the ontologies of the state, while ‘horizontality’ addresses sociological and cultural issues relating to the nation. But when studied in any depth we see the considerable crossovers between these two fields, where recent critical studies of the state have viewed the state as a performance in everyday life (Painter 2006; Jeffrey 2013), work on nationalism has sought to examine the quotidian sites through which ideas of the nation are experienced and reproduced (Closs Stephens 2013; Edensor 2002). Both are therefore seeking to pursue an anti-essentialist approach that disavows a pre-formed and coherent entity we can understand as either ‘state’ or ‘nation’. Instead, we see the significance of ideas of the state or nation in shaping human conduct and political geographies, where feelings, atmospheres, and affects shape the understandings of the existence and legitimacy of territorial and political entities. In this chapter I want to trace work that sits at the interface of these two fields, a growing set of approaches that span cultural and political geography to draw attention to the intangibility, dynamism, and mobility of the nation-state.

3.2 FOUNDATIONS Imagination constitutes a central focus of the constructivist approaches to the nation-state. This is immediately very productive, it draws our attention to the cultural practices that cultivate the existence of political communities while also prompting new ethnographic or analytical methods that could potentially grasp these phenomena. But it could also be potentially destabilizing: where post-modern or anti-essentialist approaches have countered that things (such as the state or nation) don’t exist as stable and pre-formed entities, then why do we subject anything to scrutiny? Of course, the answer to such criticisms is that a focus on imagination doesn’t deny the existence of an external physical reality, it simply acknowledges that reality is understood in different ways by different people at different times. We move away from considering ‘the’ state or nation and think instead of the multiple cultural and society

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  35 forces which interact to produce feelings of inclusion, exclusion, authority, and security. This orientates our attention to the significance of embodiment, where diverse experiences cannot be simply aggregated into an abstract concept such as the state or nation (Cresswell 1999). Instead, by starting with imagination, we can trace the ways in which certain ideas of state or nation circulate and gain credence. Social construction is an approach – if it is indeed a single approach at all – that is attuned to uneven landscapes of power and authority, as certain agencies or actors retain a voice and others are side-lined or silenced. We can trace three fields of study, all emerging in the 1980s, that promoted a social constructivist approach to the nation-state. The first is Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities (1983), an early and influential account of the social construction of nations through the historical emergence of new technologies of communication. Anderson was, at the time, based at Cornell University in the United States (US) and had established a career as an expert on Indonesian politics and government. Imagined Communities argued that it was inventions such as the fifteenth-century printing press that permitted ideas of collective identity, a shared ‘we’, to be communicated across space. The nation, through this lens, is a product of standardization of thought, as the simple act of reading the same texts builds a sense of shared history and fate. The argument by Anderson challenges approaches that view the nation as an archaic or pre-modern construct or, even, an intrinsic part of being human. In this work the nation is ‘imagined’ in as much as ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson 1983, p. 6). Of course, that the nation is ‘imagined’ is not supposed to neither deny its existence nor undermine its political force, quite the contrary. By emphasizing the communicative aspects of shared identity Anderson is pointing to the potential for political elites to craft new ideas of solidarity and stories of nationhood through available technologies. It is an approach, then, that incorporates the dematerialized notion of the imagination with the avowedly material and embodied question of how particular ideas of political community are conveyed, adopted, or resisted. This tension between the imagined and the material has endured within scholarship regarding the ontology of nationhood (see Brint 2001; Özkirimli 2003). In order to understand this tension, we need to take a step back and think about how the publication of Anderson’s work sits alongside another, affiliated, advance in understanding the production of political communities. The question of the representation of political life, its communication and interpretation, was being addressed in political geography and critical international relations at the same time (the early 1980s), though adopting slightly different theoretical tools. Anglo-American scholars such as Gearóid Ó Tuathail (1986), Jo Sharp (1993), Jennifer Hyndman (2001), and David Campbell (1992) were turning their attention to the ways in which states, initially in the international arena, were conveying ideas of security/threat, self/other, friend/enemy through the language of politics. This work, often gathered under the banner of critical geopolitics, sought to challenge an imagination of language as a straightforward mode of communication and think instead how textual and visual devices could be used to obscure or naturalize political objectives. Indebted to the social theory of Michel Foucault in particular, work in critical geopolitics has traced how powerful actors – often referred to as ‘intellectuals of statecraft’ – communicate a discourse of geopolitics that reifies certain understandings of the world and makes others seem irrational, illogical, or unfeasible (see Kuus 2007).

36  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state There are many commonalities between work on imagined communities and critical geopolitics. They both point to the significance of cultural practices in the construction of ideas concerning identity, political institutionalization, and ethics. Before teasing out examples of this merging of social and cultural constructivism we need to think about their common conceptual roots. One of the commonalities across these two fields is that they are both inspired by the post-colonial scholarship of Edward Said, and in particular his seminal text Orientalism (1978). This connection is not surprising: Said, a Palestinian exile writing at the time in the US, was interested in the ways in which ideas about ‘the Orient’ in Western literature justified colonial interventions. Once more drawing on the theoretical approaches of Michel Foucault, this work views these literary archives not as descriptions of pre-existing locations but rather textual acts that brought them into being. Again, we see the power of language as a mechanism of normalizing hierarchical relations, though not of state–nation but colonizer–colonized. Looking across the archival material, Said is interested in the citational practices that aggregate to produce imagined geographies that, despite their creative roots, go on to have material – and, in this case, violent – consequences. To illustrate the influence of Said’s ideas we could look to Gearóid Ó Tuathail’s (1986) early work examining US foreign policy towards El Salvador. By studying US presidential speeches and congressional hearings, Ó Tuathail drew out key spatial narratives underpinning the Cold War US military policies into El Salvador, such as the purported inevitability of Soviet expansionism and the assumption of ‘domino theory’ where the conversion of El Salvador to communism would inevitably increase the chances of neighbouring states also converting. Despite the focus on foreign policy adventures, one of the key observations of this work was that such images of the ‘other’ were inevitably practices of self-representation. The supposed weakness and vulnerability of El Salvador was a counter to the purported strength and security of the US state. The foregrounding of communicative practices is generative of new understandings of geopolitical authority. Most notably, these approaches point to the embedded nature of the nation-state, not as an abstract category or separate political actor, but a concept that is realized through social and cultural interactions. Some of the most interesting work in this field has sought to examine how such socially mediated practices of statecraft have attempted to present the state as a separate social actor distinct from wider society. This idea of separation is a key spar of some aspects of Marxist theories of the state, where the imagination of the state as a detached and disinterested actor masks its role in the reproduction of class advantage and in securing the profitability of capital. This imagination is the target of John Agnew’s (1994) invocation of the territorial trap: warding against assuming the state system as a neutral backdrop to the operation of politics. The recognition of embeddedness is a counter to the trap, identifying the nation-state as an embodied and situated practice, located within the inequalities, identities and contestations of society.

3.3

PRACTISING A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

An enduring element of work examining the social construction of the nation-state has focused on textual and visual materials. Deconstruction of language – broadly conceived – has remained an important mechanism for illuminating how certain ideas of collective political identity are communicated and understood. Continuing Anderson’s interest in the printing

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  37 press, one of the traits of such work is to trace how interests of the state or private capital can be traced through discourse analysis of newspapers. For example, Rusciano (2001, p. 12) examined a range of newspapers across the globe during and after the Cold War to ‘illustrate the conflicting national and international forces that affect the way the media construct reality across different historical eras and in different regions of the world’. Scholars have gone on to extend this analysis beyond newspapers into a wide array of styles of communication, such as popular magazines (Sharp 1993), cartoons (Dittmer 2005), film (Carter and Dodds 2011) and art (Ingram 2016). In addition, behavioural scientists have looked to the role of Twitter to explore how imagined communities could be formed and reproduced in cyber-space (see Gruzd et al. 2011). While these differing works provide an account of popular culture as the domain of identity construction, they also emphasize the considerable struggle over meaning making between producers, performers, and audience. They begin to highlight how a focus on the mechanism of communication alone underplays the considerable contestation over how such material is understood and interpreted. Challenging the representation itself as a static container of meaning has allowed scholars to think through the dynamic and plural ways in which ideas of communality, solidarity, and enmity are produced and circulated. This work has, from the outset, unsettled the notion of rigid distinction between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ of geopolitical knowledge, as research has illuminated the ways in which audiences shape the reception and understanding of geopolitical discourse (see, for example, Dodds 2006; Dittmer and Gray 2010). Rather than static artefacts that unproblematically convey ideas, texts become enactments of meaning that engender varying collective and individual responses. This perspective demands a focus on the nature of everyday life, understanding that performances of identity do not simply occur within ‘high’ culture of media and politics, but also in everyday experiences through which ideas of solidarity and group identity may be forged. But this is more than simply a methodological point, it is also a recognition that it is through prosaic experiences that individuals and groups forge a sense of self and other. In what follows I want to examine three approaches to the exploration of everyday life: performance, banality, and embodiment. All three offer insights into cultural production of geopolitical identities in the context of the state, while also pointing to some of the erasures and silences produced through a neat separation between the ‘elite’ and ‘everyday’. 3.3.1 Performance In order to try and capture the considerable interpretative work that takes place in the production and consumption of political communities scholars have turned to the language of theatricality and, in particular, that of performance. This work can be traced back to two influential sources: the sociology of Erving Goffman and the gender theory of Judith Butler. Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1978) transfers dramaturgical ideas into the operation of social situations, suggesting individuals in the public sphere are performers in the ‘front stage’ while the preparations for such enactments take place in ‘back stage’ spaces. While advancing a rather dualistic imagination of social life, this division between front and back stages has been a useful mechanism for understanding how agency is formulated and the role of social groupings in shaping practices in what purports to be the ‘front stage’. Consequently, Goffman’s ideas have provided a framework for exploring the intimate social dynamics of workplaces and homes (Crang 1994; Enck and Preston 1988), while also provid-

38  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ing analytical tools for confronting larger-scale phenomena such as international intervention (Andreas 2008), democracy building (de Souza Briggs 1998) and the formation of the state (Jeffrey 2013). Geographers have been critical of the spatial imaginaries within Goffman’s schema, drawing attention to the mutability of spaces between front and back (Crang 1994) or the reliance on an imagination of an ‘active, prior conscious and performing self’ behind each social interaction (Gregson and Rose 2000, p. 433). While the overdetermining of human agency is certainly a limitation in this approach, there is also an underlying belief in a clear demarcation between performer and audience, instead of understanding the coexistence of both positions within any single social actor. In short, Goffman’s approach seems to convey a sense of an ontological distinction between the ‘real’ (the backstage site where the mask is lifted) and ‘simulation’ (the front stage where performances are attempting to portray a certain social and cultural persona). In challenging the rigidity of such a theatrical notion of performance, feminist theorists have drawn on the post-structural accounts of Jacques Derrida to develop a notion of ‘performativity’. This term is used to challenge an imagination of subjectivity as separate from wider power relations and cultural practices, viewing it instead as an outcome of dominant fields of power and subjection (Müller 2008). Judith Butler’s (2002) study of gender identity is one of the foremost examples of this style of post-structural analysis. Butler’s approach seeks to advocate a linguistic, as opposed to theatrical, approach to performance, analysing how particular categories and identities become embedded in the fabric of social life (Jeffrey 2013). Using the term ‘performativity’ Butler argues that linguistic iterations – as opposed to ‘natural’ distinctions – bring certain categorizations (such as ‘male’ and ‘female’) into being, reflecting the assertion that ‘discourses constitute the objects of which they speak’ (Bialasiewicz et al. 2007, p. 406). This illuminates the distinction between performance and performativity: while performance is suggestive of a deliberate and spatially/temporally bound act, performativity illustrates how citational practices move through time and space to render certain subject positions as ‘normal’ (and others as ‘abnormal’). We are, here, at some remove from a social constructivism that imagines the cultural and social world shaping individual actions. While Butler’s ideas have attracted considerable analysis and critique (Lloyd 2007), it is an approach that has also shaped understandings of the relationship between culture and politics. For example, Cynthia Weber’s (1998, p. 90) work has offered a performative analysis of the state system, arguing that states are, like sex and gender for Butler, ‘always in the realm of discourse and cultural, not in the realm of natural’. This allows Weber to challenge the apparently ‘natural’ existence of the state as a framework for understanding governmental power and political subjectivity. There is an important inversion here from the earlier discussions of imagined communities, rather than a knowing and powerful state disseminating ideas outward from an authorial centre, the notion of a pre-existing state structure with such capacities reflects an aggregated history of citational practices. ‘The identity of the state,’ Weber (1998, p. 90) argues, ‘is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results.’ By foregrounding performativity, we have shifted away from a theatrical conception of performance but also moved some distance from the role of everyday life in the production of political communities. In order to weave a path between these poles, while integrating aspects of both, scholars have turned to the notion of ‘improvisation’ to understand the reproduction of geopolitical entities in everyday life. This approach builds on ethnographic approaches to the state to try and illustrate how sovereign power features in everyday lives (see Navaro

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  39 2012; McConnell 2016). In my own work examining attempts to communicate a coherent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the wake of the 1992–95 conflict, the idea of the state as an improvisation is used to highlight the intermingling of performance with individual and collective resourcefulness. In this context the term improvisation highlights moments of the admixture of creativity and production, rather than suggesting unbridled free agency. As a consequence, I argue that the notion of improvisation holds in tension structure and agency, illustrating that these are negotiated through practice and cannot be rendered in purely abstract terms (Jeffrey 2013, p. 35). Like others (Kuus 2010), I have been drawn to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and his invocation of different varieties of capital (social, cultural, and symbolic) that may be accrued and exchanged in order to enact political change and garner respect. In this optic, the ability of institutions and individuals to lay claim to representing the state was a product of their symbolic capital, accrued through complex and competing national and international mechanisms of recognition. The state was not, then, a pre-existing cultural entity nor were performances shifting between ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage. Instead, competing improvisations of the state coexisted within everyday life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as ideas of ethno-national purity competed with international-mediated notions of multiculturalism. 3.3.2 Banality Work on performance and performativity has shifted attention concerning the reproduction of the state from the formal arena of institution building to the operation of everyday life. We have seen a similar dynamic in work on nationalism, as interest in the communication of political subjectivity has shifted from the domain of formal politics (political parties and elites) towards arenas of cultural practice. A much-cited inspiration for this approach comes from Billig’s (1995) Banal Nationalism, a book that sought to shift debate concerning the forging of national identity from the ‘hot’ nationalisms of ethnic conflict towards the mundane ways in which states ‘flag’ the nation through everyday life. But Billig is not simply describing a process of communication, he is also interested in the ways in which banal nationalism obscures its own existence: ‘nationalism is defined as something dangerously emotional and irrational: it is conceived as a problem, or a condition, which is surplus to the world of nations. The irrationality of nationalism is projected onto “others”’ (Billig 1995, p. 38). Billig’s ideas have been a productive point of departure for many scholars seeking to trace the communication of ideas of the nation through cultural practices (Antonsich 2016; Jones and Merriman 2009). Tim Edensor (2002, 2004) has been a key thinker in this regard, whose work has examined a wide array of different sites and practices through which national identity may be reproduced. ‘Rather than through high cultures, reified folk cultures and spectacular, formal, invented ceremonies,’ Edensor (2004, p. 110) argues, ‘national identity is primarily constituted out of the proliferating signifiers of the nation and the everyday habits and routines which instil a sense of being in national place.’ He draws on Raymond Williams’ (1961) notion of a ‘structure of feeling’ to explain how dominant ideas of identity act upon individuals in ‘the most delicate and least tangible parts of [their] activity’ (Williams 1961, p. 48). This approach shares with other social theorists the desire to render tangible the cognitive frameworks and subconscious forms of influence that, while seemingly insignificant, reproduce the boundaries that shape our political geography. One example developed by Edensor is that of ‘car cultures’, that is how the production of cars and the form and use of road infrastructure

40  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state convey ideas of national belonging. Through an examination of British cars, Edensor (2004, p. 108) argues that they represent ‘a complex representational matrix comprising multiple cultural constituents of national identity, intersecting, among other things, with myths of origin and imagined histories, symbolic geographies, boundary-making, class distinctions, notions about external threats and popular comedy’. In this way the decline of the British car industry is not simply a reflection of global economic restructuring, it becomes an issue that incurs on imaginations of national prestige and future. Work on banal aspects of national identity have widened the object of scholarly scrutiny, as an array of cultural and social practices are viewed as identity forming. Bank notes (Penrose 2011), schooling (Benwell 2014), and road signs (Jones and Merriman 2009) have all been scrutinized for their role in struggles over national identity. But we must be careful not to conflate the ubiquity of banal nationalism with a consensus over this conceptual and methodological approach. One particular area of critique is the separation between ‘hot’ and ‘banal’ nationalism, where one is perceived as operating within state discourse and the other in everyday life. Feminist political geographers have, for some time, challenged this separation as the product of an imagination of a ‘masculinized’ public sphere of statecraft and war, and a ‘feminized’ private sphere of emotion, subjectivity, and banality. This produces an economy of fear and danger, where ‘certain fears are mobilized and politicized to produce and mobilize support for the nation, while other fears are treated as private and apolitical, and thereby rendered invisible’ (Christian et al. 2016, p. 65). 3.3.3 Embodiment To address the silences in work on social construction of political life, feminist scholars have foregrounded the embodied ways in which geopolitical ideas circulate. This work functions in (at least) two ways. First, it draws attention to the construction of the body within political discourse, as bodies are granted differential attributes and worth through the operation of power. Characteristics of race, ability, gender, and sexuality are projected onto flesh to stabilize certain understandings of inclusion and exclusion. But in addition, this work has been crucial in advancing understandings of the role of the body as the locus of meaning making – where gendered identity, patriarchal structures, and heteronormativity shape affective responses to the production and consumption of geopolitical ideas. This has precipitated a shift in methodology, tracing the often hidden processes of exclusion and marginalization work to shape people’s understanding of political community. A focus on embodiment necessitates a consideration of the role of intimacy, where the propinquity of bodies highlights the significance of emotional and affective elements of political life. In doing so scholars such as Rachel Pain and Lynn Staeheli (2014) have introduced the term ‘intimacy geopolitics’ to explore how intimate relations are connected to wider geopolitical processes. Intimacy in these terms is understood as a set of relations that connects the distant to the proximate. Much as Christian et al. (2016) seek to challenge the binary between ‘hot’ and ‘banal’ nationalism, work on intimacy geopolitics has sought to trace how wider geopolitical discourse is connected to other forms of both violence, for example in the domestic sphere (Pain 2015), and solidarity (Jeffrey et al. 2018). We must be careful not to present this as the ‘trickle down’ of wider geopolitical ideas ‘into’ domestic, intimate settings. Rather the forms of violence and patriarchy experienced in the domestic realm are scaled up to state violence: ‘War is both driven by intimate dynamics and, in turn, exacerbates their violence.

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  41 This is less a two-way flow, and more a single winding complex of violence; when the shared emotional and psychological dynamics of violence are exposed, intimacy turns inside out and is seen to be already a foundational part of the geopolitical’ (Pain 2015, p. 72). This approach rethinks security (our Weberian starting point) where the imagination of the state as a protective force is replaced by a sense of the pervasive nature of violence inflicted by certain bodies through gendered and racialized violence. But it is an approach that also highlights possibilities for security outside the state, where bodily proximity, either through human accompaniment in the Columbian rainforest (Koopman 2011) or through women’s refuge (Pain 2015), offers practices that challenge the singular accounts of state security. An embodied approach brings a wide array of sites and practices into our considerations of the social construction of state and nation. Rather than simply seeing the nation ‘flagged’ in public space, as we see in the approach of Billig (1995), a range of private spaces become sites through which ideas of the nation are reproduced. For example, Sara Smith (2012) looks at the ways in which health campaigns directed at women seek to limit certain forms of reproduction in Leh, Jammu, and Kashmir, India. In this case, Smith examines how the provision of reproductive healthcare has been drawn in to conflicts between the territory’s Buddhist majority and its minority Ladakhi Muslim population. Smith (2012, p. 1524) examines how Buddhist activists summon ‘an “ever-present and all-pervading sense of territorialized danger”, to encourage Buddhist women to produce children who will territorialize Buddhist political identity onto the district’. This is, then, an embodied story of the production of political space: ‘territoriality relies on geopolitics of bodies in the plural: their presence, their absence, and their state of health’ (2012, p. 1515). Smith’s focus on intimacy is shared by other feminist scholars seeking to trace how ‘the home’ becomes a site within which social constructions of the nation are enacted. In Brickell’s (2014) work examining processes of forced eviction in Cambodia, women’s activism against losing their home is structured around the preferential treatment of Chinese investors in the Greater Mekong subregion. Crucially, and emphasizing the significance of intimacy, this work focuses on the loss of homes as more than an economic or instrumental process, but one of loss of security, sense of place, and signifier of identity. But it is also a story of resistance: Brickell explores the activism that has sought to challenge injustice that sought to draw a transnational solidarity against the loss of homes. ‘Women’s protest,’ Brickell (2014, p. 1269) argues ‘has centered on exposing intimate incursions and inequities to national and geopolitical audiences through public evocations of home and gender ideals denied to them.’

3.4 CONCLUSION Over a recent weekend the annual food and produce show was held in our village. This occasion sees villagers compete in a range of different categories, bringing their best food, craft, and homemade wine to the village school for judgement by the organizing committee. One of the categories, open only to children, involved decorating a set of four biscuits with an animal theme. My daughter, aged 8, entered, decorating her biscuits on an ‘under the sea’ theme (see Figure 3.1). As she piped on icing and stuck down candied fruit, she remarked that all her friends would be doing the same thing at the same time, in kitchens across the village. As we converged on the school for the show we met parents and other families, we laughed and joked about our different biscuit-decorating adventures. This experience, in both private and public

42  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Figure 3.1

Under the sea biscuits

spheres, had seen food preparation as a performance of local identity, in ways that scholars have noted for food festivals in a variety of global settings (Avieli 2005). Although the qualities of this event in strengthening the imagined community of the village are clear, we must also be attentive to the exclusionary forces that are created through collective experience (see Staeheli 2008). The biscuit decorating was clearly only open to children, it also required the time, resources, and family support to enter. You needed to know about the show, and this was mainly advertised through a booklet posted through the letterbox of houses in the village. Maybe I am reading too much into the psychogeography of this event but when we sat down to eat in the evening after the show my daughter asked – for the first time – where the boundary lay between our own village and its neighbours. The purpose of this chapter has been to examine how everyday practices – such as decorating biscuits – have been understood as constituting the state as a national entity. Critical theories of the state and nation, prominent in the work of political geographers over the past 40 years, have explored the ways in which accounts of political life are far from neutral or descriptive exercises, rather they permit the reproduction of patriarchal, colonial, or classist articulations of power. The work of critical perspectives has been to deconstruct the state, to resist granting it ontological stability and thinking instead about how – through language and social structures – the ideas of state and nation are secured. If we are to approach the state in these terms we need to think through the interactions, events, and relationships through which the state is given meaning. When we follow this path, the state disappears as a singular and concrete political geographical unit and returns instead as a powerful idea – if not myth – that requires careful historical and geographical contextualization. This is not simply a story of emancipated thinking but also a feminist critique, where dominant understandings of the state and nation have performed a separation between elite political practices and violence in the private sphere. There are challenges ahead for political geographers to navigate, encapsulated by two trends. The first is the rise of neo-popularist political movements that seek to reassert the legitimacy of the state as founded on the unity of an autochthonous peoples within a given territory. Reflecting an underlying totalitarianism that theorists identify at the heart of the capitalist state (see Poulantzas and O’Hagan, 1978, p. 130), these movements are reorienting

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  43 attention to the mechanisms through which individuals are enrolled within the state, and the corresponding processes through which barriers are erected to would-be entrants. These political trends revive ‘nativist’ discourses of political affiliation and mobilize an updated array of communication technologies as envisaged by Benedict Anderson (1983). In place of the printing press we can see the rise of social media platforms as sites where political identities are cited, deliberated, and performed (Ingram 2017; Page and Dittmer 2016). This produces an intricate geography of material and cyber spaces, where the production and consumption of political discourse is spread unevenly both within and beyond the territory of individual states. The social construction of the state and nation has a more distributed character across space, and perhaps loosens the analytical purchase of these categories in place of new groups which reach across geopolitical boundaries. Second, and in tandem, understanding the state and nation as social constructions carries the risk of reducing the conceptual clarity of these terms as their existence becomes understood within ephemeral moments of social interaction. There is a danger of a formless relativism where we focus solely on the performances and outcomes of power and fail to contribute to debates concerning geopolitical circumstances and events. The works discussed in this chapter have tended to shift scale from discussing the formal state infrastructures and practices towards what have been understood to be less ‘formal’ practices through which the state and nation are affirmed. To be sure this widens the gaze of ‘the political’ to properly understand how the practices of varied actors in both public and private space draw upon, resist, and reproduce dominant discourses of the state and nation. But this is also – at times – privileging micro-practices and interactions in place of macro-geopolitical analysis. I am reminded of the anthropologist James Ferguson’s (2006) assertion that the retreat to specificity may be intellectually satisfying but it can be disabling when contributing to national or international debates. This leaves political geographers with the challenge of shifting scale from the specificity of everyday life to broader debates regarding the direction and future of the state and nation. This is a challenge that is being readily addressed, often by feminist political geographers who have been at the vanguard of integrating precisely such ethnographic observation with critique of oppressive forms of state practice, for example in asylum law (Mountz 2010) or immigration policy (Loyd et al. 2018). It is these works that shine a light on the exclusionary violence that sustains the close connections between state and nation. As human mobility increases, technological change transforms our imagined communities and violent rhetoric saturates political discourse, there is more need than ever to consider the social and cultural practices through which political identities and territories are produced and legitimized.

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44  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Benwell, M.C. (2014), ‘From the banal to the blatant: Expressions of nationalism in secondary schools in Argentina and the Falkland Islands’, Geoforum, 52, 51–60. Bialasiewicz, L., D. Campbell, S. Elden, S. Graham, A. Jeffrey, and A.J. Williams (2007), ‘Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy’, Political Geography, 26 (4), 405–22. Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism, London: Sage. Brickell, K. (2014), ‘“The whole world is watching”: Intimate geopolitics of forced eviction and women’s activism in Cambodia’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104 (6), 1256–72. Brint, S. (2001), ‘Gemeinschaft revisited: A critique and reconstruction of the community concept’, Sociological Theory, 19 (1), 1–23. Butler, J. (2002), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Abingdon: Routledge. Campbell, D. (1992), Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Carter, S. and K. Dodds (2011), ‘Hollywood and the “war on terror”: Genre-geopolitics and “Jacksonianism” in The Kingdom’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29 (1), 98–113. Christian, J., L. Dowler, and D. Cuomo (2016), ‘Fear, feminist geopolitics and the hot and banal’, Political Geography, 54, 64–72. Closs Stephens, A. (2013), The Persistence of Nationalism: From Imagined Communities to Urban Assemblages, Abingdon: Routledge. Crang, P. (1994), ‘It’s showtime: On the workplace geographies of display in a restaurant in southeast England’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 12 (6), 675–704. Cresswell, T. (1999), ‘Embodiment, power and the politics of mobility: The case of female tramps and hobos’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24 (2), 175–92. de Souza Briggs, X. (1998), ‘Doing democracy up-close: Culture, power, and communication in community building’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 18 (1), 1–13. Dittmer, J. (2005), ‘Captain America’s empire: Reflections on identity, popular culture, and post-9/11 geopolitics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95 (3), 626–43. Dittmer, J. and N. Gray (2010), ‘Popular geopolitics 2.0: Towards new methodologies of the everyday’, Geography Compass, 4 (11), 1664–77. Dodds, K. (2006), ‘Popular geopolitics and audience dispositions: James Bond and the internet movie database (IMDb)’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31 (2), 116–30. Edensor, T. (2002), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life, London: Bloomsbury. Edensor, T. (2004), ‘Automobility and national identity: Representation, geography and driving practice’, Theory, Culture & Society, 21 (4–5), 101–20. Enck, C.E. and J.D. Preston (1988), ‘Counterfeit intimacy: A dramaturgical analysis of an erotic performance’, Deviant Behavior, 9 (4), 369–81. Ferguson, J. (2006), Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, Durham NC: Duke University Press. Ferguson, J. and A. Gupta (2002), ‘Spatializing states: Toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality’, American Ethnologist, 29 (4), 981–1002. Goffman, E. (1978), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Harmondsworth. Gregson, N. and G. Rose (2000), ‘Taking Butler elsewhere: Performativities, spatialities and subjectivities’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18 (4), 433–52. Gruzd, A., B. Wellman, and Y. Takhteyev (2011), ‘Imagining Twitter as an imagined community’, American Behavioral Scientist, 55 (10), 1294–318. Hyndman, J. (2001), ‘Towards a feminist geopolitics’, Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien, 45 (2), 210–22. Ingram, A.R. (2016), ‘Rethinking art and geopolitics through aesthetics: Artist responses to the Iraq War’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41 (1), 1–13. Ingram, A.R. (2017), ‘Geopolitical events and fascist machines: Trump, Brexit and the deterritorialisation of the West’, Political Geography, 57, 91–3. Jeffrey, A. (2013), The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Jeffrey, A., L.A. Staeheli, C. Buire, and V. Čelebičić (2018), ‘Drinking coffee, rehearsing civility, making subjects’, Political Geography, 67, 125–34.

Cultural geographies of the state and nation  45 Jones, R. and P. Merriman (2009), ‘Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales’, Political Geography, 28 (3), 164–73. Koopman, S. (2011), ‘Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening’, Geoforum, 42 (3), 274–84. Kuus, M. (2007), Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement, New York: Springer. Kuus, M. (2010), ‘Europe and the Baroque’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28 (3), 381–7. Lloyd, M. (2007), Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics, Cambridge: Polity. Loyd, J.M., P. Ehrkamp, and A.J. Secor (2018), ‘A geopolitics of trauma: Refugee administration and protracted uncertainty in Turkey’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43, 377–89. McConnell, F. (2016), Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Mountz, A. (2010), Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Müller, M. (2008), ‘Reconsidering the concept of discourse for the field of critical geopolitics: Towards discourse as language and practice’, Political Geography, 27 (3), 322–38. Navaro, Y. (2012), The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity, Durham NC: Duke University Press. Ó Tuathail, G. (1986), ‘The language and the nature of the “new” geopolitics: The case of US–El Salvador relations’, Political Geography Quarterly, 5, 73–85. Özkirimli, U. (2003), ‘The nation as an artichoke? A critique of ethnosymbolist interpretations of nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism, 9 (3), 339–55. Page, S. and J. Dittmer (2016), ‘Donald Trump and the white-male dissonance machine’, Political Geography, 54, 76–8. Pain, R. (2015), ‘Intimate war’, Political Geography, 44, 64–73. Pain, R. and L. Staeheli (2014), ‘Introduction: Intimacy-geopolitics and violence’, Area, 46 (4), 344–7. Painter, J. (2006), ‘Prosaic geographies of stateness’, Political Geography, 25 (7), 752–74. Penrose, J. (2011), ‘Designing the nation: Banknotes, banal nationalism and alternative conceptions of the state’, Political Geography, 30 (8), 429–40. Poulantzas, N.A. and T. O’Hagan (1978), Political Power and Social Classes, London: Verso. Rusciano, F.L. (2001), ‘A world beyond civilizations: New directions for research on world opinion’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 13 (1), 10–24. Said, E.W. (1978), Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sharp, J.P. (1993), ‘Publishing American identity: Popular geopolitics, myth and The Reader’s Digest’, Political Geography, 12 (6), 491–503. Smith, A.D. (1998), Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge. Smith, S. (2012), ‘Intimate geopolitics: Religion, marriage, and reproductive bodies in Leh, Ladakh’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (6), 1511–28. Staeheli, L.A. (2008), ‘Political geography: Difference, recognition, and the contested terrains of political claims-making’, Progress in Human Geography, 32 (4), 561–70. Weber, C. (1998), ‘Performative states’, Millennium, 27 (1), 77–95. Weber, M. (1958), ‘Politics as a vocation’, in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–128. Williams, R. (1961), The Long Revolution, London: Chatto and Windus.

4. The everyday state Rhys Jones

4.1

INTRODUCING THE EVERYDAY STATE

We are living in extraordinary and unusual political times. At the time of writing (the autumn of 2019): Iranian-influenced Houthi rebels have been accused by the United States (US) of carrying out an attack on Saudi Iranian oil installations using armed drones, thus reflecting once again the geopolitical significance of the Middle East; there are ongoing parliamentary debates in the United Kingdom (UK) about the kind of Brexit that should be pursued, with talk of the impact of the emergence of ‘hard’ borders leading to either a return of political violence in Northern Ireland or the creation of an internal border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has revoked the law providing the Muslim-dominated state of Kashmir with its autonomy, thus bringing it more firmly under the control of the Indian state. All of these instances reinforce in our mind the idea of the state as something that is involved in extraordinary and, in some cases, extreme forms of politics. It can give the impression of a state, moreover, that is divorced from the day-to-day realities of our everyday lives. It is a state that becomes obvious and apparent in its ‘hotter’ manifestations during times of crisis. And, to borrow and extend Billig’s (1995) ideas relating to ‘banal nationalism’, it is a state that becomes most apparent and distinctive ‘over there’; in distant locations where the normalcy of state policies and practices have, for some reason, broken down. But of course, such a viewpoint can be qualified and countered. We need to appreciate that these more extreme forms of state politics and practice have significant consequences for people ‘on the ground’. To return to the brief examples noted above, one cannot consider the attack on the Saudi Arabian oil installations without also reflecting on their relationship with the ongoing attempts made by Saudi Arabia to subdue Yemen; with far-reaching consequences for the population of that country, not least the threat of imminent large-scale famine. Similarly, one cannot study the ever changing currents of Brexit without reflecting on their implications for European Union (EU) citizens living in the UK, British citizens living in the EU, and for all business operating across the proposed ‘harder’ borders. And one cannot examine the revocation of the special status of Indian-controlled Kashmir without thinking also about its impact on the everyday social and religious freedoms enjoyed by its Muslim population. In short, the state in its more extraordinary and extreme guise has very real consequences in far more ordinary and banal contexts. It is these more everyday states that are discussed in this chapter. The everyday state is imbricated in our everyday lives as citizens in numerous ways. First – and most clearly – we are all affected by state policies of different kinds (Painter 2006). Second, we are also subject to state ideologies. These help to shape the way in which we understand and act in the world. The most significant ideology promoted by the state, of course, is that of nationalism. Nationalism, if successful as a ‘group-making project’ (Brubaker 2004), provides a means whereby the abstract and impersonal institution of the state can become embedded 46

The everyday state  47 in the everyday identities and worldviews of citizens. Third, we are also affected by various state-related infrastructures. State-related infrastructures, for instance, bring us water (Usher 2018), allow us to travel from place to place (Guldi 2012), and allow us to communicate with one another (Raento and Brunn 2005). If this is the most obvious way in which we can approach the everyday state, we also need to be aware of a second, less obvious, way in which we can think about the everyday qualities of the state. In this second context, attention can be drawn to the everyday practice of governance by individuals and groups. Often labelled as anthropological understandings of the state, this body of research examines how states do not exist purely at an abstract level. Rather they come into being through the everyday and embodied practices of state personnel and citizens alike (Abrams 1988). There are clear complementarities between this line of reasoning and the themes discussed in the following chapter. And yet, as I will show below, there are numerous benefits arising from pursuing an anthropological approach to the everyday state. The remaining sections of this chapter build on the themes introduced above. In Section 4.2, I proceed to develop in more detail some of the theories that underpin my conceptualization of the everyday state. In particular, I draw upon two sets of literatures – one on the idea of the everyday and the second more embedded in anthropological accounts of the state – and seek to highlight the productive links between them. Combining these two perspectives, I argue, provides one insightful way of understanding the changing geographies of the state. I then proceed in Section 4.3 to examine different ways in which states impact on the everyday lives of their citizens, drawing attention briefly to the impact of policies, ideologies, and infrastructures. I change tack in Section 4.4 by examining the more practised ways in which states are reproduced by state agents of different kinds. Brief conclusions follow in Section 4.5. Throughout, I draw primarily on empirical and conceptual themes I have examined as part of recent research projects with which I have been associated.

4.2

CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVERYDAY STATE

Two sets of literatures can help us approach the idea of the everyday state. The first set of literatures examines the concept of the everyday. A number of key points arise when approaching this concept. First, the concept of the everyday extends well beyond the mundane and banal aspects of our lives. As Lefebvre (1991 [1947], p. 97) puts it, the everyday is ‘profoundly related to all activities, and encompasses them with all their differences and their conflicts; it is their meeting place, their bond and their common ground’ (see also Burkitt 2004; Moran 2005; Whitehead 2005). In addition to being a place of banal and mundane processes, the everyday may also incorporate a variety of differences and conflicts that affect people’s lives on a habitual basis. Thought about in such ways, the notion of the everyday highlights how seemingly mundane aspects of our lives may take on more overtly political connotations under certain circumstances (Jones and Merriman 2009). Second, research on the everyday suggests that there is a tendency for it to exist beyond the influence of the state. Burkitt (2004, p. 212) maintains that: ‘The production of daily reality does not occur somewhere beyond our reach in, say, the “higher” echelons of the state, and is then imposed upon us. Rather, the reality of everyday life – the sum total of all our relations – is built on the ground, in daily activities and transactions.’ Burkitt’s statement does not mean that the state does not impact on the everyday lives of individuals; as we shall see

48  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state in Section 4.3, there are numerous examples of how states influence our lives in fundamental ways. Rather, work by Burkitt and others seeks to draw attention to the crucial significance of the everyday as a place in which ‘abstractions (meaning here, imposed ideas of politics) must eventually land’ (Gregg 2004, p. 365; Whitehead 2005, p. 281). Research on the everyday, therefore, emphasizes the need to focus on the way in which people make sense of various kinds of knowledges, rationalities, ideologies, and norms that emanate from the state. Third, it has been argued that the everyday provides multiple opportunities for individuals and groups to resist political projects of different kinds. Seigworth (2000), for instance, describes a potential politics of the everyday that is grounded on notions of ‘overflow’ and ‘excess’. Whitehead (2005, pp. 282–3) expands on these ideas by referring to the possibilities for a politics of the environment that can emanate from the everyday. His comments are equally applicable, however, to all kinds of everyday politics. Seigworth’s notions of ‘overflow’ and ‘excess’ allude to the way in which the everyday is ‘an intensively creative context within which an infinite range of analytical sites and political opportunities’ are opened up, which enable individuals or groups to question forms of inequality, oppression, or injustice (Ibid., p. 282); to employ ‘tactics’ that can allow them to contest the various state ‘strategies’ (De Certeau 1984; Binnie et al. 2007). The second set of literatures that underpins my arguments in this chapter can be conveniently labelled as anthropological studies of the state. Recent years have witnessed a growing effort to understand what we think of as the ‘state’ in explicitly anthropological terms. Instead of thinking about states as homogeneous bureaucratic monoliths, which reach out in an unproblematic manner to shape the lives of individuals living and working within their boundaries, various authors have begun to chart, through ethnographic means, the ‘variegated’ (Jones 2012, p. 805) or ‘polymorphic’ (Gill 2016, p. 38) character of state bureaucracies, as well as states’ socially and spatially contingent effects on the lives of their citizens (Painter 2006). In many respects, this work has built on a long-standing tradition of examining the fine-grained interaction of people with states (e.g. Weber’s 1947 conceptualization of state bureaucracies). It is only in recent years, however, that an explicitly anthropological approach to the state has taken hold firmly in the social sciences and in geographical studies of the state. There are several implications arising from approaching the state from a more anthropological perspective. First, anthropological approaches to the state destabilize the boundary between the state and civil society (Mitchell 1996). Work in this area has shown that public servants of different kinds bring their own identities into work and that these can have profound impacts on the kinds of policies developed (Jones et al. 2005). The notion of corruption is one extreme example of the difficulties in distinguishing between the private and public lives of public officials. Modern understandings of corruption are based upon two related assumptions: ‘that mutually exclusive public and private interests exist and that public servants must necessarily abstract themselves from the realm of the private in order to properly function’ (Bratsis 2006, p. 52). Bratsis highlights the empirical and conceptual difficulties associated with maintaining this distinction; the private lives of state officials inevitably ‘leak’ into the public sphere. If this is true of corruption, then it is equally relevant to other kinds of dispositions and practices as the state is practised on an everyday basis (Jones 2008). Second, anthropological perspectives draw attention to a state that is dispersed and fragmented. Our conceptualizations of the state tend to bring to mind an organization that is coherent, unified, and, significantly, centralized (e.g. Skopcol 1979, p. 29; Mann 1984, p. 188). Yet, a more anthropological viewpoint highlights the inherently fractured nature of the state.

The everyday state  49 Gill’s (2016, p. 38) detailed work on the individuals that person the asylum system in the UK develops the idea of a state that is ‘polymorphic’ in character. Individuals working within the asylum system create their own understandings and interpretations of the state through their everyday work and through their interactions with asylum seekers. To speak of a unified and centralized state in such circumstances is patently misleading. In more policy-related contexts, attention has been drawn to the existence of fundamental policy variation, in social and spatial contexts (Pressman and Wildavsky 1984). Rather than thinking about such policy variation as something that reflects a ‘failing’ on the part of the state and its employees, it is more useful to conceptualize it as an essential and positive requirement of all states. By allowing a certain variation, states become more meaningful to individuals and groups living and working in different places. Third, the above statements begin to show how anthropological approaches highlight a conception of a state that is performed and practised by state agents in everyday contexts. Research on post-colonial states, for instance, has drawn attention to the way in which the corrupt practices of state officials are at odds with the idealized notions of bureaucracy contained within Weber’s work (Gupta 1995; Corbridge et al. 2006). States are practised by the individuals who inhabit them and this has a marked impact on the production of state organizations. Lipsky (2010, p. xii, original emphasis), for instance, claims that ‘the decisions of street-level bureaucrats … effectively become the public policies they carry out’. The state, as such, is textured, contextualized, and contested by state agents of different kinds (Guha 1999). Work in human geography, too, has maintained that there is a need to view the state as something that is ‘improvised’ (Jeffrey 2013) and/or ‘rehearsed’ (McConnell 2016) by state actors. Both these concepts draw attention to the performative and practised character of the state as an organization. Jeffrey’s (2013, p. 3) research on the process of building a new state in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s is framed in relation to the idea of improvisation, which ‘combines performance and resourcefulness’. States – especially ones that exist in relatively precarious geopolitical conditions – must be improvised on a daily basis by those individuals charged with making the state ‘work’ in practice. Similarly, McConnell (2016, p. 5) draws on the case of the Tibetan Government in Exile to attend to the ‘aspirational’ qualities of statehood and to the way in which the state as aspiration is played out in the everyday practices of public servants. While Jeffrey’s and McConnell’s work focuses on two states existing in conditions of precarity, the theoretical claims that they make are equally valid for more established states. Fourth, increasing attention is being directed towards conceptualizing the state as an affective organization. While our commonsense understandings of state personnel tend to focus on their role as rational functionaries, anthropological work on the state has foregrounded the significance of emotions for the everyday practice of state agents. Gill (2016) discusses the process of ‘distanciation’ that characterizes the work of individuals within the asylum services of the UK. Insensitivity and indifference become a survival tactic for the individuals working within these state agencies. In another context, Dubois (2010) has examined the more positive use of emotion within the welfare offices of the French state, with individuals using a sense of care and duty to enact a supportive attitude towards claimants. Indeed, for Dubois (Ibid., p. 135), a ‘good’ bureaucrat must be able to manage and balance compassion and efficiency. There are a number of ways in which we can extend the ideas discussed above and, in doing so, begin to make connections between these two sets of literatures; and in so doing, highlight significant geographies of the state. These extrapolations and connections are represented in

50  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Table 4.1

Extending and connecting the literatures on the everyday and on the anthropologies of the state

Understandings of ‘the everyday’

By extension …

Mundane experiences possess broader and

The experiences of individuals of the state – as citizens and as state personnel – may

overt political contexts and consequences.

be mundane but they may also possess overtly political connotations. The everyday state comprises an interrelationship between the unusual, the contested, and the banal.

The everyday is a place where abstractions

The various abstractions associated with the state – institutions, politics, ideologies –

of different kinds ‘land’.

must ‘land’ in everyday contexts and it is in these socio-spatial contexts that people make sense of these abstractions.

The everyday is a place of ‘overflow’ and

The everyday social and spatial contexts within which individuals and groups engage

‘excess’, enabling contestation.

with states, either as citizens or state personnel, provides opportunities to contest state abstractions.

Anthropological understandings of the

By extension …

state A destabilization of the boundary between

The everyday is a context within which the boundary between the state and that

the state and that which lies outside it.

which lies outside it is destabilized. Everyday practices, for example, blur the divide between the state and civil society.

A state that is dispersed and fragmented in

Everyday engagements of individuals with the state highlight its dispersed and

character.

fragmented character. Viewed through the lens of the everyday, the illusion of a unitary and coherent state is undermined.

A state that is performed and practised.

The state is reproduced through a range of everyday performances and practices, which combine elements of the banality and the more unusual and extreme.

A state that is characterized by rationality

Everyday practices of individuals engaging with the state, either as citizens or state

and emotion.

personnel, reflect an uneasy combination of rationality and emotion.

Table 4.1. It is these, too, that inform the more empirical sections of this chapter in Sections 4.4 and 4.5.

4.3

STATES AND EVERYDAY LIFE

In this section, I want to use the ideas discussed above as a way of informing a discussion of the various ways in which states affect the everyday life of their citizens. The discussion centres in turn on the role of policies, ideologies, and infrastructures in shaping the everyday life of citizens. First, states influence our everyday lives through their promotion and implementation of public policies of different kinds. As Painter (2006, p. 753) aptly puts it: ‘Giving birth, child rearing, schooling, working, housing, shopping, travelling, marrying, being ill, dying and countless other activities all involve us, to a greater or lesser extent, in relations with state institutions and practices, often in ways that are so taken for granted they are barely noticeable.’ One of the more significant ways in which this kind of interaction between states and citizens has been structured in recent years has been in relation to what has been termed behavioural public policy (BPP). BPP starts from the premise that conventional policy tools employed by the state (e.g. the distribution of information or taxation) have not been particularly effective at eliciting a positive change in behaviours. As a result, states have sought to develop a new approach to public policy that makes use of insights from psychology and behavioural science. New BPPs seek to ‘work with the grain’ of human cognition as a means of developing more

The everyday state  51 effective public policy, with more far-reaching influences on the everyday decisions and behaviours of citizens (Jones et al. 2013a; Whitehead et al. 2017). BPP has been deployed in a range of policy sectors in a variety of countries, with policies and interventions seeking to promote pro-environmental behaviours, more prudent financial behaviours, as well as healthier behaviours of different kinds (for global reviews, see OECD 2017; Afif et al. 2019). One instructive example of the use of BPP in everyday contexts has been applied in the public health sector in Wales. The Appetite for Life action plan seeks to encourage schoolchildren in Wales to develop a healthier association with food (WAG 2008; Jones et al. 2013b). Reacting to widespread concerns about the quality of food being consumed by schoolchildren and the rise of childhood obesity, the action plan ‘sets out the strategic direction and actions required to improve the nutritional standards of food and drink provided in schools in Wales’ (WAG 2008, p. 3). There are many facets to the action plan and it is significant that they display an acceptance of the legitimate role to be played by the state in affecting the everyday lives of children in Wales. Certain aspects of the action plan represent direct and forceful attempts to influence the food consumed by schoolchildren. Strict guidelines now exist concerning the consumption of healthy and unhealthy food on school premises. It is noted, for instance, that oily fish must be offered on a school menu at least once every two weeks (Ibid., p. 41) and it is stated that all fruit juices diluted with still or carbonated water must contain at least 50 per cent fruit juice (Ibid., p. 44). Other aspects of the policy, however, seek to use a more measured approach by using the principles of BPP subtly to encourage schoolchildren to eat more healthily. Efforts have been made, for instance, to redesign school cafeterias to make them more attractive, less ‘institutional’ and more ‘café-like’ in their form. In addition, events have been organized to educate children and parents about the benefits of healthy eating. The action plan places considerable emphasis on the role of key state and non-state actors in the realization of these goals. It recognizes that there is a need to train or retrain school caterers and servers in order to provide ‘them with the skills to prepare healthier foods and promote healthier choices within schools’ (WAG 2008, p. 16). One individual who was involved in the production of the action plan in Wales noted how the roles of school catering managers changed as a result of the action plan. She stated that ‘on top of all the job of managers of the service, they had to be health promoter’. In all this, we witness the integration of a series of principles (BPP) and practices; all geared towards changing the everyday eating behaviours of schoolchildren. The above example provides one illustration of the influence of the state on the everyday lives of its citizens through policies of different kinds. For many people in the states of the north, however, many aspects of the state’s influence on their everyday lives is unquestioned and unremarkable; something that reflects the ‘instrastructural power’ (Mann 1984) of the state or, in other words, the state’s ability to routinize its impact on our life. It is only when these more routine aspects are disrupted or severed that the state’s infrastructural power is questioned and problematized. Perhaps because of this, it is noticeable that much of the more insightful work on the impact of the state on everyday life, through its promotion and implementation of public policies, has focused on the state of the south. For instance, Corbridge et al. (2005) note how the experience of a widow collecting her pension in India rarely reflects neither the routine administrative capacity that we tend to associate with the states of the north nor the bureaucratic ideal described by authors such as Weber:

52  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The widow will often be kept waiting for hours in the sun or the rain, and she might have to call on a relative or fixer (dalaal or pyraveekar) to get her business moving. Small payments (baksheesh or ghus) might also have to be made to the accountant and/or his peon, and sometimes the payment she receives will be several rupees short. (Corbridge et al. 2005, p. 19)

Two important themes arise here. First, the impact of the state on the everyday lives of citizens and subjects tends to come more clearly into view in situations where policies and procedures are either partial, failing, or incomplete. The challenge for social scientists, however, is to demonstrate the impact of the state on everyday lives in those situations where the state operates smoothly and in routinized ways. It is for this reason that the work of authors such as Pressman and Wildavsky (1984) and Painter (2006) is so valuable since it shows how the state impacts on our lives – in subtle and un-noticed ways – wherever we live. The second theme arising from the above quote is that the everyday effects of the state come into being as a result of the interaction between state employees and citizens. Public policies are always embodied, practised, and relational. Examples of the significance of this interaction abound. Everyday interpretations of the state in India emerge precisely as a result of the quotidian interactions between widows, relatives, peons, and state accountants. The everyday state comes into view, similarly, in France as a result of the interactions between staff working in welfare offices and those seeking the state’s support (Dubois 2010). And the UK state emerges in a similar fashion through the everyday engagements of citizens (e.g. Jones 2012) and ‘non-citizens’ (Gill 2016) with state agents of different kinds. The impact of the state on everyday life is also apparent in relation to state ideologies; with state or more ‘civic’ types of nationalism being a prominent example of this. Education systems and national curricula represent one significant context within which states seek to instil particular ways of thinking among its population; in this case, the state’s youth (Gellner 1983). Staeheli and Hammett (2012, p. 33), for instance, discuss the role played by the education system in developing a ‘collective identity that unites the citizenry’ in post-conflict South Africa. The twin notions of human rights and a responsible and active citizenry have become the essential values and characteristics to be instilled in the nation’s youth (Ibid., p. 36). Once again, there is a need to examine how these kinds of state ideologies ‘land’ in particular spatial and social contexts. Benwell (2014), in his study of the role of education in promoting national identity in Argentina and the Falkland Islands, has argued that there is a need to address the way in which teachers and schoolchildren construct interpretations of nationalism within the space of the classroom. Everyday understandings of state ideologies are negotiated within these spaces. A recent project I have undertaken has uncovered similar processes at work in Wales. Despite the official support for both notions of Welsh identity and the Welsh language within the education system in Wales (Daugherty and Elfed-Owens 2003), there is still considerable license for individual schools and even individual teachers to adapt their practices to suit the educational contexts (e.g. schools with differing levels of instruction through the medium of Welsh) and spatial contexts (e.g. schools located in areas with contrasting percentages of Welsh speakers) within which they operate (Jones and Lewis 2019; Smith 2016). As a result of such educational ‘subsidiarity’, teachers had to become adept ‘diplomats’ and ‘negotiators’ of educational policy within the classroom. A teacher interviewed in a large institution located in north-east Wales, close to the border with England, referred to the difficulties of actively negotiating a suitable approach to teaching the Welsh language within the classroom. Students, according to this teacher, came to this institution from a range of backgrounds and

The everyday state  53 localities; some, for instance, from areas of Wales with high percentages of Welsh speakers and others from across the border in England. In such situations, teachers had to become skilled at working out how the Welsh language and specific aspects of Welsh culture could be introduced to audiences that were very mixed in terms of their linguistic abilities and identity outlooks. State ideology, in this context, was actively negotiated on a daily basis by teachers and, by extension, their pupils. Another significant way of approaching the impact of the state on the everyday lives of its citizens is through reference to the idea of infrastructure. As part of a broader material and networked ‘turn’ (e.g. Law 1992), various authors have begun to interrogate the significance of infrastructures for social and spatial life. Objects, it has been argued, become part of a ‘national infrastructure’ (Williams and Smith 1983) that gives a physical form to states and nations, helping them to become more apparent in everyday life. The use of objects and infrastructures such as road signs (Jones and Merriman 2009) and road infrastructures (Merriman and Jones 2017) signal to citizens that they are living and working within a certain state. State infrastructures, then, are characterized by a solidity, fixity, and concreteness which lends them qualities of durability, physicality, and ‘mooredness’ (Urry 2003), but they also underpin social processes and, importantly, elicit varied affective responses among the state’s population. To return to the examples of road signs and road infrastructures noted briefly above, it is clear that individuals and groups respond to the everyday qualities of these infrastructures in contrasting ways. The existence of monolingual (English-only) road signs in Wales during the 1960s, for instance, led to a serious and sustained campaign of civil disobedience among Welsh nationalists. While monolingual road signs might have been accepted – in the vast majority of cases, overlooked perhaps – by many people, they were viewed by Welsh nationalists as blots on the Welsh linguistic landscape that needed to be contested at every turn (Merriman and Jones 2009; Jones and Merriman 2009). They were, moreover, as is shown in Figure 4.1, state objects that could generate considerable emotion (Merriman and Jones 2017). The symbolic significance and affective qualities of the material infrastructures of the state are significant and, in many cases, unplanned and uncontrollable; especially when they are deemed to have ‘failed’ (Graham 2010).

4.4

PRACTISING THE EVERYDAY STATE

The previous section illustrated the influence that the state had on different aspects of everyday life and suggested, too, how everyday experiences of the state are shaped, at least in part, by the behaviours and attitudes of state personnel of different kinds. The significance of this issue leads us on to the second main context in which I want to examine the concept of the everyday state; the way in which the state comes into being in both institutional and more territorial contexts through the everyday practices of state personnel. At one level, such a way of thinking is counterintuitive. We have long thought of states as a set of institutions and as a political entity that possesses a fundamental territorial quality (Mann 1984). But there is also a growing interest, as I noted in Section 4.2, in understanding the state as a ‘peopled organization’ and in charting the implications of thinking about the state in such peopled ways (Jones 2008). Weber is, in many ways, the conceptual springboard for any consideration of the people character of states and all kinds of bureaucratic organizations. Weber (1947, p. 154) places individuals at the heart of his definition of the state. And yet, it

54  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Figure 4.1

Emotions and state objects: protesting against monolingual road signs in Wales

is not just the existence of these individuals that is important for Weber. He also describes the qualities of these individuals (Weber 1947, pp. 153–4, 1991, p. 78; Giddens 1985, p. 8). The state is inhabited by a particular kind of individual, described as an ‘administrative’ or ‘genuine’ official (Weber 1991, p. 95). The hallmark of administrative bureaucrats, according to Weber, is their use of rational knowledge as a means of discharging their duties (Weber 1947, p. 331). Certain authors have questioned the continued relevance of Weber’s ideas for our understanding of the peopled and practised character of the state. The first critique revolves around Weber’s conceptualization of bureaucratic organizations, including states, as bounded and closed entities (Clegg 2003, p. 61). The work of people like Bratsis (2006) on corruption highlights how that which is putatively external to the state ‘bleeds’ into the workings of the state in fundamental ways. Similarly, the majority of states across the world have chosen to engage with a range of ostensibly non-state actors in order to deliver public services. A series of ‘shadow states’ (Wolch 1990), incorporating the private sector and the non-profit sector, are now enrolled into the delivery of public services worldwide. What are the implications of this development, unforeseen by Weber, for the work of state employees as they have to negotiate with non-state actors on a daily basis? What kinds of subjectivities, practices, and behaviours are enacted in this relational space or space of encounter between what is understood as the state and that which lies outside it (Trudeau 2008; Jones 2012)?

The everyday state  55 The second critique of Weber’s conceptualization of bureaucracies – particularly state bureaucracies – relates to the growing emphasis that has been placed in many jurisdictions on the ideals of New Public Management (NPM) from the 1980s onwards (Lane 2000). NPM involved ‘lessening or removing differences between the public and the private sector and shifting the emphasis from process accountability towards a greater element of accountability in terms of results’ (Hood 1995, p. 94). NPM introduces a different culture into public service; one that is arguably at odds with the culture that allegedly underpinned more conventional bureaucratic organizations. There is some debate as to whether a culture redolent of the private sector has truly been replicated within public service (Peters and Peters 2002). And yet, there cannot be any doubt that this new approach to public service, along with the new expectations of individual public servants that it is based upon – performance review, goal setting and so on – has challenged the sense of order associated with Weberian conceptualizations of bureaucracy (Hood 1995). The third critique revolves around Weber’s understanding of rationality within conceptualizations of bureaucratic organizations. Weber, at face value, makes much of the rationality that is supposed to underpin the work of bureaucrats within organizations such as the state. However, such a viewpoint is predicated on the ability of individuals to be able to separate out rationality/objectivity and emotion/subjectivity. Others, however, contend that the link between rationality/objectivity and emotion/subjectivity is more complicated. Research in psychology and neuroscience, for instance, has demonstrated that emotions play an effective role in decision making (Damasio 1994) and that the dual system theory of the brain is flawed (Barrett 2006). Even Weberian scholars contend that the ascription of a fixation on rationality within Weberian modes of thinking is misplaced. Albrow (2003, p. 99) claims that ‘[p]urpose, cognition and emotion are seen as intertwined modalities of action both for individuals and organizations’. And as I show below, there is plentiful empirical evidence to demonstrate the significance of affect, emotions, and feelings for the practices and identities of state personnel of different kinds. Such work raises significant questions about the link between emotion and rationality within our understanding of the everyday practices of state employees. Do emotions detract from the ability of public servants to go about their everyday work or do the emotions displayed by public servants help them to discharge their duties, as demonstrated in contrasting ways by Gill (2016) and Dubois (2010)? And of course, if we accept that emotions are significant for the work of bureaucrats and public servants, to what extent can or should these be managed or altered (Fineman et al. 2010, p. 239)? For the remaining paragraphs of this section, I want to use the themes discussed above as a context for examining the peopled and practised aspects of the state as an organization. I draw briefly on a case study relating to how attempts are being made to use behavioural insights to understand, change, and improve the behaviours of state personnel. A growing use is being made of behavioural insights as a way of addressing the perceived ‘failings’ of civil servants and other individuals involved in the development and delivery of public services. Such developments start from the premise that the role played by irrationalities, biases, and emotions in the decision-making processes of the population at large are likely, equally, to affect the decision-making processes of public servants. A report published by the European Commission (2019, p. 8) maintains that ‘political decisions are not just the outcome of rational choices, but are strongly influenced by group identity, values, worldviews, ideologies and personality traits’. Moreover, the report contends that the pressures facing

56  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state public servants are only increasing and that these pressures are making it even more difficult to maintain the illusion of an objective, rational, and impartial public service. The report considers, for instance, the implications of the emergence of a ‘post-truth’ age for public servants’ ability to analyse evidence in a rational and objective way (Ibid., p. 31). Similarly, a recent report published by the World Bank (2015) contains an illuminating discussion of the need to consider the biases and irrationalities that characterize the work of public servants and volunteers working in development settings. The report makes clear that ‘[e]xperts, policy makers, and development professionals are … subject to … biases, mental shortcuts … and social and cultural influences’ (Ibid., p. 180). What’s more, the report contends that there is a real need to ‘check and correct for those biases and influences’ (Ibid.), given the impact that such development professionals can have on the life chances and opportunities of ordinary people living and working in less developed countries. Practitioners ‘can fail to help, or even inadvertently harm, the very people they seek to assist’ (Ibid.) if these biases and shortcomings are not addressed. Empirical evidence shows the pertinence of such issues. Rhodes (2011), for example, has noted the hectic and ‘fast’ working lives of senior civil servants. Such working conditions lead to high levels of stress among civil servants, which impinge on their purported rationality and objectivity. Emotional stress, in this respect, is seen to limit the abilities of civil servants to discharge their duties. Various efforts are being made to respond to such challenges through training, continuous professional development, and other forms of support. For instance, increasing use is being made within the Welsh Government of behavioural insights and mindfulness as a way of enabling civil servants to: (1) understand and manage the emotional challenges that they are facing in their work and personal lives; and (2) develop better relationships with colleagues and with external stakeholders (Whitehead et al. 2017, pp. 180–201). In the Scottish Government, use is being made of Theory-U (Scharmer 2009) as a way of promoting a mutually reinforcing and transformation of the individual civil servant and the organization within which they work (https://​ulabscot​.com, accessed on 22 October 2019). And governments across the world are using behavioural insights, inter alia, as a way of encouraging public servants to rid themselves of the shackles of conservatism and routine and to embrace, instead, a more innovative and creative approach to the development of public policy (Jones and Whitehead 2018). As a way of enabling these more creative approaches, governmental ‘skunkworks’ or ‘i-teams’ have been created in various national, regional, and local states, with the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team and Denmark’s Mindlab being prominent examples (Pittick et al. 2014). In all this, we witness an attempt to reflect on the practices, behaviours, and emotions of public servants of different kinds. There is a need, commentators and theorists argue, to address the shortcomings exhibited by public servants as they go about the everyday business of government. And it is through addressing such issues that one can unlock the potential of public servants and, by extension, of the public services that they operate within.

4.5 CONCLUSIONS My aim in this chapter has been to discuss two key contexts within which states can be approached from the perspective of the everyday. I began by discussing a more straightforward conceptualization of the everyday state, in which I examined the impact of the state on

The everyday state  57 the everyday lives of citizens; through public policies, ideologies, and infrastructures. I then proceeded to discuss what is, perhaps, a less familiar way of studying the everyday state; namely the way in which we can understand the state as something that manifests itself as a set of embodied practices of state personnel or public servants of different kinds. Both approaches, I contend, provide innovative ways of addressing the changing geographies of the state. There are, of course, clear empirical overlaps between these two ways of understanding the everyday state. Many of the examples I referred to highlighted how one could not understand fully the impact of the state on the everyday lives of citizens without also considering the embodied enactment of state policies, the performance of state ideologies, or the reproduction of state infrastructures. And of course, such a line of thinking can be extended by realizing, as noted by Herzfeld (1992), that public servants are also citizens in their own right. If state personnel are citizens, they are also affected by various state policies, ideologies, and infrastructures in their everyday lives. In blurring this distinction between that which takes place ostensibly ‘outside’ of the state and that which happens ‘inside’ it, we are encouraged to think of the everyday state as something that comes about as a result of a continuous process of ‘improvisation’ (Jeffery 2013) and ‘rehearsal’ (McConnell 2016) in a space of ‘encounter’ (Jones 2012) between individuals and ‘things’ of different kinds. In addition, thinking about this space of encounter in such expansive terms, of necessity, broadens our conception of the location of the everyday state. I also began to hint in this chapter at the potential conceptual overlap between the ideas of the everyday and more anthropological accounts of the state. There is a need for the conceptual relationship between these two sets of ideas to be teased out in more detail than I have been able to do in this chapter. One useful theme – in academic and more political contexts – might be to examine the potential for contestation that is afforded by the idea of the everyday. Anthropological approaches to understanding the state, admittedly, bring to our attention the possibility for state agents to inflict state policies, ideologies, and infrastructures in different ways; and, in doing so, to make them more applicable to the socio-spatial circumstances within which they land (e.g. Pressman and Wildavsky 1984). And yet, the idea of the everyday arguably offers additional conceptual purchase in relation to the idea of contestation. Contestation is embedded in conceptualizations of the everyday (Seigworth 2000) and, if this is the case, then anthropological approaches to the state might usefully be augmented by integrating them with the understandings of contestation that are so much a feature of conceptualizations of the everyday. Doing so, one would hope, might contribute to a much-needed academic and political project of contesting state projects that are, increasingly, in danger of repressing people. To return to the examples briefly mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, can an appreciation of the potential of the everyday help all those encountering questionable state policies, ideologies, and infrastructures – as either their implementers or as citizens affected by them – to contest those repressive policies, ideologies, and infrastructures more effectively and creatively? This potential is certainly something that critical social scientists and a progressive politics alike should seek to explore and exploit.

REFERENCES Abrams, P. (1988), ‘Notes on the difficulty of studying the state (1977)’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1, 58–89.

58  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Afif, Z., W.W. Islan, O. Calvo-Gonzalez, and A.G. Dalton (2019), Behavioral Science around the World: Profiles of 10 Countries, Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Albrow, M. (2003), ‘Accounting for organizational feeling’, in L.J. Ray and M. Reed (eds), Organizing Modernity: New Weberian Perspectives on Work, Organization and Society, London: Routledge, pp. 98–121. Barrett, L.F. (2006), ‘Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10 (1), 20–46. Benwell, M. (2014), ‘From the banal to the blatant: Expressions of nationalism in secondary schools in Argentina and the Falkland Islands’, Geoforum, 52 (1): 51–60. Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism, London: Sage. Binnie, J., J.J. Holloway, S. Millington, and C. Young (2007), ‘Mundane urban geographies’, Environment and Planning A, 39 (4), 515–69. Bratsis, P. (2006), Everyday Life and the State, Boulder CO: Paradigm. Brubaker, R. (2004), Ethnicity Without Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burkitt, I. (2004), ‘The time and space of everyday life’, Cultural Studies, 18 (2), 211–27. Clegg, S. (2003), ‘Max Weber and contemporary sociology of organizations’, in L.J. Ray and M. Reed (eds), Organizing Modernity: New Weberian Perspectives on Work, Organization and Society, London: Routledge, pp. 46–97. Corbridge, S., G. Williams, M. Srivastava, and R. Véron (2005), Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Damasio, A. (1994), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York: Random House. Daugherty, R. and P. Elfed-Owens (2003), ‘A National Curriculum for Wales: A case study of education policy-making in the era of administrative devolution’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 51 (2), 233–53. De Certeau, M. (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dubois, V. (2010), The Bureaucrat and the Poor: Encounters in French Welfare Offices, London: Routledge. European Commission (2019), Political Animals: How the Sciences of Human Behaviour Can Help Us Put Knowledge and Reason at the Heart of Policymaking, Brussels: European Commission. Fineman, S., Y. Gabriel, and D. Sims (2010), Organizing and Organizations, London: Sage. Gellner, E. (1983), Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Giddens, A. (1985), The Nation-State and Violence, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gill, N. (2016), Nothing Personal? Geographies of Governing and Activism in the British Asylum System, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Graham, S. (ed.) (2010), Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructures Fail, London: Routledge. Gregg, M. (2004), ‘A mundane voice’, Cultural Studies, 18 (3), 363–83. Guha, R. (1999), Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Guldi, J. (2012), Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gupta, A. (1995), ‘Blurred boundaries: The discourse of corruption, the culture of politics and the imagined state’, American Ethnologist, 22 (3), 375–402. Herzfeld, M. (1992), The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy, Oxford: Berg. Hood, C. (1995), ‘The “New Public Management” in the 1980s: Variations on a theme’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20 (1), 93–109. Jeffrey, A. (2013), The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Jones, R. (2008), People/States/Territories: The Political Geographies of British State Transformation, Oxford: Blackwell. Jones, R. (2012), ‘State encounters’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (6), 805–21. Jones, R. and H. Lewis (2019), New Geographies of Language, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

The everyday state  59 Jones, R. and P. Merriman (2009), ‘Hot, banal and everyday nationalism’, Political Geography, 28 (2), 164–73. Jones, R. and M. Whitehead (2018), ‘“Politics done like science”: Critical perspectives on psychological governance and the experimental state’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36 (3), 313–30. Jones, R., M. Goodwin, M. Jones, and K. Pett (2005), ‘“Filling in” the state: Economic governance and the evolution of devolution in Wales’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 23 (3), 337–60. Jones, R., J. Pykett, and M. Whitehead (2013a), Changing Behaviours: On the Rise of the Psychological State, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Jones, R., J. Pykett, and M. Whitehead (2013b), ‘Behaviour change policies in the UK: An anthropological perspective’, Geoforum, 48 (1), 33–41. Lane, J.E. (2000), New Public Management: An Introduction, London: Routledge. Law, J. (1992), ‘Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy and heterogeneity’, Systems Practice, 5 (3), 379–93. Lefebvre, H. (1991 [1947]), Everyday Life in the Modern World, London: Allen Lane. Lipsky, M. (2010), Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Mann, M. (1984), ‘The autonomous power of the state: Its origins, mechanisms and results’, European Journal of Sociology, 25 (2), 185–213. McConnell, F. (2016), Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Merriman, P. and R. Jones (2009), ‘“Symbols of Justice”: The Welsh language society's campaign for bilingual road signs in Wales, 1967–1980’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (3), 350–75. Merriman, P. and R. Jones (2017), ‘Nations, materialities and affects’, Progress in Human Geography, 41 (5), 600–17. Mitchell, T. (1996), ‘Society, economy and the state effect’, in G. Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 76–97. Moran, J. (2005), Reading the Everyday, London: Routledge. OECD (2017), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy Lessons from around the World, Paris: OECD Publishing. Painter, J. (2006), ‘Prosaic geographies of stateness’, Political Geography, 25 (6), 752–74. Peters, B.G. and G. Peters (2002), Politics of Bureaucracy, London: Routledge. Pittick, R., P. Baeck, and P. Colligan (2014), Iteams: The Teams and Funds Making Innovation Happen in Governments around the World, London: Nesta and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Pressman, J.L. and A. Wildavsky (1984), Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland, 3rd edition, Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Raento, P. and S.D. Brunn (2005), ‘Visualizing Finland: Postage stamps as political messengers’, Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography, 87 (2), 145–63. Rhodes, R.A.W. (2011), Everyday Life in British Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scharmer, O. (2009), Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, San Francisco, CA: Berrett Koehler. Seigworth, G.J. (2000), ‘Banality for cultural studies’, Cultural Studies, 14 (2), 227–68. Skopcol, T. (1979), States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, K. (2016), Curriculum, Culture and Citizenship Education in Wales: Investigations into the Curriculum Cymreig, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Staeheli, L. and D. Hammett (2012), ‘“For the future of the nation”: Citizenship, nation, and education in South Africa’, Political Geography, 32 (1), 32–41. Trudeau, D. (2008), ‘Towards a relational view of the shadow state’, Political Geography, 27 (5), 669–90. Urry, J. (2003), Global Complexity, Cambridge: Polity. Usher, M. (2018), ‘Conduct of conduits: Engineering, desire and government through the enclosure and exposure of urban water’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42 (3), 315–33. WAG (2008), Appetite for Life Action Plan, Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government.

60  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Weber, M. (1947), The Theory of Economic and Social Organization, London: Free Press. Weber, M. (1991), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited with an introduction by H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, London: Routledge. Whitehead, M. (2005), ‘Between the marvellous and the mundane: Everyday life in the socialist city and the politics of the environment’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23 (2), 273–94. Whitehead, M., R. Jones, R. Lilley, J. Pykett, and R. Howell (2017), Neuroliberalism: Behavioural Government in the 21st Century, Abingdon: Routledge. Williams, C.H. and A.D. Smith (1983), ‘The national construction of social space’, Progress in Human Geography, 7 (4), 502–18. Wolch, J. (1990), The Shadow State: Government and Voluntary Sector in Transition, New York: Foundation Center. World Bank (2015), World Development Report: Mind, Society and Behavior, Washington, DC: World Bank.

5. Feminist geographies of state power Dana Cuomo and Vanessa Massaro

5.1 INTRODUCTION Feminist contributions to advancing geographic research on the state consist not simply of ‘writing women in’ but rather of ‘rethinking what political geographies could be about, the different relationships between the political and power, and the different forms of political activities that people are engaged in’ (Kofman 2005, pp. 519–20). In rethinking the spaces, subjects and activities that comprise political geographies, feminist geographers emphasize the theoretical and methodological importance of multi-scalar attention to state processes that manifest and reverberate in the private and everyday. This approach complements theories that decenter the spatial bounding of the state from territory at the national scale and the exercise of sovereignty within that territory as the fixed site of politics (Brenner et al. 2003; Mitchell 2009). Feminist approaches to geographic research on state spatialities also destabilize notions of ‘the state’ as an a priori object in an effort to understand state power as diffuse, pervasive and sociospatially uneven (Chouinard 2004, p. 234). In approaching the study of governance and state spatialities, feminist geographers have drawn on the work of feminist historians, philosophers and political theorists (Brown 1995; Fraser 1989; Landes 1988; Pateman 1988; Yuval-Davis and Werbner 1999) to illustrate how the gendering of public and private spheres creates political geographies within the private and everyday, including the home and body. Beyond demonstrating the ways in which the private, informal and everyday operate as important sites of governance, feminist scholarship also illustrates the way that these sites participate in the production of state power across scale. Feminist geographers have suggested a variety of ways to conceptualize the constitution of the intimate and global in understanding state power and governance structures. Pain and Smith (2008), for example, utilize a DNA double helix metaphor to visualize how the global and the intimate are thoroughly intertwined. This metaphor illustrates that state power is not a top-down process nor does it move in only one direction. Instead it operates as a single complex (Pain 2015) in which the intimate and the global shape and constitute one another. This metaphor also signifies feminist approaches more broadly that seek to deconstruct social binaries, for example local/global, Global South/Global North, public/private, man/woman, inside/outside. Objects in binary opposition are not, in this conception, opposites, but instead interdependent; one cannot be constituted without the other (Gibson-Graham 1996). Such theorizing draws on poststructuralist conceptualizations of power and the state in which power is conceptualized as a relational force that connects people across scale (Crampton and Elden 2007). This multi-scalar approach to state power as aggregated is essential to understanding feminist approaches to state spatialities. We explore feminist approaches to studying geographies of the state by way of four complementary parts. In the following section, we examine nationalism in relation to identity and belonging, scrutinizing how nationalism connects to identity construction and embodiment. In Section 5.3, we explore intersections between feminist political geography and political 61

62  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state economic approaches, observing how global capitalism and the state rely upon and are socially reproduced through everyday practices. In Section 5.4, we investigate feminist scholarship on the management of people and the environment by the state, in order to further demonstrate, through varied practices of everyday devaluation and marginalization, the imbrication of the state, power and capitalism. Lastly, we look at feminist approaches to security which, as both a meta-concern of the state, and an everyday, embodied experience, epitomize the co-constitution of the intimate and the global. Within each section, we apply broader trends of feminist theory and examine relevant feminist scholarship. By emphasizing the reverberations across scales, we aim to provide a holistic, though not an exhaustive illustration of feminist approaches to theorizing the spatiality of state power.

5.2

NATIONALISM, IDENTITY AND BELONGING

Feminist approaches to studying nationalism strive to unmask the role of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity in the process of nation building (Riley et al. 2008). When feminists center identity in the nation-building process, their scholarship challenges approaches that privilege masculinist narratives centered on war, the military and administrative decisions made by state actors (Enloe 2007). Feminists by no means disregard these other scales, but rather seek to incorporate the banal and everyday components of nationalism that solidify state power. One way in which feminists approach centering the banal and everyday is by emphasizing how tropes related to gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity effect the nation-building process (Puar 2007). Feminist scholarship often begins by acknowledging that masculinity in the mainstream analysis is essential to understanding contemporary national and global politics (Enloe 2007; McClintock 1995; Nagel 1998; Yuval-Davis 1997). More specifically, that men and men’s interests have long been central to the story of nationalism and that traits and characteristics associated with masculinity have been mapped onto the protector, defender and hero archetypes. As feminist scholar Nagel (1998, pp. 251–2) notes, ‘Terms like honour, patriotism, cowardice, bravery and duty are hard to distinguish as either nationalistic or masculinist, since they seem so thoroughly tied to both the nation and to manliness’. This logic of masculinist protection (Young 2003) is then used to justify various state interventions in the name of protecting vulnerable populations. It exalts a specific form of hyper-masculinity that venerates a willingness to kill or die for the nation-state (e.g. Cockburn 2007; Cowen and Gilbert 2008; Eisenstein 2008; Enloe 2010). The interwoven relationship between nationalism and masculinity, therefore, reveals how men not only defend the nation, but defend a particular racialized, gendered and sexualized conception of the nation (Puri 2004). Traditional notions of femininity occupy an equally essential role in the nation-building process. Feminist scholars highlight how their symbolic place as ‘mothers of the nation’ situates women as representative of the national hearth and home (Yuval-Davis 1997). More literally, through their embodied role as mothers, women are expected to reproduce and to serve as caretakers for the next generation of good citizens (Ibid.). Yet mothering as a means of nation building is encouraged unevenly; race, class, sexuality and ethnicity determine which women are exhorted into mothering roles. Women are thus markers of both the internal and external boundaries of the nation (Puri 2004). Their intimate responsibility for reproducing the

Feminist geographies of state power  63 nation interweaves with state policies that control immigration, border security and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The symbolic role of women in reproducing the nation also affirms heterosexual, marital and monogamous sexuality as the honorable and ideal form for a nation’s sexual identity (Hershatter 1997; Luibheid 2002). The privileging of heterosexuality influences a variety of laws and practices tied to state spatialities, including morality clauses which restrict the immigration and naturalization of those with ‘deviant’ sexualities, along with a host of domestic laws regulating marriage, sexual relationships and the commercial sex industry (Luibheid 2002). Traditional nationalist movements have emphasized the importance of protecting women’s sexual honor, as ‘women are thought by traditionalists to embody family and national honour’ (Nagel 1998, p. 254). Rather than working to diminish the force of tradition regarding women’s sexual honor, state institutions, including political parties, have also actively or passively supported such practices as ‘virginity tests’ or ‘honour killings’ as a strategy for gaining or maintaining political power (Kogacioglu 2004; Parla 2001). So when a woman’s sexual virtue is targeted, the implications extend beyond her body; ‘women’s shame is the family’s shame, the nation’s shame, the man’s shame’ (Nagel 1998). That men’s honor is so closely tied to protecting women’s sexual virtue sheds light on why sexual violence is used against civilians, particularly women, during conflict (Oliver 2007; Sjoberg 2013; Yuval-Davis 1997). Rape becomes an effective weapon of war because it engenders this shame in men, as well as the immediate trauma of sexual assault and a long-term ethnic cleansing as children are born of rape. The embodied reverberations of sexual trauma linger long after the signing of a peace treaty. Yet the utility of sexual violence extends far beyond nationalist-inspired wars. Western nations often use sexual violence in non-Western locations to highlight differences and justify militaristic or neocolonial intervention (Fluri 2008). Even though sexual violence is an everyday occurrence within Western nations (Christian et al. 2016), it is predominately non-Western states that fail to protect women from rape during nationalist conflicts which become subject to external scrutiny and cast as symbols of state failure (Dowler 2011). Yet scholars have demonstrated that women are not simply symbolic, passive observers or victims of state building and nationalism. Some women enact nationalism through the traditional gender roles assigned to them by nationalists, actively supporting their husbands, raising their (the ‘nation’s’) children and serving as symbols of national honor (Nagel 1998). Other women actively resist the gendered tropes of femininity associated with nationalism by formally participating in military combat and informally contributing to counter-resistance efforts (Dowler 1998; Riley et al. 2008). Still others bring attention to intersecting experiences of intimate and military violence by organizing, speaking up and testifying in formal court proceedings (Gray 2016; Hanlon and Shankar 2000).

5.3

POLITICAL ECONOMIES AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

In close relation to nationalism and the processes of state building, feminist political geography also looks at the material practices of social reproduction that allow political economic systems to be maintained. One well-established body of scholarship within feminist political geography examines the imbrications of the state and capitalism. The state is not conceived by feminists as an ‘ally’, but is instead framed critically as a set of complex actors that ultimately

64  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state work in support of (racial) capitalism (Pulido 2017). While this approach echoes and expands upon political economic approaches to state power in other geographic subfields, what distinguishes the feminist geographic approach to the geographical political economies of the state is a particular attention to the ‘messy, fleshy’ of the reproduction of everyday life (Katz 2001). As in most instances of feminist inquiry, scholars maintain that large-scale systems and processes reverberate with local, everyday practices and conditions. In this case, the political economy of the state comes to be understood through close attention to social reproduction. Social reproduction is the labor necessary to reproduce society. As feminists have shown, social reproduction is essential to the process of capital accumulation. Attention to social reproduction also creates a scholarly lens through which to examine intersectional oppression. A long tradition of attention to social reproduction in feminist geography (Marston 2000; Katz 2001; Katz et al. 2015) analyses the state as part and parcel of complex economic imperatives and reveals its role in the machinations of establishing state power. This scholarship overwhelmingly demonstrates the unrecognized work required to sustain economic systems. For example, Clark, explores ‘the new thrust of state power, concerned less with extensive mechanisms of violence and cultural oppression and more with intensive mechanisms of social, economic, and cultural production’ (2015, p. 45) in southeast Turkey. Her deep ethnographic attention to ‘the corporeal experience of conflict’ reveals how a geopolitical security imperative underlies the nation’s gendered development programs. This kind of work demonstrates attention to the body as a vital site from which to understand the role of social reproduction in maintaining state power (Hyndman 2007; Koopman 2011; Mountz et al. 2013; Smith 2012). Clark’s particular application of this feminist lens exemplifies the importance, in understanding the state, of analyses which consider insights from both feminist political geography and political economy (Bonds 2019; Cowen and Smith 2009; Robbins and Smith 2017). This approach reflects ongoing trends in feminist political geography which pay careful attention to political economy in an effort to understand state power and the human experience of its reification. This same analytic can be applied broadly in order to understand the emergence of ‘the state’ as such. In the case of social reproduction, capitalism’s symbolic and material existence requires constitutive processes outside of social reproduction (Gibson-Graham 2006). State territoriality likewise requires a constitutive border without which the state cannot exist. This analytic method further informs feminist attention to borders and territory on every scale by assuming the necessity of the border for the maintenance of power and subjugation (Anzaldúa 2007; Segura and Zavella 2007; Mountz et al. 2013). The United States (US)/Mexico border, for example, is both a symbolic and physical divide which moves and changes in ways that are both socially and historically contingent, as well as emotional and individual (Hyndman and Mountz 2007; Katz 2007; Mountz et al. 2013; Williams and Boyce 2013). These understandings, in turn, build on a longer attention within feminist political geography to fear and emotion (Ahmed 2004; Pain 2009; Pain and Smith 2008; Smith 2011). More recently, the attention to social reproduction has been extended into a methodological approach for tracing ‘intimate economies’ which reflects broader interest in feminist political economy within geography (Werner et al. 2017). In this context the word intimate seeks to explicitly capture the rhizomatic relationship between state power and daily social reproduction (Pain and Smith 2008). The intimate economies of migrant detention, for example, offer a window into the complexity of national borders as well as the insidious profitability of the detention business (Conlon and Hiemstra 2017). Pratt and Johnston’s (2015) work on

Feminist geographies of state power  65 the Canadian-Filipino worker exchange program highlights the intimate complexities of globalization and migration. Tracing the flow of funds and labor in this exchange through close attention to intimate economies provides yet another view of the imbrications between the state and capitalism.

5.4

THE STATE, ENVIRONMENT AND BIOPOLITICS

Much of the information garnered from feminist approaches which combine political geography with political economy contribute to a range of insights about population management (i.e. biopolitics) and the environment. Notions of identity, nationalism and consequently racism also play a crucial role in environmental management. Like the study of intimate economies, feminist political geography brings theoretical rigor to an examination of the socially constructed and contingent nature of the environment in relation to state power. Feminist attention also insists upon a critical approach so as to consider the composition of both environment and state power. In turn this view skews the role of ‘the state’ as such, highlighting the insufficiency of governments in protecting the environment or ensuring environmental justice. A considerable body of scholarship in this area reveals how the state is a set of discourses, ideologies, bureaucracies and material relationships which works in service to power and further alienates the marginal (Bullard and Wright 2009; Parker and Morrow 2017; Pulido et al. 2019). This effect appears in a wide range of environmental studies using feminist political geography. These studies strive to understand the captive role the state often plays to power. Environmental protection, for example, is revealed to be a discourse that undermines Indigenous populations, reinforces state power, (re)colonizes land and ultimately produces human insecurity for many, all in the name of a broader state juridical security apparatus (Sundberg 2014; Ybarra 2009). Ybarra’s work captures the violence of ‘green securities’ as a set of discourses that pull in international funding to prevent dangers like ‘narco-deforestation’. Situated in a broader geopolitical context, she argues, these practices ultimately ‘rationalize increased rural policing through repeated threat narratives’ (Ybarra 2016). The Mayan forests and people come to be framed as an unruly jungle that must be tamed through increased policing. This analysis reinforces other feminist political geography studies which note the insecurities created by neoliberal state governance, pointing out that state-practiced impunity can create the insecurities which the state then supposedly seeks to solve through increased policing and militarization (Wright 2014). Indeed, Pulido argues that environmental capture and exploitation require a state apparatus that devalues black bodies and restructures nature, even altering ‘humans on a cellular level’. As Pulido notes, by positioning environmental vulnerability as a site for racial violence and with attention to political economy, ‘the state becomes a site of contestation, rather than as an ally or neutral force’ (2017, p. 524). Furthermore, she argues that ‘the state must become a site of opposition, as it sanctions racial violence’ (2017, p. 525). This conclusion exemplifies the work of feminist scholarship which recognizes the state as deserving of deep inquiry and critique, rather than as a source of protection or justice. Further, this perspective can productively inform our analysis of ‘intimate socio-ecological relations’ (Mullaney 2014). It becomes necessary to consider intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, indigeneity and nationality

66  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state in greater depth as we consider how the production of social differences is central to creating social value and then the resultant environmental implications. Collectively, this work reinforces our critical understanding of the popular discourses of security, human rights and environmental conservation. Analysis of this kind demonstrates how these discourses are deployed to create instability and insecurity for a wide range of marginal populations. In other words, these feminist projects reveal the discursive and material practices that contribute to making state terror analytically compatible with ‘democracy’ (Wright 2018).

5.5

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO SECURITY

Feminist approaches to theorizing security when examining state-centric security practices often begin by asking ‘whose security’ (Kennedy-Pipe 2004). This question underscores the embodied and grounded analysis of security that feminists typically emphasize, including in their analysis experiences of security at the scale of the body (Hyndman 2001). The turn to examining state-centric security at the scale of the body evolved from feminist critiques of disembodied global-scale security discourse, particularly in relation to ‘the war on terror’ (Pain and Smith 2008). While feminist approaches to theorizing security certainly do not confine themselves to the body and home, they do often emphasize the interconnectedness of localized and transnational security discourses and practices. This approach allows us to better understand how vulnerable populations navigate everyday security considerations across scale (Massaro and Williams 2013). By grounding their analysis in the embodied experiences of those who state-centric security purports to protect, feminist scholars reveal how security practices may paradoxically result in personal experiences of insecurity (Cuomo 2013). As these scholars have illustrated, the state often justifies enhanced security – including policing, border security, militarization and war – through apparently well-intentioned protectionist narratives rooted in defending or rescuing vulnerable populations (Young 2003). Among these policies are masculinist policing practices that mandate arrest following incidents of domestic violence (Cuomo 2013), US justifications for entering a war in Afghanistan in order to save Afghani women (Fluri 2011) and ‘emancipating’ women from wearing the veil in Central Asia (Kennedy-Pipe 2004). These protectionist narratives claim to enhance security but in fact operate across scales to justify both domestic and global security interventions. Moreover, scholars working in the field of emotional geopolitics have shown how seemingly well-intentioned security interventions can result in new and different embodied fears (see Pain and Smith 2008). Feminist scholars also illustrate how state-centric security enhances the power of those already in the ruling class. As Katz (2007, p. 352) notes in her analysis of National Guard members wearing camouflage in the landscape of post-September 11 New York City, these staged security performances create and reproduce a banal notion of terrorism which in fact tends to ‘obscure and mystify the social, cultural and political-economic relations that propel global terrorism and undergird the security state’. The security state relies on fear not only to rationalize the militarization of policing within its territory but also at the border. Scrutiny of everyday sites and situations reveals the processes and practices of territoriality that appear on scales other than the nation-state. Feminist approaches emphasize the reverberations across

Feminist geographies of state power  67 these scales and thus inspire myriad studies that do not focus only on the relationships between states, but also on the reproduction of the state and territoriality at complex, multi-scalar sites. As much of the scholarship mentioned in this chapter demonstrates, discourses of security often reinforce state militarization and capitalist accumulation while creating insecurity and dispossession. These processes wield clear multi-scalar territorial influence. More specifically, studies on the urban have revealed how they foment dispossession which in turn paves the way for gentrification and reinvestment by a wealthy elite (Wright 2013a). Feminist findings concerning the urban thus mirror those concerning territoriality and borders, revealing how urban politics and practice rely heavily on social difference and facilitate capitalist exploitation of urban space (Varley 2013; Wright 2013b). When feminist analysis intervenes in studies of urban governance, it does so in close consultation with the work discussed throughout this chapter (Peake and Rieker 2013). Upon reflection, it also becomes apparent that the territorialization of the state shapes the construction of shifting borders between insiders and outsiders. Massaro (2015), for example, argues that the drug war takes on a local, and even embodied, set of war-like territorial practices. The state’s role in space making then manifests at the urban scale. The state creates territories through bodies, communities and relationships across a range of people and places, wielding notions of urban security that construct difference both within and against the nation. The borders delimiting the nation as such are much more complex than the political boundaries of state sovereignty. Rather, they are symbolic and relationally produced. As Hyndman and Mountz (2007) note, when states implement actively hostile revanchist policies which discursively and legally view migrants as criminals, refugees experience a fundamental shift in their relationship to those states. With increasingly militarized border security practices reaffirming a racialized, gendered and sexualized conception of the nation, scholars have demonstrated that border walls and prison cages represent state violence which decreases the embodied security of marginalized populations (Loyd et al. 2012). Feminist scholars also reveal how state actors – serving in security roles – engage in violence against marginalized populations, often with impunity. This phenomenon is seen in the unexplained deaths of women of color in police custody (Dowler and Christian 2019), the sexual assault of immigrant women by border control officials (Lind and Williams 2013) and the rape of men and women in subordinate positions in the military by their superiors (Dowler 2011). Feminist approaches to theorizing security recognize that the broad range of security needs felt by vulnerable populations extend beyond physical security to include economic and emotional security (Cuomo 2013). In response to these needs, this scholarship encourages a reimagining of what security could look like, recognizing that ‘other securities’ already exist (Koopman 2011). Koopman (2011) elaborates on the practice of building alternative, non-violent securities, citing international accompaniers who escort, or accompany, individuals at risk moving through conflict zones.

5.6 CONCLUSION This chapter has offered an overview of feminist approaches to the study of state power. This is largely work that strives to be politically engaged, ethical and conducted in support of the needs of the most marginal. Feminist geographers ‘challenge conventional views on power and knowledge as they select research questions, engage their participants, choose, invent, and

68  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state practice research techniques, and address social inequality’ (Hesse-Biber and Piatelli 2007, p. 145). Feminist approaches to the study of state power produce grounded conceptions of the state that emphasize intersectional identities, marginality, membership and belonging, social reproduction, the environment and security. Creating such grounded scholarship can be challenging, especially within the confines of power-laden, predominantly white institutions within which many scholars reside. In response, feminist political geographers have taken an increasingly integrated approach working to interrogate racial capitalism and environmental crisis from the perspectives of those most directly impacted to offer an understanding of the state in the context of its perpetuation of broader social problems. Most importantly, this analysis approaches the state as a site of contestation rather than a savior or protector. Feminist political geography works to reveal the ways in which the state most often breeds insecurity and works in the service of capitalism. Through this scrutiny the complex imbrications and manifestations of state power become visible, as does its reproduction through the intimate spaces of the home, family and body.

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70  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Loyd, J., M. Mitchelson and A. Burridge (eds) (2012), Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Luibheid, E. (2002), Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Marston, S.A. (2000), ‘The social construction of scale’, Progress in Human Geography, 24 (2), 219–42. Massaro, V. (2015), ‘The intimate entrenchment of Philadelphia’s drug war’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 3 (4), 369–86. Massaro, V. and J. Williams (2013), ‘Feminist geopolitics’, Geography Compass, 7/8, 567–77. McClintock, A. (1995), Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, London: Routledge. Mitchell, T. (2009), ‘Society, economy, and the state effect’, in G. Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 76–97. Mountz, A., K. Coddington, T. Catania and J. Loyd (2013), ‘Conceptualizing detention mobility, containment, bordering, and exclusion’, Progress in Human Geography, 37 (4), 522–41. Mullaney, E.G. (2014), ‘Geopolitical maize: Peasant seeds, everyday practices, and food security in Mexico’, Geopolitics 19 (2), 406–30. Nagel, J. (1998), ‘Masculinity and nationalism: Gender and sexuality in the making of nations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21 (2), 242–69. Oliver, K. (2007), Women as Weapons of War, New York: Columbia University Press. Pain, R. (2009), ‘Globalized fear? Towards an emotional geopolitics’, Progress in Human Geography, 33 (4), 466–86. Pain, R. (2015), ‘Intimate war’, Political Geography, 44, 64–73. Pain, R. and S. Smith (eds) (2008), Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Parker, B. and O. Morrow (2017), ‘Urban homesteading and intensive mothering: (Re) gendering care and environmental responsibility in Boston and Chicago’, Gender, Place & Culture, 24, 1–13. Parla, A. (2001), ‘The “honor” of the state: Virginity examinations in Turkey’, Feminist Studies, 27 (1), 65–88. Pateman, C. (1988), The Sexual Contract, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Peake, L. and M. Rieker (eds) (2013), Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban, New York: Routledge. Pratt, G. and C. Johnston (2015), ‘Filipina domestic workers, violent insecurity, testimonial theatre and transnational ambivalence’, Area, 46 (4), 358–60. Puar, J. (2007), Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pulido, L. (2017), ‘Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence’, Progress in Human Geography, 41 (4), 524–33. Pulido, L., T. Bruno, C. Faiver-Serna and G. Cassandra (2019), ‘Environmental deregulation, spectacular racism, and white nationalism in the Trump era’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (2), 520–32. Puri, J. (2004), Encountering Nationalism, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Riley, R., C. Talpade Mohanty and M.B. Pratt (eds) (2008), Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism, London: Zed. Robbins, P. and S.H. Smith (2017), ‘Baby bust: Towards political demography’, Progress in Human Geography, 41 (2), 199–219. Segura, D.A. and P. Zavella (eds) (2007), Women and Migration in the US–Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. Sjoberg, L. (2013), Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War, New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, S. (2011), ‘She says herself, “I have no future”: Love, fate and territory in Leh District, India’, Gender, Place & Culture, 18 (4), 455–76. Smith, S. (2012), ‘Intimate geopolitics: Religion, marriage, and reproductive bodies in Leh, Ladakh’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (6), 1511–28. Sundberg, J. (2014), ‘Decolonizing posthumanist geographies’, Cultural Geographies, 21 (1), 33–47.

Feminist geographies of state power  71 Varley, A. (2013), ‘Feminist perspectives on urban poverty: De-essentializing difference’, in L. Peake and M. Rieker (eds), Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban, New York: Routledge, pp. 41–51. Werner, M., K. Strauss, B. Parker, R. Orzeck, K.D. Derickson and A. Bonds (2017), ‘Feminist political economy in geography: Why now, what is different, and what for?’, Geoforum, 79, 1–4. Williams, J. and G.A. Boyce (2013), ‘Fear, loathing and the everyday geopolitics of encounter in the Arizona borderlands’, Geopolitics, 18 (4), 895–916. Wright, M.W. (2013a), ‘Feminicidio, narcoviolence, and gentrification in Ciudad Juárez: The feminist fight’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31 (5), 830–45. Wright, M.W. (2013b), ‘Feminism, urban knowledge and the killing of politics’, in L. Peake and M. Rieker (eds), Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban, New York: Routledge, pp. 41–51. Wright, M.W. (2014), ‘The gender, place and culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Gentrification, assassination and forgetting in Mexico: A feminist Marxist tale’, Gender, Place & Culture, 21 (1), 1–16. Wright, M.W. (2018), ‘Against the evils of democracy: Fighting forced disappearance and neoliberal terror in Mexico’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108 (2), 327–36. Ybarra, M. (2009), ‘Violent visions of an ownership society: The land administration project in Petén, Guatemala’, Land Use Policy, 26 (1), 44–54. Ybarra, M. (2016), ‘“Blind passes” and the production of green security through violence on the Guatemalan border’, Geoforum, 69, 194–206. Young, I.M. (2003), ‘The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’, Signs, 29 (1), 1–25. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997), Gender & Nation, London: Sage. Yuval-Davis, N. and P. Werbner (eds) (1999), Women, Citizenship and Difference, New York: Zed.

6. Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state Jason Dittmer

6.1 INTRODUCTION The Turkish troops rolling into northern Syria in October 2019 were clearly identified with the agency of the state, clearing a ‘security zone’ along the Turkish–Syrian border and muscling aside the Kurdish forces previously inhabiting the zone. However, this exhibition of state power was predicated on a range of interlocking systems, from the diplomatic work of the presidency in convincing President Trump to abandon the Kurds, to the infrastructure of Turkish military logistics that sustained the forces across the border, to the flow of tax revenue needed to pay the troops, to the training and action of each individual soldier. Altogether, this assemblage of assemblages co-constituted the agency of the Turkish state in northern Syria. This chapter examines the rise of assemblage thinking with regard to the geographies of the state. The rise of poststructuralism might have been expected to displace the state as the focal point of political studies, given the centrality of the state within structural accounts of the social. However, the decentring of the state within accounts of politics has taken a range of forms, each of which also has its own politics. Within the discipline of geography this has primarily been seen in the development of critical geopolitics as a deconstructionist, discursively-oriented project. Critical geopolitics emerged as an effort to decentre the hegemonic politics of the Cold War, and especially the American empire, in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Ó Tuathail 1996). As such, it drew on the inspiration of literary theory, most obviously Derrida (1981) and Said (1978). This literary theory was put in dialogue with Foucault’s philosophy (1970) to dissolve the supposedly hard truths of geopolitics in the solvent of discourse analysis. This dissolution did critical work in terms of opening up new space for contestation of the fundamental geographical ‘truths’ that underpinned the making of foreign policy and which had limited debate to a fairly limited palette of (mostly imperial) options. However, the second decade of the third millennium has highlighted the limits of such an approach (Bachmann and Moisio 2020), with the poststructural state being too frequently reduced to a set of narratives and discourses that underpin geopolitical orders. Nevertheless, critical geopolitics remains an important arrow in the quiver of scholars who want to open up space for alternatives. The limits were twofold. First, the deconstructive approach of critical geopolitics was effective at demonstrating the flawed assumptions of geographic generalizations that permeated foreign policy making and opening up spaces for alternative visions; however, it rarely constructed convincing alternative accounts that could win over publics. The ‘common sense’ nature of many geographic constructs make them fundamental to many people’s world views, and this makes the task of dislodging them not only intellectual (via critique) but also visceral (through a politics 72

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state  73 of affect). The discursive focus of critical geopolitics as traditionally practised makes it an awkward (though still helpful) tool for intervening in the material and somatic politics of affect. Second, the increasing salience of climate change politics to the realm of geopolitics offered an incentive to think of new tools that would allow critical scholars to think through and with physical processes the material forces that they unleash. A critical geopolitics built on refusing the ‘reality’ of the environment and its political effects is an awkward place from which to defend climate change science from its deniers and well-heeled detractors. What was needed then was a form of poststructuralism that could speak to the current needs of critical scholarship, both in terms of its attentiveness to physical processes like climate change as well as the new forms of affective and somatic politics emergent in the 2010s: social media and their attention economies, the racial underpinnings of the politics of migration and refuge, and the embodied geopolitics of populism and its reliance on authoritarian models of masculinity. Assemblage theory offered another poststructural approach to the state that offered purchase on these topics. In what follows I trace out the literature that served as antecedents to this conceptual move, and then outline some of its implications for scholarship on the geographies of the state.

6.2

THE NEW STATECRAFT

Recent work in political geography has tended to emphasize the politics of everyday life over the politics of the state (e.g., Pain 2009; Wood 2012). This was a much needed corrective in a sub-discipline that had been dominated by statist approaches for nearly its entire history (Taylor 2000). Research on the politics of everyday life highlights the role of bodies and their habits and practices in the constitution of various spaces, including home and the workplace (Brickell 2012). This has been a crucial step in the feminist project of diversifying the gendered assumptions of politics (Dowler and Sharp 2001). However, to say that the state isn’t everything is not to say that it isn’t something. By bringing state theory in dialogue with this literature on the politics of everyday life it becomes possible to enliven some of the rather stale theorizations of the state that dominated the twentieth century and led to political geography being designated a ‘moribund backwater’ (Berry 1969). It is possible to trace these developments back to political geography’s adoption of Foucauldian thought around the turn of the millennium. Foucault’s advocacy of power as a concept that is relational and therefore diffuse has indeed proven very influential and has partially replaced the idea that power is something ‘out there’ held by actors, especially state ones. Thinking about the state from the perspective of everyday life both highlights the ways in which the everyday state is enmeshed in various peoples’ life worlds in highly differentiated ways and also points scholars in the direction of the everyday constitution of the state from ‘within’ (Painter 2006). Both of these perspectives share the idea that the state is that which emerges from a wide array of relations and interactions that are performed by a range of actors at the scale of the everyday. That is, the state ‘up there’ is seen as being produced by the interactions and performances of people ‘down here’ in the trenches, either working in, or through, the state (Abrams 1977). This marks something of a distinction from the early Foucauldian thought that was popular in critical geopolitics, which relied on a top-down (if diffuse) conceptualization of power (through concepts such as governmentality, etc.). By connecting scales that had previously been thought of as separate, the social world is seen as shaped by power,

74  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state but not in ways that are always predictable. Rather, sometimes highly parochial and ‘local’ events can bring about ‘global’ effects, or at a minimum can defy the trends that are identified as unfolding on a global scale. In parallel to these trends in political geography, political theory has been reworking our understanding of the state. Rather than accepting the state as an a priori actor in the world, these scholars have come to understand the agency of the state as emergent from the interaction among performances of the state undertaken in various times and places. These can include a wide range of activities, mundane and exceptional. For instance, the biopolitics of the border serves not only to decide who is or who is not acceptable to enter the body politic, but also to iterate the idea of the state as the arbiter of who comes and goes from the state’s territory (which is, of course, itself a production of the performance at the border). The registration of births, marriages, and deaths inscribe the state’s role in acts which otherwise lack any particular relation to the state, giving the state the appearance of being both ubiquitous and transcendental. This veneer of timelessness is crucial to the mythology of the state, which aspires to a role as the hegemonic organizer of life. A literature has formed over the past decade which I loosely refer to as ‘the New Statecraft’. This umbrella term includes a range of political geographers (and political scientists or theorists) who are primarily interested in the everyday crafting of the state. Appropriate to the focus on ‘crafting’ the state, these scholars have adopted the language of the humanities. Painter (2006, p. 760) utilizes Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of prosaics, developed to understand literature: ‘Prosaics highlights the intrinsic heterogeneity and openness of social life and its “many-voiced” character. It challenges all authoritative monological master subjects (God, Man, the Unconscious, the Sovereign as well as the State)’. If we focus on the latter, we can see that Bakhtin’s prosaics is more interested in the everyday and its brushes with the state than it is in the state per se. This hearkens back to the registration of births, marriages, and deaths mentioned above, but it also includes voting, parking tickets, and so on. Crucially, by looking at the state in this fashion we can highlight the polyvocality of the state, with its clerks and petit bureaucracy. The state can be seen to be an incoherent, fragmented actor, often working at cross-purposes to itself. Because of this incoherence, the state cannot be understood as overweening or transcendental. Rather, it is always becoming otherwise. The idea of prosaics calls our attention from categories – such as ‘state’ or ‘non-state’ – and shifts it to a spectrum of what Painter called ‘stateness’. That is, polities – whether commonly perceived as states (like Finland), or non-states (e.g., Gibraltar), or somewhere in-between (Palestine) – exhibit some qualities that are seen as inherent to the idea of the state. Therefore we can assess how closely they approximate a state ideal; even the most ‘obvious’ states will have some quirks that make it stand out from the ideal. A useful example here is the United States (US), which although usually considered a very strong state, is also marked by a federal system of government that reserves certain elements of sovereignty to the individual ‘states’ (like Florida). McConnell et al. (2012) have taken up Painter’s idea of stateness and taken it to its logical endpoint, which is to focus on these moments of excess when every polity falls short of the state ideal. The only ‘real’ state is the state ideal, the rest are all trying to perform that ideal in hopes of grasping its transcendence. The key humanities trope that informs approach is Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry from literary theory. While Bhabha’s original concept attempted to make sense of subaltern attempts to mimic the colonizer in hopes of one day achieving parity, McConnell et al. use it to describe the performance of diplomacy. Finland, Gibraltar,

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state  75 and Palestine all perform a mimicry of the state ideal in hopes of being granted its imprimatur. The state/non-state boundary is performed into existence by the adjudication of those performances by those who have achieved insider status. The closer the performance is to the state ideal, the more the requirements proliferate to ensure eventual failure in the mimicry. One consequence of all this literary theory is that it dematerializes the embodied practices in order to render them into texts. In contrast, Alex Jeffrey’s (2012) deployment of the concept of improvisation from the world of theatre and music holds promise in that it reasserts the centrality of the body and its political performances. Jeffrey draws on Bourdieu’s concept of virtuosity (1977), in which ‘performed resourcefulness’ enables political performers to deviate from the script in creative ways that nevertheless remain recognizably ‘the script’. In other words, the script is not a structure that restrains them but instead a set of resources with which to play. This advances the idea of state-craft because it means that various performers can simultaneously be improvising from the same script in the same territory. In Jeffrey’s example of Bosnia, a number of competing state projects coexist, each aspiring to become the new ‘script’ to which everyone must adhere. That introduces the dimension of multiplicity into state theory, of which more later. Crucially, Jeffrey’s focus on embodied performances raises the question of the state’s transcendence. How does the state seem so solid, so coherent over long periods of time (centuries, in many cases) if in nothing but daily embodied performances? Bourdieu (1999) features in one response to this question, via his concept of symbolic capital. That is, the state has accumulated legitimacy that makes the performances of statehood vibrate with the authority of the state: consider the solemn parade of the guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or the pomp of a courtroom when the judge enters. Attention to symbolic capital has permeated work in the so-called ‘practice turn’ in International Relations, and indeed Bourdieu’s focus on the body and its habitus has introduced a kind of attention to materiality in state theory (Adler-Nissen 2012; Kuus 2014; Neumann 2002; Poulliot 2008). However, what about materiality beyond the body and the habits or improvisations that perform the state into being? How do we account for the monuments, the office buildings, and the guns of the state?

6.3

TOWARDS ASSEMBLAGES OF STATE POWER

How can we consider the state in its everyday fragility and performativity, and also think through the importance of materiality to its seemingly transcendent state effects? In short, how can we reconcile the everyday nature of the state, as described by the above thinkers, and the seeming permanence of the idea of the state? The solution proposed here is to conceptualize the state through assemblage theory. Assemblage theory relies on a flat ontology that is dynamic, relational, and energized by processes of self-organization. Assemblages have been described by Martin Müller (2015) as sharing five characteristics. First, assemblages are composed of a range of elements that exhibit relations of exteriority. That is, the various parts of an assemblage are not understandable except through the various relations in which they are enmeshed. Their characteristics and capacities are defined by those relations rather than by anything inherent to them. Second, assemblages are constantly becoming otherwise; new elements enter the assemblage and others depart (this is known as territorialization and deterritorialization, respectively). Further, because assemblage is a flat ontology, some of the elements of an assemblage are assemblages themselves, and so they too

76  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state are undergoing change. Therefore changes in one assemblage can ripple through other assemblages that are in relation to the first assemblage. To be in an assemblage is to make oneself vulnerable to being affected, and also to make others vulnerable to your affective forces. To the extent that an assemblage appears stable, it is likely because of the specific spatial and temporal frame at which it is being observed. The third characteristic of an assemblage is that its elements are heterogeneous. Difference is inherent to an assemblage, and this is the source of its continuous novelty. With regard to our argument regarding the state, Manual DeLanda (2006, p. 12) argues that ‘the components of social assemblages playing a material role vary widely, but at the very least involve a set of human bodies properly oriented (physically or psychologically) towards each other’. The fourth characteristic is that – because of the aforementioned relations of exteriority – assemblages can never be delimited with any real finality. That is, they must be thought of ecologically rather than in their individuality. The trail of affective relations is potentially infinite, or nearly infinite. Practically speaking of course analysts of assemblage can make ‘cuts’ to produce the object of their study, but these cuts are not innocent and must be considered carefully. Coding and decoding refer to the processes through which the identity of an assemblage is solidified or rendered diffuse, and the cuts made by analysts are part of these processes. Finally, the fifth characteristic of assemblages is that they exhibit desire. By this Müller (following others) means that assemblages demonstrate the capacity for self-organization. Change to an assemblage can occur from within, without any exogenous source. Altogether, assemblage theory offers an ontology that does not privilege any particular scale, and which imagines a world of flux rather than a world of structure. But how can we imagine it to be political? John Protevi (2009) has adapted assemblage theory to speak to the political through his concept of the body politic. Of course, the most famous version of the body politic is that outlined by Hobbes (see Rasmussen and Brown 2005), in which the different parts of society function as various organs of a meta-body, with the sovereign famously occupying the head. This formulation is clearly inappropriate to assemblage theory because of the way in which it embeds a functionalism into the body politic. That is, each type of person (or class) has a defined role within the body politic. The function of each is fixed; clearly this is a political formulation that suits those occupying roles of privilege. Protevi, by contrast, draws on the insights of assemblage theory to imagine body politics at a range of scales, synchronically becoming with – and through – one another. Protevi delineates between first-order and second-order bodies politic. A first-order body politic is a human subject, emergent from the assemblage of various bodily organs, along with territorialized flows of energy, water, and air. These first-order bodies politic are shaped by those flows, and others such as media and other sensory stimuli, such that they act politically in certain ways, from the material deprivation that leads to revolutionary action, to the media ‘bubble’ that produces the Fox News voter. The second-order body politic is composed of first-order bodies politic, but enmeshed with other materials, discourses, and objects. These social assemblages are prone to some degree of collective affective cognition, in that they are brought into alignment even if individual differences persist. That is, the ability to affect and be affected means that members of social groups are shaped by their participation in that group, even if in small or unseen ways. The second-order body politic, however, is not subsequent to the first-order body politic. There is no ‘body’ that is not already enmeshed in a community, and no community that exists outside of the bodies that compose it. This is crucial given the emphasis in liberal political theory on

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state  77 the state being constituted by an a priori existing citizenry. Rather, the scales of the body and the state are synchronic – constantly re-emerging from and through the relations that compose each assemblage. It is crucial to note that Protevi’s second-order bodies politic is not a synonym for a state. Rather, the state is but one iteration of the many social assemblages that Protevi is discussing. Second-order bodies politic range from the state, to a power-laden conversation between a professor and student, to a military unit. All are becoming at different temporalities. Nevertheless, Protevi’s formulation of first- and second-order bodies politic allows us to consider the state as something other than a structure that shapes the social field. Rather, the state is composed of bodies performing the state into an everyday existence, as discussed above, in conjunction with a range of materials that persist in time and space and affect the political performances of those engaged in the (re)production of the state. These materials might include key documents (constitutions, legal judgements, etc.), monuments that code the nation-state in certain ways, and of course the flows of political economy (which are also linked to the flows of tax revenue), to say nothing of the more everyday dimensions of the state (such as Painter’s Crown-certified pint glasses). The reworking of state theory to think through assemblage is helpful because it holds onto the gains of the humanities-inflected approaches described earlier while also applying their insights to the objects and materials that compose the state and allow it to persist in time. For instance, we can see how the state/non-state divide doesn’t just apply to polities like Finland and Gibraltar, but also to the objects and materials of the state. A policewoman is clearly identified as an element of the state, but when she goes home and takes off her uniform and badge and puts on casual clothes for a night out with friends, she is no longer clearly of the state. Nevertheless, when off duty police still retain some state-ness. These processes of deand reterritorialization are occurring all the time. The state is here seen to be a set of bodily performances, objects, and materials that are brought into and out of the state assemblage, with effects on the agency of the state apparatus.

6.4

TOPOLOGIES WITHIN AND AMONG STATES

But what happens if we apply the ideas of assemblage theory not just to the state, but to interstate relations? Indeed, diplomacy is a natural field of politics to remap using assemblages. Traditionally, diplomacy has been thought of as a field focused on relations, materialized in both embassies and the bodies of ambassadors. Clearly this speaks to the relational aspects of assemblage. However, this move allows us to rethink the diplomatic system as a kind of body politic itself. Instead of thinking of the agency of the state as emergent from all its constituent parts, this formulation asks us to imagine a collective agency that is ‘above’ the state, but not represented or embodied in a single sovereign figure. This is an uncomfortable view for many who are attached to the idea of an anthropocentric agency; however, once non-human agency is allowed for, it becomes clear that the diplomatic system itself channels forces that work through and on the various state apparatuses that compose it. There is empirical justification for this in the diplomatic studies literature; for instance Christian Wieland (2012) has argued that for some political actors, serving as an ambassador made them more loyal to their sovereign. Being posted to a foreign capital made them acutely aware of their own subjectivity and made them loyal servants. Similarly, Noe Cornago

78  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state (2013) argues that early ambassadors did not have a singular loyalty; rather while overseas they were often representing their locality and their religion as well. They were, to put it in terms of assemblage, key nodes through which distinct assemblages became linked, allowing affects to circulate. This changed over time of course as the state colonized the realm of the political, closing down the multiplicitous politics of the Early Modern period with something more regimented. This role of the ambassador as a ‘key node’ in the diplomatic assemblage remains to this day. Certainly today’s diplomats are more associated with a single state than they used to be in the times that Cornago describes. Still, however, it is understood that the best diplomats are not necessarily those who adhere too closely to the instructions of their masters, but are instead those who occupy a space in-between their government and their interlocutors, working on both in order to ‘seal the deal’. It is partly for this reason that ministries of foreign affairs, and especially overseas diplomats, are seen as suspect by other parts of the government (and often also by the general citizenry). The reason that ambassadors are sent overseas is so that they can tap into flows of information and affect to guide their home government. However, to be able to affect is also to be able to be affected. Therefore, an ambassador of influence is also likely to be influenced. For this reason it is traditional to rotate diplomats from one post to another every three years or so, in hopes of disrupting the affective influence of the foreign court on the diplomat’s subjectivity. The Treaties of Westphalia are frequently described as a key event in the statist closure of politics. Stuart Elden (2007, p. 572) sees the extended period of the treaties’ negotiation as a moment in which the state and the diplomatic system are seen to be coming together to form a ‘diplomatico-military dispositif’: War is intended to be used judiciously, with a clear sense of why it is being fought, and used strategically to reinforce the balance of power. Diplomacy is to become an instrument or tool, with the negotiations in Westphalia as a model, with a congress of all states involved, and with a system of permanent ambassadors. Europe is seen as a juridical-political entity in itself, with a system of diplomatic and political security; but this is underpinned by a third instrument, each state having a permanent military apparatus of professional soldiers with an infrastructure of fortresses and transport, and sustained tactical reflection.

This summary of events traces effectively the synchronic emergence of the state and the diplomatic system, with both built on the back of the same assemblage. The idealized institutions of the newly formulated states (the diplomats and the military) must be made interoperable with one another so as to regulate the passions and metabolisms of Europe. The Elden quote above highlights for us the role of the non-human in the production of the diplomatico-military dispositif. Indeed, the discussion just prior of ambassadors as key nodes could be accused of the anthropocentrism that assemblage theory allows us to disrupt. The body politic of the diplomatic system has many key nodes, some of which are not human at all, but which serve as points of connection between the various state apparatuses (or bureaucratic assemblages) aimed at governance of ‘the foreign’. While these connections may seem mundane and unimportant in comparison to the glamour of a diplomatic dinner party, they create real, material, flows of affect that co-produce the collective political subjectivities of the states that ‘own’ them. These might include data flows, or the exchange of attaches in government bureaucracies, or the circulation of goods across borders. These materials are of course always already just ‘things’, but they also serve as subtle influences on collective world views. Because they are objects of governance that range from all pillars of society, they are governed

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state  79 by other apparatuses beyond the ministry of foreign affairs, including ministries of agriculture, environment, defence, and so on. Under assemblage, diplomacy is both a fundamental way of thinking about the international and also no longer the preserve of the diplomats. The expansion of the governmental points of connection that link together the apparatuses of the state have focused attention on the technical practices that underpin this governmentality (Barry 2001). Processes of harmonization across national borders have been unfolding for centuries. A salient example is the development of diplomatic protocol, which serves as the standard script of performance by diplomats. It was codified in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, which sought to create a permanent infrastructure with which to head off a return to the conflicts of the Napoleonic era. By establishing the norms with which diplomats greet each other and demonstrate their recognition of one another, everyone was able to set their expectations around a set of standard procedures. This drained the possibility of aristocratic honour being offended and sparking more warfare. However, this protocol is but one form of harmonization that an assemblage approach to the state must consider. Other forms of procedural, embodied protocol include the development of English as the lingua franca of most post-war international institutions, or the procedures used in extradition. More unusually, we might turn to the material, design-oriented protocols, such as computer networking protocols, document formatting, and so on. I have elsewhere written about these various protocols, and the ways in which they link together elements of a transnational state (Dittmer 2015, 2016, 2017). One such example is the standardization of signals intelligence in the United Kingdom (UK)–US alliance from the Second World War to the present. This entailed the harmonization of terminology, classification systems, and signals intelligence bureaucracies. For instance, after the war the US pulled together its fragmented signals intelligence apparatus (distributed across the State Department, the Army, and the Navy), compiling its capacities into the new National Security Agency so that their structure could mirror the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Australia, New Zealand, and Canada all had to develop counter-intelligence capabilities that mirrored those of the US and UK in order to fully participate in the flows of signals intelligence that the UK–US alliance was designed to circulate. In terms of technical standardization, the US and the UK during the war had adopted identical encryption/decryption machinery so that they could communicate with each other. The flows of signals intelligence – and their associated flows of bodies (seconded from one country to another, or staff attending meetings) and objects (equipment, etc.) – are conduits for the subject-making powers of affect that offer the potential for reworking political cognition and the reshaping of the broader structures of the state. To summarize these last two sections, it is clear that an assemblage approach to the state entails a range of distinct shifts to our perspectives on the state. First, it enables us to think about the agency of materials, both in the production of state effects and state affects. These materials are crucial both to the ability of states to enact their agency, either domestically or internationally, and therefore it also requires us to think more carefully about the technical fields through which materials are produced and set in relation to one another. Second, it also enables us to decentre individual states in our understanding of states, instead seeing them as a set of apparatuses always already in relation to one another, acting on and through one another in ways that require empirical investigation.

80  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

6.5

FUTURE RESEARCH

Thinking the state through the concept of assemblage has, as I have just specified, implications for how we think about studying the state (or states). Research that adopts this perspective must adapt itself to some of these implications. First, future research should think transversally, focusing not on specific assemblages. Research on the state is, understandably, traditionally focused on a single state. What the assemblage approach offers is the opportunity to look at specific relations within and between states: points of connection, the milieu of meeting spaces, technical systems through which the state is composed or through which the diplomatic system coheres. How do civil servants communicate or work, either with each other or with their counterparts in other countries? How do changes in these practices or systems lead to evolutionary transitions within the state or the international system? Going further, assemblage offers transversal purchase on the state (or states) and the capitalist assemblages that constitute the economic side of political economy. Indeed, thinking the state through capitalism (or capitalism through the state) is a fruitful way to think about the mangling together of politics and economics and its implications for each half of that dyad (Pickering 1995). A challenge to thinking through assemblage is, however, that it becomes difficult to know where to make the cut and limit the scope of your inquiry. If every assemblage is ‘open’ and connected to other open systems, the chain of analysis can spin out endlessly. These are the kinds of questions with which scholars must engage as we further develop our understanding. Assemblage offers the opportunity to rethink the state, and the relations that compose it and through which our social world is composed. Second, the flat ontology of assemblage directs our attention to the bottom-up processes that inspire change over time periods that are perhaps out of sync with our usual sense of the temporalities of politics. Scholars are much more comfortable – and methodologically deft at – paying attention to the sayings and doings of heads of state and heads of government (and their various ministers and other elites). Assemblage approaches to the state tend to prioritize the everyday state and its practices. While of course state elites are themselves parts of the everyday state, and they wield tremendous influence, they are not the only source of agency. To understand this non-human agency, it is crucial to use methods that speak to different temporalities. For the longue durée, it is useful to engage in archival research that enables practices and events to be brought into dialogue despite them happening far apart in time in space. At the other end of the spectrum, ethnographic and other methods that consider the microgeographies of everyday life are helpful in understanding the agency of lower-level bureaucrats. At either end of the temporal and spatial spectrum, assemblage thinking challenges us to trace the emergence of agencies that are subtle and largely affecting anthropocentric politics via inhuman registers. Scholars must learn new sensitivities to these registers if they are to unleash a politics of assemblage that might remedy the politics of grievance that underpin both the populist uprising of recent years and the longue durée of the Anthropocene.

REFERENCES Abrams, P. (1977), ‘Notes on the difficulty of studying the state’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1 (1), 58–89. Adler-Nissen, R. (2012), Bourdieu in International Relations, London: Routledge.

Assemblage and the changing geographies of the state  81 Bachmann, V. and S. Moisio (2020), ‘Towards a constructive critical geopolitics: Inspirations from the Frankfurt School of critical theory’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38 (2), 251–68. Barry, A. (2001), Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London: Athlone Press. Berry, B. (1969), ‘Book review: International Regions and the International System: A Study in Political Ecology by Bruce M. Russett’, Geographical Review, 59 (3), 450–1. Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1999), The Logic of Practice, Cambridge: Polity Press. Brickell, K. (2012), ‘Geopolitics of home’, Geography Compass, 6 (10), 575–88. Cornago, N. (2013), Plural Diplomacies: Normative Predicaments and Functional Imperatives, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. DeLanda, M. (2006), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, London: Continuum. Derrida, J. (1981), Positions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dittmer, J. (2015), ‘Everyday diplomacy: UK–USA intelligence cooperation and geopolitical assemblages’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 105 (3), 604–19. Dittmer, J. (2016), ‘Towards a more-than-human diplomacy: Assembling the British Foreign Office, 1839–1874’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 11 (1), 1871–901. Dittmer, J. (2017), Diplomatic Material: Affect, Assemblage, and Foreign Policy, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dowler, L. and J. Sharp (2001), ‘A feminist geopolitics?’, Space and Polity, 5 (3), 165–76. Elden, S. (2007), ‘Governmentality, calculation, territory’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (3), 562–80. Foucault, M. (1970), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Vintage. Jeffrey, A. (2012), The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Kuus, M. (2014), Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority in European Diplomacy, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. McConnell, F., T. Moreau, and J. Dittmer (2012), ‘Mimicking state diplomacy: The legitimising strategies of unofficial diplomacies’, Geoforum, 43 (2), 804–14. Müller, M. (2015), ‘Assemblages and actor-networks: Rethinking socio-material power, politics, and space’, Geography Compass, 9 (1), 27–41. Neumann, I. (2002), ‘Returning practice to the linguistic turn: The case of diplomacy’, Millennium, 31 (3), 627–51. Ó Tuathail, G. (1996), Critical Geopolitics: The Writing of Global Space, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pain, R. (2009), ‘Globalised fear? Towards an emotional geopolitics’, Progress in Human Geography, 33 (4), 466–86. Painter, J. (2006), ‘Prosaic geographies of stateness’, Political Geography, 25 (7), 752–74. Pickering, C. (1995), The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Poulliot, V. (2008), ‘The logic of practicality: A theory of practice of security communities’, International Organisation, 62 (2), 257–88. Protevi, J. (2009), Political Affect: Between the Social and the Somatic, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rasmussen, C. and M. Brown (2005), ‘The body politic as spatial metaphor’, Citizenship Studies, 9 (5), 469–84. Said, E. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Penguin. Taylor, P. (2000), ‘Embedded statism and the social sciences 2: Geographies (and metageographies) in globalization’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 32 (6), 1105–14. Wieland, C. (2012), ‘The consequences of early modern diplomacy: Entanglement, discrimination, mutual ignorance – and state building’, in A. Flüchter and S. Richter (eds), Structures on the Move: Technologies of Governance in Transcultural Encounter, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 271–85. Wood, B. (2012), ‘Crafted within liminal spaces: Young people’s everyday politics’, Political Geography, 31 (6), 337–46.

7. The state and historical geographical materialism Kevin R. Cox

7.1 INTRODUCTION Within the last ten years there has been a minor sideshow in Marxist studies regarding the problem of ‘many states’ (on this debate, see e.g. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2007, issue 4): in short, why do we have multiple states in the world rather than, say, a world-embracing one? Stated thus the question might seem absurd, raising all manner of commonsensical objections. My point, though, is that simply asking it underlines how state theory has historically proceeded as if geography did not exist. This is a bit surprising since in more concrete mainstream studies it is clear that geography does enter the picture: local government studies, the literature on separatism, and that on electoral districting to take but a few. Even in historical materialist work there has been some minor flirtation with geography as in the, interestingly short-lived, work on the local state (Duncan and Goodwin 1982; Duncan et al. 1988). Political science has for the most part, been absent from these debates. Any defensible theory of the state surely has to allow for the significance of these practices. The chapter starts with the classic historical materialist understanding of the state. I then consider what a historical geographical materialist approach might look like: one that incorporates, in other words, questions of scale, uneven development, mobility and fixity, demonstrating the difference that they make to state forms and practices.

7.2

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THEORIZING THE STATE

In his voluminous writings Marx frequently makes reference to the state and the role it plays in the production and reproduction of capitalist social relations. In Capital Vol. 1 the state figures prominently in the section of the book devoted to primitive accumulation. There is also the chapter on limits to the length of the workday where it is the state that has to intervene since the competition of capitals one with another prevents them from acting in such a way as to protect the health of the owners of that labor power on which they depend if they are to valorize their capital. There are other suggestive references such as his discussion of the implications of the cotton famine for the owners of the cotton textile mills of Lancashire and their interest in the state providing some sort of relief so as to maintain what has become a very bloated industrial reserve army until the cotton famine is over (Marx 1867, pp. 720–22). Some of Marx’s more concrete writings such as the Eighteenth Brumaire are also useful. But there is nothing that one could regard as systematic. Nevertheless, the state is clearly of central significance to the reproduction of capitalist production relations and has accordingly attracted a lot of attention in historical materialist writing. The aim here is to provide some reasonably defensible body 82

The state and historical geographical materialism  83 of ideas that can serve as the basis for entering into this literature, even identifying what some of the issues are, but without broaching them in any detail. We must start with capitalism’s foundational social relation. This is what Marx (1867, p. 874) called ‘the double freedom of labor power’ or the ‘wage labor relation’. Of labor’s two freedoms one was ironic: labor was free of the means of production; henceforth the worker only had her labor power to rely on but without access to the means of production, s/he was unable to realize that power in the form of a product. The second freedom was that the immediate producer now had exclusive rights to that labor power. It was her private property. S/he could dispose of it as s/he pleased and as private property it would be protected by the law in the same way as other private property. It could not be alienated without the agreement of its owner. This is the birth of a class relation fraught with consequence: on the one hand owners of money wealth who can now dictate terms to the owner of labor power, and so extract a surplus value; and on the other, a competitive relation between owners of money wealth, now become capital, which impels them to accumulate and revolutionize both how and what they produce and the social relations subtending the class relation. It is the effect of the capitalist state, not in any intentional, studied way, and for reasons to be made clear, to reproduce this relationship: to defend the private property on which it is based and the returns to that property – profit on the one side and the wage on the other (e.g. Callinicos 2007). This in turn means that the continuity of accumulation must be assured. The capitalist lays out money and wants it back, and more. This depends not simply on the bargain struck with the worker but also on the subsequent journey of what is produced: it has to be exchanged and at a price which will allow the capitalist to appropriate the money value of what has been produced, including the surplus. We are talking not only about the sphere of production, therefore, but also that of exchange. Maintaining the continuity of the accumulation process depends not just on enforcing property rights but on helping value complete its circuit. These are not effects that capital is capable of producing. It needs an institution outside of itself that is: (1) seemingly above the competitive fray as it affects the sphere of commodity exchange; and (2) seemingly above the tensions of class conflict in the sphere of production. This is the state. Capitalism is a highly contradictory mode of production. Capitalists want to accumulate but they tend to undermine some of its essential conditions. In order to facilitate exchange, and among other things, it needs a stable, reliable money; a physical infrastructure of highways, railroads and, at one time, canals; and a means of ensuring that competition does not give way to monopoly. Private banks can supply money but competition means that they are subject to the temptation of issuing too much (in the form of loans) and either inflating its value or going bankrupt; but in either case, acting so that those who need to exchange, lose confidence in the money commodity. Private firms can construct highways, canals and railroads but private land owners have a monopoly of the land necessary to create the cheapest route, and can demand extortionate prices. Competition can give way to monopoly, particularly in the provision of so-called utilities. The fact that what owners return to workers in the form of wages is less than the value of the goods produced poses a continual problem of realization: every capitalist sees the wages of his/her own workers as something to minimize and the wages of other capitalists as what will soak up his/her product. In all these areas, there is a need for an institution that can: regulate banks and control the supply of money; dictate prices to private landowners where there is a clear public need for physical infrastructure; regulate prices in the provision of electricity, gas and rail transport; and then take steps to

84  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state facilitate consumption, like the introduction of minimum wages, unemployment compensation and pensions. Class conflict threatens the accumulation process. Workers go on strike and occupy factories, disrupting production and the ability of the capitalist to pay back the loans taken out to purchase the means of production. In part, this is a matter of competition getting in the way of resolution. As Marx made clear in his discussion of struggles around the length of the workday, what inhibited capital from granting reductions unilaterally was the fear of competition from firms that refused, and who saw an opportunity if others did so; meanwhile, capital was undermining the health and working life of those on whom it depended for its surplus value. The fact is, while there might be some opposition from capital to these sorts of initiatives, the record shows that through technological innovation designed to stay ahead of the competition, the product can be increased allowing wages to rise and so absorb the cost of the reforms; something of which firms, at least in the manufacturing sector, are now well aware.1 Other issues are more intractable and require the seeming objective arbitration of the state. A radical labor movement can be a serious threat. Standard welfare state legislation is one thing, to be taken care of by the increasing productivity of capital. But public ownership, or decommodification of essential services, is something else. One problem is that the subsequent losses to capital may be uncompensated. Another is that it deprives business of what are potentially vast fields of profit making and/or introducing the competition of a state which can subsidize publicly owned enterprises. A reformist labor movement can be dealt with. One that seeks to undermine capitalism as a whole is something quite different and the capitalist state, if it is to remain one, has to have weapons that can deflect the threat, albeit without seeming to favor capital over the workers: in other words, to act in a supposed common interest. In terms of its functions, therefore, the state is an essential aspect of the capitalist division of labor. It does things which have to be done to reproduce the property relation fundamental to capitalism as a mode of production and which capital is incapable of doing. But emphatically the state has its own logics which do not necessarily bear in an obvious way on this particular function. This needs to be emphasized since there is a common argument about how the state has to have an autonomy independent of capital in order to impose on it what is for its own good, without realizing it, but an autonomy that is ‘relative’ in that policy has to be within limits that allow capital to go on accumulating (Block 1977). This is too functionalist. Like all aspects of the social process under capitalism the state has its own rationalities which, sans the disciplining effects of capital, both material and discursive, can threaten its coherence. Officials, elected and otherwise, are there to advance their careers, not to promote accumulation. They want to get elected or put themselves in a position where they can stage a coup. Nevertheless, one of the fascinating things about the capitalist state is how its structural form converges on a common template. Capitalist states are formally democratic, with rules governing the holding of elections. There is a separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers, even while in parliamentary democracies, the separation of executive and legislative branches is imperfect. The labor of the executive is divided up into departments. There is invariably a treasury, a tax service, a foreign service, a department of defense and a home office responsible for imposing the law, along with others of a more variable nature: agriculture, perhaps, housing, health and so on. There are norms governing the separation of public and private life: no nepotism and no turning state office to private advantage. With respect to policy, there are boundaries to be observed; most notably the rights of private property, and the right to dedicate that property to profit-making enterprise should not be threatened.

The state and historical geographical materialism  85 This is a structure that is contested. In terms of representation, and once struggles over the extension of the franchise have been resolved, some of this is pretty innocuous: provision for the redefinition of constituency boundaries so as to maintain some rough equivalence in the number of voters per legislator; or whether legislators should be elected according to proportional representation or first-past-the-post; and approaches to boundary definition to avoid gerrymandering. Likewise, there may be pressures for the formation of new departments or the switching of functions from one department to another. Responsibility for regulating off-farm pollution – the department of agriculture or the state environmental protection agency – has been disputed by farm lobbies and environmental groups in some of the states of the United States (US), like Ohio. More serious have been disputes over where to draw the boundary between the state and capital or what is politely referred to as ‘civil society’. Who should provide what? Should housing be something that the state provides and in competition with private developers? Is health insurance a matter for the state or for private insurance companies? Yet despite contestation of this sort, the state remains, stubbornly, a capitalist state. There are limits in the degree to which it can make concessions to the labor movement; and these are, and oddly, limits that are widely accepted. So the question is why, to draw on Marx’s claim, ‘The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. The most obvious reason is that the state is subordinated to the capitalist accumulation process. On the vitality of the latter hinges the state’s ability to carry on its day-to-day functions, to introduce new policies so as to buy off the demands of an angry electorate. Maintaining capital’s confidence has to be the priority, which helps to explain the emphasis on a balanced budget, defending the national currency against inflationary pressures, and generally creating a business climate in both fiscal and regulatory terms, which will encourage investment. The class nature of its policies is then concealed by a discourse centering not on capital’s profitability but on the ‘health’ of the national economy, and bland, classless concepts like ‘development’; in short, everybody has a stake in the (capitalist) state. The second reason is that everyone in a capitalist society experiences it in a way that makes it seem the norm and something from which everyone gains, and if they do not, it is their own fault. The way economic life is practiced creates a presumption in favor of certain values that are then endlessly drawn on by the state as it tries to justify its policies. Notions of freedom, equality and individual rights are notoriously slippery but embedded in the way an economy functions: the freedom to choose how one spends one’s money; the equality of all in matters of exchange as in the famous aphorism about dining at the Ritz; and the right to private property, even if it is only the shirt on one’s back. And economic expansion can raise all boats, even if more for some than for others. Finally, social stratification matters immensely to the ability of the capitalist state to get its way and even to legitimate its activities. The technical division of labor means that the working class, that vast majority of the population employed by someone else and earning a wage or a salary, is socially differentiated; those regarded as more skilled, perhaps engaging in mental rather than manual labor, can command a higher wage. This is the basis of the idea of ‘social stratification’, commonly confused in mainstream social science with that of class. But it does have class consequences since the better-off members of the working class are precisely the ones less likely to experience unemployment, more likely to own physical assets that can gain value, like their own homes, have more generous pensions and so on. They are the clearer beneficiaries of policies that are capital-friendly, like lower taxation and reductions

86  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state in government spending, which is why in all the advanced capitalist countries they join with business in supporting those parties of the right that advance capitalist interests against the less advantaged members of the working class; all of which suggests, as Przeworski (1980) argued, that for a radically inclined working class, the parliamentary road has severe drawbacks. Meanwhile, those it should be appealing to look on and blame themselves for not being able to enjoy the fun.

7.3

STATE GEOGRAPHIES

So far we can understand why an institutionally separate state is an essential part of capitalism’s division of labor. But just why state forms are geographically constructed and differentiated has remained outside of the discussion. State form is differentiated: space is divided into a patchwork of state forms and quasi-state forms which then organize themselves hierarchically in scalar fashion. Fundamental to this is the social character of capital and how that social character is geographically constrained: so many spaces of accumulation, therefore. This is the material basis for the localized character of state forms. As new spaces of accumulation emerge at larger geographic scales, so competition can challenge the future of those nesting at smaller scales. Uneven development emerges as a challenge, creating struggles around the state’s spatial structure. We start with a consideration of the state’s socio-spatial basis. 7.3.1

Geography and the Socialization of Production

According to Michael Mann, ‘societies need some of their activities to be regulated over a centralized territory’ (1984, p. 210). While one can agree with some of this, his reference to ‘societies’ needs amending. They are far from being all alike. Capitalism is the most extraordinarily socialized form of material life in human history. Yet because of the contradictions it sets up between that socialization and the way in which its benefits are appropriated through the competition of private agents, it needs some sort of regulatory mechanism. Through its intense division of labor and reliance on shared means of production, not just factories but a shared infrastructure of cities and their connections, it creates all-round social interdependence. This is a socialization that, in virtue of distance constraints, is also a spatio-socialization: exchange is more likely over shorter distances, though as transport innovation has occurred, the relativeness of the term ‘shorter’ has been underlined. This is something that Harvey recognized in his discussion of the geopolitics of capitalism (1985a): the tendency, that is, to the formation within a limited space of what he called ‘a structured coherence’ embracing all aspects of the social process. The class relation, the built environment, the division of labor, social hierarchies, institutions, power relations, discourse, spatial arrangements, the relation to nature, are conceived here in their internal relations: an organic unity, therefore. This is a unity that both supports and is subordinated to the logics of the accumulation process, getting restructured as the nature of the accumulation process – technologies, sectoral emphases, social organization, for example – shifts. He also assumed that structured coherences would be apparent at different geographic scales. He talks of both countries and the urban areas within them as constituting structured coherences (see Harvey 1985a, 1985b).

The state and historical geographical materialism  87 We can extend this argument to take in other scales and other institutional arrangements: supra-national state forms, like the European Union, the earlier European empires or the quasi-state forms of regulation at a global scale. The idea of a structured coherence can seem weaker, more tentative and less developed – the advanced capitalist societies hardly constitute a single society – but there are nevertheless the widely shared norms and rules and social struggles common to capitalist society wherever it is and some very common shared transformations in family, social provision, social hierarchy and lots more. Money is fundamental and international intercourse requires a commonly accepted means of exchange. This accounts for a succession of regulatory arrangements going back to the gold standard; then through the Bretton Woods modified gold standard, to the contemporary dollar standard, and surely ones beyond that as the latter starts to experience challenges. The flows and relations that give substance to a structured coherence, though, and regardless of scale, cannot be stable ones: as development continues under the impulse of accumulation, their geography will per necesita change, generating an uneven development fraught with tensions, resistances and counter-attacks. 7.3.2

Geographically Uneven Development

David Harvey (1985a) is especially helpful on the issue of uneven geographical development. As he described, as markets expand beyond existing spaces of accumulation – markets for labor power, means of production, finance and final products – this can pose a threat to any local, regional or national economy and to its supporting physical and social infrastructures: the structured coherence in toto. We can grasp this concretely through the case of foreign investment, how this can build up potential rivals elsewhere with profound ramifications for the country from which the investment is coming: impacts on supply chains, their employees and respective fixed investments in plant, in housing, in supporting public infrastructure, shopping centers, all financed by loans which have yet to be amortized. It might be argued that they too can move so as to work or invest in new, more buoyant spaces of accumulation, but selling physical assets in a declining economy can be difficult. There are other things that inhibit movement. There are the connections between firms, subcontracting relations, relations of trust, simple buyer–supplier relations which can be under threat subsequent to a plant closure or general decline in the local economy and which are extremely difficult to re-establish in a new location. The same applies to most workers: socially embedded and unwilling to take the risk of a move into the unknown. Harvey (1985a, 1985b) emphasized how this can give a boost to state formation as firms look to defend their value relations drawing on state intervention so as to ensure future profitability. To push through their program, a restructuring of the economy, for example, may mean the formation of cross-class alliances, which may not be difficult, as some workers at least sense new opportunities. These alliances then draw for discursive justification on notions of national togetherness, appealing to pre-capitalist legacies and shared historical experiences, like wars, labor unrest, revolutionary threats, around policies of protecting an existing structural coherence and ensuring that value continues to flow through it. Harvey (1985a) focused on regions or countries under some sort of challenge as the contours of economic geography shift to their disadvantage. We can extend his logic by exploring the problem faced by newer poles of development struggling to insert themselves in wider circulations of value. How to compete in a world where the enhanced productivity of firms

88  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state elsewhere gives them an advantage? Trotsky (1980) and later Gerschenkron (1962) talked about ‘catchup’ and, in the former’s case, its implications for combined and uneven development. But how to engineer it equally calls for cross-class alliances, state intervention and new rounds of state formation of the sort demonstrated by the rise of South Korea (Amsden 1990) and the idea of the developmental state. It is also the case, though, that this sort of crisis of uneven development can generate demands for other sorts of restructurings: restructurings of a territorial sort. In other words, the territorial structure of the state can be at issue. Examples readily occur and range across all geographical scales, and both state and quasi-state institutions. Bretton Woods was not implemented without a struggle. Nobody wanted a return to the rigidities of the gold standard. Keynes wanted to liberate world money from the domination of a national currency. He proposed a new currency, the ‘bancor’, which would be created by what would become the International Monetary Fund. But the US, controlling the vast proportion of bank reserves in gold, would prevail, arguing for a modified gold standard with the dollar as the major reserve currency: something which would come with the advantages of seignorage (Parboni 1981, pp. 40–3). There are the territorial tensions within the European Union, highlighted by the conflict around Brexit but by no means limited to that. Brexit has provoked talk of Scottish separatism, something that has long been on the agenda. There has long been a view in Scottish business that being part of the United Kingdom does not always help profitability. Interest rate policy moves to a broader logic dictated by inflationary pressures emanating from the boom in London and the southeast of England; pressures not always shared in Scotland. Ostensibly these are struggles about the centralization or decentralization of state structures; or ones around demands for a separate state, as not just in the case of Scotland or Quebec, to point to two obvious cases, but also the independence movements that arose in the context of empire. But, and the idea of cross-class alliance notwithstanding, these are ultimately capitalist struggles in which accumulation and underlying class relations are at stake, and in which alliances with labor or fractions thereof are always no more than tactical. Capital’s contradictions are transposed onto a spatial plane. We should not be misled by the territorial form of these conflicts. Somewhere class interest is always lurking and structuring struggle. It is important to be aware of the diversity of these struggles. They are indifferent to the state’s scalar hierarchies, and occur across all dimensions of state structure. What works in one case will not work in another. Geohistoric legacies create opportunity structures: what sort of state restructuring will work in one instance can be pre-empted in others, while a different set of opportunities becomes apparent. In his discussion of state structure, Jessop (1990, ch. 12) refers to what he calls ‘inputs’, ‘throughputs’ and ‘outputs’. Inputs refer to the characteristic ways in which demands are made on the state; throughputs, its internal organization, as determined by constitutional and statutory law; and outputs, the characteristic form assumed by policies. So, and by way of example, the American state is more open to the pressures of special interest groups than many other states (Lowi 1969); its internal organization includes an extreme form of separation of powers; while in its outputs it often devolves to provision through the market, as indeed in health care. The point is that these three different aspects all have their territorial expressions; in terms of demands made on the state, regional parties or neighborhood organizations clearly have a territorial agenda, as do local growth coalitions. States are more or less sensitive to regional demands through their internal organization and the rules laid down for recruitment into the

The state and historical geographical materialism  89 Table 7.1 Inputs

The politics of state structure across different scales Local

National

Supra-national

– Neighborhood commissions

– Regional parties

– Challenging International Monetary

– Resident groups

– Parties with a regional base

Fund voting rules

– Separatist demands

– World Trade Organization rules in question

Organization

– Ward vs at-large elections

– First-past-the-post vs

– Independence movements – The scalar division of labor of financial

– Referenda laws

proportional representation

regulation (world money, the Eurozone)

– Metro government vs local

– Decentralization

– International agreements on labor

government fragmentation

– The US electoral college

movement

– Rules governing annexation Outputs

– Flexible/inflexible land use plan – Regional policy solutions – Corporate regimes vs progressive regimes (Stone 1987)

– Market solutions

– EU structural funds – Foreign aid – Global apartheid (Alexander 1996)

organs of the state: so more sensitive where the state’s scalar division of labor favors the regions and the localities; while different rules governing elections – ‘first-past-the-post’ or proportional representation – can, depending on circumstances, favor regionally concentrated political sentiment. In their policies, regional forms of policy were long favored in Western Europe while spurned in the US as choosing winners and losers. Just how this can apply in the politics of state structure across different scales is illustrated in Table 7.1. Depending on pre-existing state and quasi-state structures, there is a functional substitutability of changes that can be made to accommodate demands emanating from the tensions surrounding geographically uneven development. The American state is not the British state, and while they are much more alike, nor is the British state the French one. One of the distinguishing features of the American state is a seeming immunity to separatist demands, and despite the clear evidence of often quite intense uneven development. The decentralized character of the American state seems to create opportunities absorbing the tensions not available to the more centralized ones of Western Europe. It is not just the fact of a radical federalism that gives states the possibility of their own development policies, even while the significance of that might be not much more than symbolic; it is also the way in which the federal branch is uniquely accessible to local pressures through the committee system. Congressmen and senators can boast about the money and regulatory relief they obtained for their constituents, though typically biased towards the needs of business. This is not something available in the much more centralized states of Western Europe where outside of separatism, the tensions are harder to manage. The distinct features of the respective social formations in which these state structures are embedded also count for something. In the American case, anti-statism and a belief in the capacity of market forces to provide relief gets in the way of more explicit attempts by the federal government to do something about uneven development; something that was absent in the West European case and which allowed regional policy during its classic period from 1945 to about 1975 to flourish; all of which suggests that territorial contestation should be situated with respect to a country’s totality of social relations, but that is outside the scope of this chapter.

90  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

7.4 CONCLUSION To return the conversation to where we started, it should now be clear why we have multiple state-like forms, at all manner of scales and organized in hierarchical fashion: the states themselves, their subnational agencies, including local governments and the quasi-state forms through which the global economy is regulated. Capital is a production relation but it depends on exchange: without markets in labor power and means of production and then in finished products, the exploitation and accumulation at its center would be impossible. This means that regulation of the class relation is always with respect to a distance-constrained set of exchange relations, which helps to account for the relative compactness of state jurisdictions. Some exchange relations are constrained over shorter distances than others, which gives the space economy and the state institutions created and mobilized to regulate it their characteristically hierarchical form. This might suggest a relatively stable, equilibrium set of relations. That, though, would be to ignore the inherently dynamic nature of capital and its impulse to break all boundaries, including spatial ones. Spaces of accumulation, therefore, develop unevenly. Increased competition from outside can threaten values in place and the structured coherences essential to accumulation. Capital-in-place has to restructure or die, which means state support or even initiative. Restructuring can take many forms, but it will inevitably entail a restructuring of class relations, which means that some sort of cross-class alliance is central to the process. Increasing emphasis on external investment may entail, it will be argued, some restrictions on union organizing, or a relaxation of land use regulations that will impact people in their living places, etc. All this has impacts on the map of uneven development, at some scale or another. Restructuring at the national level will entail changes in the relation of one region to another: territorial change, therefore, which works to the advantage of some regions and the capitals located there and to the disadvantage of others; which can then call for territorial restructurings of the state to offset the new geography of unevenness. Just where the tensions will emerge is impossible to predict. In virtue of its inbuilt tendency to self-transformation in all but its fundamental production relations, we know that there will be change. We even know that those changes will draw on the past, including its geography, which is one of the reasons that the world political map is relatively stable. But those changes will have repercussions for the reordering of capitalist advantage in the space economy, stimulating new initiatives designed to stem the tide, but inevitably with effects of their own that cannot be anticipated.

NOTE 1. Compare Therborn (1977, p. 26) on the question of the extension of the suffrage to the working class: ‘One of the main reasons why nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberals could deny the compatibility of democracy with private property was their dread that popular legislatures and municipal bodies would greatly increase taxation. However, they were disregarding the elasticity and expansive capacity of capitalism … Rises in productivity make possible a simultaneous increase of both rates of exploitation and real incomes of the exploited masses. This is, of course, not in itself conducive to democracy. But it is relevant in so far as it provides the bourgeoisie with an unprecedentedly wide room for maneuver in dealing with the exploited majority.’

The state and historical geographical materialism  91

REFERENCES Alexander, T. (1996), Unravelling Global Apartheid, Cambridge: Polity Press. Amsden, A. (1990), ‘Third world industrialization: “Global Fordism” or a new model?’ New Left Review, 182, 5–31. Block, F. (1977), ‘The ruling class does not rule’, Socialist Revolution, 7, 6–28. Callinicos, A. (2007), ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20 (4), 533–49. Duncan, S.S. and M. Goodwin (1982), ‘The local state and restructuring social relations’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6 (2), 157–86. Duncan, S.S., M. Goodwin and S. Halford (1988), ‘Policy variations in local states: Uneven development and local social relations’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 12 (1), 107–28. Gerschenkron, A. (1962), Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (1985a), ‘The geopolitics of capitalism’, in D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds), Social Relations and Spatial Structures, London: Macmillan, pp. 128–63. Harvey, D. (1985b), The Urbanization of Capital, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jessop, B. (1990), State Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lowi, T. (1969), The End of Liberalism, New York: W.W. Norton. Mann, M. (1984), ‘The autonomous power of the state: Its origins, mechanisms and results’, European Journal of Sociology, 25 (2), 185–213. Marx, K. (1852; republished 1973), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, in D. Fernbach (ed.), Surveys from Exile, Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 143–249. Marx, K. (1867; republished 1976), Capital: Volume 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Parboni, R. (1981), The Dollar and Its Rivals, London: Verso. Przeworski, A. (1980), ‘Social democracy as a historical phenomenon’, New Left Review, 122, 27–58. Stone, C.N. (1987), ‘Summing up: Urban regimes, development policy, and political arrangements’, in C.R. Stone and H.T. Sanders (eds), The Politics of Urban Development, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, pp. 269–90. Therborn, G. (1977), ‘The rule of capital and the rise of democracy’, New Left Review, 103, 3–41. Trotsky, L. (1980), The History of the Russian Revolution, New York: Monad Press.

PART II NATIONALISM, IDENTITY AND THE STATE

8. Introduction: nationalism, identity and the state Natalie Koch

In the 1990s, constructivist perspectives gained increasing popularity in political geography. One of the core concepts that was subject to this new theoretical approach was the ‘nation’, with scholars embarking on an analytical project to explain and disentangle the concept from a wide range of complimentary and competing identity narratives, and to explain its curious hegemony in the contemporary political ordering of the world around territorial states. This research therefore was just as much about language as it was about material transformations guided by multiple and conflicting efforts to define the ‘nation’, crucially extending the seminal work of scholars like Benedict Anderson (1983) in Imagined Communities, Michael Billig (1995) in Banal Nationalism, and Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) The Invention of Tradition into the field of political geography. Themes such as nation building and how state power is legitimated through the cultural and symbolic production of the nation are now crucial to the discipline (Agnew 2013; Antonsich 2015; Koch and Paasi 2016). As important as these themes have been historically, political geographers have devoted even more attention to nationalism since the rise of populist strains of nationalist rhetoric beginning in the mid-2010s. This trend has led commentators and academics alike to scrutinize the contemporary ‘resurgence’ of nationalist sentiments across the world. Global attention to this issue has largely fixated on the transformation of nationalist identity narratives toward an exclusivist vision of citizenship and sovereignty in the United States under the administration of President Donald Trump and in Britain after the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union – both of which are ultimately rooted in state and non-state actors working together to mobilize the masses through populist rhetoric and, in so doing, creating new voting publics. Within the wider political milieu, nationalist scripts in places such as Turkey, India, Hungary and Poland are similarly exclusivist but less rooted in electoral mechanisms. Rather, these nationalisms have largely been state-led projects to redefine the ethnic, religious and ideological bases of authentic membership in a polity. Elsewhere, such as in Catalonia, Scotland, Kurdistan, Kashmir, Bougainville in Papua New Guinea and among the Sidawas in Ethiopia, sub-state nationalisms continue to challenge central state narratives of national identity and imagine new spaces and communities on the basis of popular sovereignty. Given such disparate expressions and understandings of the ‘nation’, the curious staying power of nationalism has long been a concern of geographers working to understand the new – and always evolving – geographies of the state. Reflecting and refracting such concerns, the chapters in this part consider questions such as: what common elements underlie the world’s extremely diverse nationalist movements, and what distinguish them? Do they truly represent a resurgence or are they better understood as a reconfiguration of nationalist identity narratives? Where do state establishments and populist challenges intersect in defining new forms of virulently exclusionary nationalism? Is nationalism an inherently reactionary sentiment that, by definition, works to exclude others no matter how inclusive its embrace may be? Or can nationalism be an emancipatory force and, if so, for whom, when and where? And by whose standards are nationalist narratives to be normatively assessed, both in wider popular debates 93

94  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state and among scholars? Contemporary political geography is so methodologically, theoretically and empirically diverse that no coherent set of answers to these questions is articulated across the chapters. Rather, each chapter presents a window onto some of the most promising new directions of this work on nationalism – pushing at the edges of debate and exploring the new spaces of geopolitics that need further attention from the next generation of scholars. In Chapter 9, Luca Muscarà situates the contemporary resurgence of nationalism in political discourse by focusing on the border/identity nexus of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States and Europe. Yet rather than positioning the fear-mongering swirling through the language used by populist demagogues as something fundamentally new, he revisits the work published by the French geographer Jean Gottmann in the 1950s. Gottmann’s work on territory and the psychology of ethno-nationalism, Muscarà shows, remains useful in explaining the ebb and flow of exclusivist and inclusivist identity narratives today. And despite the dramatically reconfigured media landscape, Gottmann’s early insights underscore the significance of media manipulations in conjuring and activating sovereigntist-populist demagoguery – past and present. Kate Coddington’s chapter on Indigenous nationalisms also links past and present to show how, as alternative ontological approaches to the nation, these nationalisms are not just critiques of historical injustices of settler colonial regimes, but are fundamental challenges to the ongoing violence of state-based identity projects. Indeed, Indigenous nationalisms are not exactly ‘new’ spaces of geopolitics, but sites of endurance: reflecting longstanding resistance to hegemonic understandings of the relationship between sovereignty, territory and nation imposed by colonial intervention in contemporary settler spaces. Chapter 11 by Christabel Devadoss and Karen Culcasi extends this work on settler colonialism even further by linking their critiques of white nationalist ideologies with postcolonial and Orientalist critiques. Doing so, they suggest, sheds light on how migrant, diasporic and transnational communities have been differentially marginalized in the United States. Incidences of hate speech targeting African Americans, Latinos, South Asian, Sikh, Muslim and Arab Americans have been on the rise and, despite these groups’ variable experiences of inclusion and exclusion in American nationalist scripts, they are uniformly targeted in white nationalist discourses rooted in settler colonial imaginaries and storylines. By uniting postcolonial and Orientalist approaches to identity politics, Devadoss and Culcasi show that the new spaces of geopolitics built around exclusion need new alliances built around inclusions. Caroline Nagel’s chapter similarly decentres mainstream understandings of the ‘nation’ common to liberal-democratic identity narratives, built as they are on myths of secularism. To do so, however, she shifts the lens away from the Euroamerican ‘core’ to the Middle East. Rather than treating religiosity as an ‘unexpected’, ‘disruptive’ phenomenon, as in ‘post-secular’ critiques of religious nationalisms, she shows how ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ are otherwise imagined and enacted in Lebanon. Examining this conceptual co-production through identity scripts and the built environment, Nagel argues, illustrates how religious or non-religious ways of being are performed by multiple publics and become woven into the changing geographies of state power. In Chapter 13, Benjamin Forest and Sarah Moser also take the built landscape as a starting point for understanding competing identity narratives, but zoom out to consider the more global conceptual and historical relationships among cities, states and national identities. State-driven urban planning and monumental expressions of nationalism have a long history, but their geopolitical significance is always in flux – belying the universal fiction of nationalisms and ‘concrete symbols of identity’ that lay claim to permanence.

Introduction: nationalism, identity and the state  95 While the ‘nation’ and its attendant storylines may at times seem to be a flight of fancy, the chapters in this part all show that the themes of nation building, identity and nationalisms have far-reaching effects for people, power relations and the changing geographies of the state. Nationalism always has real-world consequences, whether those play out in cyberspace or on our bodies. Nationalist scripts can manifest in grandiose new cities or in an epithet hurled at a neighbour – cutting across scales and across time in ways that often defy imagination and expectation. The astonishing plasticity of nationalist discourse is precisely what makes it useful to ‘ethnopolitical entrepreneurs’ (Brubaker 2004) and all range of politicians working in the name of the state. It is also what makes the political geography of nationalism so compelling, important and necessarily plural.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. (2013), ‘Nationalism’, in N. Johnson, R. Schein and J. Winders (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 130–45. Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Antonsich, M. (2015), ‘Nation and nationalism’, in J. Agnew, V. Mamadouh, A. Secor and J. Sharpe (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 297–310. Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Brubaker, R. (2004), Ethnicity without Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger (1983), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koch, N. and A. Paasi (2016), ‘Banal Nationalism 20 years on: Re-thinking, re-formulating and re-contextualizing the concept’, Political Geography, 54, 1–6.

9. The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism: on territory, psychology, and communication technologies Luca Muscarà

9.1 INTRODUCTION The re-emergence of exclusionary strands of nationalism, often with racist and xenophobic traits in countries such as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India, had already come to international attention by the early 2010s (e.g., Saraçoglu and Demirkol 2015), but the unexpected victories in 2016 of the Leave movement in the United Kingdom’s (UK) Brexit referendum, and Donald Trump in the United States (US) presidential elections in 2016, gave a new urgency to interpreting this apparent turn and its risks for established democracies and their institutions (Bonikowski 2017). Since then, an increasing number of European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria, have also registered an intermittent growth of right-wing nationalist parties, while in Italy, India, Brazil, and Argentina, right-wing populist candidates also succeeded in mobilizing growing parts of the electorate with nationalist rhetoric. Among advocates of inclusivist liberal democracies, this resurgence of nationalism has raised concerns about its implications in the context of a deterioration of democratic conditions at the global scale: for 12 consecutive years the number of states suffering from worsening conditions of democracy have outnumbered those that have registered gains (Freedom House 2019). Each state has its own historical trajectory and culture, however, so fully understanding the variety and complexity of these trends would require a specific study. For example, if in Hungary and Poland, ethno-nationalism seems to have had a stable presence since the end of the Cold War, Italians did not appear particularly nationalist when the 150th anniversary of the country’s unification occurred in 2011. Still, in 2013, the Lega Nord – a localist party that for three decades had its constituency in the northern regions, promoting at times a separatist agenda and with strong anti-south and anti-Rome propaganda – began to realign from localism to nationalism under the new leadership of Matteo Salvini. Its electoral results increased dramatically and by 2018, the Lega dropped its Nord adjective and presented itself as a national party. It succeeded in winning the vote of the right-wing electorate even in the south, after having oriented its propaganda decisively toward anti-immigration policies. Still, for all their differences, the recent mobilization of nationalist themes by sovereingtist-populist leaders has become a common feature. Further, they share a common communication strategy with several recurring characteristics: a specific focus on national identity conflated with sovereignty on the national territory; a reparative promise to re-establish the ‘lost’ greatness of the state and its people; and the deliberate demonization of various outsiders, opportunistically used as scapegoats for whatever domestic problems and distress their potential electorate may be expressing. This focus on identity politics and the demonization of 96

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism  97 the other are two sides of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ logic, which these leaders handily project upon territory, so that national borders acquire an enhanced significance both for their filtering and symbolic functions. The recent resurgence of exclusionary ethno-nationalism, as opposed to civic variants that place the accent on individual freedom rather than on ethnic nativism (Kohn 1945, 1965), appears especially striking in a post-Cold War era dominated by discourses centred on globalization and cosmopolitanism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seemed that the long ideological struggle of the defenders of liberties against the totalitarianisms begun with the Second World War had finally come to an end. Despite uncertainties about the future, the general path appeared to be inevitably a triumphal march of liberal democracy and free markets (Koch 2019). Supported by the rapid spread of the digital revolution and the internet, a ‘borderless world’ narrative was ascendant and expressed in claims that history, geography, and the nation-state had come to an end (e.g. Agnew and Muscarà 2012, p. 165). This triumphalism was contradicted by the re-emergence of ethnic nationalisms in the 1990s, as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed, shattering the distinctive supranational identities that had been built for decades (Hooson 1994). Yet this did not fundamentally challenge the overarching globalist narrative: in the meantime, the European Union (EU) expanded the number of its member states from 12 to 28, the Schengen Treaty introduced free circulation in the common space, and the single currency was to be adopted by 19 EU member countries. Globalist narratives continued to dominate in the following decade even when, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, much international attention was absorbed first by the US-led War on Terror and its related obsession with security. Islamophobic sentiments were fuelled and a greater number of states in Asia and Africa destabilized, triggering massive refugee flows that eventually would have a direct impact on many European countries, their polities and policies. US president George Bush’s War on Terror added $6 trillion to the domestic budget deficit (Crawford 2019), yet globalist narratives persisted beyond the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic recession. The resulting austerity policies worsened the conditions of the middle and lower classes in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, however. In the context of an already widening gap between the elites and the people (Tooze 2018), increasingly public opposition to migration flows met with latent, pre-existing nationalist feelings to shape the contemporary resurgence of ethno-nationalism.

9.2

ANTI-IMMIGRANT RHETORIC AND THE BORDER/ IDENTITY NEXUS

The peak of the refugee crisis occurred in 2015, as 3.5 million people fled the civil war in Syria, across the Turkish–Syrian border, and over 1 million continued their journey across Europe, largely through the Balkan states. In addition to concentrating migrants in squalid refugee camps, European governments immediately responded with border securitization, including the erection of over 700 km of barriers. Hungary alone built over 450 km of walls and ‘fences’ along the Croatian and Serbian borders, and an additional 200 km appeared on the border between Croatia and Slovenia. Six EU member states (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden) suspended the Schengen agreements, while Austria introduced barriers with Slovenia, Greece with North Macedonia. Latvia also built barriers with

98  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Russia, as the refugees’ routes then shifted north and, in the two following years, more barriers were introduced along Russian borders with Norway, Estonia, and Lithuania. The EU signed migration control agreements with Turkey in March 2016, which dramatically slowed transnational refugee flows. Nonetheless, the 2015 refugee crisis triggered a political crisis in many European countries. In the context of general ageing and growing social inequality, large segments of the population, whose living conditions had already been worsened by the prolonged recession and had been strained by the EU’s neoliberal and austerity policies, expressed increased resentment toward the governing elites. Notwithstanding the ‘clear incongruence between the pluralist rhetoric of the political left and its legislative acts on migrants’ national incorporation’ (Antonsich and Petrillo 2019, p. 706) in Italy and elsewhere, many felt that left-wing multicultural identity politics had created an unfair advantage for the immigrants as opposed to the national population, perceived as ‘forgotten’ by their governments. Refugee flows have subsided in Europe since 2015, but opportunistic right-wing leaders have used the refugee crisis and the related border–identity nexus (Makarychev 2018), deliberately fabricating and amplifying fears of invasion. Through various media platforms and social networks, they succeeded in mobilizing the existing resentment and developed a communication strategy that paid back in the coming political elections. Campaigning under the slogan ‘Prima gli Italiani’ (Italians first), Salvini’s Lega gained 17.35 per cent of the votes in 2018. Its right-wing coalition (including Forza Italia and Fratelli d’Italia) reached a total of 37.49 per cent. The Lega then formed a hybrid government with the Five Star Movement, another populist party that had won an impressive 32.6 per cent of the votes. Both populist parties had a significant reach on Facebook, which served as an important tool for reaching voters and sharing their right-wing messages. This continued to polarize the public, in view of the EU elections, also through targeted political actions: during his 13-month tenure as minister of interior, Salvini, in patent violation of international law, dictated a policy that closed Italy’s maritime borders, which illegally prevented ships carrying rescued refugees to dock in any Italian harbour. This strategy paid back as the Lega then raised its EU electoral results to 34 per cent. Soon after, however, Salvini miscalculated the domestic impact of his European victory and allowed the fledgling Five Star Movement to reverse his alliance and form a new government with centre-left parties. In Great Britain, debates about leaving the EU were also expressed through the border/ identity nexus. While a Eurosceptic presence long pre-dated the 2016 referendum, a number of factors came together to allow a victory of the Brexiteers, who achieved 51.9 per cent of the votes against 48.1 per cent of the Remainers. The Leave camp largely consisted of over-65 and middle-aged citizens, who harboured a resentment against the worsening of their social and economic status due to longstanding neoliberal policies, which had reduced social welfare spending and which they ascribed to the cosmopolitan elitism of both the British and EU leaders. The highly polarized campaign conducted by the pro-Brexit demagogue leaders was successful because of their ability to establish a resonance among their supporters’ sense of marginalization and their claims that this was the result of the UK’s loss of sovereignty to the EU (Agnew and Shin 2019, p. 56). As thousands of refugees were encamped in the Calais ‘Jungle’, the opportunistic use of the 2015 refugee crisis became critical in the victory of Brexit, used especially by Nigel Farage (leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)) as evidence for assertions that the EU was responsible for the country’s loss of control over immigration (Agnew and Shin 2019). Paradoxically overlooking Brexit’s implications

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism  99 for the British–Irish border, Brexiteers nonetheless mobilized popular support through an extreme oversimplification of Leave’s implications for the country’s complex political geography – past and present. In the US, Donald Trump’s nationalist-populist programme was also characterized by overly simplistic slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Buy American, Hire American’. His anti-globalist worldview was reflected in calls for greater economic protectionism and especially anti-immigration policy, two main themes of his 2016 presidential campaign. This remained central during his administration, as he quickly issued a controversial travel ban on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries. He also demonized Mexicans rhetorically and practically, as his new homeland security policies targeted undocumented immigrants through workplace raids and the forced separation of thousands of minors from their families. Meanwhile, Trump’s project to build ‘a beautiful wall’ along the over 3,000 miles of the US–Mexico border has been a persistent mantra throughout his reality show-style tenure and reappeared in his 2020 re-election campaign. For all their differences, the resurgence of ethno-nationalism in Italy, the UK, and the US points to a number of similarities and shared features: from a direct communication style between the people and their populist leader, based on emotional rather than rational arguments as well as fake or falsified news, to the leaders’ use of right-wing populist discourse to propose nationalist ‘solutions’ to an electorate distressed, socially and economically, by too many changes. Exploiting the so-called ‘backlash against globalization’, these ethno-nationalists also emphasize borders and identities (‘us’ and ‘them’), with a specific accent placed on anti-immigrant rhetoric and articulating an exclusionary vision of the national territory. These commonalities all pivot around the political manipulation of the psychological nexus connecting national identity to borders, territory, and sovereignty. These have been key themes in political geography research for decades (e.g. Amilhat Szary and Dell’Agnese 2015). Long before ‘identity’ became a fashionable scholarly subject, Jean Gottmann was perhaps the first who emphasized the connection between territory and the psychology of its inhabitants, and still offers essential insights for today’s changing geographies of the state.

9.3

TERRITORY, A PSYCHOSOMATIC DEVICE

Jean Gottmann was a French urban and political geographer, who developed a powerful heuristic that is still useful for analysing the border/identity nexus at the base of contemporary ethno-nationalist discourses. In his earlier studies, Gottmann (1952, 1955) introduced two intertwined factors to explain the political partitioning of geographic space: circulation and iconography. Circulation refers to the movement of people, information, money, trade, ideas, armies, etc., and underlined how its action naturally produces change. Long considered an essential factor to explain the distribution of settlements and the organization of space in the historic canon of political geography, circulation alone was not sufficient to explain the political partitioning of space to Gottmann, who thus introduced a second factor. Iconography refers to those sets of symbols that the members of a given community recognize as commonly shared. They include various combinations of cultural elements (historical, social, political, religious, etc.) shared by a given community. These sets of symbols would naturally be different for any group, although to Gottmann what matters is not so much the content of a given iconography, but the action it exerts on territory, and specifically on circulation, through its

100  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state borders. For example, when circulation (which naturally produces change) increases to the point of threatening the status of a community, there may be a defensive reaction (Gottmann 1955, pp. 199–204). Individuals would appeal to the group they feel they belong, identified through its sharing of the same iconography, for security and protection reasons. Such self-defensive reactions may also imply an intolerance toward different iconographies, even including the extreme scenario of dictating the closure of borders and the expulsions of all their bearers (an occurrence which Gottmann, as a Jew, had personally experienced twice in the first third of his life). He thus explained the political partitioning of geographic space as the product of the interplay between the two factors. Later, considering the notion of territorial sovereignty of the modern state, Gottmann (1973) quoted Judge Alvarez of the International Court of Justice, for whom ‘sovereignty has its foundation in national sentiment and in the psychology of peoples’, and who argued that ‘the sovereignty of the States has now become an institution, an international social function of a psychological character’ (quoted in Gottmann 1973, pp. 6–7, 15). Thus, as a physical base of national sovereignty, Gottmann defined territory as a ‘psychosomatic’ phenomenon, reflecting the changing psychology of a polity. By connecting national identity to sovereign territory, the latter becomes the object of a psychological projection by a nation, as if it was its extended ‘body’. Viewed thus, the main functions Gottmann attributed to territory – to provide security and opportunities to the polity – have a psychological character. When a community perceives a need for security to prevail, the impulse would be to close it off by acting on its borders. Once security is attained, the polity would look at territory as a springboard for opportunities, and would thus want to open its borders to improve circulation (Muscarà 2005). As the psychology of a polity oscillates throughout history, a given territory will thus see its polity alternatively opening and closing its borders. Applying Gottmann’s heuristic to the exclusionary nationalism of Salvini, Trump, and the Brexiteers, we can identify the notion of circulation in today’s globalization, which has directly challenged nationalistically defined visions of stability and given the perception that traditional ways of life are being uprooted. In responding to these processes, nationalist demagogues have helped to trigger the self-defensive reaction identified by Gottmann and, in so doing, have transformed the state’s territory into the most powerful symbol of shared identity, psychologically reassuring the community under stress through its iconic symbolism and its filtering function. These leaders have clearly found that such reassurance is best attained through the action of closing the border and the expulsion of the ‘dangerous’ or ‘threatening’ other (such as Mexicans, immigrants, or the EU), which becomes a convenient scapegoat for the community’s internal problems. Exploiting this psychology to win the vote, nationalist leaders are seizing the elections to hijack Western democracies. Moreover, since the contents of an iconography vary with each community, this not only works at the national scale, but also for others, such as religious groups, or local scale communities. In India, for example, such targeting of religious minorities has long been recognized as narcissistically reassuring the Hindu majority from its fears of becoming itself a minority (Appadurai 2006). Another example can be seen in the religious rule established in Iran with the Khomeinist revolution in 1979, which could be interpreted as a self-defence reaction to the accelerated modernization of Persian society during Rehza Pahlevi’s tenure after the US-backed 1952 coup. And, at the local scale, the same territorially divisive pattern can also be retraced in a recent referendum for the separation of the city of Venice, Italy in two distinct

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism  101 municipalities, based on the territorial distinction between the dwellers of the islands of the Venice lagoon opposed to those of the mainland (Muscarà 2019).

9.4

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ETHNO-NATIONALISM

Gottmann, who had experienced twice this pattern of having to flee as a Jewish refugee, did not feel the need to deepen his reference to human psychology further. In line with his mentor Albert Demangeon, who thought that geography should only consider groups rather than individuals, Gottmann avoided elaborating on the relation between the individual and the group in his political geography enhanced by his intuitions in social psychology. This controversial link between individual and collective psychology was explored, however, in a 1987 report on the psychology of ethno-nationalism by the Committee of International Relations of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) (Leoussi 2001). In an effort to understand human divisiveness, the GAP observed the sense of psychological continuity rooted in a child’s long-forgotten biological union with and dependence on mother … The continuity draws upon later developmental stages of gradual differentiation from mother. During these stages there is a gradual growth of a facultative capacity to affiliate and dissociate … The process of individuation is constantly subject to fluctuation … and forms a prototype for an adult life affiliation/separation function in interpersonal and intergroup relations. (GAP 1987, p. 5)

This specifically explains the ‘us’/‘them’ divisive psychology at play in ethno-nationalism, since the individual sees a reassuring continuity with its familiar group, and a discontinuity with those with whom he is less acquainted, and his identification with the familiar group can be extended to the scale of a nation. In fact, the identification of an individual with a group of reference formed in the infancy remains in the adult life as a ‘tendency to feel comfortable with the familiar person and uncomfortable with the stranger; this facilitates identification with the familiar and hostility to the outsider’ (GAP 1987, p. 7). The root causes of crisis are in fact introjected in the subconscious of the individual and sharing them with the group of reference ‘encourages the sharing of the same psychology of the continuity of the self and other’ (ibid., p. 8). Here is perhaps the psychological key that explains how, under demanding circumstances, an adult may not only search for support and security in the more familiar national community, but may also become hostile to those perceived as foreigners. Of course these ‘others’ could be identified in many different groups of people, according to the circumstances. In the case of Trump’s rhetoric, these individuals may be Mexicans or Muslims or, in the case of Brexit and Salvini, immigrants and EU policy makers. The ‘denial of in-group hostility and its externalization and projection onto the outsider play into the hands of ethno-nationalism’s divisiveness’ (ibid., p. 7). This dynamic also sheds light on Gottmann’s argument about the role of iconography for a community under stress, and why it is that bearers of different iconographies are so readily demonized or scapegoated, even when cohabiting the same territory, especially since globalization has increased the chance of sharing the same place with a multiplicity of cultures and ethnicities. Social science literature on populism and nationalism has emphasized the crucial role of leaders, or ‘ethnopolitical entrepreneurs’ (Brubaker’s 2004, p. 10), and psychiatrists also underline their importance in manipulating a group’s iconography. ‘The ability of such

102  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state a leader to manipulate and even create new sets of psychological images … assures a continuing dynamic between leader and nation that has the ability to change both’ (Mack 1983, p. 48). From this perspective, the psychological forces shaping ethnic and national identity interact with language, religion, and cultural symbols, which are ‘powerful tools for establishing boundaries, that is, accomplishing the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of each group’ (Mack 1983, p. 49). Gottmann’s iconography shares a great deal with Mack’s discussion of the tools which these demagogues use to ‘structure and simplify collective human realities … to pursue the “interests” or purposes of a particular national group’ (Mack 1983, p. 49). This research also emphasizes how fear and xenophobia can be deliberately fabricated by divisive leaders ‘who play on their emotions through the creation of terror laden spectres of de-humanized enemies’ (Mack 1983, p. 52). Even a specific geographical type is introduced under the term of psychogeography, or the ‘use of natural and man-made social space as symbols of the self and others’ (Mack 1983, p. 50). Physical and human geography can become the ‘markers of group boundaries by which group members experience themselves and others. These help crystalize their sense of “who-ness” in terms of “where-ness”’ (Mack 1983, pp. 50–51). When confronted with the issue of ethno-nationalism, the American psychiatrists thus not only confirm Gottmann’s understanding of territory as a psychosomatic device, but also neatly encapsulate the characteristics of right-wing populist nationalism found in the US and Europe today by Agnew and Shin (2019), and also explain why Brexiteers would seem to be so impermeable to any rational argument (e.g., Agnew 2020).

9.5

NATIONALISM AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

If technology is notoriously neutral, communication technology has always been at the root of nationalism and it continues to empower it today, albeit in ever more complex ways. Benedict Anderson (1983) accords historical importance to the diffusion of the printing press for the birth of European nationalities, underlining how the ‘Guttenberg revolution’ not only contributed to transforming and homogenizing vernaculars into the future national languages, but also allowed for Reformist books to spread across Europe. This ultimately contributed to the awakening of civic nationalism in seventeenth-century England, as seen with the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions, when the English trading class claimed their independence not from a foreign rule, but as personal liberty from the authority of government or the Church (Kohn 1965). Almost three centuries later, the new communication technologies of the radio and cinema were used for their nationalist propaganda by dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini. After the Second World War, the Cold War’s American psychiatrists underlined how ‘the communications media have become powerful tools with which to influence people, including inflaming ethno-nationalist differentiation or, we may hope, bringing groups together’ (GAP 1987, p. 12). Although they referred to mass media, this could easily apply to the internet and social media today, which in fact played a key role in the recent ethno-nationalist/populist turn. Moreover, the report continues to sound the alarm bell about the ‘amplifying effect technology has on the irrational in man’, as well as ‘magical thinking’ among even citizens who under less stressful circumstances could be considered rational. More recently, social networks were used to promote a progressive rhetoric in the US presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and were noted as being central to the anti-authoritarian Arab Spring protest movements in 2011 (Tufekci 2018). Yet by 2016, they

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism  103 had become essential tools in the campaign strategies of ethno-nationalists and authoritarians themselves. In fact, an impressive arsenal of digital technology, behavioural psychology, and big data was combined and deployed to an unprecedented degree, both in the Brexit and Trump campaigns, as well as by Salvini in Italy and elsewhere. A set of sophisticated digital profiling tools, initially developed for micro-target marketing campaigns, were taken up and employed for electoral purposes, as exposed by extensive investigative reporting, including in the documentary The Great Hack (2019). This is exemplified in the case of Cambridge Analytica (CA), a British political consulting firm that defined itself as the ‘world leader in data-driven communication and behaviour change’, which successfully deployed such tools in the pro-Brexit and pro-Trump campaigns (Cadwalladr 2017). The firm was a subsidiary of the SCL group, a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company which claimed to have participated in over 25 international and political campaigns since 1994, conducting PsyOps disinformation campaigns for the military, and consulting with ministries of defence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries. SCL used ‘data online to identify people which would be likely targets of different extremist groups’ (Wylie 2019, p. 56). When Steve Bannon, the former executive director of Breitbart News (the alt-right nationalist online platform promoting racism and xenophobia), became the vice-president of CA, he reversed the previous SCL strategy: ‘rather than trying to mitigate an extremist insurgency in certain parts of the world, he wanted to essentially catalyse one in the United States’ (Wylie 2019, p. 49). For this purpose, he convinced one of the main funders of Breitbart News, the conservative-nationalist hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer, to invest in CA. Mercer then donated firm services to the pro-Brexit campaign organization of UKIP, Leave.eu. The methodology CA repeatedly used to change the behaviour of voters, in strategically chosen electoral districts across Great Britain and in the US, was based on gathering data about individual electors through social media platforms, as well as from other sources. This was then combined to segment the audience and drew on the expertise of behavioural psychologists to analyse individuals’ personalities and motivations and to build psychographic profiles of voters. Thus CA could target voters individually and flood their social media feeds with fake news, videos, and other advertisements expressly designed to change their voting behaviour. When Bannon became the director of Trump’s presidential campaign in August 2016, he brought CA’s arsenal to the effort. The company first identified a type of weak voter personality called the ‘persuadables’ in ‘swing states’ such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc. It did so on the basis of data voluntarily provided by users of a Facebook app which then pulled data from their Facebook friends as well. In this way CA obtained the individual profiles of about 30 million US voters without their knowledge. For each, it had up to 5,000 data points to analyse their personality and behaviour, which they then used to direct targeted content to provoke feelings of fear and anxiety in order to polarize the person’s views and achieve the desired behavioural change at the polls. Especially useful were the Facebook algorithms that select what appears on the individual profile feeds, designed to reinforce exchanges between Facebook friends with similar preferences and minimize those with diverging tastes, thus creating so-called ‘echo-chambers’ that isolate each individual in their own (fake) information bubble. The ability of these technologies to actually obtain the claimed results remains unclear, as CA’s role in the Brexit victory and Trump’s election is currently under investigation. The

104  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Facebook data breach has been confirmed, however, and the tech giant has been forced to pay millions of dollars in fines. Before CA was liquidated in 2018 as a result of the scandal, it was discovered that it had contributed its arsenal to influence the electoral results in a number of other countries in favour of right-wing nationalist parties. And Bannon, even after leaving CA, has actively supported nationalist-populist conservative movements and leaders to spread his ethno-nationalist agenda internationally, including Erdogan in Turkey, Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, Salvini’s Lega, Alternative for Germany, the Polish Law and Justice, the Freedom Party of Austria, and the Brazilian 2018 Bolsonaro presidential campaign. This new arsenal of digital psycho-technologies still remains unregulated, and increasing segments of the electorate in Western democracies can be known with increasing precision through the analysis of the massive streams of data that individuals freely and unknowingly leave behind in their online and offline interactions. After appropriate analysis and profiling, the individual profiles of the electorate reconstructed from the data can be micro-targeted directly aiming at the individual echo chambers with fake news, videos, and ads expressly fabricated to convey fear and anxiety in order to deliberately reinforce an ever more polarized vision of the world, based on ‘us’ and ‘them’, which is easily projected on the national territory and its outside. Thus, in each country, ‘persuadable’ voters can increasingly be led to believe in the leaders who promise such psychological reparation and restoration of their lost status and dignity under the nationalist flag.

9.6

THE FUTURE

How does the use of anti-immigrant and border wall rhetoric define the contemporary resurgence of ethno-nationalism through its representation of territory? As Habermas (1998, p. 117) wrote: ‘today we live in pluralistic societies that are moving further away from the model of a nation-state based on a culturally homogeneous population’. As long as the economic and political conditions of the society remain relatively stable, the cultural implications of this pluralism, the very product of circulation/globalization may be tolerated and, to a degree, accepted. Rather than pursuing the common good, governments today have largely become the executors of neoliberal policies which demonstrably benefit the global ‘elites’ at the expense of the people. As the welfare state is eroded, and everyday living conditions worsen, it becomes patent that ‘liberal’ democracies are not maintaining the very promise of civic freedoms (e.g., Greece 2008–15). Since the national majority are taught to think of themselves as a culturally ethnically homogenous group and expect the state to acknowledge their central place in it, when their relative stability is eroded, cultural pluralism becomes a problem. Populist demagogues give shape to these feelings in an apparently coherent ethno-nationalist rhetoric and propaganda, promising to cure the people of its unsettlement. They promise to restore its lost grandeur, and to do so they scapegoat the non-homogeneous minority of choice, representing it as if it had robbed the community of its specific prerogatives and stability, in order to win their vote. Through the essentialist tropes of such an exclusivist vision of the border/identity nexus, ‘foreign’ others are not only demonized, but also actively expelled or prevented from entering the national territory – all to restore the imaginary homogenous status of the territory and

The great swindle of nationalist sovereigntism  105 culture. The territory thus must be protected with a ‘beautiful wall’. Donald Trump’s obsession with building a wall on the US southern border may seem quixotic, but it is important to contextualize the idea of a ‘wall’ as a political trope. In the subconscious of the Second World War and Cold War generations in the West, it may reassuringly evoke unconscious images of the Berlin Wall and of a bipolar geopolitical order, in which friends and enemies were clearly delineated and the unsettling complexity of today’s political geography was out of sight. Exactly because of its iconic symbolism, the wall thus constitutes a subtle but extremely powerful metaphor to manipulate the distressed psychology of increasing segments of a national society, especially among the impoverished and the ageing. It symbolizes and materializes the promise of an imaginary national territory distinct and isolated from the rest of the world and its complexity, as if a ‘stand-alone’ territorial sovereignty could ever exist in these times (Agnew 2020). Despite this hypocrisy, such a promise works because it engages people’s ‘magical thinking’ of an easily reached stability, where the wall would protect the cultural homogeneity of its inhabitants. The implication is that as much as a national territory symbolizes the homogenous majority of the state nation, once ‘purified’ of the non-homogenous culprits, they will be ‘purified’ too. This complexity is also masked through the new digital tools and processes, as their echo-chamber effect and lack of transparency combine with fake news to hide different agendas of those controlling data flows and access. In the case of Trump, for example, his relentless attacks on the administrative machine of the state, the intelligence agencies, and judicial autonomy have been obscured by the general noise of his social media assaults on his variously defined enemies and his opportunistic manipulation of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Aimed at nothing more than retaining the support of his base that will allow him and his allies to pursue their financial and political interests (Norris and Inglehart 2019), he has been charged with promoting a kind of ‘pluto-populism’ (plutocracy + populism), ‘favouring the business elite, of which he is a member, while manipulating identity issues relating to race and immigration to garner greater popular support’ (Agnew and Shin 2019, p. 26). In view of these rapid changes, we need to update our understanding of the state – and the state itself. Psycho-technologies clearly need regulation, as they have been shown to induce behavioural change in the electorate. Meanwhile, if democratic institutions come to be conquered by particularist interests in the name of ethno-nationalism with authoritarian tendencies, liberal states are most fundamentally jeopardized from within – not without, as the populist demagogues have claimed. As Habermas (1998, p. 120) put it, ‘the real nation of citizens must maintain its priority over the imagined ethnic-cultural nation’, or the result will be an ever greater loss of sovereignty, paradoxically in the name of restoring it, and an increasing fragmentation of the global as well as of the inner national space, while people cling to the fiction that an outer wall will allow them protection ultimately from the acceleration of change.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. (2020), ‘Taking back control? The myth of territorial sovereignty and the Brexit fiasco’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 8 (2), 259–72. Agnew, J. and L. Muscarà (2012), Making Political Geography, Second Ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Agnew, J. and M. Shin (2019), Mapping Populism, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

106  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Amilhat Szary, A.-L. and E. Dell’Agnese (2015), ‘Borderscapes: From border landscapes to border aesthetics’, Geopolitics, 20 (1), 4–13. Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Antonsich, M. and E. Petrillo (2019), ‘Ethno-cultural diversity and the limits of the inclusive nation’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 26 (6), 706–24. Appadurai, A. (2006), Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bonikowski, B. (2017), ‘Ethno-nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment’, British Journal of Sociology, 68 (S1), 181–213. Brubaker, R. (2004), Ethnicity without Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cadwalladr, C. (2017), ‘The great British Brexit robbery: How our democracy was hijacked’, The Guardian, 7 May. Crawford, N.C. (2019), ‘United States budgetary costs and obligations of post-9/11 wars through FY2020: $6.4 trillion’, 20 Years of War: A Costs of Wars Research Series, Cambridge, MA: Pardee Center and Watson Institute,  https://​watson​.brown​.edu/​costsofwar/​files/​cow/​imce/​papers/​2019/​US​ %20Budgetary​%20Costs​%20of​%20Wars​%20November​%202019​.pdf, accessed 20 June 2020. Freedom House (2019), Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis. https://​freedomhouse​.org/​ report/​freedom​-world/​2018/​democracy​-crisis, accessed 28 May 2020. GAP (1987), Us and Them: The Psychology of Ethnonationalism. Report n°123, New York: Brunner/ Mazel Publishers. Gottmann, J. (1952), La Politique des États et Leur Géographie, Paris: Armand Colin. Gottmann, J. (1955), Eléments de Géographie Politique, Paris: Les Cours de Droit. Gottmann, J. (1973), The Significance of Territory, Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Habermas, J. (1998), The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hooson, D. (ed.) (1994), Geography and National Identity, Oxford: Blackwell. Koch, N. (2019), ‘Post-triumphalist geopolitics: Liberal selves, authoritarian Others’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18 (4): 909–24. Kohn, H. (1945), The Idea of Nationalism, New York: Macmillan. Kohn, H. (1965), Nationalism, Its Meaning and History, Malabar: Robert Krieger. Leoussi, A.S. (ed.) (2001), Encyclopedia of Nationalism, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Mack, J.E. (1983), ‘Nationalism and the self’, Psychohistory Review, 11 (2–3), 47–69. Makarychev, A. (2018), ‘Bordering and identity-making in Europe after the 2015 refugee crisis’, Geopolitics, 23 (4), 747–53. Muscarà, L. (2005), La strada di Gottmann, Rome: NextaBooks. Muscarà, L. (2019), ‘Brexit a Venezia’, Limes, Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica, 28 November, www​ .limesonline​.com/​referendum​-venezia​-mestre​-brexit/​115451, accessed 28 May 2020. Norris P. and R. Inglehart (2019), Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saraçoglu, C. and Ö. Demirkol (2015), ‘Nationalism and foreign policy discourse in Turkey under the AKP rule: Geography, history and national identity’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42 (3), 301–19. Tooze, A. (2018), Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, New York: Viking. Tufekci, Z. (2018), ‘How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump’, MIT Technology Review, 14 August. Wylie, C. (2019), Mindf*ck. Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, London: Profile Books.

10. Indigenous nationalisms as profound challenges to settler colonial regimes Kate Coddington

10.1 INTRODUCTION The arrival of asylum seekers by boat in Australia has become a highly politicized issue. One defining moment occurred after the rescue of over 400 asylum seekers in 2001. Even as the asylum seekers waited for permission to land, Australian prime minister John Howard rushed the Border Protection Bill through parliament, curtailing access to asylum. Successive governments ratcheted down protection for asylum seekers, indefinitely detaining them in remote or offshore centres, staging militarized interdiction efforts, and publicly advertising that ‘you will not make Australia home’ (Watkins 2017). In 2013, the Coalition government created a new military deterrence programme, ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, to deter the few thousand asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia. As the name suggests, many scholars argue that the militarized response to the boat arrivals is a crisis of sovereignty, rather than border protection. Asylum seekers are demonized precisely because Australia’s claims to sovereignty rest on such precarious foundations, and the arrival of asylum seekers fleeing places such as Iraq, Iran, and Sri Lanka unsettle the fiction of settler colonial sovereign control (Pugliese 2015). A vocal minority of Australians protest the treatment of asylum seekers, but many approve of the government’s tactics. Prime Minister Howard’s 2001 declaration that ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ continues to resonate for Australians (Howard 2018). Aboriginal Australians have made several well-publicized interventions in the asylum debate. For instance, in 2009, Australia pressured Indonesia to detain 255 asylum seekers aboard a fishing boat in Merak, West Java. As debate over the fate of the Merak boat continued, Aboriginal activists issued Original Nation Passports for the asylum seekers aboard the boat. As Robbie Thorpe, Aboriginal activist, explained, ‘we want to make it clear that the Aboriginal people, the true sovereigns of this land, are offering them a passport to enter into our territorial waters, and our land … we’re the colonised refugees’ (quoted in Cox 2015, p. 139). For these activists, issuing passports not only provided a humane and just response to the escalating crisis, but also reframed the debate over sovereign borders in terms of settler colonial domination. Thorpe continued, ‘Indigenous people never ceded sovereignty over Australia. The Australian government has no legitimate right to grant or refuse entry to this country’ (quoted in Levnad 2016, p. 8). There has been no unitary Aboriginal response to asylum seeker arrivals, yet the passports issued to the Merak boat were only one of several instances where Aboriginal activists reframed the terms of the Australian response to asylum seekers (Pugliese 2015). In 2012 and 2014, activists carried out additional Aboriginal passport ceremonies in the Sydney neighbourhood of Redfern. At the ceremonies, Uncle Ray Jackson, the president of the Indigenous Social Justice Association, acknowledged the presence of dead or detained asylum seekers and refugees and pronounced the issuing of passports as an Aboriginal Act of State (Pugliese 107

108  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state 2015). Prior to the ceremonies in a 2011 panel, Jackson asserted that welcoming the refugees was both a challenge to the Australian government and a means of reinforcing connections amongst Aboriginal sovereignty, territory, and national identity: I object very strongly to the governments of this country saying that refugees and asylum seekers are not welcome … I have been approached by Palestinians, Iranians, by others, could I arrange a welcome to country? … They came to the real owners of this land. They came to us, the Aboriginal people. So I say welcome, WELCOME to the refugees. And I’m damned sure that none of these governments speak in my name. (Birch et al. 2011)

Jackson’s statement highlights how practices of settler dispossession have been at the heart of Australian immigration practices since the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 curtailed non-European immigration to the country (Giannacopoulos 2015). Public gestures of welcome counter mainstream Australian discourse that positions ‘so-called problem populations’ as threats to national security (Haebich 2015, p. 28). They instead provide ‘contingent spaces for belonging … for people who are barred from both political and imagined national community’ (Cox 2015, p. 141). These alliances are more than just rejoinders to Australia’s unjust policies and solidary-building practices, however; they are also articulations of Indigenous nationalism, which highlight the endurance of the Indigenous nation within settler colonial projects of dispossession, disenfranchisement, and elimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of Indigenous nationalisms existing in relation to ongoing practices of settler colonialism. As a non-Indigenous settler born in the territory of the Kalapuya in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and living currently on land sacred to the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation along the Hudson River, I write this chapter to learn from Indigenous and anti-colonial scholars. My work focuses on migration and postcolonial policy-making in the Asia-Pacific, and I am deeply invested in thinking differently about the state and the nation, as well as common Western assumptions about its territorial integrity and sovereign authority. Yet I cannot claim authoritative knowledge about particular, situated Indigenous understandings of the nation. My interest in focusing on settler colonialism is because of the logic of elimination (Wolfe 2006) that underpins this particular approach towards colonialism. Settler colonialism is not distinctive because of the spaces and times of domination but because of the underlying logics that support colonial occupation: settlers come to stay, and in so doing they promote not the domination of colonized people, but their elimination altogether. The ongoing endurance of nationalisms in spaces where the dominant logic is one of elimination, rather than governance, points to nationalisms that have exceptional conceptual staying power and have fundamentally grappled with the rationale for going on. While the logics of other Indigenous nationalisms, and other anti-colonial nationalisms are beyond the scope of this chapter, the complex articulations of nationalisms in different global contexts, as this volume indicates, suggest a range of rich and diverse understandings of how people relate to each other, nation-state formation, and the global order. Indigenous nationalisms within settler contexts are structures that contend with a particularly challenging logic of opposition and elimination. They provide a particular vantage point into the challenges of maintaining difference. Indigenous nationalisms in settler spaces fundamentally challenge much of what scholars commonly understand to constitute nationalism, nationalist activism, and the nation. Yet rather than being ‘new’ spaces of geopolitics, they are ongoing spaces of endurance, contestation, and fundamentally alternative ontological approaches to the nation. These alternative

Indigenous nationalisms and settler colonial regimes  109 approaches may point to forms of ‘mutual flourishing’ by understanding the grounds of Indigenous and non-Indigenous belonging, but turning to Indigenous theoretical framings does not necessarily promise affirmation of difference or celebratory forms of recognition (Kowal 2015, p. 177). Nationalism and the ‘difference’ of indigeneity must be appropriately situated within the colonial relationship. Contesting the fictions of the settler nation as conflated with sovereignty and territory can make visible ongoing Indigenous nationalism, but the endurance of Indigenous nations regardless of their visibility to settler audiences suggests the more profound challenge that Indigenous nationalism poses to settler sovereign claims. Indigenous nationalisms that are – exceeding or bypassing the settler state itself—are claims to a different kind of understanding of the relationship of sovereignty, territory, and nation.

10.2

RETHINKING TIES BETWEEN SOVEREIGNTY, TERRITORY, AND NATIONALISM

One of the challenges of beginning with nationalism as an analytical framework, particularly within a settler colonial context like Australia, is that uncritical conflations with sovereignty and territory can reinscribe the settler nation as the taken-for-granted spatial form of modernity (Chernilo 2011). Historicizing the settler nation instead shows how it is only one of many articulations of sovereign belonging that could exist at any given time (Sutherland 2016). This is especially challenging in the Australian context, where the ongoing historical amnesia perpetuated by fictions of terra nullius reinforce a vision of empty lands, and the island geography unproblematically transposes sovereignty on top of presumed empty territory. Methodological nationalism thus perpetuates the normalization of settler colonial knowledge production and the taken-for-granted nature of the settler nation-state (Tomiak 2016). Prioritizing the national scale also obscures and erases Indigenous territorial ontologies and understandings of political collectivity, sovereignty, or national identity. Here again, methodological nationalism reinforces the easy conceptual slippage between nation and territory, which Shadian (2018) argues is a core assumption underlying understandings of nationalism developed within international relations. Indigenous nationalist movements such as the pan-Arctic Indigenous presence within the Arctic Council, Shadian (2018) asserts, are incomprehensible within international relations theory that assumes territorial integrity as a precursor to political sovereignty. Without an overarching spatial container (Agnew 1994), social scientists continue to struggle to characterize political movements as nationalism (Closs Stephens and Squire 2012). Recent research in geography has introduced theories of ‘atmospheres’ as a method for understanding nationalism that exceeds the bounds of the ‘territorial trap’. For Merriman and Jones (2017), nationalism is built through the circulation of particular affective forces that constitute relations and generate particular affective atmospheres. Conceptualizing nationalism as affective atmospheres can explain how, despite the everyday ‘flagging’ of nationalist identities through rhetoric and habits (Billig 1995), different bodies apprehend and encounter such banal cues differently (Militz and Schurr 2016). Nationalist atmospheres may take hold of particular bodies at particular times partially, incompletely, and differently. Yet conceptualizing nationalism as atmosphere does not always align well with the often profoundly embodied connections between Indigenous identity and space. For instance, Torres Strait Islander and

110  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Meriam Elder George Kaddy understands indigeneity as embodied and part of territory: ‘I am part of the sea and the sea is part of me when I am on it’ (quoted in McNiven 2004, p. 329). Such rootedness and specificity of identity and place corresponds uneasily with the circulation of affective forces that generate nationalist atmospheres. Postcolonial approaches to nationalism would seem to be a better fit with a focus on the contestations over national identity that emerge after decolonization and an engagement with Indigenous nationalist movements as distinctive forms of national belonging. Yet as Na’puti and Rohrer (2017) argue, postcolonial theorists tend to focus on the specificities of places that have experienced decolonial activist movements within bounded nation-state territories, reinforcing the same methodological nationalism described above. Furthermore, the conceptual emphasis within postcolonial studies on hybridity and intersectionality often situates Indigenous nationalist movements within broader conversations on ethnicity, race, and cultural identity rather than sovereignty or political dispossession (Soldatic 2015). An emphasis on culture and identity within Indigenous studies promotes assumptions that as Simpson (2014, p. 35) argues, for instance, frame the Iroquois as either ‘improperly Iroquois or impossibly nationalist’. Finally, neither of these frameworks adequately addresses the specificities of settler colonial societies, where ongoing practices of colonization may hinder transnational Indigenous alliances (Bonds and Inwood 2016; Na’puti and Rohrer 2017; Soldatic 2015).

10.3

RECOGNIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SETTLER COLONIAL CONTEXT

Conceptual frameworks that blur sovereignty, territory, and the nation not only perpetuate settler methodological nationalism that frames indigeneity as ‘impossibly’ nationalist, but also obscure the fundamental colonial frameworks that structure Western conceptions of sovereignty and nationalism. Some theorists argue that colonialism was the testing ground for contemporary understandings of sovereignty. As Stoler (2016, p. 177) argues, ‘sovereignty was a concept created and improvised out of the colonial encounter’. Nationalism, tied so tightly to sovereignty and territory, may too be best understood as co-constituted in the colonial encounter. The fusion of nationalism, sovereignty, and territory as taken-for-granted conceptions of international law continue to perpetuate colonial violence. For instance, in the decision overturning foundational settler legal principles of terra nullius in the Mabo v Queensland Australian High Court Case in 1992, legally recognizing native title to land for the first time, Justice Gerard Brennan described settler occupation of Australia as an ‘act of state’ that could not be challenged by the courts of that state. Framed as acts of state, the practices of settler occupation become exempted from legal frameworks: settler sovereignty begins with colonization (Giannacopoulos 2015). The Canadian Indian Act (1876) that acknowledges and legislates Indigenous identity also frames settler sovereignty as colonization. Understandings of nationalism therefore become codified based on Indigenous domination. In settler colonial contexts in particular, the link between sovereignty and territory is made through property rights rooted in racial domination enacted through physical violence and legal frameworks (Kauanui 2008). Indeed, as Bonds and Inwood (2016, p. 722) write, ‘an analytic that begins from settler colonialism situates the intersections of political economy and racial identity within a foundational geography underpinned by the eradication and exploitation of particularly racialised bodies’. The analytic of settler colonialism also situates

Indigenous nationalisms and settler colonial regimes  111 the concept of ‘indigeneity’ within the colonial encounter, or what Pratt (1991, p. 34) terms the ‘contact zone’. In settler colonial spaces, the processes of colonial encounter over time shape ‘sovereignty’ and notions of the Other. Encounters are the only way in which ‘Indigenous’ as opposed to ‘not-Indigenous’ can be established and subject to Western knowledge production. An understanding of ‘Indigenous nationalism’ is therefore predicated on an understanding of ‘indigeneity’ rooted in the colonial encounter: words such as ‘Indian and American Indian, like native American, aboriginal, and indigenous, emerged as a product of co-constitutive relationship with terms such as colonisers, settler, and American’ (Bruyneel 2007, p. ix). Situating Indigenous nationalism within settler colonialism foregrounds the violence that has shaped Indigenous nationalist practices. Settler colonialism, Wolfe (2006) argues, must be seen as a ‘structure, not an event’: an ongoing series of settler violence designed to eliminate Indigenous people, nations, and territories (Tomiak 2016). The ongoing state violence against Indigenous peoples around the globe, from the disproportionate incarceration and deaths in custody of Aboriginal Australians and missing and murdered Native women in Canada, to the ‘slow violence’ of environmental degradation on Native lands within the United States, demonstrates ‘logic of elimination’ that underpins settler state sovereignty (Nixon 2011; Wolfe 2006). State violence ‘remains a matter of life and death for Indigenous people’ (Tomiak 2016, p. 16). Settler national violence is discursive, as well as material: territorial claims are enacted through the presentation of settler nations as white and the naturalization of such lands as settler jurisdiction (Preston 2017). The material and discursive violence of settler colonialism is replaced with a spectrum of settler nationalisms. Moreton-Robinson (2015) describes such erasures as adhering to ‘white possessive logics’. In structuring discourse about the ownership of the nation, the ‘myth’ of the settler nation becomes not only a legitimizing story but a means of subjugation (Cox 2015; Sahhar and Griffiths 2018). For instance, in Australia, exclusionary nationalist rhetoric centres on the arrival of the first British convict ships in 1788 as ‘Australia Day’, framing the ‘nation’ as originating in the moment of settler colonization (Frew and White 2007) – it is unsurprising, therefore, that a taken-for-granted relationship between flying the Australian flag and racist violence has emerged in recent years (Fozdar et al. 2015). Settler nationalisms are predicated on colonial violence while erasing that same violence in the name of the nation, a clear case of how various forms of nationalism become a ‘regime of truth’ for the settler state (Moreton-Robinson 2006, p. 389). Attempts to acknowledge Indigenous communities within settler nationalist frameworks such as Australia include everything from the common practice of acknowledging traditional land owners before public speaking events to state-granted land title or community self-determination. Yet these acts often continue to maintain colonial inequalities (Giannacopoulos 2015). Dominant settler nationalisms often recognize indigeneity only within limited parameters, and the emphasis on Indigenous ‘authenticity’ depoliticizes Indigenous peoples’ claims (Pomering and White 2011; Soldatic 2015). Settler legal regimes that define indigeneity through blood quantum or other racialized measures depoliticize settler occupation and relegate collective Indigenous nationalist claims to individual questions of genealogy or racial identity (Kauanui 2008, p. 174). Trends towards rhetorically acknowledging Indigenous ‘custodians’ of the land at Australian public events also demonstrate the limits of recognition as a political strategy (Levnad 2016, p. 7). Such settler amnesia represents what Deborah Bird Rose (1996) terms ‘deep colonizing’, well-intentioned anti-colonial work that instead contributes to ongoing settler domination.

112  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Starting from settler colonialism is to acknowledge the erasures built into problematic fusions of sovereignty, territory, and national identity. Physical and discursive violence fade and indigeneity as a collective political force becomes viewed as ‘impossible’ (Simpson 2014). This approach also highlights the degrees of citizenship and belonging that structure colonial hierarchies. As Stoler (2016, p. 177) writes, ‘gradations of rights, deferred entitlements, and incremental withholding or granting of access to political and economic resources shape the very conditions that imperial formations produce and productively sustain’. Graduated sovereignty (Dodds 2012; Ong 2000), exclusionary nationalisms, and deep colonizing practices of recognition are imperial strategies ‘destabilizing and shattering the common sense of who belong[s]’ (Stoler 2016, p. 196). Framing Indigenous nationalism under the umbrella of racialized identity projects can also be a tool of settler colonial domination (Jetté and Williams 2017). Yet this discursive repositioning, from Indigenous nationalisms as a political claim to a cultural identity marker, also suggests that Indigenous nationalisms are problems for the settler state. Scholars posit that indigeneity itself represents an ongoing emergency for the settler state, as Indigenous people live on contrary to the logic of elimination (Dafnos 2018). If so, then Indigenous nationalisms articulated as nationalisms, such as in the case of the Aboriginal passport activists, may represent a more profound threat for the settler state. Issuing passports to asylum seekers becomes a matter not just of building solidarity with other marginalized groups, but making visible ongoing Aboriginal political claims. Passport activism resignifies the passport as an ‘Aboriginal technology’ that highlights their ‘unceded and unextinguished sovereignty over Country’ (Pugliese 2015, p. 86).

10.4

INDIGENOUS NATIONALIST PROJECTS

Contemporary Indigenous nationalist activists in Australia who draw parallels between the treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous residents contest settler nationalist myths. For instance, in 2003, Tiwi Island elders faced with Australia’s decision to excise the Tiwi Islands and other offshore territories for the purposes of making migration claims explained that, ‘We’re not stupid people, we’re educated. We know what it means to be non-Australians. If that [asylum seeker] boat comes back, we’ll welcome them and give them food and water. You know why? Because we’re all one group – non-Australians’ (Pugliese 2015, p. 108). In such fleeting moments of solidarity, Indigenous national belonging ‘sharply confronts the sovereign power of the nation-state over its territory’ (Povinelli 2011, p. 15). Yet these moments should not be overgeneralized: Tiwi Islanders also appealed to the federal government for increased maritime surveillance to apprehend asylum seekers arriving by boat (Cox 2015). The tensions in the Tiwi Islanders’ responses illustrates the multiple and contested forms of nationalist activism that characterize Indigenous nationalist struggles in many places. Similar tensions impact Indigenous nationalist movements in other parts of the world who challenge various settler nationalisms and taken-for-granted associations between settler sovereignty and territory. In Canada, for example, Attawapiskat First Nations chief Theresa Spence’s well-publicized hunger strike in 2013 as well as the 2012 Idle No More movement have used embodied tactics and alternative coalition building to contest Canadian territorial control (Tomiak 2016), whereas Aboriginal Australians’ construction of the tent embassy in the grounds of the Australian Parliament in 1972 challenges the dispossession of Indigenous

Indigenous nationalisms and settler colonial regimes  113 territory (Soldatic 2015). Meanwhile, on Sakhalin Island, Russia, emotion and ‘embodied use of resources’ propels Indigenous Nivkh and Evenk activism contesting hydrocarbon extraction (Graybill 2013, p. 40). Such embodied, public contestations of Indigenous national identity challenge myths of settler nationalisms, of the nation as something ‘settled’. They highlight the foundation of oppression supporting the settler nation-state (Soldatic 2015). While Indigenous movements in Latin America and the Arctic demonstrate the potential of transnational Indigenous organization (Dorronsoro 2013; Shadian 2018), much Indigenous activism in settler-occupied areas is still bounded by nation-state frameworks. For instance, Lee (2007) describes how Dine nationalist activists operated within the structural constraints imposed by United States (US) settler sovereignty, and the combination of capitalist accumulation and settler colonialism mean that Navajo independence is ‘all but impossible’ (Yazzie 2018, p. 30). Even when challenged by Indigenous nationalist activism, the territorial state system that defines settler sovereignty continually translates Indigenous political claims into debates over indigeneity and authenticity, marginalizes Indigenous land claims, municipalizes Indigenous governance and depoliticizes settler occupation (Tomiak 2016). Indigenous nationalist claims within settler societies reflect the ‘deep impossibility’ of sovereignty and justice within a system that has been built upon the dispossession of Indigenous land and the drive to eliminate Indigenous people entirely (Simpson 2014, p. 18). The challenges of working inside and outside of settler state logics split Indigenous nationalist movements, as Kauanui (2008) describes in the case of Hawaii, where some activists campaign for recognition and rights within the settler sovereign system even as others claim that Indigenous nationalism exceeds these frameworks for policy and law. Similar tensions affect Indigenous groups navigating the intersection of global governance organizations such as the United Nations and extractive state and corporate interests, such as the Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous groups in the Russian Arctic (Tysiachniouk et al. 2018). Contesting settler colonial nationalism may seem futile at times, but doing so fundamentally challenges the system of domination upon which it is built. Indigenous critiques serve simultaneously as a reminder of continued Indigenous claims to sovereignty and the violence of their denial (Barker 2015; Cox 2015; Tomiak 2016). For instance, Hunt and Stevenson (2017) describe the project of creating the Amiskwaciwâskahikan map in Canada, where Indigenous activists of the Pipelines Collective superimposed Treaty 6 Aboriginal maps over conventional maps of Canadian territory to explore the changing shape of colonial occupation. The Amiskwaciwâskahikan map reminds Canadians of the foundational violence of settler colonialism, the contested and unresolved claims to territory, and the ongoing presence of the Cree nation in the space of contemporary Edmonton. While the Pipelines Collective acknowledges that Cree nationalist activism ‘always already occurs within the colonial framework and language of mapping’, such activism has the potential to ‘both subvert and reproduce power and history, language and control, often at the same time’ (Hunt and Stevenson 2017, pp. 376, 386). Projects such as the Amiskwaciwâskahikan map are a reminder that, for many Indigenous nationalist activists, recognition from the settler state is not the goal of nationalist activism (Barker 2015). As described above, the idea of Indigenous as a separate, Other identity is fundamentally situated within colonial ‘contact zones’ (Pratt 1991). Yet Indigenous nations as autonomous bodies of course pre-date that encounter. For instance, Bruyneel (2007, p. xii) quotes a letter from Marge Anderson, chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band, in a letter to then-governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, who writes, ‘Please understand that sovereignty is not a gift from the federal government, and it is not a gift from the state of Minnesota.

114  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Sovereignty is the inherent right of every American Indian tribal government. It is a reflection of the indisputable fact that we lived on this land and governed ourselves hundreds of years before Europeans arrived.’ Similarly, Pratt et al. (2016, p. 109) describe the politics of recognition posing settler colonial appropriation of Inuit people in opposition to an authentic, embodied indigeneity as a false choice, noting that ‘Inuit ontologies and epistemologies are, whether Qablunaat [settlers] attempt to reckon with them or not.’ Nationalist demands that exceed or bypass the settler state are also claims to a different understanding of how nation and territory can be understood alongside one another. Settler geographies of the nation are not the only meaningful geographies – for instance, Vine Deloria, Jr. theorized tribal nationalism as a political commitment that deliberately eschewed US ‘national’ spatial frameworks, working instead to ‘defy and challenge containment by American boundaries, refusing spatialization as either inside of outside, urban or rural’ (Bruyneel 2007, p. 141). Indigenous understandings of nationalism begin with different geographic imaginaries of where and what a nation could represent. For instance, many people Indigenous to Pacific islands operate with what Kauanui (2008, p. 12) describes as a ‘global model of decolonization’ where instead of viewing island territory as circumscribed by ocean, islands are seen as part of a much larger territorial vision encompassing land, ocean, and sky. Similarly, Norman (2017) describes the spatial extent of the Coast Salish Lummi tribe, whose traditional fishing waters off the Pacific coast of Washington state have been bisected by the Office of Homeland Security Patrols who deem areas of the ocean too risky for security installations. For the Lummi people, the contemporary US geopolitical division of ocean space does not align with long-standing tribal territorial imaginaries (Norman 2017). Bypassing the settler state frameworks for recognition has also been an effective strategy for Arctic Indigenous groups, who have obtained partial sovereign status through collective organizations such as the Arctic Council (Shadian 2018). Similar strategies underpin pan-Arab movements in the Middle East and North Africa, where collective transnational discourse centred on the ‘Arab Homeland’ unifies diverse political movements through a recognizable spatial discourse (Culcasi 2011). Just as with the rejection of settler state recognition, Indigenous geographies of nationhood also reject understandings of Indigenous identity and nation grounded in colonialism. Again, even as ‘Indigenous difference’ can only be understood within a colonial framework, Indigenous as nation and identity has a different lineage. As Alfred and Corntassel (2005, p. 601) write, ‘there is a danger in allowing colonization to be the only story of Indigenous lives. It must be recognised that colonization is a narrative in which the Settler’s power is the fundamental reference and assumption, in inherently limiting Indigenous freedom.’ One of the most powerful strategies for Indigenous nationalism, according to many activists and scholars, is what Kauanui (2016, p. 1) describes as ‘enduring indigeneity’, understood as the continued drive for Indigenous people to endure, life, reproduce, and flourish, even in the face of ongoing settler colonial domination. To live as an Indigenous person directly contests the logic of elimination underpinning settler colonialism, and such endurance represents an alternative vision of nationalism. Simpson (2014, p. 11) calls this form of nationalism ‘nested sovereignty’, where ‘like Indigenous bodies, Indigenous sovereignties and Indigenous political orders prevail within and apart from settler governance’. Others, including Herb and Kaplan (1999), Tully (2000), Axtmann (2004), and Fleras and Maaka (2005), have used the term ‘nested’ in reference to sovereignty, nationality, or national identity, but Simpson’s (2014) work has popularized the term within the literature on settler colonial studies. Living

Indigenous nationalisms and settler colonial regimes  115 as Indigenous continually reinforces ontologies and ways of being that are ‘excessive’ to colonial relations (Pratt et al. 2016, p. 101). The ontological challenge posed by enduring Indigenous life is described by Anishinaabe scholar Leanne Simpson, who explains how her continued existence poses an explicit challenge to settler colonial frameworks: ‘for me, living as a Nishnaabekwe is a deliberate act – a direct act of resurgence, a direct act of sovereignty’ (quoted in Barker, 2015, p. 60). The challenge of living on in spaces where Indigenous people are expected to have disappeared is precisely the situation that Barker (2015, p. 51) writes about, when he describes the common practice of reading Indigenous people as ‘aggressive’ for occupying Canadian public space or being present in public life. Indigenous people are ‘aggressive’ because they are there. Yet even as being there represents Indigenous endurance, it reflects the endurance of settler colonialism as well (Kauanui 2016). Theorists argue that Indigenous nationalism just is, whether it is recognized for the challenge it poses to settler domination or not. Enduring as Indigenous situates Indigenous people within an ‘oppositional, place-based existence’ through living as Indigenous and maintaining ties to Indigenous territory (Alfred and Corntassel 2005). Such an existence is oppositional precisely because in living, in being a national body, Indigenous people refuse settler practices of recognition that try to reinscribe indigeneity as authenticity or another ethnic group within a wider multicultural society. Ongoing Indigenous nationalisms that simply are, outside of the context of settler understandings, are what Bruyneel (2007, p. 21) theorizes as the ‘third space of sovereignty’ that ‘constitutes a more profound sense of Indigenous political life than colonial rule and settler-state boundaries would permit’. Alternative nationalisms force questions like ‘What comes after sovereignty?’ (Giannacopoulos 2015, p. 184) or Aboriginal scholar Irene Watson’s (2007) conclusion that the position of the impossible – ongoing Indigenous life in the context of settler colonialism – is where thinking begins.

10.5 CONCLUSION Aboriginal passport ceremonies have not been the only Aboriginal interventions into the debates over asylum in Australia. Aboriginal activism publicly welcoming asylum seekers in the face of Australian exclusion has asserted sovereign claims and constructed new ties of solidarity. For instance, Aboriginal communities facing dispossession through the withdrawal of federal government services rhetorically allied themselves with refugees. In 2015, community members from the Nyoongar Nation set up camp on an island in the Swan River to draw attention to their displacement. As Nyoongar activist Marianne McKay explained, ‘this is how we feel as Aboriginal people. We feel like refugees in our own country’ (quoted in McQuire 2015). Earlier in 2009, the Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory appealed to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples for refugee status, claiming that the federal government’s 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response measures had made people feel, as spokesperson Richard Downs argued, like ‘outcast[s] in our community, refugees in our own country’ (quoted in Stewart 2009). In 2002, as hunger strikes amongst asylum seekers detained in the Woomera detention centre dominated the news, Aboriginal activist Pat Eatock at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the grounds of the Australian Parliament in Canberra offered asylum to the hunger strikers (Cox 2015).

116  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Instances such as these highlight the settler colonial politics of asylum-seeking debates in Australia: that belonging and citizenship are always already profoundly contested. Indigenous nationalisms articulating the foundational erasure of Aboriginal people in Australian public discourse interrupt settler narratives such as prime minister John Howard’s assertion in 2001 that ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ (Howard 2018). Indigenous nationalisms also make visible the ongoing presence of Indigenous nations whether recognized by the settler state or not. As Cox (2015, p. 147) writes, what Aboriginal activists articulate in these moments is not that ‘these are not Australian values’ but that ‘Australian values are not our values’, that claims to Aboriginal nationhood, sovereignty, and territory continuously unsettle the fictions of ‘settled’ colonialism.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. (1994), ‘The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy, 1 (1), 53–80. Alfred, T. and J. Corntassel (2005), ‘Being Indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism’, Government and Opposition, 40 (4), 597–614. Axtmann, R. (2004), ‘The state of the state: The model of the modern state and its contemporary transformation’, International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique, 25 (3), 259–79. Barker, A.J. (2015), ‘“A direct act of resurgence, a direct act of sovereignty”: Reflections on Idle No More, Indigenous activism, and Canadian settler colonialism’, Globalizations, 12 (1), 43–65. Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism, London: Sage. Birch, T., G. Hage, R. Jackson, T. Kohn, and J. Rogers (2011), ‘An Indigenous welcome for asylum seekers’, accessed 12 December 2018 at http://​arts​.unimelb​.edu​.au/​ssps/​resources/​videos/​crucial​ -conversations​-lecture​-series​-anindigenous​-welcome​-for​-asylum​-seekers Bonds, A. and J. Inwood (2016), ‘Beyond white privilege: Geographies of white supremacy and settler colonialism’, Progress in Human Geography, 40 (6), 715–33. Bruyneel, K. (2007), The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of US–Indigenous Relations, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Chernilo, D. (2011), ‘The critique of methodological nationalism: Theory and history’, Thesis Eleven, 106 (1), 98–117. Closs Stephens, A. and V. Squire (2012), ‘Politics through a web: Citizenship and community unbound’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (3), 551–67. Cox, E. (2015), ‘Sovereign ontologies in Australia and Aotearoa–New Zealand: Indigenous responses to asylum seekers, refugees and overstayers’, in G. Devy, G. Davis, and K. Chakravarty (eds), Knowing Differently: The Challenge of the Indigenous, Routledge, pp. 139–57. Culcasi, K. (2011), ‘Cartographies of supranationalism: Creating and silencing territories in the “Arab Homeland”’, Political Geography, 30 (8), 417–28. Dafnos, T. (2018), ‘The enduring settler-colonial emergency: Indian affairs and contemporary emergency management in Canada’, Settler Colonial Studies, 1–17. Dodds, K. (2012), ‘Graduated and paternal sovereignty: Stephen Harper, Operation Nanook 10, and the Canadian Arctic’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (6), 989–1010. Dorronsoro, B. (2013), ‘El territorio cuerpo-tierra como espacio-tiempo de resistencias y luchas en las mujeres indígenas y originarias’, IV Coloquio Internacional de Doctorandos/as Do CES, 6–7. Fleras, A. and R. Maaka (2005), The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand, Dunedin: Otago University Press. Fozdar, F., B. Spittles, and L.K. Hartley (2015), ‘Australia Day, flags on cars and Australian nationalism’, Journal of Sociology, 51 (2), 317–36. Frew, E.A. and L. White (2007), ‘Australia Day alternative events: An exploration of national identity and nationalism’, in B.G. O’Mahony, R. Harris, and J. Mair (eds), Fourth International Event

Indigenous nationalisms and settler colonial regimes  117 Research Conference: Re-Evaluating the City/Town: Events as a Catalyst for Change, 11th to 12th July, 2007, Melbourne Australia, Melbourne: Victoria University, accessed 12 April 2019 at www​.uts​ .edu​.au/​sites/​default/​files/​proceedings​_international​_event​_symposium​_2007​.pdf Giannacopoulos, M. (2015), ‘Sovereign debts: Global colonialism, austerity and neo-liberal assimilation’, Law Text Culture, 19, 166–95. Graybill, J.K. (2013), ‘Mapping an emotional topography of an ecological homeland: The case of Sakhalin Island, Russia’, Emotion, Space and Society, 8, 39–50. Haebich, A. (2015), ‘Neoliberalism, settler colonialism and the history of Indigenous child removal in Australia’, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 19 (1), 20–31. Herb, G. and D. Kaplan (eds) (1999), Nested Identities, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Howard, J. (2018), ‘Election speech, John Howard, Sydney, NSW, October 28th, 2001’, accessed 21 December 2018 at https://​electionspeeches​.moadoph​.gov​.au/​speeches/​2001​-john​-howard Hunt, D. and S. Stevenson (2017), ‘Decolonizing geographies of power: Indigenous digital counter-mapping practices on Turtle Island’, Settler Colonial Studies, 7 (3), 372–92. Jetté, M. and C. Williams (2017), ‘Gender and Indigenous–immigrant encounters and entanglements’, Women’s History Review, 1–6. Kauanui, J.K. (2008), Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kauanui, J.K. (2016), ‘“A structure, not an event”: Settler colonialism and enduring indigeneity’, Lateral. 5 (1), accessed at https://​doi​.org/​10​.25158/​L5​.1​.7 Kowal, E. (2015), ‘Welcome to country: Acknowledgement, belonging and white anti-racism’, Cultural Studies Review, 21 (2), accessed at https://​doi​.org/​10​.5130/​csr​.v21i2​.4280 Lee, L. (2007), ‘The future of Navajo nationalism’, Wicazo Sa Review, 22 (1), 53–68. Levnad, S. (2016), ‘Migrant justice in settler-colonial Australia’, Arena Magazine, 141, 7–8. McNiven, I. (2004), ‘Saltwater people: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian Indigenous seascapes’, World Archaeology, 35 (3), 329–49. McQuire, A. (2015), ‘“Refugee camp” for Aboriginal people moved off remote communities ordered to close’, New Matilda, accessed 14 March 2015 at https://​newmatilda​.com//​2015/​03/​13/​refugee​-camp​ -aboriginal​-peoplemoved​-remote -communities- ordered-close Merriman, P. and R. Jones (2017), ‘Nations, materialities and affects’, Progress in Human Geography, 41 (5), 600–17. Militz, E. and C. Schurr (2016), ‘Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan’, Political Geography, 54, 54–63. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2006), ‘Towards a new research agenda? Foucault, whiteness and Indigenous sovereignty’, Journal of Sociology, 42 (4), 383–95. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015), The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Na’puti, T.R. and J. Rohrer (2017), ‘Pacific moves beyond colonialism: A conversation from Hawai‘i and Guåhan’, Feminist Studies, 43 (3), 537–47. Nixon, R. (2011), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Norman, E.S. (2017), ‘Standing up for inherent rights: The role of Indigenous-led activism in protecting sacred waters and ways of life’, Society and Natural Resources, 30 (4), 537–53. Ong, A. (2000), ‘Graduated sovereignty in South-East Asia’, Theory, Culture and Society, 17 (4), 55–75. Pomering, A. and L. White (2011), ‘The portrayal of Indigenous identity in Australian tourism brand advertising: Engendering an image of extraordinary reality or staged authenticity?’, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 7 (3), 165–74. Povinelli, E. (2011), ‘The governance of the prior’, Interventions, 13 (1), 13–30. Pratt, G., S. Hunt, B. Braun, G. Bridge, E. Gilbert, and E. Cameron (2016), ‘Far off metal river: Inuit lands, settler stories and the making of the contemporary Arctic’, AAG Review of Books, 4 (2), 100–10. Pratt, M. (1991), ‘Arts of the contact zone’, Profession, 33–40. Preston, J. (2017), ‘Racial extractivism and white settler colonialism: An examination of the Canadian Tar Sands mega-projects’, Cultural Studies, 31 (2–3), 353–75. Pugliese, J. (2015), ‘Geopolitics of Aboriginal sovereignty: Colonial law as “a species of excess of its own authority”, Aboriginal passport ceremonies and asylum seekers’, Law Text Culture, 19, 84–117.

118  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Rose, D. (1996), ‘Land rights and deep colonising: The erasure of women’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 3 (85), 6. Sahhar, M. and M. Griffiths (2018), ‘Inquiry mentality and occasional mourning in the settler colonial carceral’, Continuum, 32 (4), 444–58. Shadian, J. (2018), ‘Navigating political borders old and new: The territoriality of Indigenous Inuit governance’, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 33 (2), 273–88. Simpson, A. (2014), Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Soldatic, K. (2015), ‘Post/colonial re/productions: Disability, indigeneity and the formation of the white masculine settler state of Australia’, Social Identities, 21 (1), 53–68. Stewart, P. (2009), ‘Aboriginal people seek refugee status’, accessed 7 December 2018 at www​.abc​.net​ .au/​news/​2009​-08​-26/​aboriginal​-people​-seek​-refugee​-status/​1405396 Stoler, A. (2016), Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sutherland, C. (2016), ‘A postmodern mandala? Moving beyond methodological nationalism’, HumaNetten, 37, 88. Tomiak, J. (2016), ‘Unsettling Ottawa: Settler colonialism, Indigenous resistance, and the politics of scale’, Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 25 (1), 8–21. Tully, J. (2000), ‘The struggles of Indigenous peoples for and of freedom’, in D. Ivison, P. Patton, and W. Sanders (eds), Political Theory and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–88. Tysiachniouk, M., L.A. Henry, M. Lamers, and J.P.M. van Tatenhove (2018), ‘Oil extraction and benefit sharing in an illiberal context: The Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic’, Society and Natural Resources, 31 (5), 556–79. Watkins, J. (2017), ‘Australia’s irregular migration information campaigns: Border externalization, spatial imaginaries, and extraterritorial subjugation’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5 (3), 282–303. Watson, I. (2007), ‘Aboriginal sovereignties: Past, present and future (im)possibilities’, in S. Perera (ed.), Our Patch: Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post-2001, Perth: API Network, pp. 23–44. Wolfe, P. (2006), ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (4), 387–409. Yazzie, M.K. (2018), ‘Decolonizing development in Diné Bikeyah’, Environment and Society, 9 (1), 25–39.

11. Orientalist-settler colonialism: foundations and practices of post-9/11 white nationalism in the United States Christabel Devadoss and Karen Culcasi

11.1 INTRODUCTION In March 2017, three months after Donald Trump was inaugurated, a white man outside of Seattle, WA stalked and confronted Deep Rai, a Sikh American citizen born in India. The unidentified assailant approached Rai, whom was working on his car that Friday afternoon in his own driveway, yelled ‘Go back to your country!’, and shot him the arm. Rai survived, but this attack reminded many people, and particularly the Sikh American community, of the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi (Dwyer 2017; Day 2017). Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India, was murdered a few days after the events of September 11, 2001 near his home in Mesa, AZ by a white man who proclaimed that he wanted to ‘go out and shoot some towelheads’ (Kumar 2017). Coinciding with Trump’s election campaign in 2015, the United States (US) has experienced a significant increase in discriminatory rhetoric, practices, and hate crimes against numerous minority groups including immigrants, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ+ communities, and Jews. This rise, in great part, is due to Donald Trump’s proud nationalist outlook. In October 2018, he publicly stated that he knows that ‘we’re not supposed to use that word’, and then he went on to defy that knowledge and declare that ‘you know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist’ (quoted in Forgey 2018). Trump’s nationalist rhetoric intersects with his racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim views as well (Beydoun 2018; Gökarıksel and Smith 2016; Modi 2018; Sridaran et al. 2017; Steinberg et al. 2018). It is now quite commonplace that hate speech focused on promoting white identity as the basis for power and control in the US is employed and performed by our leaders, not just extremist groups as once assumed (Flint 2004). White nationalism has long existed in the US. It has had many forms and many different targets, but its basic tenet is to promote a ‘white superior race’ with an end goal of forming a ‘white ethnostate’ (SPLC n.d., p. 2). White nationalism, though itself not homogeneous, rests on the idea that a singular white race is superior to all ‘others’ (Delgado and Stefancic 2017), which then allows whites to control the nation’s wealth and political power (Goldstein 2008; Mikdashi 2013; Morgensen 2011; Smith 2012). This central idea of white nationalism positions people perceived as ‘non-white’ as targets,1 including Sikh Americans, as highlighted above, and countless others who do not fit into the definition of ‘white’ (Radcliffe 2017; Rowe and Tuck 2017; Harris 2004; Smith 2012; Mikdashi 2013; Inwood and Bonds 2016). African Americans, Latinos/Latinas, Chinese, Japanese, and Indigenous peoples have all been targeted by white nationalists in the US,2 but since the September 11 terrorist attacks, white nationalists have increasingly attacked people from or with familial origins in South Asia and the ‘Middle East’ (SAALT n.d.).3 As the South Asian American civil rights advocacy group SAALT (n.d.) 119

120  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state reported, ‘around the country, xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment has increasingly permeated the media and political sphere. For decades, African Americans and Latinos were subjected to this rhetoric, but more recently, South Asian, Sikh, Muslim, and Arab Americans have increasingly become the targets.’ Recognizing that state and public discourses and practices are always evolving, in this chapter, we focus on how white nationalism in the US has, since September 11, 2001, racialized and violently targeted people from the Middle East and South Asia. A growing literature on ‘anti-brown’ hate has elucidated the connections between hate directed at Muslims, people perceived to be Muslims, and people from or with familial ties to the Middle East and South Asia (Silva 2016; Considine 2017; Beydoun 2018; Semati 2010). We advance this literature by drawing from settler colonial theory and postcolonial studies. Bridging these disparate, but overlapping, bodies of literature allows us to historically contextualize growing ‘anti-brown’ hate as part of a broader grammar of white nationalist rhetoric and racist practices that date back centuries. Our analysis of recent hate crimes and political rhetoric in the US that follows demonstrates how merging settler colonial and postcolonial critiques can reveal the continuity of settler colonial and Orientalist discourses and practices today. We argue that settler colonialism and Orientalism are the foundations for the othering, homogenization, conflation, exclusion, vilification, racism, hate, and violence directed at people from or perceived to be from the Middle East and South Asia in the US today.

11.2

SETTLER COLONIAL THEORY AND POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE

The US is a settler colonial state, founded upon settler colonial logics and structures that promote white privilege and supremacy. Settler colonialism is not just of the past but continues to infiltrate the present (Morgensen 2011; Veracini 2013). After European settlers came to what is now the Americas, they forcibly displaced and killed approximately 50–100 million people while erasing knowledge of their histories from US society (Pulsipher et al. 2017; Coddington this volume; Mikdashi 2013). In the 150 years after the arrival of Columbus, historians estimate that the population of Indigenous peoples was reduced by 50 to 90 percent (Goodman et al. 2012). Settler colonialism, in which peripheral territories were permanently settled by colonists, like classic colonialism included the erasure, removal, and genocide of Indigenous peoples. However, unlike classic colonialism, settler colonialism also sought to replace Indigenous peoples through settlement and territorial expansion (Veracini 2013; Glenn 2015). Indigenous peoples were the first victims of settler colonialism, facing genocide and forced displacement during early colonization. The slave trade evolved directly from the settler project in the Americas and is, of course, foundational to how racism persists in US today. Settler colonial categories, laws, and structures have evolved but remain deeply embedded in today’s blatant and subtle white nationalism (Mikdashi 2013; Smith 2012; Radcliffe 2017). Yet, the US is not a postcolonial state, since colonists settled in the US and continue to hold power generations later, while Indigenous peoples remain colonized. Thus, immigrants to the US are ‘joining’ the already established settler colonial state that has long been established (Pulido 2018, p. 2). Settler colonial theory is a growing body of literature that has examined racism and violence towards Indigenous peoples, Latinos/Latinas, and African Americans, but it has not directly

Orientalist-settler colonialism  121 addressed how the US’s settler colonial past has affected migrants, diasporas, and transnational communities in the US, including those from or with familial ties to South Asia or the Middle East. Postcolonial (including transnational) critiques of Orientalism, however, have provided theoretical and analytical lenses to examine migrants and diasporas in the US. Taking inspiration from both literatures, this chapter unites postcolonial and settler colonial critiques to illustrate how political geographers can gain insights about the changing geographies of the state – illustrating the connections between European settler colonization of the Americas and Orientalism in the US today, both of which are foundations of white nationalism. People living in the US who are from or perceived to be from the Middle East and South Asia are often othered, conflated, vilified, and harmed. Today’s racism against these groups, we assert, is a reworking and combining of deeply entrenched settler colonial and Orientalist logics and structures, which we refer to as ‘Orientalist-settler colonialism’. Settler colonialism frames white nationalism, but settler colonial critique does not fully explain the ‘anti-brown’ hate crimes we note in the introduction. Modern-day white nationalism in the US, we assert, is informed and framed by Orientalist logics as well (Smith 2012).4 Edward Said’s (1978) critique of the discourses of Orientalism showed that ‘the West’ created the ‘Orient’ (what is generally referred to as the Middle East today) over hundreds of years as both distinct from and inferior to the Europe and the West. Orientalist logics have long homogenized and conflated these diverse groups (Hopkins et al. 2017). Though Orientalist ideas have evolved over the last two centuries, they are intricately embedded in Western geographical imaginings and practices of people from the Middle East, Arab world, or Islamic world (Naber 2012; Culcasi 2010). In contemporary contexts, Orientalist practices are recognizable in American geopolitical wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the US’s unconditional support for the state of Israel (Gregory 2004; Culcasi 2006). Contemporary Orientalism also functions through expressions of ‘internal Orientalism’, which includes stigmatizing practices applied within the context of a nation-state, as the dominant white group creates and marginalizes a minority as ‘the other’ within its own borders (Ehrkamp 2017; Jansson 2010; Sharpe 1995; Winders 2005). As ‘the other’ is not clearly defined as much more than being ‘non-white’ or non-Western, Orientalist thought creates ‘geographic ambiguity’ that allows for the vilification of many disparate groups (Beydoun 2018, p. 53). White nationalism in the US today combines Orientalist thought with settler colonialism by conflating people from the Middle East or South Asia, marking them as inferior, as invaders, as coming from ‘other civilizations’, and as threats to the ideal of a white American nation (Smith 2012).5 Postcolonial and transnational theories, which emerged in great part from Orientalist critique, have revealed many legacies of colonialism, including how colonial powers manipulated racial, religious, and ethnic identity to assert and maintain power and control. However, the US is not a postcolonial state like India or Algeria where the colonists left or were forced out. Though postcolonial theory may seem to not apply to the settler colonial history of the US (Mains et al. 2013), we argue that it actually helps to nuance settler colonial critique by focusing on the experience of immigrants coming from postcolonial states into the US.6 Indeed, individuals from neither the Middle East nor South Asia were directly subjected to settler colonialism in the US, but they are nevertheless affected by settler colonial assertions of white superiority and the centrality of whiteness in defining a US national identity.

122  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

11.3

MIDDLE EASTERN–SOUTH ASIAN CONFLATIONS: AN OVERVIEW

People from the Middle East and South Asia are so diverse in their cultural practices and social and political identities that such place-based labels seem misadvised overgeneralizations. At the intellectual level, this may be the case, but they nonetheless hold meaning and significance as supranational or world regional categories. People from South Asia come from at least eight countries, speak hundreds of different languages, and have an enormous variety of cultural traditions and practices. They come from different religious traditions like Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, among others. Immigration from South Asia to the US began with Punjabi settlers, often Sikhs, who worked in agriculture in California and helped build the Western Pacific Railroad in the early 1800s (Bhardwaj and Madhusudana Rao 1990). After the 1965 US Immigration Act, which allowed for increased migration from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (while limiting migration from South and Central America), the South Asian population grew substantially, with close to 4.1 million living in the US today (Barrett 2018; Hoeffel et al. 2012). People coming from the Middle East are often considered to be from about 25 countries across Southwest Asia and North Africa. The 22 states that comprise the Arab League countries, in addition to Israel, Iran, and Turkey, are generally thought of as the Middle East. But this region’s composition is quite ambiguous and can be smaller or larger depending on who defines it. There is much social, cultural, religious, and political diversity among people in these states, even though they are often generalized and racialized into one homogeneous category (Culcasi 2010; Beydoun 2018). Migration from this diverse area of the world to the US has come in two waves (see Castles et al. 2014 for an overview). The first wave, in the late 1880s, were Arab migrants largely from Syria and Lebanon, most of whom Christian, and from a wide variety of professional and trade classes. The second wave began after the Second World War when volatile situations arose in relation to the establishment of Israel. This wave has been slow, rather continuous, and is incredibly diverse. Americans from the Middle East are for the most part classified as ‘white’ on the US census, which is quite ironic considering that many are racialized as decidedly not white. This official categorization makes it difficult to determine how many people in the US have ancestral links to this area of the world, but the Pew Trust estimates that it is around 5 million (Wiltz 2014). Discrimination and hate crimes toward people from or with familial origins in South Asia and the Middle East have reached unprecedented levels in the US and continue to rise (Modi 2018; Sridaran et al. 2017). Muslims and people who ‘look’ Muslim or Middle Eastern have long been objects of Orientalist stereotypes and Islamophobia. Recently these diverse peoples have been grouped into a broader racial category within the US that has homogenized Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asians, and into a single racialized ‘other’ (Beydoun 2018; Considine 2017; Love 2017; Silva 2016). Like other socially constructed racial categories, this one blurs phenotype and skin color with cultural practices like dress, prayer, music, and language (Beydoun 2018; Devadoss 2017, 2018). Muslims, Sikhs, South Asians, and Middle Easterners for example, are often conflated as they are believed to have some somatic similarity.7 Moreover, this is a pernicious racialization and conflation, as these diverse people are often constructed as ‘radicals’ and ‘extremists’ who are threats to white America. There are countless examples of how people from South Asia and the Middle East have been racially conflated and targeted as a threat to white nationalism in the US since September

Orientalist-settler colonialism  123 11, 2001 (and before). White nationalism is expressed in many ways, from law to spatial segregation, media, emotions, experiences, but we focus here on political rhetoric and hate crimes. Our examples show that these populations have been othered, homogenized, and/or conflated; vilified as invaders, threats, and terrorists; and have been the targets of virulent racism, hate, and violence.

11.4

MIDDLE EASTERN–SOUTH ASIAN CONFLATIONS IN PRACTICE

Hate crimes, discrimination, intolerance, inflammatory language, and racist political rhetoric and practices against Arabs, Muslims, and people from (or perceived to be from) the Middle East spiked in the months following the events of 9/11, as these very diverse people were held collectively responsible for the terrorist attacks (Cainkar 2006, p. 253). Direct violence had slowed down but increased again during the run up to the 2016 US presidential election. Since the election of Donald Trump, there has been a surge of white nationalist crimes and hate speech broadly, including crimes against people from or believed to be from South Asia and the Middle East specifically (Nagel 2016; Silva 2016; Beydoun 2018; Modi 2018; Council on American-Islamic Relations 2019).8 Mark Stroman was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white nationalist gang. In the fall of 2001, he went on a several-week killing spree in Texas that resulted in the death of two men and severely injured a third (Associated Press 2011). During Stroman’s legal trial, he stated he wanted to kill Arabs and people from the Middle East as revenge for the September 11 terrorist attacks. All three victims of Stroman’s attacks were from South Asia – Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. None were Arab and none were from the Middle East. The first victim was Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani-Muslim who owned a convenience store in Dallas. On September 15, Stroman fatally shot him in the head while he was at work. The second victim was Rais Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant who worked in a gas station in Dallas. On September 21, Stroman entered the gas station and shot Bhuiyan in the head. Bhuiyan survived but is now partially blind. Stroman’s third victim was Vasudev Patel, a Hindu immigrant from India who was a US citizen. Patel was working at a gas station in Mesquite, Texas when Stroman fatally shot him on October 4. Stroman’s motivation folded white nationalist ideologies and Orientalist-settler colonial logics into hatred toward ‘non-white’ people he believed had associations to the 9/11 terrorists. It didn’t matter that his victims were from South Asia, not the Middle East. These three men, regardless of religion or places of origin, were conflated, homogenized, othered, vilified, and violently attacked. Rising governmental tolerance and even the mainstreaming of white nationalist rhetoric and goals has fueled hate crimes toward numerous ‘non-white’ peoples. Trump has made countless racist comments and enacted policies within this vein. For example, his apologetic tone about the attacks in Charlottesville and blaming ‘both sides’ fueled white nationalists as they received tacit support from the US president. In the last several years, one out of every five perpetrators of hate crimes towards people from the Middle East or South Asia referenced Trump, a Trump administration policy (i.e. ‘Muslim Ban’), or a Trump campaign slogan (i.e. ‘Make America Great Again’) while committing the attack (Modi, 2018). Indeed, Trump’s headline phrase ‘Make America Great Again’ implies ‘Make America White Again’ (Gökarıksel and Smith 2016; Morrison 2016; Steinberg et al. 2018) and has romanticized

124  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the height of American greatness as when those who had rights and uncontested power were generally white men (Gökarıksel and Smith 2016). The ‘Muslim ban’ and Trump’s political rhetoric around this policy directly illustrates how Orientalist-settler colonial logics materialize into exclusionary and hateful state-based policing and bordering practices.9 While on the campaign train on December 7, 2015, and in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, Trump called for ‘a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ (Taylor 2015). Also, on the campaign trail earlier that September a member of his audience ranted that ‘We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims, you know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American … Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us.’ The man then asked, ‘When can we get rid of them?’ Trump did not correct nor reject this man’s factually incorrect, ignorant, and racist comment, but instead legitimized the fear-mongering sentiment that the US needs protection and should purge Muslims from the country. Trump tacitly replied that ‘We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things … You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We’re going to be looking at that’ (Schleifer 2015). These two comments made on the campaign trail set the rhetorical stage for one of Trump’s first actions as president. On January 27, 2017, just seven days after his inauguration, he issued Executive Order (EO) 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, commonly referred to as the ‘Muslim Ban’ (EO 2017). This EO (and its two subsequent versions) were put on hold by different federal judges, but his third version, released on September 24, 2017, was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018. The first EO banned people from seven different Muslim-majority states – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – under the premise that people coming to the US from these countries were terrorists. The altered and standing ban removed Iraq, Sudan, and Somalia from the list, and added Venezuela and North Korea, broadening the scope of who is a terrorist away from Muslim-majority states only. Regardless of the inclusion of non-Muslim-majority states on the revised ban list, both Trump’s rhetoric and the ban itself facilitated the idea that Muslims are dangerous and don’t belong in the US, thus conflating, homogenizing, excluding, othering, and vilifying them. Drawing from the same Orientalist stereotypes and playing upon the same manufactured fears that fueled the Muslim ban, Trump has stoked fears that Middle Easterners, Syrian Muslims, and Syrian refugees are threatening Americans specifically at the southern border. As opposed to EOs and the externalization of bordering practices that occurred with the Muslim ban, bordering practices are being manifested at the physical border and with considerable direct violence. In many different tweets and public statements with the press, Trump has turned the southern border into a battleground against not just asylum seekers from Central America, but against Middle Easterners and Muslims. On the campaign trail in 2015 he tweeted two different statements about Syrians encroaching the southern border. On October 13 he posted ‘Syrian Muslims escorted into U.S through Mexico. Now arriving to Oklahoma and Kansas! Congress?’ (Council on American-Islamic Relations 2019). And again, one month later he tweeted that ‘13 Syrian refugees were caught trying to get into the U.S. through the Southern Borber [sic]. How many made it? WE NEED THE WALL!’ (Council on American-Islamic Relations 2019). In these sentiments, the mere presence of Syrian Muslims and refugees is the alarm, indicating threat. Trump does not need to provide any details because it is just assumed that Syrian Muslims and refugees are dangerous.

Orientalist-settler colonialism  125 To Trump and his followers, even just a few of these people justify the building of a wall. Trump’s racist rhetoric on the matter of the southern border has continued. In October 2018, as a new ‘caravan’ of asylum seekers walked from Central America – Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador primarily – through Mexico en route to the US southern border, Trump again vilified Middle Easterners as a rallying cry to build a wall that would ostensibly and primarily be to stop people from Mexico and Central America. Trump tweeted on October 22, 2018 (and confirmed the sentiment in other statements too) that ‘Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the US. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws!’. It is assumed that hidden amongst thousands of Central American asylum seekers are Middle Easterners, people who are likened to criminals and must be stopped. In an interview with ABC news, Trump stated that ‘You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Easterners, you’re going to find everything. And guess what? We’re not allowing them in our country’ (Da Silva 2018). Though there was no proof that Syrians or Middle Easterners were coming in from the southern border (Hutchinson et al. 2018), all Middle Easterners are put at the same level as the notoriously violent MS-13 gang. Whether or not there are Middle Easterners in the ‘caravan’ matter less than the meaning of the claim. Just to insert the possibility of Middle Easterners entering the US is to invoke fear that America is in danger. These two different issues – of Central American asylum seekers and fears of Middle Easterners and Muslims – converge to leverage white nationalist goals.10 That the border is overrun, unprotected, and permeable to both Middle Easterners and Central Americans reveals the weakness of the state to control and police its borders. The attempt to control and securitize the border is an active practice of state-based violence, racism, and xenophobia. This violence at the border is an escalation of protracted exclusionary and violent practices towards migrants, Indigenous people, and now to Middle Easterners too. As Young and Reynolds recently stated ‘The borders of North America are both a colonial legacy and an ongoing colonisation’ (2019, p. 6). Though there are countless examples of people from the Middle East, Muslims, and Arabs being subjected to racist state-based policies and practices and Orientalist bias (see Council on American-Islamic Relations 2019; SAALT n.d.; Smith 2012), targets of white nationalist hate are much broader. As the two examples in the introduction and the one just above of Stroman’s murders all demonstrate, Sikhs and South Asians are also targeted. Precise place of origin did not matter to their assailants. Instead, just being a ‘non-white’ immigrant conflated these people into threats to white America and a white ethnostate. The man who shot Sodhi Singh in Mesa, Arizona exclaimed, ‘I stand for America all the way’ (Beydoun 2018, p. 35). America for this attacker refers to white America. To him, Sodhi was an invader, a foreigner threatening the white nation of the US. Like Sodi, in February 2017, Srinavas Kuchibholta and Alok Madasani, two Indian nationals, were shot in a bar in Kansas while enjoying a drink after work. The perpetrator, Adam Purinton, thought they were from Iran, a state that Trump has vilified and targeted economically and politically (Barajas 2018; Schmidt 2018). As Purinton shot these men, he yelled ‘get out of my country’, clearly indicating that he viewed these men as invaders that were threatening his American nation. South Asians have been purposefully and intentionally targeted as well (Devadoss 2018): ‘Save American IT Jobs’ was a website based in Columbus, Ohio that appeared shortly after the 2016 election. This site emphasized that ‘Indians’ were stealing information technology (IT) jobs that belonged to Americans. While the site was live, it asked white community members

126  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state of Columbus to stalk (follow, spy, report, conduct surveillance, stake-out, collect evidence on) Indian Americans to document how they are ‘destroying’ the (white) Columbus community and ‘American lives’. This website merged the logics of settler colonialism, Orientalism, and white nationalism to fuel hate that Indians are invaders and threats to white American IT workers. It also homogenizes very diverse groups of people by implying that all Indians are IT workers. The website founder, Stephen Pushor, suggested that Indians and Indian Americans are not really American, even if they have citizenship. Pushor has even created a moveon.org petition calling for a limit to H1-B visa jobs to protect ‘American’ citizens (Pushor n.d.). This kind of hate is not limited to Columbus, Ohio or South Asians, but is a national issue based on misconceptions that immigrants are taking US IT jobs (Ali 2017). White supremacist, settler colonial, and Orientalist logics are acted out by white American racists like Stroman, Purinton, and Pushor, but as we discussed above these logics are also central to Trump’s political rhetoric and actions. On April 3, 2017 US Citizenship and Immigration (USCIS) announced ‘targeted site visits’ to police places of employment in order to detect ‘fraud’. USCIS’s actions imply that H1-B visa fraud is rampant across the US and that site visits are necessary to ‘protect American workers’ because ‘too many American workers who are as qualified, willing, and deserving to work in these fields have been ignored or unfairly disadvantaged’ by H1-B visa workers (USCIS 2017). Websites like Pushor’s ‘Save IT Jobs’ vilified Indians as a threat to ‘America’, but along with the US government actions, the idea that Indians are here to commit ‘fraud’, steal, or invade the US is violently reinforced. Indians, in this case, are not depicted as terrorists, but pose a different threat. They are taking over and replacing what he implies as being ‘real’ Americans – white Americans.

11.5

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

White nationalism in the US has been around for a long time with foundations in settler colonial history, but it has evolved immensely and has become intertwined with Orientalism. The result of this convergence is a targeting of people who were not part of early American settler colonial practices like genocide or slavery, but who are nevertheless subjected to the similar white nationalist foundational discourses and practices in the US. Since settler colonial critiques do not directly address all of the varied migrant, diasporic, and transnational communities in the US, including people from or with familial ties to South Asia or the Middle East, and since postcolonial critique lacks the historical context of settler colonialism, the two critiques complement one another in helping to explain contemporary iterations, expressions, and effects of white nationalism. The Orientalist and settler colonial logics that converge in the US have led to the racialization, conflation, and homogenization of Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, people from the Middle East and South Asia. Regardless of whether people in these groups are American citizens, white nationalism marks them as the ‘other’, as threats to the white American nation, and designates ‘non-white’ immigrants as not belonging (Smith 2012). Indeed, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC n.d., p. 2), ‘Ending non-white immigration, both legal and illegal, is an urgent priority … for white nationalists seeking to preserve white, racial hegemony’. These logics have also led to active marginalization, exclusions, and discrimination as evident in hate crimes and racist political rhetoric and policies.

Orientalist-settler colonialism  127 The above examples of the hate crimes, state-based rhetoric and policies that target and often conflate people from the Middle East and South Asia are increasingly being referred to as ‘anti-brown’ hate. No clear label exists to encompass those affected by this violence, but some have pointed to a newly constructed racial category that often falls within the umbrella of the term ‘brown’ (Silva, 2016). The term and idea of ‘brown’11 has long signified ‘non-white’ people (Anzaldúa 1987; Bhatia 2007; Spivak 1988), but the meaning of ‘brown’ has evolved in the US with the influx of postcolonial diasporas from South Asia and the Middle East, and has been further compounded with the rise of Islamophobia12 (Bhatia 2007; Silva 2010; Semati 2010). In approaching the changing geographies of the state, political geographers could contribute far more comprehensive research on white nationalism, ‘anti-brown’ hate, and the concept and category of ‘brown’. Recent academic literature on ‘anti-brown’ hate generally frames ‘brown hate’ as linked to Islamophobia, but is clearly more widespread targeting many different peoples, not just Muslims. Moreover, white nationalists don’t readily use the term ‘brown’. This term is, however, used on occasion in solidarity against white nationalism and racist rhetoric and practices of the US. Thus, more research is needed on how the category ‘brown’ is used, embodied, performed, embraced, and/or rejected by people often targeted by white nationalists. It is essential that academics not only research these pertinent issues but also actively combat white nationalist practices and rhetoric. In our research, our classrooms, through public engagement, and within the discipline of geography (which has historically contributed to many colonial projects), we must acknowledge the different historical contexts, geographical specificities, and heterogeneity of the myriad of peoples targeted by white nationalism. These are some of the new spaces of geopolitics. Geographers and scholars need to do more than just raise awareness of the subtle and discursive ways that white nationalism targets and enacts violence upon marginalized groups in the US. Many people in these communities also actively fight against white nationalism and we need to support, listen to, and stand in solidarity with them.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The term ‘non-white’ is problematic as it erases complexity and sets the norm as white, from which all else is measured. We recognize that this is commonplace within white nationalist views and practices. Thus we keep this term in quotes. We recognize the different tribes, interethnic groups, and histories of Indigenous people but use this general term as we are not focused on any particular groups by the wider processes of settler colonialism (see Meeks 2007). The ‘Middle East’ is a geopolitical construct based on imperialist and Orientalist logics. We use the term here in quotes to stress that point, but do not use quotes throughout simply for the sake of easy reading. The US did rise as an empire at the turn of the twentieth century and as a neo-imperialist power across the globe (especially the Philippines, Vietnam, Guam, and Hawaii). See Coddington (2018) for her point that settler colonial logics work today in Australia’s anti-immigration, anti-asylum politics. Decolonial work has many parallels with postcolonial research but we draw on the latter. Both recognize that the present is ‘intrinsically saturated with coloniality’ but decolonial work moves away from postcolonial criticism through its focus on internal social relations outside of the Western context (Radcliffe 2017, p. 329; Naylor et al. 2018).

128  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state 7. Arabs are technically classified as ‘white’ on the US Census, and ‘while their proximity to whiteness may bestow some racial privilege’ they are still viewed as inferior and a threat (Smith 2012). 8. Hate crimes against Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim increased by 44 percent in 2016 and then by another 15 percent in 2017 (Kishi 2017). 9. He also made repeated statements about creating a Muslim registry, monitoring mosques, and deporting Syrian refugees (a majority of which are Muslim). 10. Dabashi (2018) refers to the recent family separations at the US southern borders as similar to what European settler colonialists did hundreds of years ago. 11. We also recognize that ‘brown’ as a term has many different meanings and has been used in a variety of ways. This term is deployed by white nationalists but is also used by people as a means of self-identity (Devadoss 2018). 12. Islamophobia, like ‘anti-brown’ hate, affects a range of people with different religious practices.

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130  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Morgensen, S. (2011), ‘The biopolitics of settler colonialism: Right here, right now’, Settler Colonial Studies, 1 (1), 52–76. Morrison, T. (2016), ‘Making America white again’, New Yorker, November 14, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​.newyorker​.com/​magazine/​2016/​11/​21/​making​-america​-white​-again Naber, N. (2012), Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism, New York: New York University Press. Nagel, C. (2016), ‘Southern hospitality? Islamophobia and the politicization of refugee in South Carolina during the 2016 election season’, Southeastern Geographer, 56 (3), 283–90. Naylor, L., M. Daigle, S. Zaragocin, M. Marietta Ramírez, and M. Gilmartin (2018), ‘Interventions: Bringing the decolonial to political geography’, Political Geography, 66, 199–209. Pulido, L. (2018), ‘Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color’, Progress in Human Geography, 42 (2), 309–18. Pulsipher, L., A. Pulsipher, and H. Hapke (2017), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, 7th edition. New York: Macmillan. Pushor, S. (n.d.), ‘SaveAmericaInformationTechnologyWorkerJobs’, MoveOn.org, accessed on December 1, 2019 at https://​petitions​.moveon​.org/​sign/​save​-america​-information Radcliffe, S. (2017), ‘Decolonising geographical knowledges’, Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers, 42 (3), 329–33. Rowe, A. and E. Tuck (2017), ‘Settler colonialism and cultural studies: Ongoing settlement, cultural production, and resistance’, Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 17 (1), 3–13. SAALT (n.d.), ‘Post 9-11 backlash’, South Asian Americans Leading Together, accessed on December 1, 2019 at http://​saalt​.org/​policy​-change/​post​-9​-11​-backlash/​ Said, E. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon. Schleifer, T. (2015), ‘Trump doesn’t challenge anti-Muslim questioner at event’, CNN, September 18, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​.cnn​.com/​2015/​09/​17/​politics/​donald​-trump​-obama​-muslim​ -new​-hampshire/​index​.html Schmidt, S. (2018), ‘Man who yelled “get out of my country” before killing Indian immigrant pleads guilty, faces life sentence’, Washington Post, March 7, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​ .washingtonpost​.com/​news/​morning​-mix/​wp/​2018/​03/​07/​man​-who​-yelled​-get​-out​-of​-my​-country​ -before​-killing​-indian​-immigrant​-pleads​-guilty​-faces​-life​-sentence/​ Semati, M. (2010), ‘Islamophobia, culture and race in the age of empire’, Cultural Studies, 24 (2), 256–75. Sharpe, J. (1995), ‘Is the United States postcolonial? Transnationalism, immigration, and race’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 4 (2), 181–99. Silva, K. (2010), ‘Brown: From identity to identification’, Cultural Studies, 24 (2), 167–82. Silva, K. (2016), Brown Threat: Identification in the Security State, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Smith, A. (2012), ‘Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy’, in D. HoSang, O. LaBennett, and L. Pulido (eds), Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 66–90. Spivak, G. (1988), ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271–317. SPLC (n.d.), ‘White nationalist’, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 15, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​.splcenter​.org/​fighting​-hate/​extremist​-files/​ideology/​white​-nationalist Sridaran, L., S. Raghunathan, and V. Trivedi (2017), Power, Pain, Potential: South Asians at the Forefront of Growth and Hate in the 2016 Election Cycle, Takoma Park, MD: South Asian Americans Leading Together. Steinberg, P., S. Page, J. Dittmer, B. Gökariksel, S. Smith, A. Ingram, and N. Koch (2018), ‘Reassessing the Trump presidency, one year on’, Political Geography, 62, 207–15. Taylor, J. (2015), ‘Trump calls for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering” US’, National Public Radio, December 7, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​.npr​.org/​2015/​12/​07/​458836388/​ trump​-calls​-for​-total​-and​-complete​-shutdown​-of​-muslims​-entering​-u​-s USCIS (2017), ‘Combating fraud and abuse in the H-1B visa program’, US Department of Homeland Security, accessed on December 1, 2019 at www​.uscis​.gov/​working​-united​-states/​temporary​-workers/​ h​-1b​-specialty​-occupations​-and​-fashion​-models/​combating​-fraud​-and​-abuse​-h​-1b​-visa​-program

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12. The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state: sectarianism and state formation in Lebanon Caroline Nagel

12.1 INTRODUCTION Since it was introduced to the academic lexicon nearly four decades ago by Benedict Anderson (1983), the concept of ‘imagined community’ has become ubiquitous in scholarly discussions about modern nation-states and nationalisms. The concept of an imagined community, as explained by Anderson, references the development of a sense of belonging in the absence of face-to-face contact between people. While anonymous to each other, members of the imagined community understand themselves to be marching together through time toward a common destiny. For Anderson, this modern, imagined community replaced ‘classical communities’ that had taken shape around sacred texts and languages. In contrast to the modern, territorially limited nation, the boundaries of these classical, sacred communities were indistinct or non-existent; God (or gods) sat at the top of the community hierarchy, conferring legitimacy on earthy rulers, while a small literate elite mediated between heaven and earth. The Protestant Reformation, Anderson suggested, provided the initial challenge to this religious way of being by displacing Latin – the unifying language of Christendom – with vernacular languages. The translation of the Bible into vernaculars encouraged literacy, which then fostered the emergence of print capitalism in the form of newspapers and novels. Print capitalism, in turn, allowed people to imagine themselves as participating in a bounded, common life, thereby making possible the emergence of modern nationhood. Anderson insisted that the development of the nation as a new form of imagined community represented a fortuitous coalescence of processes rather than a deliberate course of action or an inevitable series of events. Yet by connecting nationalism to the demise of an all-encompassing religious way of being, Anderson’s theory can be situated within a broader, Euro-centric historical narrative of modernization and secularization that runs through the works of Marx, Weber, and Habermas, among others (for a critical overview, see Clark 2012). The ‘secularization thesis’, as it is often called, connects the modern, capitalist, liberal, national state with the confinement of religious belief in the private sphere, the disenchantment of society, and the emergence of a public sphere built on rational discourse vis-à-vis a neutral bureaucratic state (Habermas 1989). The precipitous decline of traditional, organized religion, the growing influence of science over all aspects of life, and the adaptation of new forms of spirituality to individualized consumerism have all served as key indicators of secularization (Bruce 2006; Wilford 2010). In recent decades, however, the seeming revival of militant religious movements in the post-colonial world, as well as the reappearance of faith-based claims in putatively secular, liberal democracies, has challenged the assumptions of the secularization thesis (e.g. Juergensmeyer 1993). While scholars dispute whether we are in the throes of an epochal shift toward a new ‘post-secular’ reality, there is a widely shared sense that religion, 132

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  133 for better or for worse, has become, and is likely to remain, part of the mix of public, political life (Habermas 2006). The growing attention paid across academic disciplines to religious belief and identity (e.g. May et al. 2014) has been a welcome corrective to secularist assumptions about the inevitable demise of religion as a socio-political force. But the treatment of religiosity as either a stubbornly persistent or unexpectedly resurgent phenomenon takes as given that religion is inherently disruptive of the normal conduct of public, political life in the modern state. Even when scholars and pundits have described the deprivatization of religion as a source of positive political change – as a foundation of ethical behaviour standing firm against the excesses of neoliberalism – they have treated religion as a problematic to be reconciled with the expectations and requirements of modernity and secularization (e.g. Habermas 2006; Taylor 2010). Such accounts leave underexplored the relationality between religion and the secular – that is, how these concepts become meaningful in relation to each other across a range of historical and geographical contexts. Accordingly, this chapter refocuses discussions about religion and secularism around the continuous creation, negotiation, and regulation of the boundaries between personal and political, sacred and profane, and spiritual and worldly in the contemporary state. Critical perspectives on religion and the state bring into focus how national societies imagine and reimagine the relationship between religion and public life, thereby bringing these categories into being in a material sense. To illustrate these processes, I use the case of Lebanon, a country that often serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when primordial religious passions intrude upon democratic governance. In the decades prior to the creation of a Lebanese republic in the 1920s, the region of Mount Lebanon had been incorporated into a European-dominated political economy through colonialism, emigration, and missionary-based education. This process of ‘modernization’ led not to the marginalization or demise of faith communities, but to the transformation of these communities – formed over centuries through doctrine, ritual, endogamy, and Ottoman policy – into discrete political constituencies vis-à-vis an emerging, quasi-independent Lebanese state. Today, myriad political actors continue to debate the legitimacy of sectarianism – that is, the involvement of confessional groups in political life, including the allocation of public services and resources. These debates, while especially acute in Lebanon, are indicative of the indeterminacy of struggles within all contemporary polities over the boundaries of private belief and public life.

12.2

IMAGINING THE PLACE OF RELIGION IN A SECULAR WORLD

Mainstream understandings of the place of religion in the modern state bear the imprint of liberal narratives that posit an inexorable march from tradition, irrationality, and tyranny to democracy. The fall of the Soviet Union lent particular credence to the idea of the forward pathway of history toward a secular, liberal modernity. In the midst of communism’s collapse, Francis Fukuyama (1989) famously argued that the world had reached the ‘end of the history’, the endpoint of humanity’s intellectual evolution. Societies worldwide, he suggested, had embraced the universal human desire for individual freedom and democracy, ridding themselves of totalitarian states and making themselves the authors of their own political destinies. Liberalism, Gauchet (1997) elaborated, had tamed religious passions and ethnic prejudices

134  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state and freed humans from the shackles of totalizing social orders; it alone was capable of protecting the individual’s moral autonomy amidst a pluralism of beliefs. With the liberal state triumphant, the obvious next step would be a post-national liberal order, in which the rights and freedoms associated with liberal citizenship would be decoupled from territorial states and made truly universal. This post-national order seemed just on the horizon in the 1990s with the deepening of European integration and the growing prominence of human rights discourses (e.g. Soysal 1994). This liberal triumphalism, however, was soon overtaken in the 1990s by outbreaks of religious fundamentalisms and violent ethno-nationalisms. Scholars scrambled to make sense of the perceived intrusion of religious and quasi-religious movements in the modern world. In The Revenge of God, for instance, Gilles Kepel (1994) attributed the rise of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish fundamentalisms globally to the failure of secular ideologies to deliver well-being to ordinary people. The utopian political projects of the twentieth century, he suggested, had been unable to deliver on their promises or to counteract the anomie, human misery, and spiritual emptiness wrought by modernity. Even before the Soviet collapse, religious movements like the Islamic Revolution in Iran had ‘transformed the confused reaction of their adherents to the ‘crisis of modernity’ into plans for rebuilding the world’ according to holy scripture (p. 191). While reactionary, Kepel insisted, these movements were wholly modern, drawing their leadership not from the ranks of traditional religious elites, but from educated middle classes who offered their own interpretations of sacred texts (also Juergensmeyer 1993; Taylor 2006). Samuel Huntington (1993) made similar observations about the demise of modern, secular political projects and the reappearance of religious identities and affiliations. Huntington, however, maintained that religion had always lurked below the surface of modern societies. Indeed, religion, according to Huntington, formed the basis of many of the world’s ‘civilizations’, which he defined as large, cultural blocs formed over centuries, each with wholly different conceptions of citizenship, authority, and liberty. Twentieth-century struggles between state authoritarianism and liberalism, he warned, would soon be eclipsed by global conflicts fought along religious-civilizational lines. Whether adopting Kepel’s view of a dramatic rejection of secular political ideologies by modern religious movements, or Huntington’s view of a more ‘natural’ and predicable return to indelible civilizational identities, scholars in the waning years of the twentieth century shared an overwhelming sense that the ‘unsecularization of the world’ (a phrase borrowed by Huntington from Catholic thinker George Weigel) was under way. Politics had changed course, the tide of history had been reversed, and faith in secular ideologies had been replaced by a more troubling set of political and cultural dynamics. These perspectives, while challenging the liberal triumphalism of the post-Cold War era, framed contemporary political dynamics as a reversal of a normal (and implicitly desirable) trajectory, thereby upholding an idealized conception of the public sphere as a space emptied of religious content. Western-liberal anxiety about religious militancy and the erosion of secularism soon became fixed on Muslim communities in Europe, who had become more visible and politically assertive in the 1980s and 1990s. An explosion of academic books, articles, and conferences at this time sought to decipher Islam and to address the ‘challenge’ posed by religious Muslims to liberal European societies (e.g. Cesari 2000; Roy 2004). While perhaps well meaning, the liberal response to Muslims in Europe, critics charged, had exposed the fiction of the liberal public sphere as an accessible, egalitarian space. As Butler (2008) observes, the tendency to pathologize Muslim immigrants follows a long-running pattern of exclusion and coercion

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  135 in liberal societies toward cultural and religious Others who fail to conform to ‘modern’ societal norms. In other words, despite claims of neutrality and universalism, liberal states validate particular religious-cultural norms and identities while marginalizing or denigrating others (Casanova 2009). This favouritism is most obvious where states continue to subsidize established churches (e.g. Britain and Germany), but it is also evident in states, like France and the United States, that have explicitly sought to separate religious and state authority. In the United States, for instance, a constitutional separation of church and state coexists with the public display of Christian piety, and it is wholly unremarkable for religious leaders (mainly Christian) to give benedictions at the start of legislative sessions and for politicians to invoke the country’s ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ in explaining policy positions (not surprisingly, an important political strategy of Muslim American organizations has been to reframe America’s religio-political heritage as Abrahamic rather than Judeo-Christian). Across Western contexts, dominant groups, regardless of the personal piety of their members, continue to designate ‘public space’ implicitly or explicitly as Christian, and to treat non-Christian practices and places of worship as fundamentally out of place (Naylor and Ryan 2002). As it has identified the biases that inhere in the liberal public sphere and public space, critical scholarship has also offered more sympathetic and nuanced readings of the relevance of piety and faith to people’s experiences, worldviews, and subjectivities, rejecting the premise that religious feeling and belief can simply be ‘checked at the door’ when one enters the public sphere (Gökarıksel and Secor 2015; Olson et al. 2012; Deeb 2006). Religion and spirituality in the modern world, even in the ostensibly secular West, is woven into everyday life, with many people making decisions and conducting their lives within moral and spiritual frameworks (e.g. Silvey 2007). Scholars note that young people from myriad faith traditions are especially keen to live spiritually authentic lives and to dispense with both the formalism and rigidity of traditional religious doctrine and the cultural baggage carried by parents (Naber 2005; Vincett et al. 2012). The desire for such authenticity shapes not only the inward, private lives of devout people, but also their daily social interactions within households, schools, workplaces, and city streets, intersecting at every turn with gender, ethnicity, class, and race (Es 2016). Secularist political values and faith-based convictions, in short, interact with one another, informing the claims, arguments, and sentiments that people individually and collectively bring to the public square (Bayat’s 2007 discussion of ‘post-Islamist’ politics in Muslim-majority countries illustrates this point). Entanglements between religious and secular institutions, morals, and norms inevitably blur categories like public and private, personal and the political (May et al. 2014). But even more importantly, they call attention to how we classify and categorize certain identities, stances, and practices as belonging to distinctive spheres of grounded human experience (cf. Tse 2014). Asad (1999) makes the insightful point that religion and the secular take shape in relation to each other: the concept of the secular is meaningful only in relation to religion, and religion only becomes identifiable as a discrete ‘thing’ in relation to the secular. Having imagined distinctive realms of private religiosity and secular governance and, in many cases, enshrined these realms in legal systems and modes of regulation, societies must continuously delineate the boundaries between them, rendering both of them intensely political. Debates in Britain over state funding of faith-based schools, which pit those who view such schools as exclusionary against those who see them as a legitimate means to achieve diversity, social cohesion, and choice, can be understood in this light (Dwyer and Parutis 2013). So, too, can recent tensions around the sale and consumption of alcohol in restaurants and cafes in Turkey,

136  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state where a growing pious middle class has challenged the dogmatic secularism of the Kemalist state (Gökarıksel and Secor 2015). Critical scholarship, then, helps us to move beyond the preoccupation with religious resurgence and the erosion of liberal democracy. The notion that religion has broken free of its liberal shackles takes for granted that there once was, or that there could be, a unitary public sphere emptied of religious content, and treats appeals to the sacred in public life (or the formation of religious publics) as an unexpected deviation from the path of secularization. As well, it obscures the co-production of the religion/secular binary. Critical scholarship urges that we interrogate the meanings, purposes, and outcomes that we assign to the categories of secular and religious. From this perspective, the question of whether religion is waxing or waning in its influence, or of whether we have entered a new post-secular age, is less important than how, in a given moment, multiple publics establish the validity of religious or non-religious ways of being and negotiate the coexistence of practices, norms, and public identities within the space of everyday life (Gökarıksel and Secor 2015).

12.3

SECTARIANISM, MULTI-CONFESSIONALISM, AND SECULARISM

Lebanon vividly illustrates the struggles within modern states to define the appropriate relationship between religious and secular identity and authority. Lebanon’s governing arrangements are highly unstable, and the country is often characterized in academic and popular literature as a failed state – a messy collection of confessional groups who have never managed to coalesce around a single vision of nationhood. To describe Lebanon as a failed state, however, is to assume a natural trajectory toward a modernity marked by the singularity of sovereignty and authority (for a critical discussion, see Fregonese 2012). The case of Lebanon demonstrates how state production is always incomplete, and how religion, as Butler (2008, p. 13) puts it, becomes a ‘field of contestation’ and ‘a discursive matrix for the articulation and disputation of values’ within the process of state formation. In its chronic instability, in other words, Lebanon throws into sharp relief how contests over the role of religious identity, belief, and practice in public life emerge from, and become woven into, the changing geographies of state power. If canonical accounts of modernization are based almost exclusively on idealized conceptions of Western European societies, a more critical understanding of secularization would begin by considering the experiences of non-Western contexts (Cannell 2010) and the transformation of non-Western systems of governance and authority, with their particular configurations of publicity and privacy, through encounters with European colonialism. The case of Lebanon draws our attention to the Ottoman Empire, which gained control over the Eastern Mediterranean in the early sixteenth century. The Ottomans fashioned their empire as the successor to the medieval Islamic caliphates, claiming authority over all Muslims and over Islam’s holiest sites. Yet the Ottomans ruled over an ethnically and religiously diverse population – diversity no more evident than in Mount Lebanon and the adjacent coastal provinces, which were home to a mix of Orthodox, Melchite, and Maronite Christians, Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, and Druzes (among others). The Empire recognized religious distinctions among its subjects, discriminating to some degree against non-Muslim communities, but granting significant communal autonomy to Jews and Christians on an array of matters (including

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  137 taxation, the punishment of criminals, and the adjudication of disputes). For the most part, however, power and authority on Mount Lebanon operated through local systems of elite dominance over peasant producers, and these systems had little to do with religious affiliation; and, indeed, religious identity among local elites in Mount Lebanon tended to be fluid, with local notables changing confession in order to forge new political alliances (Makdisi 2000). A sectarian way of thinking – in which membership in religious communities became understood as the basis of membership in a sovereign, territorial political community – began to take shape in the late 1830s, when the Ottoman state, under pressure from European powers, undertook a series of modernizing reforms, including the extension of political equality to all imperial subjects. Rather than generating a universalistic sense of citizenship, this move emboldened Mount Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic community, long the protegees of France, to challenge the traditional authority of their Druze overlords. The eruption of fighting in 1841 between Maronites and Druzes led the Ottomans, at the behest of Europe’s Great Powers, to divide Mount Lebanon along sectarian lines. Two decades later, in the midst of major economic transformation, conflict erupted again between Christians and Druzes, and European powers again intervened, this time insisting on the creation of a new, semi-autonomous region to be divided into six religiously homogenous administrative units and governed by a European-approved, Christian mutasarrif. As Makdisi has argued (2000), the infusion of sectarianism in the process of state formation in the Mount Lebanon region was not a deviation from the ‘normal’ secularizing course of modernity, but part and parcel of it. Whatever their secularist impulses at home, the European powers who sought control over the Eastern Mediterranean envisioned Mount Lebanon as an essentially Christian space, despite its obvious religious diversity. Europeans cultivated Mount Lebanon’s Christian character through the workings of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries, who encouraged local Christians to separate themselves from the corrupting influences of non-Christians and to purify their religious practices and belief (Europeans also encouraged a mythology of Mount Lebanon as a haven from Muslim oppression). Local elites, to be sure, were complicit in the transformation of confessional communities into political communities, representing themselves as ‘minorities’ in need of protection from Europe (White 2011). In the years following the First World War, Maronite leaders succeeded in carving out an independent Lebanese republic from the French mandate of Syria. Christian elites entered into a power sharing with (mainly Sunni) Muslim elites upon full independence from France in 1943; this unwritten agreement, known as the National Pact, divided key government positions and legislative seats according to sect. Within this new governing arrangement, individual personal status was linked to religious community, and matters of marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance were adjudicated by courts affiliated with religious communities (the Lebanese state officially recognizes 17 religious communities today, though not all of them rule on personal status matters). Throughout the independence period, Christian elites, along with their Druze and Muslim counterparts, paid lip service to the ideal of multi-confessional coexistence. This idea was represented in a national monument erected in the 1930s to memorialize a group of young nationalists – Christian, Muslim, and Druze – executed for treason by the Ottomans in 1916. The monument, which depicted a Muslim woman and a Christian woman kneeling together in shared grief, glossed over the conflicting nationalisms espoused by the young martyrs, which included secular concepts of peoplehood (watan) and the idea of a community of believers (ummah) (the monument also glossed over that some Lebanese

138  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state viewed the young ‘martyrs’ as traitors for conspiring with European powers against the Ottoman state) (Volk 2010). Secularist parties, including the Communist Party, provided a political alternative for those sceptical of the rhetoric of multi-confessional harmony. But sectarian politics, if anything, became more salient in the context of Cold War geopolitical rivalries and rapid economic and demographic change. Tensions between (Sunni) Muslims and (Maronite) Christians flared up in the 1970s over the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organization and led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975. With the end of the civil war in 1990, there was widespread agreement that sectarianism had brought catastrophe to Lebanon. Yet the peace negotiators, many of them members of the existing sectarian power structure, reinstated the National Pact, albeit with a shift in the balance of power toward Muslims and a nominal commitment to the future ‘de-confessionalization’ of the political system.

12.4

REWORKING CONFESSIONALISM IN POST-WAR LEBANON

Many of Lebanon’s pre-civil war elite families remain in power today, and most political parties continue to be aligned with confessional groups. But there are also new players on the scene who represent both new geopolitical alliances and novel understandings of the role of faith and religious identity in the public sphere. Most notable in this respect are Shi’a political organizations, Amal and Hizbullah. Shi’a communities had been largely sidelined by Lebanon’s Sunni and Christian elites during the Mandate period (though Shi’a elites had generally sided with Maronites in supporting an independent Lebanese state). Starting in the 1950s, many rural Shi’a were pushed out of southern Lebanon by the decline of the country’s agricultural sector and by conflict between Israel and Palestinian refugees. A sizeable segment of newly urbanized Shi’a Muslims were attracted to relatively socially diverse leftist-radical parties. But leftist parties were overshadowed in the 1970s by a new social movement led by a charismatic, Iranian-born, Shi’a cleric, Musa al-Sadr, who railed against the iniquities of Lebanese society. Al-Sadr was committed to intercommunal dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and his movement (like many political movements and organizations in Lebanon) officially rejected sectarianism; but his Movement of the Dispossessed was primarily a vehicle for the political empowerment of Lebanon’s Shi’a. Al-Sadr’s movement eventually coalesced into a political party and militia called Amal; Amal, in turn, was joined on the political scene in the 1980s by a more militant rival, Hizbullah (the Party of God), which is today the stronger of the two Shi’a-dominated parties (for detailed overviews, see Shanahan 2005). Hizbullah exemplifies the complex, shifting relationship between religion, governance, national identity, and state space in Lebanon. Hizbullah’s agenda and activities connect the political advancement of the Shi’a community to religious and social-civic reform. While usually labelled a terrorist organization by the United States because of its close relationship with Iran and its antagonism toward Israel, Hizbullah participates in the Lebanese parliament and sponsors a number of social welfare services, including hospitals, schools, and housing (see Cammett 2019). The organization enjoins its members to put their Islamic faith into action through volunteering and civic activism: to be a progressive, modernizing Shi’a Muslim is to be an active citizen, and to be an active citizen requires, above all, the transformation of social norms, including gender norms, across domestic and public realms (Deeb 2006). Hizbullah

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  139 has been dedicated to the advancement of the Shi’a, but it also proclaims its commitment to the Lebanese nation as a whole. Since the early 2000s, when its militia pushed out the occupying Israeli army from southern Lebanon, Hizbullah has styled itself as ‘the Resistance’ – a force uniquely capable of defeating Lebanon’s enemies. For older Lebanese accustomed to the overweening ambitions of the Maronite community, this new state of affairs – in which the once-downtrodden and quiescent Shi’a have become Lebanon’s protectors – has been a startling shift. While some welcome Hizbullah as an alternative to the feckless ruling elite, others fear the transformation of Lebanon into an Iranian-style theocracy. Hizbullah, as might be expected, rejects concerns about its Islamist designs, reiterating its commitment to Lebanese sovereignty and national unity. The contest among sectarian groups for political and territorial authority has played out in numerous ways in Lebanon’s built environment. Of particular importance has been the formation of Dahiya (Arabic for ‘suburb’) a large Shi’a-dominated district on the southern fringes of Beirut. While located on the periphery of the capital city, Dahiya in many ways is a new power centre with myriad transnational links both to Iran and to wealthy Shi’a diasporic communities in West Africa and Latin America. Hizbullah and other Shi’a powerbrokers have proven adept at the production of urban space, taking charge of the reconstruction of Dahiya after the Israeli bombing campaign of 2006, and facilitating the expansion of Shi’a space through the construction and subsidization of high-rise housing units in Dahiya’s outskirts. As Bou Akar (2018) observes, local Christians and Druzes describe the consolidation and expansion of the Shi’a community as an encroachment or invasion. Such contests over space and political power are not confined to the southern suburbs, but can be found throughout Beirut, where the sectarian allegiances of neighbourhoods are well marked through graffiti, makeshift memorials, religious symbols, and partisan banners (see Figure 12.1). As Bou Akar notes, ordinary people explain and justify the separateness between groups through the concept of b’ia – the idea that people are meant to live among those who are like themselves. The Lebanese military has positioned barricades, armoured vehicles, and soldiers where Shi’a and Sunni neighbourhoods meet to stave off what many believe to be inevitable warfare (Monroe 2016). In this context, the symbolic performance of multi-confessional harmony has become even more vital to maintaining political stability. One example of multi-confessionalism has been an annual gathering on 13 April of faith-group leaders on the steps of the National Museum (located on the Green Line that divided Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut during the civil war) to commemorate the end of hostilities and to pray together for intercommunal harmony. Symbols of multi-confessional coexistence have also been prominent in Beirut’s rebuilt central district, an exemplar of neoliberal urban redevelopment. The public–private downtown redevelopment agency, Solidere, has taken pains to preserve centuries-old Muslim and Christian places of worship in the downtown area, though one of its most publicized efforts has been the renovation of Beirut’s main synagogue. Beirut’s Jewish community is now virtually non-existent, so the renovation of the synagogue appears to be an entirely symbolic gesture designed to signify Lebanon’s tolerant, cosmopolitan past and future. Another effort to recover and to promote tolerance and diversity in the city centre is the Garden of Forgiveness, described by Solidere as a place of contemplation, reflection, and healing in the aftermath of the civil war. Descriptions of the garden invariably highlight the involvement of myriad faith leaders in planning the garden and the siting of the garden amidst Muslim and Christian houses of worship.

140  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Note: Religious statuary and symbols, along with partisan flags and banners, mark the sectarian identities of Beirut’s neighbourhoods. Source: Caroline Nagel, 2011.

Figure 12.1

A statue of the Virgin Mary on a street corner in the fashionable, predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Badaro

Such efforts to encode religious cosmopolitanism in the urban landscape are viewed with scepticism by non-elite Lebanese who cannot afford the high-end shops, restaurants, and condominiums that dominate the Solidere development (providing, ironically, a rare moment of agreement among Lebanese of different confessional backgrounds). Discourses of multi-confessional harmony in the city centre appear all the more dubious following the construction of the massive, neo-Ottoman Muhammed al-Amin mosque by the powerful Sunni Hariri family (Rafiq Hariri was the founder of Solidere and Lebanon’s prime minister from 1992 to 1998, and 2000 to 2004; he was assassinated in 2005 and is now interred at the mosque). For some, the mosque is a vulgar monument to Sunni power that is out of place among the city centre’s much smaller-scale historical churches and mosques. The Maronite Patriarch’s decision to build a campanile for his cathedral to match the height of the mosque’s minarets casts further doubt on the prospect of multi-confessional harmony through the reconstruction of Beirut’s city centre (see Hamdan 2017). While multi-confessionalism is undoubtedly an elite discourse used to market Beirut’s rebuilt city centre, the idea of coexistence does genuinely appeal to some elements of civil society. The annual 13 April commemoration of the civil war, for instance, was initiated not by sectarian leaders, but by a philanthropic peace organization called Offre Joie, or Farah al Ataa (the ‘Joy of Giving’). Formed by a group of friends from different religious backgrounds

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  141 during the civil war, Offre Joie describes itself as ‘non-political’ and ‘non-confessional’, though clearly it has a political vision of Lebanon as a multi-confessional nation-state in which religious identities and values have an important role in public life and citizenship. The group’s core belief is that religious diversity can and should be an asset to Lebanon, and that the Lebanese, as a religiously plural nation, have a responsibility to demonstrate to the rest of the world the possibility of coexistence – of an organic coexistence typified by the pilgrimage of both Christians and Muslims to the colossal shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon near Beirut. Toward these ends, Offre Joie has sponsored summer camps, peace marches, mural-painting activities, and housing-rehabilitation projects that are designed to foster national unity around the reality of religious differences (see Figure 12.2).

Note: Such murals can be found in Beirut and other Lebanese cities, usually in areas experiencing sectarian conflict. Offre Joie advocates a vision of Lebanon as a pluralistic, multi-faith national community. Source: Lynn Staeheli, 2012.

Figure 12.2

Murals commissioned by the non-governmental organization Offre Joie (Farah al Ataa), such as the peace dove with the Lebanese cedar

Still, not all activists view multi-confessionalism as a remedy to sectarian divisiveness. The contemporary secular/anti-sectarian movement is a relatively loose collection of activists, many of them students or members of the educated middle class – groups that have long bristled against patronage politics and the lack of a universal civil status (which has made it almost impossible for heterosexual couples of mixed religious backgrounds to marry in Lebanon). Elements of this movement have been influenced by Western donor organizations, which have funded scores of non-governmental organizations since the civil war in order to counterbalance Hizbullah and other religious ‘extremists’. A key strategy of donors and

142  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state non-governmental organizations in reformulating national identity and citizenship has been to promote activism around ostensibly non-political issues like the environment and municipal services (Nagel and Staeheli 2015). Indeed, such issues have become a rallying point for activists opposed to the sectarian political system. When the failure of the municipal government to respond to the closure of a major landfill led to a massive pile-up of uncollected garbage in Beirut, thousands of people took to the street in ‘You Stink’ demonstrations, calling out the state’s ineptitude and corruption and demanding an end to sectarian patronage systems. Observers of the garbage crisis in Beirut have commented on the havoc created by the sectarian system, suggesting more or less explicitly that Lebanon has veered off the path of political modernity, and that the ‘normal’ processes of secularization have been stunted by unhealthy primordial attachments to religious community (a recent example is Eddé 2019). Yet a critical understanding of secularization suggests that Lebanon’s problems are better understood in terms of the unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) dilemmas of modernity.

12.5 CONCLUSIONS At the time this chapter went to press, Beirut was once again in the throes of large demonstrations against political corruption. These explicitly non-/anti-sectarian protests were sparked by the government’s decision to tax calls made through WhatsApp, but protestors also expressed deep dissatisfaction with weak or non-existent public services (including daily electricity shut-offs) and the country’s looming debt crisis. For many of these protestors, secularism is the remedy for the fractious sectarianism that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war for the past two decades. But the political project of secularism requires the reification of religion – the treatment of religion as something separate from other things, and therefore manageable and controllable. In this sense, secularism creates and re-creates the problem of religion that it then seeks to solve through various accommodations and strictures. Far from being ensconced in a separate private realm, religion becomes inescapably politicized. While Lebanon’s travails have been particularly noteworthy, all states struggle to varying degrees to establish the appropriate place of religion in public life, and vice versa: to what extent should religious authorities involve themselves in ‘political’ matters and should state authorities wade into religious disputes? To what extent should people be guided in civic behaviour by faith and spiritual beliefs? Is it legitimate for religious communities to mobilize as political communities? Is religion a source of division or of civic unity? Even in the most functional of liberal democracies, these questions can never be fully or definitively answered. Scholarly discussions of the politics of religion have often taken a reflexively liberal position by taking for granted a distinction between the secular and the sacred, and public and private. It is the idealization of a secular, universalistic, liberal public sphere that has framed discussions of sectarianism in Lebanon, as well as anxieties in Western societies about Islamic fundamentalism and Muslim minority groups. Today, decades after the end of the Cold War, scholars still seem taken aback by the ‘reappearance’ of religion in public life and the renewed salience of religious identities in public debate. The increasing attention paid to religious phenomena is perhaps understandable given steep declines in formal religious affiliation in Western liberal democracies. But the existence of the secular has never hinged on the absence of religion so much as the conceptualization of

The ‘problem’ of religion in the secular state  143 religion as a distinctive realm of human action – an object worthy of analysis and regulation. In studying the role of religion in the formation and conduct of states, what we study is the ongoing production of myriad binaries – the sacred and the profane, faith and reason, public and private, political and spiritual – that take shape in the material spaces of our everyday lives. These are formations, not static, immutable realities. From this perspective, entanglements of religion and politics are not aberrations or deviations from the normal course of modernity. Rather, they are at the heart of the modern state.

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Asad, T. (1999), ‘Religion, nation-state, secularism’, in P. van der Veer and H. Lehmann (eds), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 178–96. Bayat, A. (2007), Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bou Akar, H. (2018), For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bruce, S. (2006), ‘Secularization and the impotence of individualized religion’, Hedgehog Review 8 (1–2), 35–46. Butler, J. (2008), ‘Sexual politics, torture, and secular time’, British Journal of Sociology, 59 (1), 1–23. Cammett, M. (2019), ‘Lebanon, the sectarian identity test lab’, The Century Foundation Report, accessed on 8 August 2019 at https://​tcf​.org Cannell, F. (2010), ‘The anthropology of secularism’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 85–100. Casanova, J. (2009), ‘The secular and secularisms’, Social Research, 76 (4), 1049–66. Cesari, J. (2000), ‘Islam in European cities’, in S. Body-Gendrot and M. Martiniello (eds), Minorities in European Cities, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 88–99. Clark, J. (2012), ‘Secularization and modernization: The failure of a “grand narrative”’, Historical Journal, 55 (1), 161–94. Deeb, L. (2006), An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dwyer, C. and V. Parutis (2013), ‘“Faith in the system”? State-funded faith schools in England and the contested parameters of community cohesion’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 (2), 267–84. Eddé, D. (2019), ‘“The compatibility of opposites”: A portrait of Lebanon’, New York Review of Books, 19 June, accessed on 24 March 2020 at www​.nybooks​.com/​daily/​2019/​06/​19/​the​-compatibility​-of​ -opposites​-a​-portrait​-of​-lebanon/​ Es, M. (2016), ‘Turkish–Dutch mosques and the formation of moral subjects’, Social and Cultural Geography, 17 (7), 825–48. Fregonese, S. (2012), ‘Beyond the “weak state”: Hybrid sovereignties in Beirut’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (4), 655–74. Fukuyama, F. (1989), ‘The end of history?’, National Interest, 16 (Summer), 3–18. Gauchet, M. (1997), The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gökarıksel, B. and A. Secor (2015), ‘Post-secular geographies and the problem of pluralism: Religion and everyday life in Istanbul, Turkey’, Political Geography, 46, 21–30. Habermas, J. (1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Boston, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2006), ‘Religion in the public sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy, 14 (1), 1–25. Hamdan, A. (2017), ‘Sites of memory in Lebanon: The Hariri Mosque in Martyrs Square’, in N.S. Nikro and S. Hegasy (eds), The Social Life of Memory, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145–68. Huntington, S. (1993), ‘The clash of civilizations’, Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), 22–49.

144  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Juergensmeyer, M. (1993), The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kepel, G. (1994), The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World, State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Makdisi, U. (2000), The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. May, S., E. Wilson, C. Baumgart-Ochse, and F. Sheikh (2014), ‘The religious as political and the political as religious: Globalisation, post-secularism and the shifting boundaries of the sacred’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, 15 (3), 331–46. Monroe, K. (2016), The Insecure City: Space, Power, and Mobility in Beirut, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Naber, N. (2005), ‘Muslim first, Arab second: A strategic politics of race and gender’, Muslim World, 95, 479–95. Nagel, C. and L. Staeheli (2015), ‘NGOs and the making of youth citizenship in Lebanon’, in K. Kallio, S. Mills, and T. Skelton (eds), Politics, Citizenship, and Rights, Singapore: Springer, pp. 497–514. Naylor, S. and J.R. Ryan (2002), ‘The mosque in the suburbs: Negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London’, Social and Cultural Geography, 3 (1), 39–59. Olson, E., P. Hopkins, R. Pain, and G. Vincett (2012), ‘Retheorizing the postsecular present: Embodiment, spatial transcendence, and challenges to authenticity among young Christians in Glasgow, Scotland’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103 (6), 1421–36. Roy, O. (2004), Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, New York: Columbia University Press. Shanahan, R. (2005), The Shi’a of Lebanon: Clans, Parties, and Clerics, New York: IB Tauris. Silvey, R. (2007), ‘Mobilizing piety: Gendered morality and Indonesian–Saudi transnational migration’, Mobilities, 2 (2), 219–29. Soysal, Y. (1994), The Limits to Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, C. (2006), ‘Religious mobilizations’, Public Culture, 18 (2), 281–300. Taylor, C. (2010), ‘The meaning of secularism’, Hedgehog Review, 12 (3), 23–34. Tse, J. (2014), ‘Grounded theologies: “Religion” and the “secular” in human geography’, Progress in Human Geography, 38 (2), 201–20. Vincett, G., E. Olson, P. Hopkins, and R. Pain (2012), ‘Young people and the performance of Christianity in Scotland’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 27 (2), 275–90. Volk, L. (2010), Monuments and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. White, B. (2011), The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in Mandate Syria, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wilford, J. (2010), ‘Sacred archipelagos: Geographies of secularization’, Progress in Human Geography, 34 (3), 328–48.

13. Building nations/building states/building cities: concrete symbols of identity Benjamin Forest and Sarah Moser

13.1 INTRODUCTION The design of cities, monuments, and other urban features has been intertwined with nation building, politics, and the construction of identity since antiquity. Cities have always been an important medium through which the powerful communicate ideology and aspirations to domestic and foreign audiences (Vale 2008). Arguably, rapid urbanization, industrialization, the development of planning as a scientific discipline, and the creation of new states, particularly following the decline of European colonization, intensified this role over the last two centuries. Ruling elites designated particular cities or monuments to be concrete symbols of the state or nation, a process that strategically and selectively showcases dominant narratives while silencing others. This process continues today, and as the geographies of the state change, urban geographies change with them. In important ways, patterns in the Global North and Global South have diverged in the last 50 years, with the former turning away from state-directed planning while countries in the latter have embraced the long-standing practice of nation building through city building. Moreover, states in the South – particularly China – are using ‘new cities’ not just as tools of economic development and national solidarity but as a way to extend and redefine spaces of geopolitical influence. From antiquity to the pre-industrial era, ruling elites used the design of cities to establish political legitimacy, often through connecting their rule to the spiritual realm, and to send a signal of power to both their subjects and rivals. Indeed, the practice of using cities to embody symbolic relationships and identities is common to all city-building cultures (e.g., Duncan 1990; Natcher et al. 2013). In ancient Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South and Southeast Asia, the design of many cities was a manifestation of religious beliefs and served to perpetuate social hierarchies through concentric designs that segregated based on caste (Dutt 2009; Fritz 1986; Parish 1997). In the Americas, Mayans designed cities throughout their empire to embody cosmological concepts and political ideology (Ashmore and Sabloff 2002; Šprajc 2018). Ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese, and other empires employed urban planning principles as a means both of social control and to distinguish between the ‘civilized’ colonizer and their colonial subjects (Glover 2008; Home 2013; Nightingale 2012). The solidification of the global political system around nation-states rather than empires in the twentieth century meant that urban landscapes were increasingly used to represent national identity rather than just symbols of state or imperial power. As Ernest Gellner (1997), among others, reminds us, the industrial cities of nineteenth-century Europe were crucibles of new national identities as previously rural populations were shaped by new economic and demographic forces. Industrialization and colonialism gave states unprecedented power to shape urban environments, and through them, to construct new national identities. These national 145

146  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state identities were not merely spontaneous by-products, but were actively shaped by states seeking to cultivate political solidarity through the construction of grand civic and cultural buildings or monuments to historical figures or abstract ideals (Sidaway and Mayell 2007). In the post-colonial era, states in the Global South have adopted many of the same techniques in attempts to cultivate national identities of their own.

13.2

THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF PLANNING, EMPIRE BUILDING, AND COLONIAL POWER

Urban planning as a profession emerged during the intense period of European nation building in the nineteenth century. Early capitals like Washington, DC and Paris (among the earliest modern states) were designed as mnemonic devices, as a display of power, and used classical urban referencing to legitimize state power. Later in the century, professionalization also gave European planners an unprecedented opportunity to experiment with planning cities and capitol complexes while showcasing the power of the empire and to exert new forms of control over their colonized subjects (Nightingale 2012). Conventional histories of urban planning typically trace its modern origin to Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s (Hall 2002; Relph 1987). The construction of broad, straight boulevards through the medieval streetscape was meant to aid in the social control of the city’s population, and as a public health measure, but was also a statement of power by the Second Empire’s government over the city’s rebellious population. Harvey (2006) argues that the reconstruction and other associated developments were driven by the need to reorganize both urban space and social relations to accommodate France’s emerging industrial capitalist economy. He writes: a new scale of action and thinking had also been defined that was difficult to reverse. This was nowhere better represented than in the transformation of Les Halles [the city’s main market], because it was not simply a matter of the scale of individual buildings and of architectural style, but of a ‘new concept of commercial urbanism’ that amounted to the production and engineering of a whole quarter of the city given over to a single function. The effect was to produce a whole new city texture. (Harvey 2006, pp. 100–101)

Scholars may disagree about the consequence and implications of Haussmann’s project – if its ideas represented a sharp break with the past or continuity with the grand symmetries of ancient imperial cities; if it was ultimately a liberalizing force or the effort of a conservative regime; the degree to which it was a blueprint for subsequent urban planning, etc. – but it is generally seen as the first time the physical and social power of modern industrialism was harnessed to deliberately reshape an urban landscape. In many ways, the American City Beautiful movement (1890s–1900s), with its emphasis on visual appearance and monumentality over quotidian infrastructure and the top-down methods required for implementation, is the closest inheritor of Haussmann’s approach. This program, credited to the architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett working in late nineteenth-century Chicago, called for the (re)construction of cities with wide boulevards to create dramatic sightlines focused on classically inspired, grand civic buildings (Peterson 1976; Smith 2006). City Beautiful designs were, however, impractical for industrial cities and did little to address issues like affordable housing, so that its greatest impact tended to be

Building nations/building states/building cities  147 on civic centers and capital cities (Gordon 1998). Nonetheless, as Wilson (1989) argues, the movement sought to reshape the identities of urban residents. At first glance, modernist urban design, particularly that associated with Swiss architect and tireless self-promoter Le Corbusier, seems diametrically opposed to the City Beautiful movement (Hall 2002). Le Corbusier’s famous maxim that ‘a house is a machine for living in’ encapsulates his purported emphasis on function over form and his embrace of industrialism (Saeter 2011). Proceeding from basic assumptions about the function of urban infrastructure, he proposed cities of tall, uniform towers in huge, geometric blocks, linked by automobile-only freeways. Such designs, like his ‘Plan Voisin’ for Paris, he claimed, would eliminate congestion and create vast stretches of open green space among his towering buildings. Such ideas, and Le Corbusier himself, reached the peak of their influence in the mid-twentieth century, but subsequent evaluations have not been kind. Peter Hall (2002, p. 238) writes for example, that ‘the evil that Le Corbusier did lives after him’. Modernist principles are blamed for a host of social ills associated with racially segregated public housing in the United States (US), the prioritization of cars, placeless architecture, etc. Whether these criticisms are fair or not is a complex question, but the dismal failure of so many modernist designs to produce attractive, healthy, and vibrant urban environments highlights how much of Le Corbusier’s work was – like the City Beautiful movement – based on visual aesthetics. The key for Le Corbusier was that his designs looked orderly, rational, and functional, not that they actually produced orderly, rational, functional cities, and by extension, orderly and rational urban residents. Seen in this light, both City Beautiful and modernist designs show considerable continuity with the Haussmann tradition. Both embraced top-down, comprehensive planning and the idea that urban design was a tool for social engineering that could reshape residents’ identities. In the post-Second World War era, newly independent states seized on modernist design as a means to assert independence from colonial legacies and to build new national identities (Perera 2006; Shaw 2009). Such modernist cities could be potent symbols – the literal (re) construction of a nation’s environment that was both forward-looking and distinct from colonial architectural traditions. In these respects, Brasília (Brazil’s capital city built in the late 1950s), Chandigarh (the new capital of Punjab built after the 1947 India–Pakistan partition), and Islamabad (the capital of Pakistan started several years after the India–Pakistan partition) are exemplary cases. These three cases were major post-independence efforts to use new cities built from scratch to craft identity and broadcast aspirations, while symbolically cutting ties with the colonial past through the language of international modernism. All three are seats of political power designed in the motor age at great expense, and they succeeded in attracting global attention by hiring internationally known ‘starchitects’ to create cities dotted with iconic state buildings and civic spaces that sought to be futuristic, democratic, and architecturally sophisticated. Ironically, however, these cities are perhaps best understood as heirs to the colonial grandeur of New Delhi, Kolkata, Singapore, Yangon, and other imperial cities. Viewed in this light, Brasília, Chandigarh, and Islamabad use the language of modernism and were designed with modern technology in mind but remained grand attempts to represent and embody state power and national identity in urban form. Such cities employed a common set of symbols that circulated through professional planning communities, the members of whom worked internationally in the late colonial era (Njoh 2008; Home 2013) and remained active in the post-colonial period (Harris and Moore 2013).

148  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

13.3

CONTRADICTIONS: URBAN PLANNING AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

There are apparent contradictions in the history just described. First, Brazil, India, and Pakistan turned to principles originating in Europe for the nation-building designs of Brasília, Chandigarh, and Islamabad. Second, Le Corbusier’s modernism was (ostensibly) forward-looking and rational, whereas (conventionally) national ties are backwards-looking and affective. Finally, Haussmann’s reconstruction was done for Napoleon III in France. As in all royal regimes, political solidarity was based on loyalty to the monarchy, not on a sense of national commonality. How could such urban planning ideas be the basis of national identity building? In important ways, urban planning movements in the twentieth century always had international dimensions, with organizations and networks devoted to promoting designs globally (Freestone 2007; Geertse 2016). While Brasília’s design reflected modernist principles, its three principal planners were Brazilian, making the city simultaneously a national and international project. Indeed, urban planning programs have remarkable degrees of ideological flexibility. Modernism was also adopted, for example, as a style emblematic of Québec nationalism in the 1960s (Nerbas 2015) and by many other post-colonial states that saw modernism as a break with the humiliations of the past. The control that comprehensive urban planning offers – and the accompanying promise of economic development – makes it attractive to political elites as a technique of state power. In many ways, the designs themselves may be beside the point; elites can adapt available planning principles and designs in flexible ways to build national solidarity. Indeed, Brazil’s mid-century national ideology was explicitly futuristic, a pointed contrast to ‘traditional’ European nationalism. If comprehensive planning itself offers a general technique for nation building, the symbolic content of monuments and memorials are highly specific (Gillis 1994). For example, Haussmann served Second Empire France, but his work was directly followed by the French Third Republic (starting in 1870). This regime returned to a conventional nation-state model, where political solidarity was once again based on national identity, rather than loyalty to a monarch. This was the era of ‘statuemania’, which was a time of intense national-identity building in France (Hobsbawm 1995, p. 12) and elsewhere in Europe, both by existing states cultivating a sense of shared political solidarity among their populations, and by ethnic groups fighting to establish their own states (Gellner 1997). Nation-building strategies typically included the standardization of language, creation of ‘national’ literary and artistic cultures, the establishment of ‘national’ museums (Bennett 1995; Hobsbawm 1983) – and the construction of grand, heroic ‘national’ monuments and memorials (Johnson 1995). All of these efforts sought to create what Pierre Nora (1989) describes as lieux de memoire (places of memory), or places and practices that would embody the history of a nation. Imposing monuments, typically of a military or political leader, were perhaps the most common example through the start of the twentieth century (Atkinson and Cosgrove 1998; Johnson 1994). Their placement in prominent locations, typically in public space near the center of capital cities, reflected their symbolic importance. The use of grand monuments to build national identity and solidarity thus more or less coincided with the origin of comprehensive urban planning, both being responses to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in

Building nations/building states/building cities  149 Europe and North America. Indeed, grand city designs themselves could be seen as a kind of national monument and provided a way to create symbolic centers showcasing national heroes.

13.4

MONUMENTS AND PLANNING THROUGH THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

As the twentieth century progressed, comprehensive urban planning and conventional monument styles both faced challenges. While their evolutions were not necessarily causally related, they both reflected tensions between efforts by states to direct social and economic development and a growing list of failures that fed doubts about their wisdom and ability to do so (Scott 1998). Particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, the relatively powerful position of civil society vis-à-vis the state in Europe and North America made it difficult to pursue lavish nation-building projects, whereas in more authoritarian states, particularly those with resource wealth, grand urban projects continue to have widespread support. The same modernist principles used by Brazil and India were applied in the US for urban renewal and public housing projects in the 1950s. Critics including Jane Jacobs (1961) and Richard Sennett (1970) soon pointed to the failure of these plans to produce livable urban environments. Conventional wisdom emerged that – fairly or not – blamed the fiascos on both modernist design itself and on centralized planning. The construction of vast swaths of uniform, modernist-style high-rises in Soviet bloc countries also helped to solidify the association of state-directed, comprehensive planning with political oppression in the United Kingdom and US. As market-oriented, neoliberal policies took hold in the late 1970s and early 1980s in these countries, government planning became focused on smaller-scale outcomes, even as cities were increasingly reshaped by privately planned ‘mega-projects’ such as the London Docklands (Butler 2007; Diaz Orueta and Fainstein 2008; Merrifield 1993). Over roughly the same period, the style and, to a degree, the purpose of national monuments in Europe and the US also moved from grand and imposing to small-scale and modest. The emphasis on memorializing ‘great leaders’ to build national identity largely gave way to more generalized war memorials following the First World War, including the new idea of commemorating common soldiers in a Tomb of the Unknown (Blair et al. 2011; Wittman 2011). Although the war discredited romantic portrayals of warfare as a glorious pursuit, it proved to be a potent symbol for national identities rooted in loss, sacrifice, and unity, particularly among countries in the British Commonwealth (Cook 2017; Gough and Morgan 2004; McDonald 2017; McKay and Swift 2016). In turn, the Second World War and the experience of the Holocaust challenged the practice of using memorials of any kind as a tool of nation building in Western Europe and North America. In the post-war period, the central challenge for Holocaust memorialization was seen as one of representing absence or loss (Apel 2014; Young 1993). The 1982 US Vietnam Veterans Memorial established a new genera of both war and ‘loss’ memorials by listing the individual names of the war dead and by subverting traditional heroic monument forms (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). Indeed, in the late twentieth century, ‘counter-monuments’ became perhaps the most common memorial form (Stevens et al. 2012). A counter-monument is one – like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – that is designed in deliberate contrast with grand monument styles, or which is placed in ‘dialogue’ with an existing monument in ways that challenge the original’s meaning.

150  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The influence of counter-monuments was evident as both publics and political elites in Central and East Europe sought to redefine their national identities in the 1990s. Soviet memorials tended toward the grand, imposing, and monumental, so erecting modest and even playful memorials provided an obvious contrast (Forest and Johnson 2002). In 1996, for example, the Hungarian government erected an approachable, life-sized statue of Imre Nagy, the leader of the failed 1956 rebellion, as a counter-monument to the Red Army monolith in Budapest.1 The memorial to the Velvet Revolution in Prague installed in 1990 is a modest sculpture of a set of hands reaching toward the viewer at shoulder height. The Russian non-governmental organization Memoriál even installed a small, abstract memorial to victims of the Solovki gulag in Moscow across from KGB headquarters a year before the break-up of the Soviet Union. Consequently, through the mid-1990s in Europe and North America, it seemed that both urban planning and public memory had, broadly speaking, emerged at a similar point. Large-scale, state-directed plans, whether for cities or for national identity, had fallen from favor in ‘the west’, replaced by small-scale, often private projects. The bloody break-up of Yugoslavia also served as a cautionary lesson in Europe about the dangers of exclusionary national histories. Insofar as national identity building was seen as a state project, the preferred approach seemed to be one of modesty and human-scale accomplishments. The pattern in the 1990s and after is quite different outside Europe and North America, however. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in former colonies, the state took a central role in ushering in an era of urban mega-developments on an unprecedented scale. New cities built from scratch, new development zones and Special Economic Zones, new capital cities, and other projects conceived to advance economic and nation-building objectives have since proliferated across the Global South. The projects are intended to attract foreign investment, showcase states’ technical capabilities, and ‘leapfrog’ economies from agriculture and resource extraction and into the ‘knowledge economy’, often while valorizing the history, culture, and religion of the dominant national group.

13.5

MONUMENTALISM REDUX

As government-guided, comprehensive urban planning fell from favor in the late twentieth century in Europe and the US, states turned from a focus on physical infrastructure to one on ‘image’ and ‘place branding’. That is, urban landscapes and major events became a means to define the identity of cities through visual spectacle, and in that sense continued the practices associated with the City Beautiful and modernist movements (Gotham 2011; Ley and Olds 1988; Paul 2004). The use of cities as spectacle was also adopted by states outside the developed world, as strategies of economic growth and identity building (Koch 2018; Wade 2019; Wu et al. 2016). In that respect, ‘monumentalism’ in urban planning did not disappear but rather transformed and migrated. The use and style of monumentalism for memorials display a similar pattern. With only an occasional exception (i.e., the Solovki memorial), human-scale memorialization in the post-Soviet sphere was confined to Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast, Russia and states in Central Asia continued using the grand monumental style favored by the Soviet Union, even adapting some former Soviet monuments as national symbols (Forest and Johnson 2002; Koch 2010). Indeed, newly independent Kazakhstan built a new capital city, Astana, in a bid to cultivate a dual Kazakh and modern identity in contrast to a Soviet/Russian one (Koch 2014).

Building nations/building states/building cities  151 Like the City Beautiful, modernist, and Garden City movements, these more recent efforts are embedded in an international network of planners and draw on prior grand projects as models (Koch 2013; Koch and Valiyev 2015).

13.6

NEW CITIES, NEW IDENTITIES

In the post-colonial era, the number of new cities dramatically increased as former colonies sought to distance themselves from their colonizers and forge a new identity to reflect post-independence ambitions. There are three main (often overlapping) categories of new city projects that are driven by nation and state building. First, new capital cities are created to demonstrate the ruling elite’s capacity to marshal labor and resources and the technical skills to execute a complicated mega-development (Rossman 2017; Vale 2008). Cities built as seats of power project an identity or national narrative that rejects aspects of the past to tell a story about new allegiances and configurations of power. Naypyidaw, the new capital of Myanmar, for example, embodies religious imagery and cosmological principles as a way for leaders to legitimize their power by associating themselves closely with Buddhism (Seekins 2009). These new capital cities frequently engage with a selective version of the past through architectural spectacles that use a particular historical style, either to highlight the legacy of one religious or ethnic group or associate themselves vicariously with a distant land perceived as powerful, prestigious, and – in the case of several new cities in Southeast Asia – ‘authentically Islamic’. Putrajaya, Malaysia’s new capital started in the mid-1990s, has adopted an imported architectural vocabulary that draws on various classic sources of Islamic architecture including Arab, Moorish, Ottoman, Mughal, Persian, and Central Asian. The decision to adopt exclusively foreign styles in Putrajaya positions local Malay Islam as less sophisticated and less ‘authentic’ than imported Islam (Moser 2012). Prior to starting construction on Putrajaya, several oil palm plantations were purchased and cleared of all Hindu laborers and several dozen Hindu shrines and temples were destroyed or relocated outside the boundaries of what would become the new capital (Moser, 2018). Putrajaya projects a religiously exclusive national identity, marking a departure from more inclusive efforts of prior decades of Malaysian nation building. Similarly, Nusajaya, a new state capital in Malaysia, embodies a ‘pure’ Islamic identity, with the city plan being the first in the world to be oriented towards Mecca. Likewise, Dompak, a new capital city of a recently formed province of Indonesia, has also adopted an Islamic image in defiance of the multicultural local population and serves to physically and symbolically exclude non-Muslims (Wilbur 2020). Putrajaya, Nusajaya, and Dompak evoke a pre-colonial past that is ‘authentically Muslim’ and reject the multiculturalism promoted in official state rhetoric. The three cities can be seen as the epitome of Malaysia and Indonesia’s ethnocracy, a policy that privileges Malay Muslims over non-Malays/non-Muslims (Koch et al. 2018; Yiftachel and Yacobi 2003). Second, new cities play important roles in nation building when they are created as engines of growth to advance national economic agendas, are used as a national rebranding strategy, a signal that a country welcomes foreign investment. King Abdullah Economic City plays an important role in the effort to transform Saudi Arabia’s image as an ultraconservative oil-producing kingdom with draconian laws to a modern country that is (comparatively) economically and socially liberal and entrepreneurial (Moser et al. 2015). New cities with a clear economic function are often conceived as a way to emulate the success of Silicon

152  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Valley by investing heavily in infrastructure that will attract international corporations, particularly those focused on technological research and development. Many new cities seek to transform national economies from agriculture or light manufacturing to a digital economy through an urban information technology hub that will spark a national economic revolution (Bunnell 2004; Das 2012; Datta 2015, 2018; Kanna 2011). States also use new city projects in nationalistic rhetoric to justify the expropriation of land, the expulsion of poor residents, and massive state investment. For example, in Yachay City of Knowledge in Ecuador, the state adopted the Indigenous language in the name of the city (‘yachay’ means knowledge in the Indigenous Quechua language) and Indigenous philosophy in the city’s marketing materials. Yachay is emblematic of state officials’ aspirations for a new Ecuador: it was to become the ‘Silicon Valley of Latin America’ and transform the economy (Childs and Hearn 2016) while also embodying socialist and Indigenous values. While Yachay failed to live up to the state’s ambitious and unrealistic promises (Vega-Villa 2017), many other states, including Kenya, Morocco, and Malaysia, still promote new high-tech cities as a key national development strategy. Third, in some new city projects, nation and state building are intertwined with geopolitics. The creation of new cities can normalize one state’s claim over disputed territory, a strategy that is difficult to reverse. New Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a display of Israeli power that support expansion beyond the United Nations-sanctioned Green Line. Beitar Illit, the largest and fastest-growing settlement in the West Bank with a population of nearly 60,000, is one of many settlements that ostensibly provide housing for Israel’s expanding population and provide a protective buffer around Jerusalem. The massive fortified urban communities springing up along hilltops and ridges in the West Bank are a powerful visual symbol to Palestinians that Israel is able to seize control over their territory against international law. Settlements such as Beitar Illit project an image of urban fortification and a sense of permanence and provocation while reifying beliefs enshrined in national ideology and Israeli state policy (Hughes 2017; Thirkell 2015). Other new city projects meld nation and state building in ways that challenge internationally accepted territorial boundaries and contribute to a disassembling of national territory. A new city is currently being constructed by Morocco in the disputed Western Sahara territory to consolidate control of the region, a move seen as highly provocative to residents of the territory. Similarly, the largest Chinese foreign investment is in Forest City, a new city project being constructed on artificial islands in Malaysian territorial waters. While it is billed simply as a real estate project (albeit a massive one), Forest City’s location is a strategic choke point in one of the world’s busiest shipping channels. Moreover, Malaysia has made significant concessions of sovereignty for the project, including accepting a ban on Malaysian police and military. As such, Forest City is a de facto expansion of Chinese territory into another country, and exemplifies the geopolitical entanglements of new cities and how they are important vehicles for colonialism and nation and state building (Moser 2018).

13.7 CONCLUSION Cities have long been an important focus for nation and state building because they serve as vast public stages upon which to dazzle and showcase ideology, establish and normalize claims over land, and instill a sense of national pride. Such monumental grandeur is intended

Building nations/building states/building cities  153 to intimidate and inspire, while normalizing power relations. As states in the Global South seek economic development and consolidate national identities at home, and increase their geopolitical power, they have turned to this traditional method. These new urban geographies are consequently really manifestations of new state geographies, and have important economic, cultural, and political consequences beyond city boundaries. In the modern era, the relationship between nation/state building and cities intensified as industrialization provided unprecedented wealth, technology, and political motivations, and as urban planning developed into a profession with international networks that facilitated the diffusion of techniques, styles, and symbolic vocabularies. In Europe and North America, large-scale urban planning coincided with nation-building efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period, states also favored grand monument designs, typically in major cities, that promoted solidarity and valorized sacrifice for the nation. The grand scale of both efforts saw significant declines in the second half of the twentieth century in developed, democratized countries, as critics and civil society successfully challenged the wisdom of top-down planning and questioned ‘monumental’ national symbols. In contrast, during the post-war period, newly independent states and nationalist movements turned to large-scale urban planning, rooted in modernist aesthetics, for the design of capitals and other major cities. Such designs were seen as rejections of the colonial past and statements of national independence even as they drew on colonial traditions of top-down planning and international professional planning networks. Finally, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many newly industrializing states in the Global South have embraced resource-intensive ‘new cities’ as a strategy for economic development, nation building, and geopolitical influence. Like the earlier grand urban projects, their designs are embedded in regional and international networks of planning practices but now typically draw on religiously or ethnically specific symbolic vernaculars rather than the uniform vocabulary of international modernism. As scholars analyse such new projects, they would be wise to attend to the successes – and failures – of their historical antecedents.

NOTE 1.

The right-wing, nationalist government of prime minister Viktor Orban moved the Nagy statue from its original location in late 2018 (Novak 2018).

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Building nations/building states/building cities  155 Johnson, N. (1995), ‘Cast in stone: Monuments, geography, and nationalism’, Environment and Planning D-Society and Space, 13 (1), 51–65. Kanna, A. (2011), Dubai: The City as Corporation, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Koch, N. (2010), ‘The monumental and the miniature: imagining “modernity” in Astana’, Social and Cultural Geography, 11 (8), 769–87. Koch, N. (2013), ‘Why not a world city? Astana, Ankara, and geopolitical scripts in urban networks’, Urban Geography, 34 (1), 109–30. Koch, N. (2014), ‘Bordering on the modern: Power, practice and exclusion in Astana’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39 (3), 432–43. Koch, N. (2018), The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Koch, N. and A. Valiyev (2015), ‘Urban boosterism in closed contexts: Spectacular urbanization and second-tier mega-events in three Caspian capitals’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 56 (5), 575–98. Koch, N., A. Valiyev, and K. Hazmi Zaini (2018), ‘Mosques as monuments: An inter-Asian perspective on monumentality and religious landscapes’, Cultural Geographies, 25 (1), 183–99. Ley, D. and K. Olds (1988), ‘Landscape as spectacle: World fairs and the culture of heroic consumption’, Environment and Planning D-Society and Space, 6 (2), 191–212. McDonald, M. (2017), ‘Remembering Gallipoli: Anzac, the Great War and Australian memory politics’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 63 (3), 406–18. McKay, I. and J. Swift (2016), The Vimy Trap, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, Toronto: Between the Lines. Merrifield, A. (1993), ‘The Canary Wharf debacle: From “TINA” – There is No Alternative – to “THEMBA” – There Must Be An Alternative’, Environment and Planning A, 25 (9), 1247–65. Moser, S. (2012), ‘Circulating visions of “high Islam”: The adoption of fantasy Middle Eastern architecture in constructing Malaysian national identity’, Urban Studies, 49 (13), 2913–35. Moser, S. (2018), ‘Forest City, Malaysia, and Chinese expansionism’, Urban Geography, 39 (6), 935–43. Moser, S., M. Swain, and M.H. Alkhabbaz (2015), ‘King Abdullah Economic City: Engineering Saudi Arabia’s post-oil future’, Cities: International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 45, 71–80. Natcher, D.C., R.C. Walker, and T.S. Jojola (2013), Reclaiming Indigenous Planning, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Nerbas, D. (2015), ‘William Zeckendorf, Place Ville-Marie, and the making of modern Montreal’, Urban History Review, 43 (2), 5–25. Nightingale, C. (2012), Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Njoh, A.J. (2008), ‘Colonial philosophies, urban space, and racial segregation in British and French colonial Africa’, Journal of Black Studies, 38 (4), 579–99. Nora, P. (1989), ‘Between memory and history: Les lieux-de-memoire’, Representations, 26, 7–25. Novak, B. (2018), ‘Hungarians fume as statue of former leader is downgraded’, New York Times, December 29, 8A. Parish, S. (1997), ‘Goddesses dancing in the city: Hinduism in an urban incarnation – a review article’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, 1, 441–84. Paul, D. (2004), ‘World cities as hegemonic projects: The politics of global imagineering in Montreal’, Political Geography, 23 (5), 571–96. Perera, N. (2006), ‘Chandigarh: India’s modernist experiment’, in D. Gordon (ed.), Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities, London: Routledge, pp. 226–36. Peterson, J. (1976), ‘City Beautiful movement: Forgotten origins and lost meanings’, Journal of Urban History, 2 (4), 415–34. Relph, E.C. (1987), The Modern Urban Landscape, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rossman, V. (2017), Capital Cities: Varieties and Patterns of Development and Relocation, London: Routledge. Saeter, O. (2011), ‘The body and the eye: Perspectives, technologies, and practices of urbanism’, Space and Culture, 14 (2), 183–96. Scott, J.C. (1998), Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

156  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Seekins, D.M. (2009), ‘“Runaway chickens” and Myanmar identity: Relocating Burma’s capital’, City, 13, 63–70. Sennett, R. (1970), The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, New York: Knopf. Shaw, A. (2009), ‘Town planning in postcolonial India, 1947–1965: Chandigarh re-examined’, Urban Geography, 30 (8), 857–78. Sidaway, J.D. and P. Mayell (2007), ‘Monumental geographies: Re-situating the state’, Cultural Geographies, 14 (1), 148–55. Smith, C.S. (2006), The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Šprajc, I. (2018), ‘Astronomy, architecture, and landscape in prehispanic Mesoamerica’, Journal of Archaeological Research, 26 (2), 197–251. Stevens, Q., K. Franck, and R. Fazakerley (2012), ‘Counter-monuments: The anti-monumental and the dialogic’, Journal of Architecture, 17 (6), 951–72. Thirkell, L. (2015), ‘In the national interest: Construction and destruction in Gaza City’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 15 (2), 352–62. Vale, L.J. (2008), Architecture, Power, and National Identity, New York: Routledge. Vega-Villa, K.R. (2017), ‘Missed opportunities in Yachay’, Science, 358 (6362), 459. Wade, M. (2019), ‘Hyper-planning Jakarta: The Great Garuda and planning the global spectacle’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 40 (1), 158–72. Wagner-Pacifici, R. and B. Schwartz (1991), ‘The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a difficult past’, American Journal of Sociology, 97 (2), 376–420. Wilbur, A.S. (2020), ‘Dompak, Indonesia: Religio-nationalism and the (re)assertion of Muslim dominance through the construction of a provincial capital’, in S. Moser (ed.), New Master-Planned Cities, Islam, and Identity, New York: Routledge. Wilson, W.H. (1989), The City Beautiful Movement, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wittman, L. (2011), The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Wu, Y., X. Li, and G.C.S. Lin (2016), ‘Reproducing the city of the spectacle: Mega-events, local debts, and infrastructure-led urbanization in China’, Cities, 53, 51–60. Yiftachel, O. and H. Yacobi (2003), ‘Urban ethnocracy: Ethnicization and the production of space in an Israeli “mixed city”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21 (6), 673–93. Young, J.E. (1993), The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

PART III GEOGRAPHICAL POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF THE STATE

14. Introduction: geographical political economies of the state Sami Moisio

This part of the book explores the relationship between space, politics, governance and economy. One of the central premises of geographical approaches to the capitalist state has been that there is a close link between the changing regimes of capital accumulation and states’ spatial ‘patterning’. Another premise is that the changing geography of the state is not simply an outcome or reflection of wider economic processes; rather it is fundamental to the manner in which entire regimes of capital accumulation are spatially constituted. This kind of political economy of state spaces is premised on a view that economy is an instituted process (Polanyi 1957). Accordingly, all ‘economic activities’ are embedded in and manifested through social relations, extra-economic as well as economic institutions, and in a variety of socio-spatial configurations. In the process of bringing about different historically contingent spatial regimes of capital accumulation, the state plays a key role: it operates in producing and maintaining the conflictual and crisis-mediated course of capital accumulation through, for instance, channeling money, investment, and other resources spatially. All regimes of accumulation therefore signal particular state-orchestrated and state-mediated geopolitics of place and territory (cf. Storper and Scott 1988), and state-mediated governance of populace. Moreover, the different territorial forms assumed by the state emerge from all sorts of place-based struggles around the socio-distributional effects of capital accumulation and uneven development. Despite the globalization of networks of production and consumption, and the proliferation of transnational forms of economic governance characterized by, for instance, transnational circuits of knowledge, states continue to play an instrumental role in the organization and management of political economy. The ‘death of the nation-state’ narratives figure prominently in neoliberal political campaigns that seek to increase market-driven governance. These narratives are equally visible in the city-centered political crusades that highlight how major cities rather than states are ‘functional’ territories in governing the world at the age of ‘wicked global problems’. These narratives, however, embody very little analytical value. From a spatial perspective, the state has not been hollowed out by the purportedly forceful imperatives of global economy, and forecasts of the demise of the state have proven highly premature. This part examines the variety of issues underpinning an emerging geopolitical order, and to what extent various political economic processes facilitate state spatial transformation. The part brings together a set of contributions that discuss the political economies of state spaces. These chapters analyse the politics of austerity and neoliberal political rationality as important constitutive elements of contemporary state spatial transformation and the related crisis tendencies. They also inquire into the global geopolitical landscape in which territorial states remain key social and political organizations. In addition to these themes, the part includes a chapter on feminist political economies of the state in a Nordic context, as well as a chapter 158

Introduction: geographical political economies of the state  159 that interrogates ‘neuroliberalism’ as an evolving – and potentially privatizing – mode of governing state space and populations. Part III begins with John Agnew’s critique of various ‘geoeconomic’ perspectives to the state. Since the 1990s, numerous writers have suggested that a transition is under way worldwide from ‘geopolitical’ to ‘geoeconomic’ competition among states. Importantly, Agnew challenges the fundamental assumptions that the past was ‘purely geopolitical’ and that the present is transitioning towards a ‘politics-free geoeconomics’. Such false periodization has become pervasive in geoeconomics scholarship across social science disciplines (Moisio 2019). Agnew’s analysis discloses how in the current scholarly debates the ‘economic’ is privileged over the ‘political’, thus naturalizing and depoliticizing the economic. Contra to this tendency, Agnew presents a useful interpretation of the role of geopolitics – as something that brings together the political and the economic – in contemporary globalization, and demonstrates the value of such a geopolitical approach for understanding changing statehood in different temporal contexts. Agnew reminds us that in the contemporary context states are embedded in worldwide networks of power and influence involving multiple actors of which states are only one type. Accordingly, states indeed ‘instrumentalize’ sovereignty to serve given goals that may be closely aligned with the interests of various transnational actors. State spatial transformation inescapably ‘happens’ in the world of policy-making. Research on the geography of policy and policy formation has thus become an important part of the study of changing state spaces. Geographers have in particular engaged in developing an approach on policy mobility, a perspective that underscores the importance of understanding policy as a spatial process whereby both the content of policy and the movement of policy are inseparable. The policy mobility approach seeks to avoid falling into the ‘territorial trap’ by highlighting policy-making contexts across and between jurisdictions. Incorporating recent work outlining the linkages between relational and territorial space, Russell Prince introduces a dynamic conception of territory in the context of policy mobility literature, with implications for its aims and methodologies. Importantly, he argues that avoiding the territorial trap in thinking about policy and state space requires not just a turn to relational space, but also a relational conception of territorial space. In his view, the dynamic conception of territory is crucial for understanding how mobile policies contribute to the transformation of the state as a site where politics and economy come together. In his chapter, Prince explains how the apparent movement of policy concepts, ideas and programs between places is an important feature of the current political economy of the state, and how this movement reveals the expansive geography of policy-making beyond particular state bureaucracies. Different forms of government are crucial constitutive elements of spatial political economies and related regimes of capital accumulation. In Chapter 17, Mark Whitehead explores the emerging fusion of the data and behavioral sciences in the operation of ‘behavioral government’. He suggests that various smart technologies today facilitate behavioral government in real time at unprecedented scales. An important aspect of this development is that it leads to changes in the geographies of the state. Importantly, Whitehead suggests that various digital manifestations of ‘neuroliberalism’ are currently leading to a blurring of the boundaries between states, corporations and governmental practices. In partnership with big tech companies, the state can now trespass into everyday spaces of citizens in new ways, thus bringing together the state, private firms, populace and space in new manners. The post-2008 development has been fundamentally marked by the politics of austerity. In their chapter, Bernd Belina and Tino Petzold conceptualize the concomitant development

160  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state of the ‘austerity state’ and the ‘security state’. In the advanced capitalist states, both of these state forms have been on the rise since the mid-1970s. The austerity state as a form of statehood institutionalizes the principle of scarce public budgets and reorganizes class relations by lowering taxes for capital and the rich, and by curbing infrastructure investment and cutting back the welfare state more generally. According to Belina and Petzold, the security state, in turn, ‘pacifies’ crisis-prone and constantly revolutionizing capitalist social relations based on private property. The authors of this chapter provide the reader with interesting insights regarding the combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state. Moreover, they highlight the uneven geographical development that comes with this mutual development, as well as discuss the social revanchism that this ‘nasty coupling’ puts into effect. Regimes of capital accumulation and related modes of regulation are geographically variegated phenomena. In Chapter 19, Hanna Ylöstalo offers an insightful feminist political economy analysis of the Nordic welfare state. After introducing notable feminist political economy contributions to the state, she in particular focuses on the recent shifts in the relations among the Nordic welfare state, political economy, feminism and gender equality in Finland. Ylöstalo offers a set of interesting observations regarding the ways in which feminist politics can also contribute to the neoliberalization of the welfare state. More generally, Ylöstalo’s chapter seeks to disclose feminist political-economic landscapes, within which the content and intentions of feminism are constantly negotiated and reworked. The chapter demonstrates that the political economies of the welfare state are profoundly ‘gendered’, and argues that in order to understand political economies of the state, gendered aspects of the economy (including the political economy of reproduction) need to be carefully scrutinized.

REFERENCES Moisio, S. (2019), ‘Re-thinking geoeconomics: Towards a political geography of economic geographies’, Geography Compass, 13 (10), e12466. Polanyi, K. (1957), ‘The economy as instituted process’, in K. Polanyi, C.N. Arensberg and H.W. Pearson (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, New York: Free Press, pp. 243–70. Storper, M. and A.J. Scott (1988), ‘The geographical foundations and social regulation of flexible production complexes’, in J. Wolch and M. Dear (eds), The Power of Geography, London: Allen and Unwin, pp. 21–40.

15. Geoeconomics and the state John Agnew

15.1 INTRODUCTION Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s numerous authors have attempted to make the case for a transition in the world political economy from geopolitics to geoeconomics as the driving force behind the changing role of states and the emergence of a world order based now entirely around interstate economic rather than interstate territorial competition. After trying to define the main features of what is by now a large and by no means homogeneous literature, I offer a critique of the overall perspective and provide the outline of an alternative that argues for the continuing relevance of geopolitical competition and regulation incorporating but not restricted to states and albeit in shifting shapes from the past. The overall purpose of the chapter is (1) to question the notion of some sort of clean break from geopolitics to geoeconomics in the late twentieth century and (2) to suggest, largely by way of examples, that some states and other primarily geopolitical agents licensed by states are still vitally important to the workings of the world political economy.

15.2

FROM GEOPOLITICS TO GEOECONOMICS?

Recent events such as the weaponizing of tariffs by the Trump administration in the United States (US) to achieve broader economic goals such as restricting Chinese firms’ access to the technology of US-headquartered businesses might suggest an important shift in the nature of interstate competition. The increased resort to this sort of strategic activity by states, as ‘traditional’ geopolitical competition based primarily in military preparation and challenge retreated, was what some meant by invoking the term ‘geo-economics’ in the 1990s (particularly Luttwak 1990). Yet, of course, the use of economic and financial sanctions was by no means new, as authors such as Luttwak allowed. What was new was the prospect after the Cold War that they would largely replace the older modus operandi of military competition between the Great Power states. Similarly state-centric but more nuanced in seeing the incomplete displacement of geopolitics as conventionally construed by the geoeconomic, Cowen and Smith (2009, p. 42), for example, write: ‘Where geopolitics can be understood as a means of acquiring territory towards a goal of accumulating wealth, geoeconomics reverses the procedure, aiming directly at the accumulation of wealth through market control. The acquisition or control of territory is not at all irrelevant but is a tactical option rather than a strategic necessity.’

Both perspectives remain focused on the relative power capacities of powerful states in the tradition of realist International Relations rather than attending much at all to other actors and the fact that the world political economy has long been more complex than the theories used 161

162  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state to understand it tend to assume. They therefore focus on economic instruments as weapons of statecraft replacing or supplementing military force rather than widening the focus to include a wider plurality of actors at work in directing and managing the world taking off primarily from the fact that political leaders made increased reference to economic pressures as techniques of power in the aftermath of the Cold War (e.g. Scholvin and Wigell 2018). Even as such techniques are put to use, however, the world political economy has many features associated with the term globalization – in geographic scope well beyond those of interstate competition – that remain not only significant but increasingly so (e.g. Johnson 2019). Even if globalization is not the great ‘leveler’ its exponents once claimed, it is nevertheless a major source of the clustering of economic and financial activities that states find themselves competing for and over (e.g. Pisani-Ferry 2019). The theoretical problem with the tendency to see geoeconomics displacing geopolitics is twofold. First, it sees the past as largely or entirely ‘geopolitical’ in terms of struggles over control of territory. Yet, as Montesquieu among others noted in the eighteenth century, ‘wealth was not fixed to land, holding as it did the capacity to flee, could work as a check on political power’ (Klaus 2014, p. 11). From this viewpoint, the relationship between states and capitalism was always contingent rather than the latter somehow invariably commanding or shaping the former (Murray 1971). So, the geoeconomic, in the sense of economic imperatives relating to capital accumulation and wealth, was always inherent in geopolitics even as it often escaped the grasp of particular states both historically and contemporaneously (Agnew and Corbridge 1995). Second, the transition motif misses the fact that arising out of the Cold War period was a new form of global capitalism that although based in different states, with the US as its most important original sponsor as a direct result of Cold War distinctions between ‘free’ and ‘state socialist’ economies, increasingly transcended those states in its basic operations (Agnew 2005). Globalization, as the geographical shape of the expansion of the world market, is typically rendered, made for a world that does not readily fit back into the template of state territories. This is a world in which a tapestry of state territories, localities, regions, and cities operates under regulatory authorities of one sort or another that cannot be invariably reduced to the powers of this or that state (Moisio 2019). Yet, this is what the dominant sense of the ‘geoeconomic’ tends to do. Just as the sense of geopolitics is of serving the territorial goals of states, that of geoeconomics is that of the economic ones. The economic is now liberated. What remains, of course, is an unrelenting state-centrism.

15.3

WHY THE SINGULAR PRIORITY TO THE ECONOMIC IN GEOECONOMICS AND GLOBALIZATION?

Cataclysmic events like the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the 2007–8 financial crisis provide an opportunity to pose basic questions that go unasked during more ‘normal’ times. If in the former case the story was largely one of a failure of the Soviet-style economy to keep pace with the global-capitalist one, in the latter it was put down to savings imbalances between countries or risky financial innovations such as credit default swaps. Political processes, the legitimation crisis of the Soviet Union in the first case and the US government’s obsession with encouraging mass homeownership in the second, are frequently introduced as simply functional or instrumental to the economic (the state as the ruling committee of the

Geoeconomics and the state  163 bourgeoisie, etc.) rather than as a whole series of sites of political contestation. The annunciation of the economic as especially causal has been possible because the social and the political have become defined as somehow ‘unnatural’ or derivative when contrasted to the economic. The end of the Cold War, in particular, could be seen as the closing down of an ‘unnatural’ period in which geopolitics had temporarily trumped economic competition between states. Natural order would be restored. Similarly, those perspectives that see an emerging globalization as terminal for any state role also see the eclipse of geopolitics as likewise complete. At one time in economic thought ‘the economic’ was related more closely to the social and the moral than to the natural (Mirowski 1994, p. 6). If the naturalization story of the economic as we understand it today begins with the medieval natural law tradition and its positing of a primordial law of nature as preceding human agency (with which politics is associated), a crucial stage was reached with the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and the thinking of Saint Simon, when the political was absorbed into the social. Those today often classified as ‘classical economists’ (for example Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, but also Karl Marx) were often very appreciative of the role of politics as both necessary and inevitable, but other current (such as the so-called Manchester School) and later generations forgot or ignored such admonitions. The more recent key to the naturalization of the economic lies in the mid-twentieth century, with the fusion between natural metaphor, on the one hand, and the adoption of what was presumed to be the statistical practice of physical science, on the other (Mirowski 1993, pp. 339–40). Policy implications are drawn that presumably will lead to a technically defined better economic performance (in both Keynesian ‘regulated capitalism’ and Marxian ‘post-capitalism’ registers), independent of the cut and thrust of the actual political contests that always produce real-world institutional frameworks and policy directions. Yet the modern capitalist economy is a political project realized through a massive process of commodification of land, labor, and capital that is the result of political action by states, powerful interest groups, and other agencies within and across state borders. Both the expansion of certain economic practices and their limitation are crucially subject to political intervention and direction. Lending support to this vision, typical narratives of contemporary globalization see it as an almost entirely economic phenomenon. The dominant image is of a world that is increasingly economically interdependent, with less restrictive trade and investment boundaries between states. In counterpoint, geoeconomics sees the new world after geopolitics through a state-centric and territorialized lens. For its part, globalization is usually conceptualized through either one of two frames: as a spatial fix to declining profit rates of big business in the US and other countries in the 1960s, as domestic markets saturated, productivity declined relative to labor costs, and consumer markets became customized rather than mass production-oriented; or as a temporal shift away from territorial economies in response to the possibility of spatially distributed production chains and the capture of external economies within firms, or by clusters of firms, at discrete sites. Either way, the conquest of space by time or ‘time-space compression’, enabled by a revolution in transportation, logistics and communication technologies, is producing a totally different globalized world economy, compared to that which prevailed a scant 30 years earlier. Of course, there are differences of emphasis or political judgment between commentators about the consequences of what is understood as globalization. Yet the general narrative is almost entirely depoliticized, with little attention given to the geopolitical or national-political

164  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state contexts in which recent globalization has arisen. This recent phase did not just ‘happen’, nor is it an unmediated result of economic processes. Three pre-eminently political processes have been involved (Agnew 2005, chapter 6). First, the US has been a major sponsor of globalization, partly as a result of its geopolitical competition with the former Soviet Union: as the sponsor of a so-called ‘free-world economy’ successive US governments worked vigorously to open up the world economy to trade. Obviously, some of the impetus for this came from US-based businesses that lobbied US governments for reciprocal reductions in tariffs (through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) so as to expand their export markets. But the large size of the US domestic market and the local dependence of many US businesses meant that not all US businesses favored this global strategy. Politics was at work. Without the dramatic reductions in tariffs on manufactured goods, negotiated in the 1950s and 1960s, the possibilities of a later globalization in the shape we have seen it would have been limited. Second was the emergence in the US of the prototypical multinational corporation, increasingly drawn to expand operations globally in competition with co-nationals and foreign equivalents (for example Frieden 2006, chapters 11 and 12). A direct product of the US ‘marketplace society’ that evolved particularly in the years after the Civil War, these companies were agents of a consumer capitalism that expanded worldwide, from the US, in the years after 1945. This was not ‘natural’: It arose within a specific spatial-political context, the US, becoming a global possibility because of the ability of the US as a world power to ‘sell’ this model worldwide. Finally, the increased importance of financial markets, world cities, and credit flows under globalization owes much to the directly political act of the US government in abrogating in 1971 the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, thereby liberating many national currencies from being fixed in value to the US dollar. Arguably, this single act catalyzed much of the financial industry that has grown up since. Designed by the Nixon Administration, to make US exports more competitive at a difficult time for the US economy, the resulting flexible exchange rate regime has been as important in enabling globalization as any technological changes in computing and transportation. Indeed, the Bretton Woods Agreement was not only important in stabilizing the world economy of the time, but also underpinned social democracy and the welfare state (for example Frieden 2006, chapters 12 and 15). Since the 1980s, politics has been at work in a number of other ways in directing and changing globalization. One has been the spread of a new neoliberal growth model, based around liberalized and deregulated financial and commodity markets and devoted to replacing what had gone for the previous Bretton Woods system. Picked up and sponsored by certain political parties, such as the Conservatives and later ‘New’ Labour in Britain, and the Republicans and centrist Democrats in the US, this was never simply a question of intellectual conviction on the part of economic actors. Avowedly anti-government, neoliberalism has in fact been entirely dependent on political victories for its success. But these should not be read as preordained victories for capital or for a new economic base over a fading ideological superstructure. In the context of high inflation and declining economic growth in many industrialized countries in the late 1970s and early 1980s, neoliberalism promised an economic boom premised on rolling back government spending, pacifying labor unions, privatizing state assets, and turning citizens into ‘financial subjects’, forced to bear total responsibility for their own life decisions (parenthood and pensions, in particular), in return for an explosion of private investment that would supposedly follow from the lower tax rates on high incomes that a ‘smaller’ state would allow (Stein 2010). The sudden collapse of Soviet communism and its state-centered model of

Geoeconomics and the state  165 economic development, and the political success of those in Britain and the US in particular who believed that financial services could be the basis for a new economic renaissance, were important in boosting popular support for neoliberal practices. This required the adoption of a reinvigorated view of government, never completely absent particularly in the US, as the enemy of economic welfare, and the elevation of an abstracted ‘market’ as the idealized alternative to the politics of liberal democracy (Brown 2003). Though based in a naturalized sense of economic order that would presumably apply universally, governments signed up fully for this program only in some countries, notwithstanding its worldwide effects (increased reliance of many countries on deregulated foreign exchange and credit markets, and the flood of investment from the industrialized world into so-called emerging markets such as China). In other countries elements of the package may well have been adopted for macroeconomic management (central bank independence of governments, removing capital controls, floating exchange-rates, etc.) but little or nothing has been done on such fronts as the privatization of state assets or the shift from defined-benefit to defined-contribution pensions (for example Iversen and Stephens 2008). Income inequality has shot up most sharply in those countries that most rigorously have adopted the ministrations of neoliberalism. In the US and Britain, the gap between bankers’ salaries and the average worker’s wages approach levels not seen since the end of the nineteenth century. Choices have been made; politics at work again. Other governments elsewhere have been actively engaged in strategic development programs departing considerably from neoliberal nostrums about a minimalist state pursuing export-oriented growth. Their foreign exchange surpluses are then recycled through global financial markets. Indeed, some governments have created so-called sovereign wealth funds (investment banks run by states) with which to channel their surpluses into investments in industrial firms, banks, and insurance companies in the US and Europe. This is not so much a reinstatement of state-based economic development, as it is a new strand to globalization that makes use of private asset managers for ends ultimately decided within the bounds of political institutions (Dixon 2010; Carney 2018). Finally, one of the most important features of globalization has been the way in which what can be called competitive advantage, based on explicit organization of places for insertion into the world economy, has replaced what was left of a naturalized comparative advantage as an explanatory motif. If the latter is always premised on an ‘even surface’, with economic specialization decided on its (natural) merits, the former presumes that there is no such thing. An important insight of recent economic geography has been the focus on the ‘relational assets’ of certain places, and how their spatial distribution entails new patterns of uneven development (for example Storper 1997). Again, rather than being purely ‘natural’ occurrences, these assets are the result of spending on public goods (education, highways, ports, etc.) and the political-economic processes involved in making places more competitive through explicit political choices and institutional development (for example Nugent and Robinson 2010). In sum, globalization owes more to politics than to anything else.

15.4

GEOPOLITICS IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

So, definitions of the economic and its often hidden but presumed superordinate status to the merely ‘political’ is definitely part of the problem with dominant understandings of the

166  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state geoeconomic. But the other part has been the restrictive definition of geopolitics as restricted solely to interstate competition largely over territory. The dominant image of globalization today relies on seeing something purely economic totally eclipsing the purely geopolitical. The past few years since the financial crisis of 2007–8 have seen evidence for a renewal of the older style geopolitics of inter-imperial rivalry, for example in the Russian annexation of Crimea and in Iranian moves across the Middle East. Of course, even at the height of globalization, invasions and interventions, such as that of the US in Iraq, suggested that military coercion and territorial expansion had not been eliminated from world politics. The US has also used its geopolitical position as a sponsor of globalization for narrower geopolitical ends such as in the use of trade and financial sanctions against its putative adversaries such as Iran, Russia, and North Korea. It is common, then, to see geopolitics and globalization as opposites with respect to how the world works. If geopolitics is associated primarily with geographical determinism in channeling the universal urge for territorial expansion on the part of all states, globalization is seen as creating an interdependent and ‘flat’ world in which flows of goods, people, and capital displace the territorialized world of inter-imperial rivalries that characterized the past. Yet, historically, such a clear-cut distinction makes little sense. Certainly, the period from 1875 until 1945 can be reasonably characterized as one in which inter-imperial rivalry tended to win out over open trade and so on and the Cold War from 1945 until 1991 involved a major geopolitical fracture between a relatively free-flowing West and a relatively autarchic East. Classic geopolitics developed in the first period, in the late 1800s, and represented an effort at justifying imperialism in naturalistic terms of space and race. But right across the periods in question there were systematic efforts on the part of some governments, particularly in Britain and the US, and businesses looking to expand beyond home shores, to reduce and remove barriers to trade and investment. These increasingly came to fruition during the Cold War and since the 1990s have expanded to include much of the world. Globalization, then, was incipient within the territorialized conflicts of the twentieth century. It was not opposite but in fact a strategic option pursued by some actors within the confines of the geopolitical conflicts that wracked the century. I have previously identified three aspects of the connection between geopolitics construed in this broader meaning and the globalization that the world economy has experienced over the past 50 years (Agnew 2015). These are the geopolitics of globalization, the geopolitics of development, and the geopolitics of global regulation. These, respectively, involve discussing the role of the US in enabling and stimulating much of what now goes for economic globalization (increased trade and investment around the world and so on), identifying the capacities of different states in light of different colonial histories and histories of statehood to engage in successful strategies of economic growth and thus capture the presumed benefits of globalization, and showing the new agencies of global regulation, both public and private, that are addressing and enabling current patterns of globalization often independently of any single state or grouping of states. I would say something briefly about each. Much of the twentieth century was spent fighting and recovering from the wars that this geopolitical system of inter-imperial rivalry entailed. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the US took on the global role of sponsoring a return to the sort of open world economy relinquished by a now declining Britain. The impetus to this came both from the desire of US industry to benefit from worldwide expansion and the perceived threat to this from the Soviet Union and its autarchic model of economic development. The roots of contemporary

Geoeconomics and the state  167 globalization can be said to lie, at least in part, in the containment of the Soviet Union: the putative strategy at the center of US Cold War policy. The internal decay of the Soviet model meant that by the 1980s the US had become the world’s most important country economically and militarily. US governments were compelled by their ideological struggle with the Soviet Union to favor lifting restrictions on trade and commerce, though historically protectionist of their own domestic market. The US replaced Britain in using its financial and military power both acquired as outcomes of the Second World War when the other world powers were very largely exhausted to support the development of the global legal and financial norms necessary for the overall expansion of commerce. Pushing for this were American businesses that saw opportunities for both investment and consumer markets around the world (e.g. Lavelle 2013). These included systematic reductions in tariffs on trade in manufactured goods under the various rounds of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later World Trade Organization), using the US dollar as the main global currency, introducing technologies such as the container and the fax that facilitated long-distance trade and global supply chains, and spreading legal norms and procedures that allowed for the contracts and dispute mechanisms that make globalization possible. Globalization works through as well as around governmental institutions (Kennedy 2016). It is a myth that globalization leads to the ‘end’ of the state. In fact, much of the impetus behind globalization lies in taking advantage of differences in factor endowments and fiscal and monetary policies in different countries. In this context, some governments have been more adept than others at exploiting the opportunities provided by a more open world economy. The map of the most globalized countries according to one set of empirical indicators reveals that the world is far from ‘flat’ or uniform in terms of active involvement in the world economy. Small European economies tend to be the most open followed by other European countries, the US and Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. In terms of trade, holdings of foreign assets (particularly US Treasury bonds), and ‘weight’ within the world economy, South Korea, Japan, and China are also very important. Given its rapid rise from negligible significance as a player in the world economy before 1987 to its growth as the world’s second largest economy by 2012, China’s story is particularly interesting as an example of the geopolitics of development. China’s great success in improving its level of economic development and reducing its number of poor people is not simply just a question of exploiting its vast pool of relatively cheap labor. Mobilizing populations and organizing insertion into global markets have been particularly important. Mobilizing populations depends in part on a degree of cultural homogeneity and acceptance of government popular legitimacy, and makes it possible for foreign and domestic investors to expect maximum political stability and minimal workplace disruptions. Organizing insertion into global markets requires a clear sense that some economic activities, banking, for example, need considerable government control, even as the country is opened up globally to exploit its comparative advantages in land, labor, or capital. Ease of doing business is part of the story. Perhaps even more crucial is investment in infrastructures such as ports, railways, and highways and public goods such as general education and healthcare to produce propitious settings for profitable private investment. There is a clear connection between successful efforts at popular mobilization and infrastructure investment, on the one hand, and dramatic improvements in economic development, on the other. But a number of different strategies can make sense depending on size of economy (population, infrastructure demands, etc.), resource base, governmental structure, and governmental

168  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state efficacy. Large home economies allow for both economies of scale in production/consumption and import substitution. Historically, Brazil, India, and Mexico followed this approach. Russia, having flirted with the world economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, may be heading back in this direction. Regional supra-national authorities such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement can provide such benefits while also maintaining state-level autonomy of various sorts. Trading with neighbors is a substitute for having a large economy. Countries with large resource bases, particularly ones with relatively inelastic demand but subject to depletion (such as oil), can bank on using sovereign-wealth funds to invest in assets both nationally and globally. Many of the world’s major oil-producing countries, from Kuwait and Venezuela to Norway, have such funds. But countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, China, and South Korea have also followed this strategy to a degree. Smaller states can turn themselves into tax havens. Since the onset of the globalization era in the 1970s, world economic development has been increasingly regulated not just by governments within countries but also by increasingly influential private, quasi-public, and international organizations (e.g. Büthe and Mattli 2011; Quark 2013). Arguably the growth in private and quasi-public agencies is the product of the erosion of the public–private divide with the revolving door in personnel between government and private business, popular and business hostility (particularly in the US) to government regulation (at least before the financial collapse of 2008), the absence of much intergovernmental regulation, and the explosion of transnational transactions to which established states are ill-equipped to respond. As Janine Wedel (2004, p. 217) describes this trend: Spurred by two decades of deregulation, public–private partnerships and a worldwide movement towards privatization, non-state actors now fulfill functions once reserved for government. Moreover, the inclination to blur the ‘state’ and ‘private’ spheres now enjoys global acceptance. An international vernacular of ‘privatization’, ‘civil society’, ‘non-governmental organizations’ and other catch terms de-emphasizing the state is parroted from Washington to Warsaw to Wellington.

The decisions of the myriad of new transnational organizations can have major effects on the course of globalization. They constitute the actors in what can be called ‘low geopolitics’ to distinguish it from the ‘high geopolitics’ of interstate hierarchy and inter-imperial rivalries. Even though this trend has had powerful sponsors in the US, the European Union, and among the businesses that lobby in the traditional corridors of geopolitical power, it gives rise to actors who are only accountable indirectly to any recognizably public political masters. In the first case are international standard setting and regulatory agencies. These are arrayed across two dimensions: whether they are essentially private or public (in terms of responsibility) and whether they are market- or non-market-driven (in terms of decision mechanisms). International financial and development organizations such as, respectively, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are the best known of these. They are intergovernmental organizations but follow their own agendas set by their professional staffs with votes weighted towards their major funders, in particular the US. They support governments in difficult economic circumstances in return for those governments following policy prescriptions designed by those organizations. An important example of the private/market organizations would be the major credit-rating agencies, which rate the riskiness of bonds issued by businesses and governments. Their decisions are based on the claim that they have specialist knowledge and ‘independence’ not available to governmental organizations. When governments try to raise revenues by selling bonds, therefore, they are subject to the authority

Geoeconomics and the state  169 exercised by private credit-rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch when doing so. The recent Eurozone crisis showed their importance relative to that of public agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank whose decisions reflected anxieties over decisions by the credit-rating agencies. Standard and Poor’s is evidently first on the draw when it comes to regarding sovereign bonds. In the public/market category are organizations that regulate mergers and acquisitions and the monopoly pricing and insider trading practices of giant businesses often well beyond home shores such as the US Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Finally, there are a host of standard-setting organizations that fit into the private/non-market category. These are the organizations that have come into their own in recent years as filling regulatory roles simply not addressed by public bodies of any stripe. They set accounting rules, product safety specifications, rules about derivatives and other financial products, and so on. They may seem mundane in terms of what they do. But they are exactly the agencies that Büthe and Mattli (2010) dub the ‘new global rulers’. In the second case, most national central banks today have a high degree of political independence from their governments. For example, the Bank of England, long subject to close supervision by the British Treasury, has been independent of such influence since 1997. The European Central Bank, invented in 1999 to govern the new euro currency, likewise exercises a power separate from that of the member states in the Eurozone (the members of the European Union that since 1999 have come to share the same currency). This means that they make decisions about how much currency to issue, interest rates, and exchange rate supports with an eye on global markets rather than just their own governments. At the same time, much of the world’s private financial economy is increasingly moving ‘offshore’ to avoid as much national and global regulation as possible. Many trillions of dollars in foreign assets are now located abroad as much to avoid taxes as to make profits on investment returns. To take advantage of low or non-existent corporate and personal income taxes, many transnational businesses now incorporate in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. Major global financial institutions in New York and London provide the nerve centers for this cross-jurisdictional circulation of corporate profits. Central banks increasingly try to coordinate their activities to manage these offshore flows. In the Bank for International Settlements they even have their own joint bank to coordinate their efforts at regulating global finance. The contradiction between the desire of large countries with dependent populations and development plans to retain tax revenues and the increasing desire and opportunity of wealthy individuals and businesses to avoid or evade taxes plagues the contemporary system of international financial regulation. You may have heard of a book called The Panama Papers that exposes this entire aspect of the globalized world economy (Obermayer and Obermaier 2016). A major crisis is brewing in that the massive avoidance of taxes not only creates opportunities for ‘money laundering’ of illegal activities, it also reduces the revenues that governments need in providing the public investments necessary for successful economic development.

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15.5

CONSEQUENCES FOR UNDERSTANDING STATEHOOD

Several consequences follow from this reorienting of the fundamental relationship between the economic and the political in the critique of geoeconomics as transcending geopolitics in the practices of the world political economy. For one thing, it leads to seeing the contemporary world as not one of states as single unified actors. While that image was always problematic for most states it is now utterly misleading even for the most powerful ones. Increasingly, in the same epoch in which the big three credit-rating agencies, for example, have come to exercise such authority as they do, central banks, for example, have become more independent of their respective governments. Regulation of money and finance has become increasingly driven by private and quasi-private actors rather than by states per se. Governance has been reconstructed to meet the needs of increasingly globalized private actors such as banks and industrial corporations rather than the needs of the territorialized populations of states (Pistor 2019). State bonds underwrite this system and socialize risk onto domestic populations in return for back stopping the speculative activities of private banks, hedge funds, and other investors. ‘Technocrat-guardians,’ as Roberts (2010) terms them, in the central banks and credit rating agencies, shielded from democratic influences thereby guard the marketplace and defend its stakeholders from fiscal and monetary policies of a socially redistributive or nationally oriented quality. Governance as the exercise of technocratic control has in fact become the modus operandi not just globally but at all spatial levels including the national, the regional, and the municipal (Marazzi 2011, p. 121). Beyond all of them loom the differentials of bond revenues determined in the international financial markets and evaluated by the credit-rating agencies. Second, the meanings of such key terms in political and geopolitical discourse as private versus public and markets versus states have undergone revision. No longer can the political be seen as uniquely deriving from states or from societies defined in national-state forms. Rather, the spatial boundaries governing states themselves are no longer the national ones. They are profoundly the boundaries defined by the investment and regulatory activities of private/public businesses, pension funds, banks, international law firms, standard setting, and credit-rating agencies. Even as the economic crisis of 2008 could be seen as calling the roles of all of these into question, they have, if anything, emerged from the crisis more strongly entrenched than they entered it. Too much money was spent bailing out those ‘too big to fail’ for the influence of the giant banks and industrial corporations that are the prime movers behind this heavily financialized system to suddenly dissipate (Crouch 2011). Indeed, their interests are increasingly the ones at stake as governments compete with one another to acquire their largesse. The inability to demarcate where the public ends and the private begins is exactly what produces the inability to address how to move beyond the Scylla of undemocratic transnational regulation and the Charybdis of increasingly globalized investment and monetary flows and their legal empowerment. Third, and finally, in this context the expropriation of land that has lain at the heart of conventional geopolitical thought is thrown into doubt as a transcendental signifier. If classically, sovereignty was intimately associated first with the body of the monarch and then with a people occupying a territory, the Manichean them-versus-us logic which this entails no longer makes sense when the very basis to sovereign decision lies in the interstices between states in the capacities and identities of non-state actors rather than in states banging up against one another. This suggests, inter alia, that we have little to learn from excavating theorists

Geoeconomics and the state  171 such as Schmitt and Mackinder whose logic relies precisely on the expropriation of land/territory (e.g. Legg 2011; Kearns 2009). In a world in which authority is increasingly outsourced by states and in which states ‘instrumentalize’ sovereignty to serve given ends but increasingly thus come under the dominion of transnational actors whose goals thus become theirs, sovereignty has not ended but has been transformed into a new ‘game’ quite different from those old-fashioned geopolitical thought insists on constantly reproducing as somehow ‘essential’ to understanding how the world works (Adler-Nissen and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2008).

15.6 CONCLUSION In brief compass I have argued that geoeconomics and geopolitics should not be as sharply distinguished as they have been since the term geoeconomics was first introduced widely in the 1990s. Economic and political considerations have both long entered into geopolitical calculation. So there has been no sudden transition to the presumably more natural order associated with the economic. To the contrary, what we see today is the increasing cast of the geopolitical beyond the historical scope of a state-based territorialism even if with some of its old attributes still operational. This discussion has important repercussions for how statehood is understood. Rather than business as usual in terms of reified states banging up against one another, this argument about geoeconomics suggests that states are embedded in worldwide networks of power and influence involving multiple actors of which states are only one type.

REFERENCES Adler-Nissen, R. and T. Gammeltoft-Hansen (2008), ‘Epilogue: Three layers of a contested concept’, in R. Adler-Nissen and T. Gammeltoft-Hansen (eds), Sovereignty Games: Instrumentalizing State Sovereignty in Europe and Beyond, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 197–209. Agnew, J. (2005), Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Agnew, J. (2015), ‘Understanding geopolitics in the era of globalization’, Tamoios, 11, 4–21. Agnew, J. and S. Corbridge (1995), Mastering Space, London: Routledge. Brown, W. (2003), ‘Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy’, Theory and Event, 7 (11). Available at: https://​muse​.jhu​.edu/​article/​48659/​summary Büthe, T. and W. Mattli (2011), The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Carney, R.W. (2018), Authoritarian Capitalism: Sovereign Wealth Funds and State-Owned Enterprises in East Asia and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cowen, D. and N. Smith (2009), ‘After geopolitics? From the geopolitical social to geoeconomics’, Antipode, 41, 22–48. Crouch, C. (2011), The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, Cambridge: Polity. Dixon, A. (2010), ‘Sovereign wealth funds and the trap of state-centrism’, Environment and Planning A, 42, 2274–6. Frieden, J. (2006), Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, New York: Norton. Iversen, T. and J.D. Stephens (2008), ‘Partisan politics, the welfare state and the three worlds of human capital formation’, Comparative Political Studies, 41, 600–37. Johnson, K. (2019), ‘While Trump isolates the US, it’s “let’s make a deal” for the rest of the world’, Foreign Policy, July 3. Kearns, G. (2009), Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

172  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Kennedy, D. (2016), A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Klaus, I. (2014), Forging Capitalism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lavelle, K.C. (2013), Money and Banks in the American Political System, New York: Cambridge University Press. Legg, S. (ed.) (2011), Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt: Geographies of the Nomos, London: Routledge. Luttwak, E. (1990), ‘From geopolitics to geo-economics: logic of conflict, grammar of commerce’, The National Interest, 20, 17–23. Marazzi, C. (2011), The Violence of Financial Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e). Mirowski, P. (1993), ‘The goalkeeper’s anxiety at the penalty kick’, in N. De Marchi (ed.), Non-Natural Social Science: Reflecting on the Enterprise of More Heat than Light, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 305–49. Mirowski, P. (1994), ‘Doing what comes naturally: Four metanarratives on what metaphors mean’, in P. Mirowski (ed.), Natural Images in Economic Thought: ‘Markets Read in Tooth and Claw’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–19. Moisio, S. (2019), ‘Re-thinking geoeconomics: Towards a political geography of economic geographies’, Geography Compass, 13 (10), e12466. Murray, R. (1971), ‘Internationalization of capital and the nation state’, New Left Review, 67, 84–97. Nugent, J.B. and J.A. Robinson (2010), ‘Are factor endowments fate?’, Rivista de Historia Economica, 28, 45–82. Obermayer, B. and F. Obermaier (2016), The Panama Papers, London: One World. Pisani-Ferry, J. (2019), ‘Farewell, flat world’, Project Syndicate, July 1. Pistor, K. (2019), The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Quark, A.A. (2013), Global Rivalries: Standards Wars and the Transnational Cotton Trade, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Roberts, A. (2010), The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scholvin, S. and M. Wigell (2018), ‘Power politics by economic means: Geo-economics as an analytical approach and foreign policy practices’, Comparative Strategy, 37, 73–84. Stein, J. (2010), Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Storper, M. (1997), ‘Regional economies as relational assets’, in R. Lee and J. Wills (eds), Geographies of Economies, London: Arnold, pp. 248–58. Wedel, J.R. (2004), ‘Blurring the state-private divide: Flex organizations and the decline of accountability’, in M. Spoor (ed.), Globalization, Poverty and Conflict, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 217–35.

16. The geography of policy-making: mobile policy, territory and state space Russell Prince

16.1 INTRODUCTION One of the most notable policy trends in the first two decades of the twenty-first century has been a focus on culture and creativity, particularly, though not exclusively, at the urban scale. The irony of this development, given culture is one of the things that makes a city, any city, unique, has been that policies intended to leverage culture and creativity in cities adopt strikingly similar discourses, models and techniques. Consumption-oriented waterfront redevelopment (Oakley 2007), enticing the ‘creative class’ (Asheim 2009), constructing iconic buildings (Heidenreich and Plaza 2015), developing the creative industries (Prince 2010), kicking off ‘culture-led’ regeneration (Miles and Paddison 2005) and rebranding as ‘creative’ (as every city in Britain seemed to do in the mid-2000s – from ‘Creative Bristol’ to ‘Creative Edinburgh’), are all examples of cultural development that have been widely adopted and reproduced. This has left many critics wondering about the agenda behind such policies, seeing them as the amenable face of global neoliberal capitalism as it continues to erode the public sphere and ramp up inequality (Lovink and Rossiter 2007; Mould 2018; Peck 2005; Zimmerman 2008). This may be so, but what it does clearly show is just how interconnected policy networks are, and the way particular ideas can circulate rapidly in the right conditions. Creativity policy is just one example of the kinds of globally circulating policies being studied by political scientists, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists trying to make sense of the ways in which states are being spatially transformed through policy-making at different administrative scales. At first glance, this seems to fit a narrative of globalization, where the globalization of policy occurs along with the globalization of economic sectors like finance, manufacturing and food. This narrative conjures up an image of policy-making slipping out of the control of democratically elected governments and into the hands of global institutions and networks, such as the International Monetary Fund or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Events like the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland, come to represent the leadership over policy development now exercised by a transnational elite of the rich and the politically connected. But, just as in other sectors, such an image does not do justice to the complex shifts occurring in the spatial constitution of policy-making. The aim of this chapter is to outline how the study of moving and circulating policy can add to our understanding of state spatiality. Its approach to this is to consider the state-spatial claims implicit and explicit in the literatures studying policy movement: specifically, the political science policy transfer literature and the geographical policy mobilities literature. In particular, the chapter argues that much of the policy transfer literature falls into the ‘territorial trap’ (Agnew 1994). The policy mobilities literature is rightly critical of the policy transfer literature for this problem, although its own implications for state spatiality have not been 173

174  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state systematically outlined. The space of the state is defined by the space inside and outside its boundaries, but also necessarily by the linkages across those boundaries (Agnew 2005; Jonas and Moisio 2018; Moisio 2018). Policy networks are a good example of the latter, but policy mobility research needs to consider how the network spaces created to mobilize policy simultaneously construct, reconstruct and transform territorial spaces, and vice versa. The next section will summarize the heritage and the claims of the policy transfer literature, along with the policy mobilities critique. There will be a brief summary of the territorial trap, before a more systematic consideration of policy transfer in relation to it. The chapter will then move onto the policy mobilities literature to consider how it overcomes some of the limitations of policy transfer in regard to the trap. The chapter will conclude by reflecting on the links between relationality and territory, before considering the implications of its argument for the study of state space and policy mobility.

16.2

TRAVELLING POLICY: DIFFUSION, TRANSFER, MOBILITY

Political science research into the movement of policy goes back several decades (Meseguer and Gilardi 2009). Studies of policy diffusion trace the adoption of policy across space – so the way a particular policy programme seemingly moves across borders as it is adopted in one state or country after the next until, as the metaphor suggests, it is virtually everywhere. The speed and pattern of the diffusion are key points of interest (Weyland 2007). Explanations for the diffusion are often linked to geographical proximity. Spatial and temporal clusters of policy transitions are understood as resulting from, for example, competition with near rivals, or the emulation of peers (Simmons and Elkins 2004). Despite its spatial metaphor, space is only important to policy diffusion as the medium through which the diffusion happens. To put this another way, space is nothing more than an axis made up of a sequence of jurisdictions, with no role to play in the explanation. State space is pushed to the background and rendered immaterial. In the 1990s a new agenda within political science for studying what was dubbed ‘policy transfer’ was outlined. This was defined as ‘a process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, p. 344). Compared to policy diffusion studies, there is a shift in focus here from patterns and rates of policy uptake across space to the actors, circumstances and processes involved in making policies transfer. Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000) identified a range of actors who could be involved in particular acts of policy transfer, including policy entrepreneurs and experts, supra-national organizations, politicians, political parties, civil servants, pressure groups, corporations, think tanks, non-governmental organizations and consultants. Their influential model of transfer distinguishes between voluntary and coercive forms of transfer and highlights not just who is involved, but the different degrees of transfer and content of the transfer as well. Their model also allows for more geographical complexity than in diffusion studies, recognizing the possibility of transfer within as well as between nations, and the importance of interscalar transfer. Benson and Jordan (2011) have summarized the development of policy transfer research since the 1990s. They argue that there are three main strands of study. One is simply the bur-

The geography of policy-making  175 geoning literature studying a wide variety of policy transfer in different contexts and relating to different policy domains. The second develops theories of policy transfer that account for the nature of, for example, policy lesson drawing, or making sense of the role of institutions. And the third involves a more normative orientation, asking how policy transfer can shape and guide policy development and innovation. Key debates in the field have related to the motivations of key transfer actors, the role of coercion, the influence of ‘softer’, ideological factors in transfer, the direction of transfer through scalar hierarchies ‘up’, ‘down’ and ‘sideways’ and the constraints that exist on transfer. Clearly, the policy transfer literature provides a way into thinking about policy networks and circuits as dynamic and uneven. But while it is more sensitive to the complexity of state space than the policy diffusion literature, from a geographical perspective there are still important limitations. The geographical notion of ‘policy mobility’ was first coined in 2008 by McCann (2008), although work in geography offering a more geographical take on policy transfer had begun earlier (Peck 2002, 2004; Ward 2006). This new literature makes a number of criticisms of the political science policy transfer and diffusion literatures. One is that it assumes that policy makers are rational actors scanning the horizon for the best policy solutions (Peck and Theodore 2010). Alongside this it is argued that there is an inherent literalism to much of the policy transfer literature which assumed that policies did not change as they travelled or that they meant the same thing in different places (McCann 2011). Policy mobility scholars have called for a shift of emphasis away from rational actors and their motivations and characteristics to focus more on process and the intricacies of context. Part of this is considering how policies mutate as they move between places (Peck 2011). The abovementioned critiques are contested in the policy transfer literature, with proponents of the latter arguing that they do not do justice to what the literature actually says (Dolowitz and Marsh 2012). I will not hash out the rights and wrongs of this debate here. One other contested critique offered by policy mobility scholars, however, is particularly relevant to the argument of this chapter. One form of this is the point that policy transfer studies have tended to focus on the national scale, and that it harbours an implicit methodological nationalism (McCann 2011; McCann and Ward 2012b; Stone 2004). Again, proponents of the literature object, arguing that if it was once true, it is not anymore (Benson and Jordan 2011; Dolowitz and Marsh 2012), and this does appear to be the case (e.g. Gorton et al. 2009). Certainly, there is nothing inherent in the policy transfer model that requires a focus on the national scale. But complexifying the range of scales at which policy transfer operates – which of course reflects the reality of hierarchical policy-making jurisdictions and the way policy constitutes different scales – does not hide the more insidious spatial problem: the tendency to hold space still (Prince 2012a, 2012b). I will unpack this claim in the next section with reference to what Agnew (1994) called the ‘territorial trap’.

16.3

TRAPPING POLICY IN TERRITORY

The movement of policy engages state space, in the sense that this movement both shapes state space and is conditioned by the particular contextual histories and traditions of state spaces. It may reproduce or reinforce received state spatial relations, or it may undermine them. If instances of policy transfer are increasing as the policy transfer literature insists, it implies that there has been a major shift in the spatiality of policy-making, which is one of the most

176  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state important functions of the state. This change of spatiality involves shifting balances of forces driving and shaping policy agendas. But the formalism of policy transfer studies means it is preoccupied with marking out what is policy transfer from what is not, and so conceiving of the world as stable scaled units of space against which we discern moving policies. In this sense, the policy transfer literature risks the territorial trap. The territorial trap is a consequence of methodological nationalism. The latter is where ‘the nation-state is treated as the natural and necessary representation of modern society’ (Chernilo 2011, p. 99). In spatial terms, the state is equated with its territory, and states themselves come to be regarded as relatively fixed territorial units. Politics is conceived according to an outside–inside or foreign–domestic binary. And society is treated as existing in nation-state ‘containers’. These territorially fixed, inside–outside, container conceptions of state space comprise the territorial trap (Agnew 1994). The territorial trap leads to a number of problems for political and social analysis. For one, it naturalizes the relationship between space and power as being defined by the nation-state form. This ignores the historicity of the nation-state, particularly its relatively recent emergence in the second half of the twentieth century as the central unit of the global geopolitical order, and obscures the uneven geopolitical relationships that exist between more and less powerful states. This means it struggles to comprehend change in the underpinnings of the state system and threats to its stability. Second, the binary of domestic and foreign policy conceals the linkages between these spheres, such as when seemingly ‘domestic’ policy is really about international relations, and ‘foreign’ policy is a result of internal politics. And third, the territorial trap means struggling with the existence or emergence of spatial forms that do not map easily onto the territorial state. For example, studies that fall into the trap underemphasize the importance of interstate networks in the maintenance of the state system and fail to recognize the transnational basis of many communities and social movements. Escaping the territorial trap is necessary to grasp the complex and fluid reality of state spatiality. It should be pointed out that there are reasons to object to this characterization of the policy transfer literature. The policy transfer literature is large, and its engagement with questions of space varies. It does not generally ‘containerize’ society with the state in the same way as the international relations literature that Agnew (1994) was critiquing. The policy transfer literature leans on a different analogy where a nation-state is divided up into state, civil society and economy (Maclean 2000), so there is a typology of actors that are ‘state’ or ‘non-state’, with the latter including international expert communities, corporations and institutions (Benson and Jordan 2011). One way it has overcome its earlier methodological nationalism has been to consider the range of administrative scales that policy transfer occurs across. Studies examining the role of the European Union in policy transfer processes show that many studies do get beyond methodological nationalism to consider other state territorialities (Gorton et al. 2009). Moreover, the development of multi-level models of policy transfer has demonstrated an appreciation of the multiple state spatialities that shape policy by trying to account for the various roles of international and global structures, national state projects and the work of the policy network transferring the policy itself (Evans 2004). Other work engaged in policy transfer debates makes a case for considering policy formation not as occurring at the national level before being transferred, but as occurring transnationally (Stone 2012; Stone and Ladi 2015). It is a mistake to assume that there is a lack of nuance in the way the policy transfer literature engages with space. Nevertheless, this engagement with different scales does not overcome the assumption of a degree of territorial fixity. Recognizing multiple scales complexifies the sense

The geography of policy-making  177 of state space, but the latter still remains fixed. This ‘rock-bottom’ geographical assumption’ (Agnew 1994, p. 59) is so ingrained it is rarely discussed, and it is unlikely to be so, because it is a product of the formalism of political science more generally. For one, although the state is not viewed as a societal container, the clear distinctions drawn between state and non-state actors ignore the inherent blurriness of the state and the constant movement of actors, ideas and materials between formal state institutions and its wider context. The OECD, for example, is an international organization and an important source of policy advice and direction for its members (Schmelzer 2016), but is not part of the state as understood in work on policy transfer (Benson and Jordan 2011). And there has long been a traffic between formal policy-making organs in the state and policy consultancies that sit outside of it (Craggs and Neate 2017). The inside–outside distinction reifies the state, and by extension its connection to a particular fixed territory. Of more import, however, is the inside–outside/foreign–domestic distinction made in the policy transfer literature. It is visible in Benson and Jordan’s (2011, p. 371) summary of the assumed rational policy search that comes before transfer: ‘the first port of call for actors seeking to innovate is their own (i.e. domestic) context, which they pursue by examining previous policy successes and failures. Beyond this, policy makers could also look at foreign political systems, particularly those that are established innovators in a particular policy area.’ The distinction between domestic and foreign – or better, inside and outside to account for transfers that occur below the scale of the nation-state – is pivotal for policy transfer because it is the basis for its definition. So, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, p. 21) argue that ‘an increasing amount of policy development, and particularly policy change, in contemporary politics is affected by policy transfer. As such, when we are analysing policy change we always need to ask the question: Is policy transfer involved?’ The inside–outside distinction is necessary to define policy transfer so that it can be distinguished from ‘normal policy studies’ (Evans 2004, p. 226). This, alongside the bedrock assumption of territorial fixity, leads many policy transfer studies into the territorial trap. The formalism of political science drives a desire for carving out a distinct place for policy transfer in the study of policy formation, but it comes at the cost of falling into the trap.

16.4

POLICY MOBILITY: POLICY IN RELATIONAL SPACE

The policy mobility literature, as suggested earlier, emerges from a critique of work on policy transfer and policy diffusion. It is located in the critical geographical literature, and more broadly, the critical social science literature as part of a new wave of critical policy studies (Baker and Temenos 2015). This location liberates it from the formalism evident in the political science literature and allows for a different orientation to the object of policy and its movement. This section will argue this means that, for the most part, the policy mobility literature avoids the territorial trap. However, this will be considered alongside some recent geographical thinking on territory that allows for more effective engagement with the latter’s role in state spatiality. The policy mobility literature does not focus on the movement of the policy against an inert background but on the contexts in which, to which, and through which policy moves. So the movement of policy is not something to be isolated and theorized for its own sake or as an element of policy formation, but as a way into thinking about and understanding social, polit-

178  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ical and economic change. From this point of view, it is embedded in the mobilities paradigm, which describes an emergent agenda of social science that emphasizes how the social world is in many ways a mobile, moving one, requiring research that stays true to this movement (Cresswell 2011, 2012; Merriman 2015; Sheller and Urry 2006). Apart from the importance of context, Peck and Theodore (2015, p. 7) also emphasize the changing spatiality of policy formation, pointing out that policy-making does not occur in one place before being transferred to other places but ‘across transnational expert networks and communities of practice, and between co-evolving governance regimes’ (emphasis in original, compare Stone 2008; Stone and Ladi 2015). The policy mobility literature is less concerned with isolating policy movement as a distinctive addition to ‘normal policy studies’ than with using it to map out shifting policy systems and regimes. Policy mobility has much to offer for thinking about state spatiality. As stated earlier, policy-making is a central, perhaps defining, role of the state. And the study of policy mobility can reveal its multiple geographies. One aspect is the making-up of places as policy senders and receivers. This involves the construction of policy models through a myriad of material practices: these include the writing up of particular policies into forms that can be easily disseminated – as pamphlets, websites, books and PowerPoint presentations (Bunnell and Das 2010). It often involves the enrolment of experts who can advocate for the policy in different settings (Larner and Laurie 2010; McCann 2008). And it can feature a variety of socio-material practices, from policy conferences where ideas are disseminated and discussed, to policy tourism, where people physically travel to other places to learn about policy programmes in place there (Cook and Ward 2012; Cook et al. 2015). Places where particular policies come from can find themselves constructed as ‘policy models’, such as the ‘Singapore model’ of entrepreneurial governance and ‘Vancouverism’ for urban design (Peck and Theodore 2010; Pow 2014). And places where policy is expected or intended to land are similarly constructed as problematic in some way that the policy will solve (Robinson 2015). Policies that are being mobilized in this way will inevitably mutate as they are rendered in a moveable form and made amenable for the places they are travelling to (Peck 2011). Importantly, all this work of mobilizing policy and constructing the sending and receiving sites to facilitate the movement does not necessarily occur in those places, but, as Peck and Theodore (2015) argue, across and between them. For example, in his research on drug harm-reduction policies in Vancouver, McCann (2008) makes the point that the development of the city’s policy rested on the development of international expert networks between cities that not only circulated policy knowledge but provided the necessary legitimation for the policies to be normalized and enacted. Meanwhile, policy is increasingly being commoditized by private policy consultants who develop and adapt policy scripts and models for sale to different policy contexts (Murphy 2014; Prince 2012a). It is these kinds of connective and dynamic spaces that are studied by policy mobility research. And it reveals the places – cities, nations, blocs – where policy is enacted as relationally constituted by complex, intersecting and dynamic networks cutting across them (McCann and Ward 2010, 2011). This vision of state spatiality is very different to one that reduces it to its territorial boundaries. It does not containerize society, make a distinction between inside and outside, or assume territorial fixity for policy-making processes, and so avoids the territorial trap. And yet, territory still ends up being pushed into the background in many policy mobility studies. Where it is considered, territory usually refers to the local and the particular, and so territorial processes in place are distinct from, and in tension with, relational processes between places

The geography of policy-making  179 (e.g. Lysgård 2019; McCann and Ward 2010). Recent thinking on territory, however, offers far greater opportunities for engaging with it in policy mobility research (see in particular Elden 2005, 2007, 2013; Painter 2010). This is important because it deepens our understanding of state space and the different forms of capitalism partly co-constituted with policy (Moisio 2018), with requisite implications for how we approach mobile policy. Elden (2005, 2013) locates the emergence of territory in its modern sense as an area controlled by a particular power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the intersection of revolutions in Western philosophy and political thought. He argues that with the Treaty of Westphalia sovereignty comes to be defined explicitly as being about control over a territory. Around the same time, with Descartes emerged a new, mathematical conception of space founded on geometric coordinates, allowing for the growth and development of cartographic practices that could map out these sovereign territories. There are two important consequences of these developments. One, a territory could now be understood as an abstract space independent of what it contains and comparable in these terms with any other territory. And two, following on from this, a territory could be rendered calculable. So it can be divided up, measured, ordered, distributed, redistributed, catalogued and controlled. Despite its reification today in both popular discourse and many research programmes, territory is not a natural or eternal phenomenon. It is a historical product. In line with this, Painter (2010) suggests that we should treat territory as an effect of particular social practices rather than an object that exists independently of these practices. He argues we should focus on these networked socio-technical practices producing this territory effect, including its boundedness, abstractness and calculability. These are practices that are both social – so involving human activities and relations – and technical – so involving some combination of materials. It includes things that clearly mark out territorial lines in space, like border controls, but also practices that act on territory as if it is abstract and calculable, such as measurements of economic performance and catalogues of people and dwellings. Painter makes the point that relational networks and territories are not necessarily incommensurable or existing in tension: they are more inextricably linked than this. Policy can be thought of in these terms as a set of networked socio-technical practices. From their codification in documents, legislatures, organizational codes and so on, to the various devices used to realize the intent of the policy, to the social relations and subject positions that they arrange, policies are more than just ideas: they are material and social technologies. Like other socio-technical practices, policy produces the territory effect in two ways: (1) some policies act directly on space to produce boundaries. Customs policy, biosecurity policy, immigration policy, border security policy and trade policy are all policies that exist as a set of social and material technologies that mark a line in space and control what passes over it. And, arguably more importantly, (2) all policies act on space through their own assumed and often unspoken spatiality, whether it is focused on a particular city, a region or a country as a whole. This spatiality rests on the notion of a territory in Cartesian terms as an abstract but calculable space that emerged with more mathematical conceptions of space (Elden 2005, 2013). Public policy, as something that acts, in principle, evenly across sovereign territorial space, is a creature of the birth of territory. Without this vision of territorial space, policy as we know it cannot exist. And it means that whenever policy is enacted, it reproduces the territorial effect (Painter 2010). When we approach policy and territory in this way it suggests the significance of policy mobility is that insofar as policy is a (set of) networked socio-technical practice(s), that

180  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state network stretches across various territorial boundaries. But, importantly, the boundary does not pre-exist the network – as Painter (2010) argues, they emerge together. The very circulation of policy depends on an abstract notion of territory as calculable space. Taking territory seriously when studying policy mobility means studying how this notion underpins and informs the way that policy circulates and acts on that space. How have statistical comparisons within and between territories facilitated the circulation of certain kinds of policy? How have circulating policies changed the kinds of calculations being made about a territory? Answering these kinds of questions means policy is not studied as something moving across static territorial space, or as something that lands in pre-existing territories, but as something that territorializes – makes and remakes territory – as it moves.

16.5 CONCLUSION One of the remarkable aspects of the wave of policies aiming to increase and leverage off culture and creativity in the early 2000s was the accompaniment of many of these policy discourses with statistical forms of knowledge. The Creative Industries Mapping Document, first published by the Blair Labour government in 1998 (DCMS, 1998), was one of the earliest and most influential of these kinds of policy documents – a situation made all the more remarkable by the fact that it did not actually contain any programmatic policy statements. Rather, it was a statistical compendium of the creative industries in Britain. Indeed, although it was billed as a ‘mapping document’ it contained no maps, underlining the point that ‘mapping’, which we understand is about communicating the nature of a territory, is a calculative activity. The mapping document was not the only example of calculative reason in this policy area. Richard Florida’s (2002) highly influential formulation of the creative class was similarly underpinned by quantitative knowledge that not only measured various characteristics of cities, but ranked those cities on how they performed. It was not simply the soft appeal of the malleable and upbeat ideas of culture and creativity that enabled their travel, but their rendering as knowable, divisible, calculable and comparable through statistical knowledge (Prince 2014). These calculative renderings territorialized culture and creativity. The effect was to both fix them in place and make them mobile. When considering policy formation, state space needs to be conceived in both territorial and relational terms. But the link between the relational and the territorial means we need to nuance both. Rather than conceive of them as two different spatial logics acting on and shaping policy in place, it is necessary to consider how a policy is linked to the calculative, Cartesian grid that underpins contemporary conceptions of territorial space. This territorialization, whether the policy is enacted or not, is necessary to embed the policy in place. But, importantly, it means a similar act of territorialization can occur anywhere else that territory is conceived in the same calculative, Cartesian fashion. And so, as we see with culture and creativity policy in the 2000s, the territorialization of a policy also situates it in relational space that renders it potentially mobile. From here, whether the material networks required to make a policy actually mobilize are built will be a matter of political agency and will (Clarke 2012). This chapter will conclude with three implications of this argument for the study of mobile policy and state space. First, it requires a turn towards a conception of state space in more topological terms (e.g. Allen 2016; Hoffman and Thatcher 2017; Prince 2016, 2017; Robinson 2015). Topology is often used as a stand-in term for relational space and in opposition to

The geography of policy-making  181 topography, which is conceived as Cartesian space. As Martin and Secor (2014) point out, this is a mistake. Topology is not simply concerned with what relational space looks like, but how relationality endures even as the relations themselves continuously stretch and change. From this perspective, Cartesian topography can be understood in topological terms. By tracing mobile policy, we can map out the multiple topologies that comprise contemporary state space, including the pivotal Cartesian territorial topologies that have been part of state space for several centuries. Second, to focus on the question of whether the frequency of policy transfer is increasing, as Dolowitz and Marsh do, is to miss the significant point. It implies that policy has always been, and continues to be, primarily scalar and scaled, such as at the level of the nation-state. But the geography of policy is relational as much as it is scalar and territorial. The networks may have expanded and become more complex and dynamic, but they have always been part of a policy’s geography. Finally, third, it raises methodological questions about the favoured method of ‘following the policy’ (McCann and Ward 2012a; Peck and Theodore 2012). In simple terms, the following methodology approaches policy mobility by focusing on the movement of policy in an ethnographic fashion. So delving into the different contexts, both within and between places, in which and through which a particular policy is present. The benefit of this is the depth of understanding of the political and social contexts in which policy is being enacted, and the transformation and mutation of the policy itself. But it risks overemphasizing the importance of those moments and places where the policy, in whatever form, is most visible (Gulson et al. 2017). As this chapter has argued, avoiding the territorial trap in thinking about policy and state space requires not just a turn to relational space, but a relational conception of territorial space. Attending to the territorialization of a policy into calculative, Cartesian space as a necessary precursor to its travel, before it can ever be ‘followed’, can help to bring a more dynamic conception of territory into the discussion of mobile policy.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. (1994), ‘The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy, 1 (1), 53–80. Agnew, J. (2005), ‘Sovereignty regimes: Territoriality and state authority in contemporary world politics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95 (2), 437–61. Allen, J. (2016), Topologies of Power: Beyond Territory and Networks, London: Routledge. Asheim, B. (2009), ‘Guest editorial: Introduction to the creative class in European city regions’, Economic geography, 85 (4), 355–62. Baker, T. and C. Temenos (2015), ‘Urban policy mobilities research: Introduction to a debate’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39 (4), 824–7. Benson, D. and A. Jordan (2011), ‘What have we learned from policy transfer research? Dolowitz and Marsh revisited’, Political Studies Review, 9 (3), 366–78. Bunnell, T. and D. Das (2010), ‘Urban pulse: A geography of serial seduction: Urban policy transfer from Kuala Lumpur to Hyderabad’, Urban Geography, 31 (3), 277–84. Chernilo, D. (2011), ‘The critique of methodological nationalism: Theory and history’, Thesis Eleven, 106 (1), 98–117. Clarke, N. (2012), ‘Urban policy mobility, anti-politics, and histories of the transnational municipal movement’, Progress in Human Geography, 36 (1), 25–43. Cook, I.R. and K. Ward (2012), ‘Conferences, informational infrastructures and mobile policies: The process of getting Sweden “BID ready”’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 19 (2), 137–52.

182  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Cook, I.R., S.V. Ward and K. Ward (2015), ‘Post-war planning and policy tourism: The international study tours of the Town and Country Planning Association 1947–1961’, Planning Theory and Practice, 16 (2), 184–205. Craggs, R. and H. Neate (2017), ‘Post-colonial careering and urban policy mobility: Between Britain and Nigeria, 1945–1990’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42 (1), 44–57. Cresswell, T. (2011), ‘Mobilities I: Catching up’, Progress in Human Geography, 35 (4), 550–8. Cresswell, T. (2012), ‘Mobilities II’, Progress in Human Geography, 36 (5), 645–53. DCMS (1998), Creative Industries Mapping Document, London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Dolowitz, D.P. and D. Marsh (1996), ‘Who learns what from whom: A review of the policy transfer literature’, Political Studies, 44 (2), 343–57. Dolowitz, D.P. and D. Marsh (2000), ‘Learning from abroad: The role of policy transfer in contemporary policy-making’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 13 (1), 5–24. Dolowitz, D.P. and D. Marsh (2012), ‘The future of policy transfer research’, Political Studies Review, 10 (3), 339–45. 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. Elden, S. (2007), ‘Governmentality, calculation, territory’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (3), 562–80. Elden, S. (2013), The Birth of Territory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Evans, M. (ed.) (2004), Policy Transfer in Global Perspective, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Florida, R. (2002), The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books. Gorton, M., C. Hubbard and L. Hubbard (2009), ‘The folly of European Union policy transfer: Why the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) does not fit Central and Eastern Europe’, Regional Studies, 43 (10), 1305–17. Gulson, K.N., S. Lewis, B. Lingard, C. Lubienski, K. Takayama and P. Taylor Webb (2017), ‘Policy mobilities and methodology: A proposition for inventive methods in education policy studies’, Critical Studies in Education, 58 (2), 224–41. Heidenreich, M. and B. Plaza (2015), ‘Renewal through culture? The role of museums in the renewal of industrial regions in Europe’, European Planning Studies, 23 (8), 1441–55. Hoffman, L.M. and J.E. Thatcher (2017), ‘Urban studies and thinking topologically’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5, 1–17. Jonas, A.E.G. and S. Moisio (2018), ‘City regionalism as geopolitical processes: A new framework for analysis’, Progress in Human Geography, 42 (3), 350–70. Larner, W. and N. Laurie (2010), ‘Travelling technocrats, embodied knowledges: Globalising privatisation in telecoms and water’, Geoforum, 41 (2), 218–26. Lovink, G. and N. Rossiter (eds) (2007), MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Lysgård, H.K. (2019), ‘The assemblage of culture-led policies in small towns and rural communities’, Geoforum, 101, 10–17. Maclean, J. (2000). ‘Globalization and the failure of the sociological imagination’, Critical Sociology, 26 (3), 329–49. Martin, L. and A.J. Secor (2014), ‘Towards a post-mathematical topology’, Progress in Human Geography, 38 (3), 420–38. McCann, E.J. (2008), ‘Expertise, truth, and urban policy mobilities: Global circuits of knowledge in the development of Vancouver, Canada’s “four pillar” drug strategy’, Environment and Planning A, 40 (4), 885–904. McCann, E.J. (2011), ‘Urban policy mobilities and global circuits of knowledge: Toward a research agenda’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (1), 107–30. McCann, E.J. and K. Ward (2010), ‘Relationality/territoriality: Toward a conceptualization of cities in the world’, Geoforum, 41 (2), 175–84. McCann, E.J. and K. Ward (eds) (2011), Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policy-Making in the Global Age, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

The geography of policy-making  183 McCann, E.J. and K. Ward (2012a), ‘Assembling urbanism: Following policies and “studying through” the sites and situations of policy making’, Environment and Planning A, 44 (1), 42–51. McCann, E.J. and K. Ward (2012b), ‘Policy assemblages, mobilities and mutations: Toward a multidisciplinary conversation’, Political Studies Review, 10 (3), 325–32. Merriman, P. (2015), ‘Mobilities I: Departures’, Progress in Human Geography, 39 (1), 87–95. Meseguer, C. and F. Gilardi (2009), ‘What is new in the study of policy diffusion?’, Review of International Political Economy, 16 (3), 527–43. Miles, S. and R. Paddison (2005), ‘Introduction: The rise and rise of culture-led urban regeneration’, Urban Studies, 42 (5–6), 833–9. Moisio, S. (2018), Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy, London: Routledge. Mould, O. (2018), Against Creativity, New York: Verso. Murphy, L. (2014), ‘“Houston, we’ve got a problem”: The political construction of a housing affordability metric in New Zealand’, Housing Studies, 29, 1–17. Oakley, S. (2007), ‘The role of urban governance in re-constructing place, economic function and social relations in urban waterfront regeneration: The case of Port Adelaide, South Australia’, Space and Polity, 11 (3), 279–95. Painter, J. (2010), ‘Rethinking territory’, Antipode, 42 (5), 1090–118. Peck, J. (2002), ‘Political economies of scale: Fast policy, interscalar relations, and neoliberal workfare’, Economic Geography, 78 (3), 331–60. Peck, J. (2004), ‘Geography and public policy: Constructions of neoliberalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 28 (3), 392–405. Peck, J. (2005), ‘Struggling with the creative class’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29 (4), 740–70. Peck, J. (2011), ‘Geographies of policy: From transfer-diffusion to mobility-mutation’, Progress in Human Geography, 35 (6), 773–97. Peck, J. and N. Theodore (2010), ‘Mobilizing policy: Models, methods, and mutations’, Geoforum, 41 (2), 169–74. Peck, J. and N. Theodore (2012), ‘Follow the policy: A distended case approach’, Environment and Planning A, 44 (1), 21–30. Peck, J. and N. Theodore (2015), Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pow, C.P. (2014), ‘License to travel: Policy assemblage and the “Singapore model”’, City, 18 (3), 287–306. Prince, R. (2010), ‘Globalizing the creative industries concept: Travelling policy and transnational policy communities’, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 40 (2), 119–39. Prince, R. (2012a), ‘Policy transfer, consultants and the geographies of governance’, Progress in Human Geography, 36 (2), 188–203. Prince, R. (2012b), ‘Metaphors of policy mobility: Fluid spaces of “creativity” policy’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 94 (4), 317–31. Prince, R. (2014), ‘Consultants and the global assemblage of culture and creativity’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39 (1), 90–101. Prince, R. (2016), ‘The spaces in between: Mobile policy and the topographies and topologies of the technocracy’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34 (3), 420–37. Prince, R. (2017), ‘Local or global policy? Thinking about policy mobility with assemblage and topology’, Area, 49 (3), 335–41. Robinson, J. (2015), ‘“Arriving at” urban policies: The topological spaces of urban policy mobility’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39 (4), 831–4. Schmelzer, M. (2016), The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Simmons, B.A. and Z. Elkins (2004), ‘The globalization of liberalization: Policy diffusion in the international political economy’, American Political Science Review, 98 (1), 171–89. Stone, D. (2004), ‘Transfer agents and global networks in the “transnationalization” of policy’, Journal of European Public Policy, 11 (3), 545–66.

184  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Stone, D. (2008), ‘Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks’, Policy Studies Journal, 36 (1), 19–38. Stone, D. (2012), ‘Transfer and translation of policy’, Policy Studies, 33, 1–17. Stone, D. and S. Ladi (2015), ‘Global public policy and transnational administration’, Public Administration, 93 (4), 839–55. Ward, K. (2006), ‘“Policies in motion”: Urban management and state restructuring: The trans-local expansion of business improvement districts’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30 (1), 54–75. Weyland, K. (2007), Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Secor Reform in Latin America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zimmerman, J. (2008), ‘From brew town to cool town: Neoliberalism and the creative city development strategy in Milwaukee’, Cities, 25 (4), 230–42.

17. Neuroliberalism in the digital age: the emerging geographies of the behavioural state Mark Whitehead

17.1 INTRODUCTION: ON THE RISE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE Some of the most striking recent changes in the geographies of the state relate to the emerging relationships between governments and the behavioural sciences (Whitehead et al. 2017). The last 15 years have seen the behavioural sciences influence the principles and practices of statehood in a series of ways. At the heart of these changes has been a shift in the ways in which states comprehend citizens. Since antiquity there has been a prevailing assumption that citizens’ actions and behaviours are guided by the principles of rationality (in particular, self-interest, reflection deliberation, and an alignment between beliefs and actions) (Jones et al. 2013). Over the last 15 years, however, the behavioural sciences have been progressively challenging assumptions about rational citizenship. In the place of homo-economicus has emerged the figure of homo-psychologicus, who is characterized by irrationality, short-termism, bias, and various forms of emotional motivation. Changing understandings of human behaviour have in turn led to the deployments of new techniques of government. These techniques of governing focus far less on trying to change the internal dynamics of human decision making, and instead seek to use social and material environmental vectors to shape behaviour (Feitsma and Whitehead 2019; Whitehead et al. 2018). In previous work I have described this shift in state practices as neuroliberalism (Whitehead et al. 2017). This chapter begins by exploring the impacts of neuroliberalism on modern state practices. Particular attention is given to the ways in which neuroliberal styles of government operate geographically. While this chapter is broadly critical of the epistemological assumptions and ethical implications of neuroliberal state systems, it claims that many of the established criticisms of this mode of government have been overstated. Analysis moves on to consider emerging fusions between the behavioural and big data sciences (see Yeung 2016; Zuboff 2019). It is argued that these scientific fusions are paving the way for a new digital iteration of neuroliberalism (2.0). This new form of neuroliberalism combines acts of digital surveillance and behavioural modification which are characteristics of an inherently behavioural state. This chapter argues that emerging systems of behavioural government may result in some of the early fears concerning the epistemological and ethical implications of neuroliberalism coming to fruition. It is also claimed that digital forms of neuroliberalism have significant implications for the geographical modes of operation of the late modern state.

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186  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

17.2

PSYCHOLOGY, ANALOGUE SPACE, AND NEUROLIBERAL GOVERNMENT

17.2.1 Neuroliberalism: A Brief Introduction Neuroliberalism can be defined as, ‘The use of behavioural, psychological, and neurological insights to deliberately shape and govern human conduct in free societies’ (Whitehead et al. 2017, p. 1). Within this beguilingly simple definition lie two significant considerations. First, neuroliberalism is predicted on a novel set of perspectives on the human condition, which challenge many of the presumptions of liberal and neoliberal systems of statehood. Second, neuroliberalism is associated with the subtle, but nonetheless important reframing of what it is to be free. In the context of the human subject, neuroliberal systems of government challenge the presumption that subjects are capable of unassisted forms of effective self-government. Classical liberalism has operated under the assumption that the rational, self-interested subject, when given sufficient information and autonomy, would be best placed to calculate optimal courses of behaviour that would serve their own and society’s more general needs (according to Hayek, there is an ‘irremediable ignorance’ within the state when it comes to the best interests of individuals (see Sunstein 2019). Drawing on the insights of behavioural economics and cognitive psychology, neuroliberalism challenges liberal ontologies of the subject in significant ways. Neuroliberalist ontologies are based on the recognition of the limited nature of the human subject. These limits relate to both the cognitive bandwidths that are used to process information and execute decisions, and the bounded amounts of willpower we have to act in our long-term interests (Jones et al. 2013). Neuroliberalism thus challenges the orthodoxies of negative freedom that are associated with neoliberal society (negative freedom sees the prevention of interference with human decision making as a key prerequisite of what it is to be free) (Sunstein 2019). In the context of the limited cognitive bandwidth and willpower of people, neuroliberalism suggests that there is legitimate scope for state actors to shape choice environments in ways that facilitate good decision making and the achievement of individual wellbeing (Sunstein 2019). The neuroliberal state has thus deployed a series of psychological devices (often referred to as nudges) to shape human conduct. These psychological systems of governing seek to preserve freedom to the extent that they (should) remain fairly easy to resist and maintain elements of choice. But as we will see, equating freedom with choice involves an important reframing of what it is to be free within liberal societies (Whitehead et al. 2017). Armed with a new ontology of the human subject, and novel tools of psychological governance, the emergence of neuroliberalism as a project of statehood has been facilitated by certain politico-economic developments. Central among these developments has been the Credit Crunch of 2008 and the ensuing period of social, political, and economic instability associated with the Great Recession. The Credit Crunch embodied a practical and epistemological threat to the presumptions of neoliberalism. At an epistemological level, the irrational actions of bankers and financiers demonstrated that neoliberal theories of homo economicus were not only inaccurate, but egregiously so. In this context it became clear that social stability and personal welfare are, clearly, not best secured by the preservation of self-interested forms of (negative) freedom. Politically, neuroliberalism has become popular on both the political left and right due to the fact that it offers a form of low-cost behavioural government that complements the needs of the austerity state.

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  187 Table 17.1

Neoliberalism and neuroliberalism – a comparison Neoliberalism

Targeted behavioural system Deliberative/utility maximizing Assumed human context for Individual

Neuroliberalism Automatic/emotional Social

decision making Fictitious figure

Rational – Homo economicus

More-than-rational – Homer Simpson

Experimental style

Informally experimental

Formally experimental

Economic orientation

Market-oriented

Market-/austerity-oriented

Vectors for behaviour change Incentive/information-based decision making

Context-based decision making, behavioural environments

Cognitive target

Conscious

More-than-conscious

Target population

Aggregate population

Personalized

In the wake of the Credit Crunch, behaviouralist explanations have become popular ways of explaining a series of ensuing social crises, including climate change, the obesity epidemic, the mental health crisis, and even the failings of international development policies. In these contexts, neuroliberalism has been popularized as a system of statehood that can help to address the meta-crisis of neoliberalism, while still preserving the core liberal values of autonomy and freedom (Jones et al. 2013; Whitehead et al. 2017, see also World Bank 2015). This, of course, does beg the question of the nature of the relationship between neuro and neoliberalism. As Table 17.1 demonstrates, from their understanding of the human condition to their governmental targets, neo and neuroliberalism embody different styles of government and statehood. Notwithstanding these distinctions, it is important not to draw too strong a line of distinction between these modalities of government. While neuroliberalism clearly reflects a response to the crises of neoliberalism, it is by no means a fully fledged alternative to the neoliberal political economy. In the absence of radical economic restructuring, it is clear that neuroliberalism still operates in the umbra of neoliberalism, seeking to correct the behavioural failings of the enduring neoliberal economic system. Neuroliberalism can be thought of as a micro-economic project that works in harmony with the macro-economics of neoliberalism – the quantum level theory of behaviour that co-exists, even as it contradicts, the universal laws of the neoliberal economic systems. To these ends, neuroliberalism reflects a set of responses to neoliberalism that sees economic crisis not as a product of the market system, but behavioural failings within it (it is akin to correcting for human market failures rather than questioning the overall logics of the market system itself). Through its alignments with austerity, neuroliberalism could actually be interpreted as a much more radical political than economic project. In facilitating the emergence of a more minimal, behavioural state, neuroliberalism has enabled the neoliberal project to facilitate heretofore unrealized levels of fiscal retrenchment and roll-back in state systems. Precisely how neuroliberalism fits into the neonationalist response to neoliberalism, currently being developed on the political left and right, does, however, remain to be seen. 17.2.2 Neuroliberalism as a Contextual Project of Government One of the regularly overlooked aspects of neuroliberalism is its geographical dimensions. The nature of neuroliberalism means that it is not a project of government that focuses on conventional modalities of governing such as persuasion and compulsion – it does not seek to win the soul of the governmental subject. As a project of liberal psychological statehood, neuroliberal-

188  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ism seeks to govern through (re)shaping the contextual environments and spaces of everyday life (see Jones et al. 2013; Whitehead et al. 2017). Context is important within neuroliberalism for two reasons. First, it reflects the psychological insight that human conduct is conditioned by the choice environments that we find ourselves in (whether these choice environments are characterized by social influence or the physical design of space). Second, a focus on context, and not the individual soul per se, is what enables neuroliberalism to fuse psychological influence with a liberal governmental project that ostensibly seeks to preserve freedom. The emphasis that neuroliberalism places on governing through context is a product of the interaction of the project with those working in the field of cognitive design (Whitehead et al. 2017, pp. 157–79). While cognitive psychologists emphasize how our brain’s processing capacity leads to human error, cognitive designers approach poor decision making from the opposite perspective. Cognitive designers suggest that human error is also a product of the irrational push of the poorly designed environments we often find ourselves in. Inspired by the insights of cognitive design, neuroliberal styles of government have targeted the contexts within which we make decisions as vectors for effective behavioural governance. Sometimes, governing through context focuses on the design of our immediate haptic environment and the approximately 20,000 objects and devices we interact with on a daily basis. At other times, related policies can target broader behavioural contexts. In his analysis of the United States public health Blue Zones Project, Carter documents how neuroliberal government can involve attempts at more holistic shifts in the choice environments in which people live (2015). In relation to the Blue Zones Project, contextual government has seen attempts to transfer the social and physical factors that produce so-called ‘longevity hotspots‘ around the world (those places, such as Sardinia, which have much higher life expectancy) into urban communities in the United States (Whitehead et al. 2018) The Blue Zones Project seeks, in classic neuroliberal style, to gently bias space so as to make living a healthy life much easier. The formation of a biased geography is an interesting notion, revealing as it does the spatial dimensions at the heart of the neuroliberal project. The biasing of space in this instance focuses on the deconveniencing of everyday life, so that it becomes more difficult to drive to places (due, perhaps, to roads that have been designed to slow cars down and with a reduction of car parking spaces), and much more difficult to purchase unhealthy, processed food. Ultimately, through the promotion of alternative food cultures (and the kinds of peer pressures this brings), the Blue Zones Project is seeking to reproduce, in fairly holistic terms, the contextual factors that make certain places in the world the most healthy places to live, and inculcate healthy habits. The Blue Zones Project reveals how, in its most ambition forms, neuroliberalism is a geographical project that not only seeks to govern through context, but also through the restructuring of place. Governing through the psychological appropriation of spaces raises some interesting ethical and epistemological concerns. Ethically, the evident psychological manipulation appears to take neuroliberalism into a realm where the freedom preserving notion of choice becomes most stretched. While it may be easy to opt out of a default setting on organ donation schemes, opting out of a holistic healthy food environment may stretch the notion of choice beyond its liberal limits. Epistemologically, the emerging focus on place suggests a more effective appropriation of context as a tool of government than those associated with early iterations of neuroliberalism. Earlier forms of neuroliberalism tended to focus only on immediate everyday environments as the context for behaviour change (such as the canteen, workplace, or home). From a critical geographical point of view, these were appropriations of

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  189 context that failed to acknowledge the large-scale temporal and spatial processes that produce context and attendant behaviours (Whitehead et al. 2018; Feitsma and Whitehead 2019). While governing behaviours through the psycho-geographies of place rather than proximate environments is likely to be more effective in achieving certain behavioural goals, it too still fails to acknowledge the extra-local, and long-term, processes that shape contexts and behaviours (Feitsma and Whitehead 2019). 17.2.3 Critical Perspectives on Neuroliberalism Before moving on to consider the emerging digital manifestations of neuroliberalism it is instructive to consider the types of critique it has received as a style of government. At the most immediate level neuroliberal styles of government have been criticized on ethical grounds. Ethical critiques have centred on the manipulative nature of neuroliberal techniques, the way in which they exploit human frailties to shape human behaviour, and their apparent intolerance to aberrant behaviours (see Jones et al. 2013) At other times related initiatives have been criticized on the basis of their ineffectiveness. While the styles of psychological government associated neuroliberalism have proven relatively effective at addressing simply behaviours over short time periods, they have been far less effective at addressing longer-term behavioural issues (Whitehead et al. 2017). While critiques of neuroliberalism have been theoretically justified, at a practical level they have often proven unnecessary. In only a limited number of instances have the manipulative potentials of neuroliberalism resulted in pernicious acts of government. The worse effects of neuroliberalism have been largely tempered by two process. First, the fact that they have been developed within the public sector means they have been open to political scrutiny and have remained focused, by and large, on the promotion of what most agree are socially desirable governmental goals. Second, neuroliberalism has been militated against by the fact that as a relatively low-cost form of government, its effects have often been fleeting, as the government nudges and leaves. In the remainder of this chapter I consider the emergence of digital neuroliberalism (sometimes referred to as micro- or hyper-nudging, or neuroliberalism 2.0). In this discussion I consider how questions of geography and context re-emerge as critical issues within this digital movement. More worryingly, I argue that many of the critiques developed of neuroliberalism tend to gain more lasting purchase within its digital manifestations.

17.3

GEOGRAPHY, HYPER-NUDGING, AND THE FUTURE OF NEUROLIBERALISM

17.3.1 Neuroliberalism 2.0: The Nature of Hyper- and Micro-Nudging Over the last five years the nature and focus of neuroliberalism has started to shift with important implications for the governing practices that are associated with states. With the advance of various forms of smart technology and machine learning, new opportunities for neuroliberal government have emerged (Guszcza 2015; Risdon 2017). This new era of digital behavioural government has been characterized, in part, by the emergence of the hyper-nudge. According to Yeung hyper-nudges are nudges that fuse together behavioural and data sciences. Yeung observes that:

190  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Hypernudging relies on highlighting algorithmically determined correlations between data items within data sets that would not otherwise be observable through human cognition alone (or even with standard computing support) thereby conferring ‘salience’ on the highlighted data patterns, operating through the technique of ‘priming’, dynamically configuring the user’s informational choice context in ways intentionally designed to influence her decisions. (Yeung 2016, p. 8)

Interestingly the notion of hyper-nudging takes its name from the scaling-up of nudges through social media networks and smart technologies to deliver population level effects. But, as this quote from Yeung reveals, hyper-nudging can also be thought of as micro-nudging – to the extent that it involves the delivery of personally salient nudges to individuals in real time (see Dow Schull 2016). To these ends hyper-nudges would include Facebook’s Voter Megaphone Project (through which voting in elections has been promoted on the basis of indicating who in social networks has already cast their vote), and the various forms of personal feedback that people receive from self-tracking devices (see Lanzing 2018). Table 17.2 summarizes the key differences between neoliberalism, neuroliberalism, and the hyper-nudges of what could be considered neuroliberalism 2.0. There are important distinctions in particular between neuroliberalism and its digital mutations. First, while neuroliberalism tends to approach humans from the perspective of cognitive limitations, inspired by behaviouralist thinking, neuroliberalism 2.0 tends to see human populations like animal groups, who are to be governed primarily by systems of stimulus, response, and reward (Zuboff 2019). Second, hyper-nudging is based on an almost continuous application of experiments, of which citizens are rarely aware. This continuous experimentation sees our choice environments being adjusted in incremental ways, our responses (expressed in likes, click-through rates, or perhaps taking more exercise) ambiently monitored and assessed, and the results fed into the next round of experimentation. Third, hyper-nudging tends to rely on the commercial infrastructure of big tech to deliver forms of behavioural government. The implication of this shift from public to private infrastrucTable 17.2

The differences between neoliberalism, neuroliberalism, and neuroliberalism 2.0 Neoliberalism

Neuroliberalism

Neuroliberalism 2.0

Targeted behavioural Deliberative/utility maximizing Automatic/emotional

Automatic/organism

system Assumed human

Individual

Social

Collective

making Fictitious figure

Rational – Homo economicus

More-than-rational Homo sapien

Homo-imitans

Experimental style

Informally experimental

Formally experimental

Continuously experimental

Economic orientation Market-oriented Vectors for behaviour Incentive/information-based

Market-/austerity-oriented

Market/behavioural surplus revenues

Context-based decision making,

Hyper-nudge (mobilization of social

change

decision making

behavioural environments

influence and bias at scale)

Cognitive target

Conscious

More-than-conscious

Automatic system

Target population

Aggregate population

Personalized

Mass personalization

Epistemology

Socio-economic ignorance

Individual/behavioural

Total knowledge/post-theoretical

Mode of government

Minimal state

Soft-paternalism

Surveillance capitalist/corporate

Perspective of

Prioritization of individual

Freedom as structured choice

freedom

freedom

context for decision

governmentality Freedom as illusion

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  191 tures of behavioural government has significant implications. It tends to mean, for example, that nudges are being used to further more explicitly commercial goals than was evident under non-digital forms of neuroliberalism. The commercialization of traditionally state-based behavioural government (pertaining perhaps to personal health or finance), exposes potential tensions between the commercial and public values associated with behaviour change policies (what will happen when the behavioural needs of the public clash those of the corporation). It also means that there is often less transparency and accountability within the application of hyper- as compared to analogue nudging. The connections between hyper-nudging and commercial digital infrastructure also signals a shift in who might be considered the agents of government. While state bodies use the digital tools of hyper-nudging, corporations are also becoming involved in the practices of digital behavioural government, as they seek to extract ever more intimate data from subjects to feed their predictive analytics. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, hyper-nudging has an ability to scale much more easily and, often at lower costs than first-generation neuroliberal interventions. It is in these contexts that it is perhaps appropriate to think of hyper-nudging as a form of continuous behaviour modification at scale (Lanier 2018). It is, of course, in the context of the extended reach, algorithmic fine tuning, and commercial mobilizing of hyper-nudging that the early critiques of neuroliberalism start to become more salient. Essentially, neuroliberalism 2.0 promises to deliver forms of behavioural government that are both more effective, longer lasting, and more open to commercial exploitation than first-wave nudges. To put things another way, neuroliberalism 2.0 is much more likely to be effective in reshaping public behaviours, its influence will be much harder to resist, but its normative goals are far less clear. While these concerns are significant, the remainder of this chapter considers the geographical implications of neuroliberalism 2.0. In particular, I want to consider how thinking about hyper-nudging geographically reveals important aspects of what the future of behavioural government, and states’ role within it, will look like, and additional reasons to be critical of its modes of operation. 17.3.2 Unpacking the Geographies of Hyper-Nudging The transfer of nudging into the digital world may, at one level, be interpreted as neuroliberalism becoming less relevant to geographical government and the spatial operations of the state, as nudges migrate from the changing of actual environments to digital ones. But the reverse appears to be true. The reason for this is that the emergence of hyper-nudging is directly coupled to the embedding of the digital into the everyday spaces of life. The emergence of smart devices (including mobile phones, smart thermostats, the onboard computing capabilities of cars inter alia), coupled with the embedding of a bewildering array of monitoring devices into the physical infrastructures of everyday life, is the very basis of neuroliberalism 2.0 (Zuboff 2019). It is the Internet of Things (or the wideware) of the contemporary digital age that enables the data on which hyper-nudges depends to be gathered (perhaps relating to our particular penchant for running), and appropriate nudges to be delivered (perhaps a message to let us know of a popular running route, which is enjoyed by our friends, in our current vicinity). In a strange way, while the preliminary stages of the internet embodied clear demarcations between the realms of virtual and real space, it appears that in the future computing will be so deeply embedded in the world around us that it will be inherently geographical (Zuboff 2019).

192  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Of course, the fusion of the digital and the geographical has already been described in the pioneering work of certain digitally oriented geographers. In their account of the automatic productions of space and the associated technological unconscious, Thrift and French (2002) consider how software insinuates itself into our everyday lives and offers forms of local intelligence that are reshaping our worlds. Thrift and French draw particular attention to how the work of software in urban space tends to operate below the threshold of the representational, and the particular political and epistemological implications this presents to urban studies (Thrift and French 2002, p. 312). Thrift and French interpret the spread of software into everyday life as the emergence of a form of distributed cognition in and through which our everyday environments become contexts for increasingly diverse forms of knowledge production and non-human analysis. While Thrift and French’s analysis is portentous of the age of digital surveillance we now find ourselves in (Zuboff 2019), it was written at a time before the proliferation of smart devices, cloud computing, and social media platforms. As such, while Thrift and French’s work identifies the spatial implications of governmentality by software, it did so in an age before the emergence of the hyper-nudge. To these ends, it is important to reconsider the ways in which data and the behavioural sciences are insinuating themselves into the spaces of everyday life, and the particular geographical implications of these processes for the practices of the state. It is important, however, to identify three key processes that are associated with the spatial hyper-nudge. First are the processes I describe as spatial behavioural surveillance. Spatial behavioural surveillance is different from more general forms of digital surveillance to the extent that it is not limited to the virtual world. Spatial behavioural surveillance involves the gathering of behavioural data in geographical situ. Spatial behavioural surveillance can operate on an aggregate (changing patterns of driving behaviour monitored through embedded kerbside devices) and more personal levels (as GPS-activated smart watches indicates to Strava the particular routes we like to cycle or walk along, or photographs are ‘geo-tagged‘ in Facebook). Spatial behavioural surveillance thus involves both locational behavioural surveillance (identifying what behaviours happen where) and the surveillance of geographical behavioural routines (identifying the spatial routes and patterns of everyday life). Neuroliberalism 2.0 is thus predicated on an historically unprecedented ability of state authorities to hypothetically see, interpret, and shape our spatial behaviours. The second set of spatial processes associated with digital hyper-nudging is geographical digitization. Unlike spatial behavioural surveillance this process is not primarily interested in behaviours in space, as enabling the geographical (in its entirety) to have a digital form. The transferal of the geographical into the digital is perhaps expressed most obviously through the Google Earth and Google Street View projects, in which satellite and ground-level surveillance facilitate the production of digitally adaptable maps of the world. Geographical digitization can operate at large and small scales. So, while Google Earth and Google Street View involve the orchestrated extraction of geographical data at large scales, Google Glass offers a more personalized, and invasive, form of surveillance, whereby anyone wearing Google glasses could help to map the world for Google in real time. But geographical digitization can take an even more sinister form. Zuboff (2019, p. 235) describes the capacity of iRobot’s autonomous vacuum cleaner to develop detailed floor plan information of homes while cleaning rooms. Whether generating the God’s-eye perspective of Google Earth, the more dynamic mappings of Google Glass, or iRobot’s more intimate floor plan data, geographical digitization provides the spatial coordinates in and through

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  193 which hyper-nudging can be most effectively mobilized. In order to be able to hyper-nudge geographically you first need to have a digital version of the geographical world. It is these digital coordinates that enable the activation of geographically salient knowledge, not only at the right time, but also in the right place! The state has, of course, been complicit within the digitization of space. The state has supported related processes by a wilful lack of regulation of the digitization of public space and by more direct forms of financial support for such processes through military and security research programmes (Zuboff 2019). The third and final dimension of the geographies of hyper-nudging is the spatial hyper-nudge. The spatial hyper-nudge is essentially a non-coercive prompt to action that is based on algorithmically determined correlations of personal and collective data sets that are able to predict what you would like to do next and route your behaviour accordingly. Spatial hyper-nudges are distinct from more general forms of hyper-nudge to the extent that they are determined by spatial context (as opposed to the webpage that you are on) and target spatially salient behaviours. Spatial hyper-nudges could be used to maximize the behavioural possibilities of particular settings: for example, letting you know that a car park you are passing has available spaces, that a swimming pool is currently fairly quiet, or that a nearby restaurant is loved by one of your friends. But they could also be used to actively route you in certain directions. It has been suggested, for example, that the game Pokémon Go has been using play as a way of guiding people to particular, fee-paying, commercial establishments (such as McDonald’s) (Zuboff 2019). Google’s Sidewalk Labs is also promoting a new approach to tackling traffic congestion in cities, which combines artificial intelligence and smart tech to guide people to available public and private parking spaces (a kind of Airbnb for parking); this tech can also, however, guide traffic wardens to lucrative areas of cities! The colonization of smart city technologies by tech companies, such as Sidewalk Labs, reveals an important shift in responsibility for urban government from the local state to smart technology companies. While a systematic analysis of the particular ways in which geography and digital neuroliberalism are, or could be, used is still to be completed, the possibilities are intriguing and troubling. We may only just be seeing the beginnings of the ways in which spatial hyper-nudging can deploy the behavioural tools of defaults (assumed best places), social influence (the spatial behaviours of those that you know), or status quo bias (you have been here before, so why not go again). What is clear is that smart tech, the Internet of Things, and machine learning, will enable neuroliberalism to enter the spaces of our everyday lives in ways it never has before and change the spatial practices of government that have traditionally been delivered by the state. 17.3.3 Critical Geographical Perspectives on the Hyper-Nudge In this final section I want to offer some critical perspectives on hyper-nudging, which are specifically signalled by a geographical perspective. Much critical analysis of hyper-nudging focuses on the question of privacy (Yeung 2018). Concerns over privacy emerge because of the large volumes of personal data that must be harvested to feed the algorithms that support hyper-nudges. Critically, however, Lanzing (2018) claims that hyper-nudges involves a new horizon of privacy concerns as infringements on informational privacy (perhaps pertaining to demographic profiles) are joined by those pertaining to decisional privacy. Decisional privacy is distinct from informational privacy as it does not just tell us about a person (data which can be used to predict behaviour), it reveals the actual way a person behaves in a given context.

194  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Access to decisional data (which can be both prompted and harvested by the smart devices that facilitate hyper-nudges) opens-up new realms of behavioural experiments and controlled trials at previously unattainable scales. The operation of such trials, often without meaningful forms of consent, raises a series of troubling ethical issues (Jones and Whitehead 2018). Concerns over decisional privacy have two primary geographical dimensions. First, whether it be through the biometric reconnaissance of wearable tech, or the domestic surveillance of the smart home, hyper-nudges have enabled the behavioural governance of decisions to enter the everyday spaces of life in ways that analogue nudges never could. So, whether it be your smart fridge nudging you to consume less food, or your smart car encouraging you to drive more sensibly (and secure better insurance premiums), hyper-nudging changes the geographical scope of neuroliberalism and the monitoring of related behaviours. Second, the GPS-activated technologies that are associated with hyper-nudging do not only capture decisional actions in particular places, they can also monitor spatial action itself. Hyper-nudge technologies can compromise decisional privacy to the extent that they can monitor and mould our spatial decision making and the routes we take. While not directly related to hyper-nudging, one of the most striking recent violations of spatial behavioural privacy has been perpetrated by Uber. In its infamous ‘Rides of Glory’ analysis, Uber was able to map users’ one-night-stands (without their meaningful consent) on the basis of historic spatial patterns in customers’ use of the ride-sharing app. What Uber’s ‘Rides of Glory’ analysis reveals is the ability of GPS-enabled smart tech to not only reveal private spatial behaviours, but also to use patterns of spatial movement as proxies for the estimation of actual behaviours. This inferential capacity means that observed spatial behaviours can be used to reveal, and potentially mould, the behaviours that are occurring in between geographical movements. States have been conspicuously slow to regulate corporate surveillance of our decisional privacy. It is now likely that states will benefit from a deeper understanding of our spatial behaviours, and related spatial inferences, as they design systems of behavioural government. On these terms, the state will clearly benefit from ongoing privacy infringements within spaces it would not have been able to monitor (legally) itself. A geographical perspective on hyper-nudging also highlights its exploitative potential. By being able to simultaneously cross-reference ‘geo-tagged‘ data concerning location, biometrics, and historical behavioural patterns, hyper-nudging has the potential to be able to exploit people’s spatial behavioural vulnerabilities in previously unimaginable ways. Being able to nudge you in the direction of a fast-food restaurant on the basis of the time of day, proximity to a fee-paying eating establishment, biometric data on your level of hunger, and historical data on your penchant for hamburgers could enable nudges to wield new forms of corporeal power. This, of course, is the realm of mobile life-pattern marketing (see Zuboff 2019, pp. 242–5). As such it is perhaps best termed ‘hyper-sludging’ (the use of nudge techniques for commercial gain). Nonetheless, it is clear that the proliferation of ‘context-aware data’ facilitates the exploitation of human spatial vulnerabilities in enhanced ways. While this may improve the effectiveness of nudges, it is likely to significantly reduce our ability to be able to resist them. We can log off from a computer, but it is much more difficult to opt out of the Internet of Things. In government we are only beginning to see how these techniques may be used to encourage us to pay our taxes on time, lead healthier lifestyles, or behave in more responsible ways. So far, we have seen how a geographical perspective on hyper-nudging can help to provide critical vantage points on how big data and the behavioural sciences are insinuating themselves within the spaces of everyday life. It is also clear, however, that geography offers some scope

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  195 for collective resistance to hyper-nudging. According to Zuboff (2019), the growth of the surveillance practices associated with hyper-nudging have progressed through the geographical logic of trespass. The logic of trespass has seen the big data industry move as far as it can into personal spaces of existence until political or legal opposition is encountered (at which point such opposition is strenuously resisted). Whether it be in relation to the extraction and sale of data concerning online behaviour, or the photographing of private homes as part of Google’s Street View initiative, trespass has provided a lucrative model of economic accumulation (particularly when individuals are often unaware of acts of trespass and feel disempowered to do anything about them). It is interesting to ponder why the state has not moved to prevent forms of trespass, given that one of its core historical functions is the protection of property rights (perhaps it is due to enhanced security benefits that flow from acts of trespass). The ethos of trespass is nevertheless tightly connected to the Californian Ideology that undergirds the big data industry and suggests that only by doing things ‘without permission’ can the creative liberalism of the tech industry be realized (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). It appears, however, that when trespass takes on a physical geographical mode of action opportunities for resistance are enhanced. In 2010, for example, residents of London Road, a cul-de-sac in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, came together to prevent a Google Street View car from gaining access to their street. Local councillor Edward Butler-Ellis explained the motivation behind the spatial protest on the following terms: ‘The fact is they should have asked or at least let people know that they were photographing their houses. What really gets me is people have to opt out of being on it when they should have to opt in. A lot of older people without the internet are unaware that they are able to opt out of this’ (quoted in Barnett and Beaumont 2010). While London Road would eventually be captured on Street View, community action has seen many similar streets and neighbourhoods seeking to opt out of the forms of digital surveillance that provide the virtual infrastructure for hyper-nudging. The question remains, however, as to whether the notion of trespass can offer a spatial discourse through which more opposition can be generated to the embedding of digital surveillance and hyper-nudging into homes and communities. While there is no guarantee that resistance to the apparatuses of hyper-nudging will be more sustained in the real world as opposed to the digital world, it is clear that as neuroliberalism 2.0 moves from the virtual to the real that new opportunities for spatial resistance will emerge. Whether the state will continue to facilitate new forms of spatial surveillance and behavioural manipulation, or be an institutional context to resist them, remains to be seen.

17.4 CONCLUSION This chapter has outlined the key parameters of neuroliberalism as an emerging system of government. Analysis has revealed how neuroliberalism is a specifically geographical approach to governing human conduct that has developed in the context of emerging behavioural insights into human motivation and action, and the meta-crises of neoliberalism. This chapter has argued that while many early critiques of neuroliberalism proved to be unfounded, its new digital iterations may make them more salient. Neuroliberalism 2.0 embodies an attempt to fuse behavioural psychology with the infrastructures of smart technology. This chapter has argued that the emergence of neuroliberalism 2.0, and its associated techniques of hyper-nudging, could present an ethically and politically significant corruption of neuroliberalism. Analysis

196  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state has also demonstrated that despite the digital nature of hyper-nudging, geography continues to play a crucial role in the emerging governmental techniques of neuroliberalism 2.0. Ultimately, neuroliberalism 2.0 reveals a changing geographical role of the state within behavioural government. Neuroliberalism 2.0 offers a context for the more ubiquitous and effective operation of the state within the everyday spaces of existence. It also reveals how in the future, behavioural government will increasingly operate at the interface of public bodies and private corporations. In this context, smart tech companies will often be key interfaces between states and citizens and will, at times, take on directly governmental responsibilities. We are beginning to see some of the most troubling aspects of the unaccountable digital systems of statehood that could emerge in these circumstances in the context of so-called digital welfare states (see Pilkington 2019). In these instances, the geography of the state is changing to the extent that while it is able to move with ever greater ease within the spaces of everyday life, it is unavailable (and increasingly unaccountable) geographically to the populations it is serving. Ultimately, analysis has demonstrated that digital neuroliberalism is likely to blur the lines of demarcation between the virtual and the real, commerce and the state, and the public and private in our collective governmental future. We have also seen that a geographical perspective will remain crucial if we are to adequately analyse and resist what neuroliberalism 2.0 threatens to deliver.

REFERENCES Barbrook, R. and A. Cameron (1996), ‘The Californian ideology’, Science and Culture, 6 (1), 44–72. Barnett, E. and C. Beaumont (2010), ‘Buckinghamshire village in Street View fight against Google’, The Telegraph, 12 March. Carter E.D. (2015), ‘Making the Blue Zones: Neoliberalism and nudges in public health promotion’, Social Science and Medicine, 113, 374–82. Dow Schull, N. (2016), ‘Data for life: Wearable technology and the design of self-care’, BioSocieties, 11 (3), 317–33. Feitsma, J. and M. Whitehead (2019), ‘Bounded interdisciplinarity: Critical interdisciplinary perspectives on context and evidence in behavioural public policies’, Behavioural Public Policy. doi:​10​.1017/​ bpp​.2019​.30 Guszcza, J. (2015), ‘The last-mile problem: How data science and behaviuoral science can work together’, Deloitte Review, 16, 65–79. Jones, R. and M. Whitehead (2018), ‘“Politics done like science”: Critical perspectives on psychological governance and the experimental state’, Progress in Human Geography, 36 (2), 313–30. Jones, R., J. Pykett, and M. Whitehead (2013), Changing Behaviour: On the Rise of the Psychological State, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Lanier, J. (2018), Ten Arguments for Deleting you Social Media Accounts Right Now, London: Bodley Head. Lanzing, M. (2018), ‘“Strongly recommended”: Revisting decisonal privacy to judge hypernudging in self-tracking technologies’, Philosophy and Technology, 32, 549–68. Pilkington, E. (2019), ‘Digital welfare state: Big tech able able to target and surveil the poor, UN is warned’, The Guardian, 23 October. Risdon, C. (2017), ‘Scaling nudges with machine learning’, Behavioural Scientist, October, 1–7. Sunstein, S.R. (2019), On Freedom, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thrift, N. and S. French (2002), ‘The automatic production of space’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 27 (3), 309–35. Whitehead, M., R. Jones, R. Lilley, J. Pykett, and R. Howell (2018), ‘Neuroliberalism: Cognition, context, and the geographical bounding of rationality’, Progress in Human Geography, 43 (4), 632–49.

Neuroliberalism in the digital age  197 Whitehead, M., R. Jones, J., Pykett, R. Lilley, and R. Howell (2017), Neuroliberalism: Behavioural Government in the 21st Century, Abingdon: Routledge. World Bank (2015), Mind, Society and Behavior: World Development Report, Washington, DC: World Bank. Yeung, K. (2016), ‘“Hypernudge”: Big data as a nodue if regulation by design’, TLI Think! Paper 28/2016. Yeung, K. (2018), ‘Five fears about mass predictive personalization in an age of surveillance capitalism’, International Data Privacy Law, 8 (1), 258–69. Zuboff, S. (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, London: Profile Books.

18. The combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state and its changing geographies Bernd Belina and Tino Petzold

18.1 INTRODUCTION While writing this text, Paris is burning: the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) are staging a social rebellion on the French streets, met with fierce violence by the French state. While the protest was ignited by a scheduled rise of gas taxes, the more general sentiment is a widespread feeling, concentrated in the peripheries (Roux 2019), of state-induced rising costs of living for the many on the one hand and tax exemptions for the rich on the other hand. When put into a long-term historical perspective, the gilets jaunes are, among other things, the latest entry in the long (and often bloody) list of tax revolts against the capitalist state. As Marx (1975a, p. 329) argued, taxes are ‘[t]he economic existence of the state’ and thus tax revolts very often involve the sentiment of fighting the state in general; and security is the ‘highest social concept’ of capitalist society (Marx 1975b, p. 163), in place to secure private property and to pacify populations. In this chapter, we bring together two strands of discussion on the changing geographies of the state that are usually developed independently, and which are, in general, underrepresented in political geography: austerity and security. From a political economy perspective, we argue that the austerity state (increasingly) relies on the security state, and that the combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state results in geographies of cumulative uneven geographical development that is an expression of social revanchism. In a broader sense, we argue that capitalism is constantly changing (cf. Berman 1982), including transformations of the state and state spatial transformation. In what follows, we reconstruct what the notions of the austerity state and the security state refer to, and we sketch how both have developed in tandem since the 1970s in the United States (US) and Germany.

18.2

THE AUSTERITY STATE

The economic existence of the state is taxes. (Marx 1975a, p. 329; original emphasis)

Discussing the state through the lens of state finances means focusing on the (1) modes, effects and limits of how the state intervenes economically into the capitalist accumulation process, and more generally, the reproduction of capitalist society; (2) how the state appropriates the necessary resources for this intervention; (3) the social struggles and strategic selectivity through which these processes of ‘intervention’ and ‘appropriation’ are molded; and (4) the geographies of these relationships. The concrete modes of these four aspects vary across time and space and become most visible during conjunctures of crises. The most recent articulation

198

The austerity state and the security state  199 of these four aspects has been termed the austerity state (Jessop 2016; McBride and Evans 2017). If the term austerity state has a common denominator, it is the observation that the post-financial crisis capitalist state institutionalizes a public political economy guided by the principle of scarce public budgets (Schäfer and Streeck 2013, p. 10; McBride and Evans 2017). Ideologically, this variegation of the capitalist state is based on an everyday understanding that one cannot live beyond one’s means – epitomized in Germany by Chancellor Merkel’s remark in 2008 according to which every Swabian housewife would obey this worldly wisdom – as well as neoclassical economics heralding the (fiscally) small state as in the interest of everyone. But the austerity state is more than that. It institutionalizes class relations that benefit the rich while reducing the social wage, i.e. taking away the means of subsistence from the poor through roll-backs of (social) infrastructures and rights as well as a hardening of tax regimes. As a consequence of both, patterns of uneven geographical development at all spatial scales are stabilized, when poor regions are locked into fiscally scarce disequilibria with high social needs but lacking funds to cater to these (Peck 2012). 18.2.1 The Roots of the Austerity State in Fordism Contrary to widespread belief, the austerity state is not just a very recent installment. Rather, it has been on the rise since the mid-1970s. Consider for example Lichten’s Class, Power & Austerity (1986) on the crisis of the city of New York in the 1970s. It was not only one of the first empirically grounded and theoretically reflected analyses of what we now call the neoliberalization of the (local) state, but also highlighted the particular role that austerity played in this process. By shedding light on the social struggles during the near bankruptcy of New York City and its austere ‘solution’, circa 1974–77, Lichten analysed how New York’s ‘fiscal crisis of the state’ (O’Connor 1973) was produced, managed, and then transformed into a blueprint for universalized austere statism in the US and beyond. With hindsight, New York’s austere transformation was only the most ‘iconic case’ (Harvey 2005, p. 44) for a more widespread and increasingly global fiscal crisis of local, regional, and national states. These (nationally variegated) crises formed the terrain which allowed for rolling back the (Western) Fordist-Keynesian consensus and the socialist institutionalizations in the Global East and often South. In the ruins of failing interventionist statism, neoliberal adjustment strategies (often in the name of disciplining ‘fiscally irresponsible’ governments) enabled the restauration of capitalist class power. Seen ex post facto, the conjuncture of fiscal stress, rising public debt, soaring social security spending and plummeting public capital expenditure, which unfolded in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was only the starting point of a longer-term development, which is the rise of the austerity state. Today, we witness the normalization of this particular variegation of the capitalist state (Petzold 2018). In order to understand the rise of the present austerity state, we need to consider the main features of its predecessor, the ‘Keynesian welfare national state’ (KWNS) (Jessop 2000) as well as its fiscal crisis. In terms of economic intervention, the KWNS institutionalized an approach of explicit macro-economic management through fiscal policies, inspired by Keynesian demand and deficit spending politics. One of the main features of the state’s economic role in this regime has been a massive mobilization of ‘social capital expenditures’ (O’Connor 1973, pp. 6–7; cf. Poulantzas 1978, pp. 176–7) towards public physical and social infrastructures. Many of these expenditures are concentrated in cities of different sizes as

200  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state well as in peripheral regions designated for development in the form of ‘means of collective consumption’ (Castells 1977), which in turn helped to counteract the falling rate of profit in the 1950s and 1960s. If the state quota – the total spending of the capitalist state in relation to gross domestic product – is a rough indicator of the rate of state intervention, then its rapid growth in most Western states speaks to the interventionist expansion of the KWNS. Such an expansion of the state quota, however, had to be funded. This was achieved through an expansionist tax policy (either explicitly through the adaption of tax scales or implicitly by bracket creep), the funding of social security systems through payroll taxes, and issuing public debt. This particular Keynesian politics of taxing and spending was forged against the backdrop of a rapid post-war accumulation rate. As Hirsch argued for the German case, this allowed the state to ‘satisfy demands of particular interests without impairing the situation of competing groups. The prerequisites for a “class politics” in the traditional sense therefore vanished’ (Hirsch 1996, p. 170). Steuerle (1996, p. 416), with the US in mind, characterizes the Keynesian epoch as an ‘easy financing era’. However, this is not to indicate that class politics did not exist at all, but that their terrain shifted. With the KWNS achieving a widely expanded economic function in the reproduction of capital, two effects emerged. On the one hand, social struggles were more rigorously articulated on the terrain of the state itself, with the newly emerging mass parties and state apparatuses becoming important arenas for struggles around e.g. wages, but also state infrastructures. The rise of urban social movements asking the (local) state for better housing, schools, etc. in that period is indicative of that shift (Castells 1977). On the other hand, the state itself was problematized as a ‘bureaucratic monster’ intruding into both the everyday life of citizens (through bureaucracy, technocratic planning, labor disciplining, and anti-communism) as well as capital (through dirigisme, statization, and bureaucracy) (Lefebvre 2001). Finally, as the term already indicates, the KWNS institutionalized particular spatial configurations of the political economy of the state. While much emphasis has been put on the centralization of politics at the national scale (cf. Brenner 2004; Jessop 2000), we think it is worth highlighting additionally that the KWNS institutionalized (nationally variegated) forms of cooperative fiscal federalism. This kind of federalism was characterized by the attempts, problems, and contradictions of coordinating fiscal policies and social capital expenditures across an uneven state territory governed by (semi-)autonomous local and regional states. While the national scale has been an important arena and target for these geographically constituted struggles around the spatial coordination of the global macro-economic management of capitalist society, the national government usually needed to find multilateral compromises with lower-scale state apparatuses, especially in West Germany (cf. Scharpf et al. 1976). The KWNS during Fordism was characterized by the multiscalar roll-out of Keynesian demand and deficit politics; a corporatist management of the contradiction of capital and labor; the (gendered) statization of social reproduction through the introduction of welfare systems; a general (modernist) discourse of affluence and progression; the heyday of technocratic (urban and spatial) planning techniques; and a relative upgrading of the national scale vis-à-vis subnational spaces. All this is well documented in the vast literature on the subject (see e.g. Brenner 2004). What is often not in focus, though, is that all of this costs a lot of money. Even though the Keynesian rationale was that these investments would spur economic growth, the resulting accumulation was hardly ever profitable enough to refinance the huge investments made. The money had to come from somewhere else. What we want to highlight, thus, is that

The austerity state and the security state  201 as a tax state, the KWNS was characterized by a historically exceptional expansion of the state quota, i.e. an unprecedented growth of the levels of public spending as well as taxation necessary for funding those. This meant, in turn, a quantitative and qualitative intensification of the economic relationships between state, economy, and tax-paying citizens compared to former classical liberal tax states. In consequence, the interventionist state intensified its economic functions and took on the role of organizer of the reproduction of capital (cf. Poulantzas 1978, chapter 3), which it tried to perform through planning at all scales of the state. 18.2.2 The Crisis of Fordism and the Rolling Out of the Austerity State Considering this large-scale expansion of the economic entanglements of state and capitalist society, it becomes clear from the outset that the economic crisis of Fordism – which started to become manifest through the global economic recession in 1974 – was complemented by a severe ‘fiscal crisis of the state’ (O’Connor 1973). The Keynesian tool box of economic intervention became contradictory due to the stagflation dilemma: while soaring inflation would have required, according to Keynesian dogma, a politics of fiscal restraint, economic stagnation would have required the opposite, expansionary deficit spending. In the shadow of this dilemma, Keynesian economics lost its academic hegemony and soon after its hegemonic role in policy advice. As a normal effect of economic crisis, state revenues stagnated while public spending grew. In order to fund the deficits, governments had to issue public debt. Especially neoconservative and neoliberal forces, whose power grew, were quick in politicizing soaring debt rates and campaigning towards experimental austerity programs. In this situation, the (Western) political conjuncture which began in the mid-1960s and which was marked by widespread anti-racist, feminist, class, and urban struggles (Castells 1977), transformed towards a more general crisis of the state. On the one hand, fiscal stress at all scales of the state budget meant that newly voiced demands by various social groups (including gender and race equality programs, environmental protection plans, but also state aid for labor and capital in regions of industrial transition) could not be served as easily as before. On the other hand, experimental austerity sparked struggles over budget cuts involving groups from all social strata. In these struggles, social groups which were well present within mass parties were able to defend their positions better, which in turn led to a social and spatial selectivity of the effects of the Fordist fiscal crisis of the state, and thus to augmented uneven spatial development. Analyzing the Haushaltsoperation 1982, a first wave austerity program in Germany, Schroeder (1984, p. 270) observes ‘socially differentiated and targeted measures, which hit the hardest especially social groups located in “peripherialized” parts of society’ (for the US cf. Pierson 2001). Old-industrialized regions in particular felt receding public investments and the roll-back of social rights, but also peripheral regions in general; and, on the urban scale, poor neighborhoods much stronger than wealthy ones. The selectivity of budget cuts implemented by the rising austerity state was one of the mainsprings of experimentation with regional development policies (Brenner 2004) and, over time, increasing spatialized competition at all spatial scales (Harvey 2005). Austerity was thus a key driver of the rescaling of the KWNS towards what Jessop (2000) terms the ‘Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime’. Supra- as well as subnational spatial scales gained in importance and found themselves in an increased competition with each other, fought out, among other things, through tax cuts for capital and the rich at these spatial scales as well.

202  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Historically, the austerity state emerged as the long-term product of a particular strategy of solving the fiscal crisis of the state. Ideologically, this strategy built upon a particular problematization of the KWNS itself as the main cause of crisis, which is the product of the global rise of neoliberal knowledge and experts. This neoliberal critique is the fusion of two prongs: on the one hand, its economic academic foundation is derived from neoclassic-monetarist economics, which became hegemonic in the 1970s. In Germany, it was condensed in the mantra of Chancellor Kohl (1982): ‘towards an ordered state via ordered finances’. These theories consider markets as in themselves efficiently self-regulating processes. The active discretionary intervention of the state through debt, monetary, tax, and spending policies is considered a distortion of this mechanism and therefore to be avoided. However, there is also a second prong, which is a moral critique of profligacy combined with a classist, revanchist and often racist understanding of social relations. The moral critique usually voiced by neoconservative forces was also not uncommon on the other side of the political spectrum. To give just one extreme example, the Italian Communist Party saw a huge debate about a ‘revolutionary’ version of austerity in the 1970s, which proclaimed (personal and public) austerity as a revolutionary way of social transformation (Berlinguer 1977, p. 211). According to this typically right-wing critique, the moral basis of society has been deeply disturbed by excessive demands from working-class, feminist, race struggles, etc., leading to ever growing public spending and skyrocketing public debt. This second prong was often discursively urbanized. Cities governed by social democratic or liberal parties, i.e. the homes of marginalized and state-dependent communities with strongly organized public workforces, were chosen as guinea pigs for austere roll-backs. Again, the fiscal crisis of New York City in the 1970s, which provided the test case for a series of national austerity projects under the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, is the case in point (Lichten 1986). However, a materialist theory of the austerity state needs to go beyond the discursive dimensions of state finance and has to consider the material effects of these struggles, which are condensed in the budget. From a materialist political economy perspective, the neoliberal critique of the ‘bloated’ (welfare) state represents a particular strategy of enhancing the profitability of capital. While the Keynesian toolbox aimed to do so through interventionist demand management, the neoclassic-monetarist strategy seeks to create profitability through relieving capital from ‘all “excessive” burden through public expenses, which indeed cost taxes’ (Altvater 1978, p. 52). That is to say, that the goal of a low state quota necessitates a double movement of containing (social) expenses while lowering (capital) taxes. For example, in (West) Germany – similar to other Western states (Harvey 2005, p. 26) – the combined rate of capital taxes (including national corporate income tax, national ‘Solidaritätszuschlag’ tax as well as local business tax) was reduced from 62.28 percent in 1981 to 29.83 percent in 2016 (Wissenschaftlicher Dienst 2018, p. 6). In a parallel development, politically orchestrated Europeanization and globalization allowed (especially multinational) capital to shift assets and profits to tax havens with low taxation rates, effectively lowering its ‘tax burden’ even further (cf. Aalbers 2017). On the other hand, shrinking revenues from capital taxation were compensated by rising consumption taxes, reduction of social expenses, and the emergence of a massive backlog of investment in public (and especially social) infrastructures (Martin and Wissel 2018; Greive and Hildebrand 2018).

The austerity state and the security state  203 18.2.3 Normalization of the Austerity State and Its Unequal Consequences While austerity in the 1970s and 1980s was mainly about destroying the Keynesian consensus and rolling back elements of welfare statism, a new mode emerged at the end of the 1980s: the normalization of the austerity state (Petzold 2018). This strategy aims at rolling out a new framework for managing public budgets along austere lines. This new politics hovers around the idea of balanced public budgets, i.e. a goal of refraining from public debt and financing all state expenses through tax revenue only. Ideologically legitimized by neoclassic crowding-out theory, according to which state debt distorts efficient markets by crowding out private investment, this strategy started to gain hold in the early 1990s. In the European Union, legal agreements such as the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 and the Growth and Stability Pact in 1997 legally limited the scope of member states to issue debt through the deployment of the so-called Maastricht criteria (1992) and the goal of balancing budgets (1997). This roll-out of austere frameworks was accelerated during the global financial and economic crisis. In Germany, for example, the so-called debt brake – essentially a balanced budget requirement – was introduced in 2009 into the constitution. As a traveling policy framework, the debt brake was rescaled through the European Fiscal Compact in 2013, obliging Euro member states to include legally binding measures against ‘excessive’ public debt. The effect of the constitutionalization of austerity (cf. McBride and Evans 2017) is the normalization of austerity: a recalibration of the capitalist states’ systems of strategic selectivity privileging austere strategies of lean statism while delegitimizing strategies in the interest of rising social wages, well-maintained public (social) infrastructures, and generally a public sector in the interest of the 99 percent. One of the central tropes in public discourses under conditions of normalized austerity is the problematization of the bloated welfare state. The austere solution of these problems is, of course, cutting public expenses in general and social expenses in particular. However, what this argument often misses is the other side of the state budget, the revenues of the state. Since most of the revenues of the modern capitalist state are generated by various taxes, (the geography of) tax policy is the necessary addition for analyzing the austerity state. In Germany, Truger and Teichmann (2010, p. 15) calculated that the change in the German tax code between 1998 and 2008 produced a yearly loss of tax revenue amounting to €50 billion in the fiscal year 2010 across all state scales – which equals roughly 10 percent of the reported overall public tax income or 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. On top of these explicit cuts, a plethora of ‘loopholes’ allows international capital and the rich to minimize their ‘tax burden’. The widespread practice of ‘designing taxes’, regarded as illegitimate by many but as legal by multinational tax consultancies, ‘creates space for illegal practices’ (Hudson 2018, p. 170) and augments uneven geographical development. In Germany, for example, the cost of tax evasion for the German state is estimated to be around €125 billion (Murphy 2019) annually. The CumEx-scandal – where cunning tax consultants, illustrious capitalists, and banks used loopholes in the German tax code to claim multiple tax repayments for dividend stripping – even managed to extract €55 billion in taxpayer money from European states and more than €30 billion from the German state alone (Correctiv 2018). Altogether, the attack on public revenue through tax reforms, the creation of legal loopholes as well as illegitimate and illegal practices of tax evasion, and tax looting means under conditions of normalized austerity that public expenses are constantly under pressure in order to balance budgets.

204  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The by now normalized austerity state, on the rise since the 1970s, and its deepening of uneven geographical development, should however not be regarded in isolation. In order to get a more complete perspective, a look at the simultaneous rise of the security state is helpful.

18.3

THE SECURITY STATE

Security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of police, expressing the fact that the whole of society exists only in order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property. (Marx 1975b, p. 163; original emphasis)

In the quote, Marx uses the concepts ‘security’ and ‘police’ interchangeably – and connects both to the foundation of the political economy of capitalism, private property. In the nineteenth century, the term ‘police’ was not restricted to the institution of the same name, but referred to the new idea that the state organizes, secures, and pacifies all of society. This was taken up in Foucault’s (2007) reworking of the concept of power, departing from which ‘security’ became a central term in academic discourse. He identifies a new form of power or governing: ‘governmental management, which has population as its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism’ (Foucault 2007, p. 143). One central way to achieve security in this logic is to ‘plan a milieu’ (Foucault 2007, p. 35), i.e. to produce spaces in ways that enable and hinder practices in order to result in an ‘ordered’ population. Inspired by Foucault, ‘securitization’ (Huysmans 2000; Ibrahim 2005) became a key term in International Relations and beyond, meaning the way in which social and political problems are discursively turned into problems of security that need to be dealt with by security measures – often in an extra-legal manner with reference to a state of emergency. What got lost was Marx’s focus on the relationship between security and capitalism. One major exemption is the work of Neocleous (2011, p. 26; original emphasis): To see security as a constitutive power or a technique deployed and mobilized in the exercise of power is to read it as a police mechanism: a mechanism for the fabrication of a social order organized around a constant revolutionising of the instruments and relations of production and thus containing the everlasting uncertainty and agitation of all social relations that Marx and Engels define as key to capitalism.

Bringing together Marx and Foucault, a ‘security state,’ then, is one that uses ‘the power of the state in securing the insecurity of capitalist accumulation’ (Neocleous 2011, p. 26) – a process termed ‘pacification’ by Neocleous to avoid the positive term ‘security’. The security state builds consensus around the promise of security – which nobody can oppose. By scapegoating and constructing moral panics the security state constantly constructs dangerous ‘others’ that threaten security. In a patriarchal logic, the government puts itself into the role of the masculine protector against threats from within and outside, putting the population into ‘a subordinate position of dependence and obedience’ (Young 2003, p. 2). The concrete form of the security state and its geographies, as well as its relationship to the welfare state that tries to secure capital accumulation by other means, alters with changes in the political economy and its regulation. In this section, we sketch out the way in which the security state has evolved in the US and Germany in relation to the austerity state and how it has produced its characteristic geography, marked by uneven development and revanchist policies.

The austerity state and the security state  205 The security state is a matter of intense scholarly debate in times of crisis. Hirsch (1980), Poulantzas (1978), and Hall et al. (1978) published their ground-breaking work during the crisis of Fordism, and a plethora of critical literature came with the securitization of the devastations of neoliberalism and austerity (Beckett 1997; Wacquant 2007; Christie 2000; Belina 2006; Cremer-Schäfer and Steinert 2014). For over 40 years, following the end of Fordism and simultaneously to the rise of the austerity state, the security state has been strengthened vis-à-vis the welfare state. 18.3.1 The Security State under Fordism During Fordism, marked by the stabilization of profit rates through expanding state intervention but also a looming labor shortage that strengthened unions and threatened profits, two strategies were implemented in most Western countries: the import of labor and the integration of almost everyone into the KWNS. While foreigners and racialized others were kept at a distance from the welfare state, institutionalizing an underprivileged underclass of manual laborers, those belonging to the nation ideologically and practically were integrated. One major difference between Western Europe and the US is that the American racialized underclass did not immigrate voluntarily during Fordism, but was brought in violently during the transatlantic slave trade. During and after slavery, African-Americans were subject to the security state (Walker et al. 2000). For the white majority in the West, though, during Fordism, ‘marginality and its symptoms were characterized by the welfare state as social problems’ (Hallsworth and Lea 2011, p. 144), to be dealt with by ‘penal welfarism’ (Garland 2001): an integration of many through penal reform, decriminalization, and rehabilitation of offenders, but a penalization of those deemed unwilling to integrate. In West Germany, Hirsch (1980) scrutinizes the political-economic basis of these developments. Fordist mass production, mass consumption, state planning, and welfare state expansion were built on a depoliticized corporatist mode of mass integration through mass parties, unions, and state institutions. Only individuals and groups that may have been a risk to this particular kind of integration – communists in particular – were subject to securitization (Hirsch 1980, p. 39). In general, Fordism in the West was a period of decriminalization fostered by mass integration, made necessary by labor shortage and the power of organized labor. 18.3.2 Crisis of Fordism While mass integration was a central tenet of the KWNS, this changed dramatically during the crisis of Fordism. Marginality and crime turned from social problems to be dealt with by the welfare state to problems of security to be dealt with by the security state. The Western world witnessed the rise of ‘authoritarian statism,’ defined by ‘intensified state control over every sphere of socioeconomic life combined with radical decline of the institutions of political democracy and with draconian and multiform curtailment of so-called “formal” liberties’ (Poulantzas 1978, pp. 203–4; original emphasis). Writing in 1978, Poulantzas could not foresee how soon afterwards neoliberalism would do away with the ‘state control over every sphere of socioeconomic life,’ heralding deregulation, economic liberalization, and privatization instead (Harvey 2005), but keeping the two other aspects: de-democratization and securitization. Like many others at the time, Poulantzas noticed that shifts in political economy and in the security state go hand in hand.

206  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The study by Hall et al. (1978, p. 21) on ‘the birth of a law-and-order society’ in 1970s Britain is particularly interesting in that it combines materialist state theory with critical criminology that focus on how the alleged thing ‘crime’ is really the result of the process of criminalization by state institutions. Christie (2000, p. 22) makes this argument in a straight-forward manner: ‘Crime does not exist. Crime is created. First there are acts. Then follows a long process of giving meaning to these acts’. Hall et al. (1978) argue that what counts as ‘criminal’ is indicative of the hegemonic view on what is ‘normal,’ and that thus, struggles over criminalizations are really about changing hegemonies. The ‘shift from a “consensual” to a more “coercive” management of the class struggle by the capitalist state’ (Hall et al. 1978, p. 218) in 1970s England is, in this view, ‘a response, within the state, to increasing polarisation of class forces (real and imagined)’ (Hall et al. 1978, p. 320). The crisis of the 1970s led to the criminalization of young black men in urban areas as a reaction to widespread ‘social anxiety’ (Hall et al. 1978, p. 157) rooted in the contradictions of Fordism that came to light during its crisis. Hall, in a conversation with Massey (2015, p. 58), summarizes how the story went on: ‘Thatcherism, neo-liberalism, globalisation, the era dominated by market forces, brutally “resolved” the contradictions and opened a new conjuncture’. Processes of criminalization were a necessary means towards the end of this ‘solution’ to the crisis. In Germany, the Fordist mode of mass integration through the state in the 1960s and 1970s necessitated a gradual demolishing of traditional milieus, working-class and religious ones in particular. When the ‘boosts of disintegration’ (Hirsch 1980, p. 93) hit West German society as Fordism entered its crisis stage, dismantling the Fordist class compromise, the security state was needed to keep potential and real sources of unrest in check – hence the ‘orgy of security’ (Hirsch 1980, p. 11) in the 1970s. This was enhanced by the overarching reaction of the state against left-wing terrorism which, as the title of the study by Sack and Steinert (1984) emphasizes, targeted the ‘heart of the state’ and thus the regime of private property. The US in the 1960s and 1970s saw urban unrest by African-American populations. In a struggle over hegemony, welfare state and security state answers were facing each other, with the latter starting to triumph all the way by the 1980s (Beckett 1997). Developments in New York City are particularly indicative of the way in which the local austerity state and its racist and classist equivalent, the local security state, intermesh – and how the strategy of securitizing was scaled up to the national level. After a period of austerity-induced decline, ‘zero tolerance policing’ was introduced in the 1990s to deal with the social devastations that austerity had brought about. In an effort to erase visible signs of these devastations from central city spaces, elites mobilized ‘security’. Drawing on the dubious ‘broken windows thesis’ (Wilson and Kelling 1982; for a critique see Harcourt 2001), according to which visible signs of decay would necessarily lead to serious crime, so called ‘quality of life offences’ such as turnstile-jumping or panhandling were used to stop, frisk, and often incarcerate ‘poor people in poor places’ (Fagan and Davies 2000, p. 496). To legitimize this, a blaming-the-victim strategy was used: ‘The conservative reasoning of the austerity program articulated the causes of the city’s “fiscal ill health”, as primarily attributed to unionized labor, the poor, and immigrants’ (Mitchell and Beckett 2008, p. 83). Smith has discussed how gentrification, which necessitated a displacement of poor people, and brutal policing aiming at precisely these poor people in the name of security co-evolved in 1990s New York. In this attack, which he characterizes as revanchist, crime served as ‘a central marker’ (Smith 1996, p. 213). In all three countries, marginality was turned from a social problem into a security problem during the crisis of Fordism. One noticeable difference is how the turn towards law and order

The austerity state and the security state  207 was fueled by moral panics about urban issues related to poverty and race in Britain and the US, while it was a nationwide process in Germany, othering ‘terrorists’. This different geography of the security state reflects the ways in which the austerity state was implemented: swiftly and coercively in short periods of time around 1980 in Britain and the US vs. incrementally and more consensus-based in West Germany. 18.3.3 The Normalization of the Security State under Neoliberalism The security state, which was built up by introducing exceptional measures during the crisis of Fordism, was rolled out and normalized in Western states during neoliberalism. The relationship between the security state and the austerity state is contradictory. Security is necessary to pacify the results of the austerity state, but also costs money. The security apparatus attempts to deal with this contradiction in a variety of ways that all result in deepening uneven geographies and in increasing its grip on marginalized populations in poor urban areas as well as on those attempting to cross the national border. The police and other branches of the security state have come under some pressure to legitimize the funding they receive in times of austerity. They react in different ways which all result in an increased criminalization of marginalized groups. First, evaluations based on performance data are introduced to make policing more efficient. This creates incentives to produce countable results, i.e. quick and easy arrests which necessarily focus on the most vulnerable groups and places, and also to ‘cook the stats’ (Briken 2014). Second, human labor is replaced by technology, as in ‘predictive policing’. Such software packages promise to predict the where and when of future crime based on the very crime statistics that most of all reflect the overpolicing of marginalized neighborhoods, resulting in deploying even more police in these very neighborhoods (Jefferson 2018). Third, costly state police are replaced by cheaper private or local police, who are not only less trained but by their very nature police in the interest of their private or entrepreneurial local state employer. Fourth, when the police face budget cuts, which can result in shrinking forces, outdated equipment, overtime, and other negative impacts, the reaction is more often than not to normalize the security state and/or to come up with new ‘threats’ to ‘security’. The latter was accomplished differently in different states. In Germany, the gradual implementation of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of ‘“criminality” in the widest sense’ (Hirsch 1996, p. 157) as a threat, i.e., of an undetermined notion of generalized criminality with no concrete content. This switch materialized in laws that use blanket clauses and vague terms, putting ‘the de facto power of definition [of what is “criminal” and how to deal with it] into the hands of the police’ (Pütter et al. 2005, p. 11). While criminal law was ‘toughened’ in the name of security in the 1990s and 2000s (Schlepper 2014), the focus was on police law, giving the police extra powers to stop and search people without probable cause (Belina 2006). These, too, resulted in an increasing harassment of poor urban minority populations. Following the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, policing of the borders is back on the agenda and extended to places far away from the border in search of ‘illegal immigrants’. Continuing previous developments (Huysmans 2000) and using special authorities of the border police, the ‘other’ against whom the population needs to be protected is increasingly the foreigner (Belina 2018). Also, as Perthus (2020) shows for the federal state of Saxony, in light of this new ‘threat,‘ the slight trend to spend less on police through reducing personnel was immediately reversed.

208  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state In the US, where the state waged a ‘war on drugs’ on the racialized poor in the 1980s and 1990s, the security state was normalized in ever ‘tougher’, often racist laws, giving, among other things, extra authorities to the police and mandatory sentencing guidelines to judges. Both trends resulted in a constant growth of the prison population (Christie 2000; Beckett 1997; Wacquant 2007; Gilmore 2007). This process, built on racist fear-mongering by Republican and Democratic politicians alike, is a way to deal with the impoverished surplus population – located in the ‘black ghetto’ – produced by neoliberalism and the austerity state. Faced with the problem of governing an increasing black urban population in precarious and low-paying service sector jobs, on dwindling welfare or unemployed, incarceration provided a solution (Wacquant 2007) – and a ‘prison fix’ which, in California, allowed to put ‘state capacities into motion, make use of a lot of idle land, get capital invested via public debt, and take more than 160,000 low-wage workers off the streets’ (Gilmore 2007, p. 88). The huge investments in the security state not only took budget funding away from the welfare state, but was even legitimized with austerity when law-and-order initiatives ‘defined rehabilitation of offenders as an affront to taxpayer rights and fiscal austerity’ (Cate and HoSang 2018, p. 178) because of its allegedly high cost. Following the financial crisis of 2007/2008, initiatives against mass incarceration try to combine the austerity state and the security state in a particular manner, basing claims for decarceration on fiscal reasons – a movement labelled as ‘humonetarianism’ (Aviram 2015). But as Cate and HoSang (2018) show for the state of Oregon, the previous normalization of the security state has established structures that result in a growing prison population even when prison reform initiatives are put into law. The election of a new president in 2016 on an anti-immigration platform is adding the othering of ‘illegal immigrants’ to continue the consensus for the security state, no matter what the cost.

18.4 CONCLUSION If indeed, as Marx and Engels (1975, p. 487) put it, ‘[a]ll that is solid melts into air’ under capitalism due to its constant revolutions and reworkings (cf. Berman 1982), the parallel structural transformations of the state and its geographies is a necessary complement. In this chapter, we have discussed how two significant changes of the state and its spaces from Fordism to neoliberalism are fundamentally intertwined: the rise of the austerity state and the rise of the security state. The austerity state, on the rise since the mid-1970s in Western states, institutionalizes and finally normalizes the principle of scarce public budgets and, with it, class relations that benefit the rich and take away means of subsistence from the poor through taxation. The latter suffer not only from high taxes – sometimes leading to tax revolts, often from the peripheries, as in France in 2018/19 – but also from cuts in (social) infrastructures and the welfare state. The security state, in place to pacify contradictory and constantly revolutionizing capitalist social relations based on private property, is growing along with the austerity state in order to handle its devastations, thereby replacing the welfare state. Largely immune against cuts itself, the security state is expanding, materializing in costly prisons and police. The combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state in the West is the materialization of revanchist ideologies that aim at ‘taking back’ public and private assets from the poor by the rich. As such, it is part and parcel of the way in which capitalism was (and still is) being revolutionized and reworked in the wake of the crisis of Fordism.

The austerity state and the security state  209 The recent development of both the austerity state and the security state in the West, sketched in this chapter, reinforces uneven geographical development at all spatial scales. The two most obvious forms of uneven development were discussed: between states and within them, all tiers of government are involved in a constant struggle over investment, wealthy inhabitants, and consumers via lowering taxation of capital and the rich; and urban areas with poor minority and migrant populations are hit hardest by both the cutting of the welfare state and the build-up of the security state. A critical engagement with the changing geographies of the state should not overlook the revanchist work put into effect by the combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state. A deeper engagement with the combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state would necessitate more critical research into the ways in which the two developments discussed in this chapter rely on each other in multiple ways. First, empirical studies are needed on how exactly austerity was implemented and has reorganized class relations, and how this went along with processes of securitization. Studies mentioned above, especially Hall et al. (1978) and the way in which it simultaneously looks at criminalization and moral panics, class relations, the restructuring of the state and race, but also Hirsch (1980) remain milestones to lean on. Second, building on these same studies, a theoretical working through of the ways in which the different moments are related is needed. Such work has been begun by, among others, Cremer-Schäfer and Steinert (2014), Garland (2001), Gilmore (2007), Neocleous (2011), and Wacquant (2007). Third, following the Foucauldian take on issues of security, risk, and governing, and partly going beyond the classical studies from the 1970s and 1980s, the ways in which discourses performatively shape and push the ascent of the austerity state and the security state need to be included (cf. Mitchell and Beckett 2008; Neocleous 2011). Most of the literature does not include the ways in which spatial strategies and uneven development are part and parcel of these processes (see, however, Gilmore 2007; Mitchell and Beckett 2008). Thus, and maybe most important for this volume, the spatial forms in which the combined ascent of the austerity state and the security state manifest are made possible and, in a Lefebvrian (1991) sense, also made real need for more scrutiny (cf. Belina 2006, 2018).

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The austerity state and the security state  211 Marx, K. (1975b), ‘On the Jewish question’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, trans. C. Dutt, New York: International Publishers, pp. 146–74. Marx, K. and F. Engels (1975), ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, trans. H. Macfarlane, New York: International Publishers, pp. 477–519. McBride, S. and B. Evans (eds) (2017), The Austerity State, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Mitchell, K. and K. Beckett (2008), ‘Securing the global city: Crime, consulting, risk, and ratings in the production of urban space’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 15 (1), 75–99. Murphy, R. (2019), ‘The European tax gap’, accessed on 20 October 2019 at www​.socialistsanddemocrats​ .eu/​sites/​default/​files/​2019​-01/​the​_european​_tax​_gap​_en​_190123​.pdf Neocleous, M. (2011), ‘Security as pacification’, in M. Neocleous and G.S. Rigakos (eds), Anti-Security, Ottawa: Red Quill Books, pp. 23–56. O’Connor, J. (1973), The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York: St Martin’s Press. Peck, J. (2012), ‘Austerity urbanism: American cities under extreme economy’, City, 16 (6), 626–55. Perthus, S. (2020), ‘Die Polizei in Sachsen. Umstrukturierungen und Veränderung polizeilicher Praxis’, in S. Becker and M. Naumann (eds), Regionalentwicklung in Ostdeutschland. Dynamiken, Perspektiven und der Beitrag der Humangeographie, Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum, pp. 43–56. Petzold, T. (2018), Austerity Forever?! Die Normalisierung der Austerität in der BRD, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Pierson, P. (2001), ‘Coping with permanent austerity: Welfare state restructuring in affluent democracies’, in P. Pierson (ed.), The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford Scholarship, pp. 410–56. Poulantzas, N. (1978), State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso. Pütter, N., W.-D. Narr, and H. Busch (2005), ‘Bekämpfungs-Recht und Rechtsstaat’, Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP, 82, 6–15. Roux, J.-M. (2019), ‘Gilets jaunes: l’émeute décentralisée’, Tous Urbains, 25, 12–13. Sack, F. and H. Steinert (1984), Protest und Reaktion, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schäfer, A. and W. Streeck (eds) (2013), Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Scharpf, F.W., B. Reissert, and F. Schnabel (1976), Theorie und Empirie des kooperativen Föderalismus in der Bundesrepublik, Kronberg i.T.: Cornelsen. Schlepper, C. (2014), Strafgesetzgebung in der Spätmoderne. Eine empirische Analyse legislativer Punitivität. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Schroeder, K, (1984), Der Weg in die Stagnation. Eine empirische Studie zur Konjunkturentwicklung und Konjunkturpolitik in der Bundesrepublik von 1967–1982. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Smith, N. (1996), The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, New York: Routledge. Steuerle, E. (1996), ‘Financing the American state at the turn of the century’, in E. Brownlee (ed.), Funding the Modern American State, 1941–1995: The Rise and Fall of the Era of Easy Finance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 409–44. Truger, A. and D. Teichmann (2010), ‘IMK-Steuerschätzung 2010–2014. Kein Spielraum für Steuersenkungen. IMK-Report 49, Mai 2010’, accessed on 9 September 2014 at www​.boeckler​.de/​ pdf/​p​_imk​_report​_49​_2010​.pdf Wacquant, L. (2007), Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity. Walker, S., C. Spohn, and M. DeLone (2000), The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America, 2nd edition, Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning. Wilson, J.Q., and G.L. Kelling (1982), ‘Broken Windows’, The Atlantic Monthly. Available at: www​ .theatlantic​.com. Wissenschaftlicher Dienst des Deutschen Bundestages (2018), ‘Sachstand. Überblick über die Körperschaftund Gewerbesteuer von 1998 bis heute, WD 4-065/18’, accessed 9 June 2020 at www​.bundestag​.de/​ resource/​blob/​554394/​909c420261d​aedfa9527b5b7b1078778/​WD​-4​-065​-18​-pdf​-data​.pdf Young, I.M. (2003), ‘The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’, Signs, 29 (1), 1–25.

19. Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state: gendering the economy and economizing gender equality Hanna Ylöstalo

19.1 INTRODUCTION Feminist political economy understands gender and other social differences to be integral to the functioning of political-economic systems. While feminist analyses of various aspects of political economy – such as production and reproduction, macroeconomic policy, and economic inequalities – have been conducted in the 2000s, less attention has been paid to their geopolitical dimensions (see, however, Marston 2000; Mitchell et al. 2017; Werner et al. 2017). In this section I analyse feminist political economy as a geographically variegated phenomenon (see also Peck and Theodore 2007) by focusing on a specific spatial context: namely, the Nordic welfare state. I argue that the relations among the state, political economy, and feminism are spatially and temporally contingent, and that the relationship between the welfare state and feminism is complex. Feminist knowledge can (potentially) bring about changes in the welfare state, but feminism itself has also changed when it has engaged with questions about the state. Key changes in feminism include economization and depoliticization, as well as the emergence of new feminist actors. In contrast to the rather pessimistic views of feminist scholars who have stressed women’s marginalization and their dependency on the ‘patriarchal’ state, the Nordic welfare states have been called potentially ‘women-friendly’ societies (Hernes 1987) – or even societies that are a ‘better friend to a girl than diamonds’ (Julkunen 2002). A woman-friendly welfare state has been seen as a result of the combined impact of a broad political mobilization of women from below and the institutionalization of gender equality from above (Hernes 1987). In other words, the Nordic welfare state has been seen as an instrument of social change, leading to the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality. Since the 1980s, when the idea of a women-friendly welfare state first emerged, feminist scholars have certainly expressed doubts about the state’s women-friendliness, and pointed out that the welfare state has created new forms of inequalities (see, e.g., Borchorst and Siim 2008; Kantola 2006). Nevertheless, the alliances between feminists and the state have remained strong in the Nordic countries. In this chapter I analyse recent shifts in the relations among the Nordic welfare state, political economy, feminism, and gender equality. I take as my focus Finland, where I have carried out research on gender equality and gender equality policy since the early 2000s. Despite the long tradition of ‘state feminism’ in Finland, the recent rise of an anti-feminist political party (the Finns Party), austerity policies, and the weakening of gender equality policies have given rise to allegations of a ‘backlash’ against the push for gender equality (see Elomäki and Kantola 2017, 2018; Elomäki et al. 2018; Kantola et al. 2020). Accordingly, the state has

212

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state  213 come to be seen as an untrustworthy partner to feminists, and the bonds between at least some feminists and the state have weakened (Elomäki et al. 2020). I argue, however, that rather than a sudden backlash or U-turn, these recent shifts should be understood as part of a much broader process of state reform – namely, the neoliberalization of the welfare state. Neoliberalization can be broadly defined as the extension of a specific formulation of economic values, practices, and metrics to every dimension of human life (Brown 2015, pp. 30–3). In this chapter I focus on the shifts in economy–society relations brought about by neoliberalism within the welfare state. By shaping the context where feminisms operate, neoliberalization has also changed feminist actors as well as their priorities, practices, discourses, and knowledge base. Feminisms and feminists have in many cases adapted to the neoliberal context by, for example, providing governance-friendly gender expertise vis-à-vis existing policies rather than engaging in more radical political forms of critique (Kantola and Lombardo 2017). I analyse the effects of the neoliberalization of the welfare state, first, on feminism and feminists, and second on gender equality policy in Finland. I focus on recent changes in state and governance that have taken place or intensified in the 2000s. I pay specific attention to the contributions of feminist political economy to these debates and, more generally, to debates about the economy. The present chapter draws on my earlier research on these topics with my colleagues Anna Elomäki, Johanna Kantola, and Anu Koivunen (see Elomäki et al. 2016, 2018, 2020; Elomäki and Ylöstalo 2017, 2018). It also draws extensively on data from key policy documents regarding government policy (e.g., government programmes), economic policy (e.g., budget proposals, general government fiscal plans), and gender equality policy (e.g., government gender equality action plans) in Finland in the 2000s. These data are complemented with research interviews with key policy actors, such as state officials, politicians, researchers, and experts. I also use my own observations and experiences as data, since I have participated in the previously mentioned social and economic processes and activities as a gender equality researcher and feminist activist. This chapter is structured as follows. I start with a brief account of how feminist political economies have ‘gendered’ mainstream perceptions of the economy as well as of economic crises. Next, I describe in more detail the women-friendly welfare state as well as some of the central shifts in the welfare state model. In two following sections I analyse the neoliberalization of feminism and gender equality policy, focusing particularly on welfare state reform in Finland. I end with concluding remarks in which I identify some positive developments in the feminist political economies of the welfare state.

19.2

FEMINIST POLITICAL ECONOMY: GENDERING THE ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC CRISES

Neoliberalization of the welfare state is a fundamentally gendered process. One of the main contributions of feminist political economy has been understanding economies as gendered structures and economic crises as crises of social reproduction and gender equality, as well as of finance and production (Rai and Waylen 2014). Feminist political economists have pointed out how mainstream economic thinking is based on explicit and implicit gendered assumptions about what the economy is and what kind of activities are economically valuable, and also on

214  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state a traditional understanding of gender roles (Rai and Waylen 2014). According to Antonella Picchio, mainstream economics, on the one hand, at the macro level, does not take into account the processes of social reproduction that enable real people to live, work, and relate to one another in society; on the other hand, at the micro level, it has a very reductive idea of the individual: neutral, selfish, ‘autistic’, disembodied and disembedded from context (Picchio 2016, p. 250).

Such gendered assumptions about the economy and human beings underpin the key economic ideas and concepts of the neoliberal state, such as competitiveness, productivity, and the understanding of human beings as human capital. The concept of social reproduction, one of the key feminist concepts to challenge gendered distinctions in the domains of economics and political economy, is a particularly useful tool for unpacking the effects of the expansion of economic ideas and understandings. Social reproduction can be broadly defined as the material and affective everyday activities of maintaining life and reproducing the next generation – giving birth to children and raising them, caring for family members and friends, housework such as cleaning and cooking, and sustaining communities – that have historically been seen as women’s work and that are still mainly carried out by women, often without pay (see, e.g., Bakker 2007; Fraser 2016; Hoskyns and Rai 2007). This work is vital for the functioning of the capitalist economy as well as for human well-being. Yet social reproduction is generally overlooked both at the level of economic theory and at the level of public policy, which focus on the so-called productive economy, that is, monetized exchanges associated with the market. For example, the unpaid work of social reproduction is not seen as productive work that should be included in key economic indicators, such as national accounts and the gross domestic product. Another gendered aspect of neoliberalization that feminist political economists have pointed out are recent shifts in economic policy and economic governance, and their gendered effects. Efforts to promote economic growth and competitiveness as well as public financial management – decisions about public expenditure and taxation as well as the balance between the two – are often understood as gender neutral, and gender is rarely visible in key economic policy documents (see, e.g., Bakker 1994; Bakker et al. 2011). Isabella Bakker (1994) has described this silence about gender as a strategic silence, which hides gendered hierarchies and structures related to the economy and obscures the way economic policies and economic governance processes may entrench inequalities between women and men (and within particular groups of each) and strengthen gendered hierarchies. For example, economic policy may have differential impacts on the disposable income of different groups of women and men, increase or decrease the need for unpaid care work, or increase or narrow down inequalities between women on a global scale. Feminist economists and political economists have since the 1980s paid attention to the gender impacts of neoliberal economic policies and structural adjustment programmes. In recent work, feminist scholars have, for example, shed light on the gender impacts of the austerity policies adopted by European countries in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and endorsed by the European Union institutions. Studies from different national contexts have shown how women and minorities have borne the brunt of austerity-related cuts in public services and social benefits and female-dominated public-sector jobs (see, e.g., Bargawi et al. 2017; Kantola and Lombardo 2017; Karamessini and Rubery 2014; Pearson and Elson 2015).

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state  215 For example, in the United Kingdom, ethnic minority women have been particularly impacted by austerity (Emejulu and Bassel 2017). From a feminist political economy perspective, shifts in economic policy are not only about who loses and who benefits, but also about the conditions of social reproduction. In other words, what is at stake is the often unpaid work that sustains human life and communities that is still mainly provided by women. When the state withdraws from public provisioning, social reproduction is refamiliarized and reprivatized. On the one hand, it is turned into a commodity that is bought and sold on the market. On the other hand, it returns to a place where it is often thought to belong: in households where it is mainly achieved via unpaid work by women. This enhances existing gendered hierarchies while also creating new ones. Only those who can afford it can buy care from the market. Many of those who are not able to do this end up providing informal care work to wealthier families, with low salaries and poor working conditions. The withdrawal of the state also has global effects: when racialized women from poorer countries patch up the care deficits in the Global North, care deficits then become a problem in the Global South (Bakker 2003; Fraser 2016).

19.3

THE ‘WOMEN-FRIENDLY’ NORDIC WELFARE STATE

The Nordic welfare state has been characterized by the provision of universal basic services and a redistributive social security benefits system financed by progressive taxation (Esping-Andersen 1990). The notion of a Nordic model refers also to an active state, a large public sector, and a broadly conceived public responsibility for the social welfare of citizens within the framework of a market economy (Kautto 2010). Gender equality has been seen as one of the cornerstones of this model. Since the 1970s, Nordic governments have introduced and implemented a range of policies to implicitly and explicitly promote gender equality. The Nordic welfare states – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – have developed into dual-earner societies, and public services (in particular, publicly financed childcare and parental leave) were developed to provide women with the capacity to increase their paid employment (Teigen and Skjeie 2017). From the perspective of reproduction, the state-supported inclusion of women within the Nordic labour market is a distinctive characteristic of the Nordic welfare state. Feminist research on the Nordic welfare state is also tied to a broader notion of gender-inclusive citizenship, which incorporates aspects of gender equality across paid work, care work, and income, as well as across areas of participation in political life and decision making (Bergqvist et al. 1999; Borchorst and Siim 2008). More recently, aspects related to violence against women and intersectional forms of discrimination have been increasingly addressed in the Nordic model (Siim and Borchorst 2017). The Nordic welfare states tend to rank at the top in international indices that map degrees of gender equality, such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap and the European Union’s Gender Equality Index. Although the Nordic countries form a distinct group of high achievers with regard to gender equality, their distinctiveness is more pronounced for democratic parity (which includes equal rights to vote, assemble, and hold office, as well as inclusive opportunity structures for civil society and gender balance in political decision making) than for economic equity (which includes equal educational opportunities, equal pay for work of equal value, gender balance in family life, and gender-balanced participation in labour

216  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state markets) (Teigen and Skjeie 2017). On the economic equity dimension, Finland’s scores are the lowest within the Nordic countries, while on the democratic parity dimension, Finland and Sweden stand out as high performers (Teigen and Skjeie 2017). The woman-friendly welfare state emerges from a long tradition of state feminism. The concept signifies close relationships and strong alliances among feminist and gender equality movements and the state (Kantola 2006; Kantola and Squires 2012). These relationships are manifested in, for example, state-based funding, practices of consultation and hearings on legislative and policy proposals, and close personal networks involving feminist actors in and outside the state government (Holli 2006; Kantola 2006). As noted previously, there has been a belief in the women-friendly welfare state as a partner in advancing gender equality among the feminist and gender equality movements in Finland, as well as in public debate and feminist research. In the past, the state-centred approach has had many successes, mainly due to shared framings of the political problems among key actors, including civil society organizations (especially women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs)), feminist politicians and femocrats (feminist bureaucrats within the state administration), and gender experts and researchers (Holli 2006). The downside has been that the Finnish feminist and gender equality movements have become strongly co-opted by state discourses and practices (Elomäki et al. 2020). The state feminist tradition has meant that the feminist movements and gender equality policies have likewise been transformed by neoliberal welfare state reform. As is well documented, over the past four decades, Finland and the other Nordic countries have taken on board the mainstays of neoliberal reform. This includes embracing new public management, the take-up of competition policy, the enrolment of economic actors (especially think tanks, business consultants, and economists) in executive decision making, the centralization of power over resources, and the allocation of increasing authority to the Ministry of Finance (see, e.g., Ahlqvist and Moisio 2014; Kantola and Kananen 2013). The pathways of these reforms have in no way been linear and have often been forged from and alongside long-lived commitments to social rights, universal access to welfare, and redistributive taxation. Economic crises in Finland have turned out to be decisive moments in which new ideas are adopted and policies formulated (Kantola and Kananen 2013). Many of the reforms mentioned previously were implemented during the deep recession of the early 1990s, and the economic crisis of 2008 and the long recession that followed have intensified the processes of welfare state reform (Adkins et al. 2019; Elomäki and Ylöstalo 2020). In the 2010s, the state-centred feminist and gender equality approach in Finland faced a new situation, as the state appeared to have turned its back on gender equality. In contrast to the other Nordic countries, Finland did not recover quickly from the 2008 global economic crisis, and instead fell into a deep and long recession. The gloomy picture of the Finnish economy and the growing national debt have dominated political debates since the beginning of the crisis. This ‘crisis awareness’ culminated in parliamentary elections in 2015 and the formation of a centre-right conservative government. The openly anti-feminist Finns Party became one of the governing parties, along with two other conservative parties, the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party. The government pushed stringent austerity policies, for which the previous government had already laid the ground, which are known to have detrimental effects on gender equality (see, e.g., Bargawi et al. 2017; Kantola and Lombardo 2017; Karamessini and Rubery 2014). Furthermore, the centre-right government’s gender equality policies were remarkably weak, giving rise to claims about a ‘backlash’ against the push for gender equality (Elomäki and

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state  217 Kantola 2017, 2018; Elomäki et al. 2018; Kantola et al. 2020). These developments have also damaged the long-standing relations between the state and feminist and gender equality movements (Elomäki et al. 2020). It should be noted, however, that the new Finnish government (2019–), which consists of the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party, the Greens, and the Left Alliance, has brought gender equality back to the governmental policy agenda. Neoliberalization of the welfare state has also had other effects on feminism and gender equality policy that have been less visible and less contested. Some feminist scholars have claimed that feminism and gender equality policy have themselves become neoliberalized (e.g. Fraser 2013; Rottenberg 2018). In what follows, I analyse the effects of neoliberalization and especially a neoliberal approach to welfare state reform on the feminist and gender equality movements as well as on gender equality policy.

19.4

THE NEOLIBERALIZATION OF FEMINISM

As noted previously, neoliberalization of the welfare state has also changed feminist and gender equality actors as well as their priorities, practices, discourses, and knowledge base. What is central to the process of neoliberalization is that it extends economic values, practices, and metrics to every dimension of human life, including ‘non-economic’ spheres – such as gender equality. In other words, neoliberalization does not necessarily mean marketization (although that is an important effect of neoliberalism); rather, it means, first and foremost, that the ‘model of the market’ is disseminated to all domains and activities, even where money is not an issue (Brown 2015, pp. 30–1). In the context of feminist political economy, this has also been called the economization of feminism or of issues of gender equality (Elomäki 2015). The feminist movement is characterized by a constant struggle between the desire to have an impact and the desire to remain critical. The key question has been whether feminisms become compromised or co-opted when they engage with political processes, actors, and institutions, such as states, governments, and international organizations (Caglar et al. 2013; Elomäki et al. 2018). These concerns have sparked the emergence of new analytical concepts such as ‘market feminism’ (Kantola and Squires 2012), ‘governance feminism’ (Halley et al. 2018; Prügl 2011), and ‘crisis governance feminism’ (Griffin 2015), which have all illustrated in their distinct ways how feminism itself gets changed when it engages with neoliberal state and governance structures. At the core of this process is the development of a particular kind of feminist knowledge: namely, co-opted, governance-friendly expert knowledge that fits with the prevailing logics of neoliberal governance, including its economized logic (see Griffin 2015; Prügl 2011). As a result, ‘governance feminism’ has been markedly silent about the gendered underpinnings of global governance and financial governance, focusing instead on supporting institutional measures to enhance women’s participation (Griffin 2015). In Finland, the state-centred feminist and gender equality movements have been unable to challenge the neoliberalization of the welfare state. Finland has a relatively weak feminist and gender equality movement that has relied on institutionalized cross-party collaboration between women’s organizations and close relationships with the state (Kantola 2006), representing a state-centred and consensus-oriented form of feminist activism. As a result, in Finland women’s organizations’ responses to austerity measures and their gendered effects in the 2010s were slow and muted (Elomäki and Kantola 2017, 2018). The main reason for this are these actors’ close relationships with political parties and the state. As a politically polar-

218  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ized topic, economic policies and their gendered effects have been difficult issues for women’s cross-party collaboration. Feminist academics have been more successful in their critique of austerity policies in Finland, but they too have tended to frame their critique in terms of technical, evidence-based policies rather than political issues (Elomäki et al. 2018, 2020). A key characteristic of the neoliberalization of feminism is that the framing of gender equality has changed. These changes include, for example, giving primacy to those feminist claims that are complicit with a market agenda (Kantola and Squires 2012) as well as reinforcing the ‘economic case’ for gender equality by highlighting its macroeconomic benefits (Elomäki 2015; Roberts 2015). Far from being a ‘national speciality’, these shifts characterize feminisms globally and are evident, for example, in European Union gender equality policy as well as in many other national contexts (see Elomäki 2015; Kantola and Lombardo 2017). Additionally, prominent global international economic actors as well as business corporations, including the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Goldman Sachs, and Nike, have put gender equality on their agenda. These new actors tend to represent gender equality as an instrument for economic growth rather than as a value in and of itself (Roberts 2015). Feminism itself has been taken up as a marketing strategy, again representing the link between particular forms of feminism and the creation of economic value. In parallel with these economic actors, many feminists have adopted similar rhetoric. In Finland, a recent open, citizen-driven movement for gender equality called TASAN!, for example, adopted an instrumentalized and positive rhetoric that emphasized the contribution of gender equality and women to national success and selected employment, competitiveness, and entrepreneurship as its main themes. Similar discourses that endorse Finland as a strong knowledge-based economy and aim at enhancing ‘national competitiveness’ have been used frequently in recent decades to support diverging political aims (Moisio 2018). When taking the form of feminist critique, such discourse is entangled with the government’s neoliberal agenda (Elomäki and Kantola 2017). Speaking with the ‘language of economy’ has been seen by feminist actors as a way to legitimize contested gender equality initiatives (Brunila 2009). However, presenting gender equality as a means to promote economic growth and national competitiveness can also be used to legitimize policy reforms that are problematic for gender equality itself, such as cutting wages in the female-dominated public sector.

19.5

THE NEOLIBERALIZATION OF GENDER EQUALITY POLICY

The past decade has been marked by a backlash against gender equality policy in different national contexts in Europe. Austerity politics and the increasing influence of right-wing populism and conservatism and related anti-feminist or anti-gender views have led to the closing down or defunding of gender equality bodies, the sidelining of gender equality as a political goal, and the withdrawal of gender equality initiatives (Kantola and Lombardo 2017; Krizsan and Roggeband 2018; Karamessini and Rubery 2014). This visible backlash against gender equality has taken place side by side with the intensification of longstanding transformations of state and governance, which have already for several decades influenced the form and content of gender equality policy from Australia to South America to Europe (Kantola and Squires 2012; Rönnblom et al. 2017). These shifts in gender equality policy are related not

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state  219 to neoliberalism viewed as a policy or ideology but to neoliberalism understood as a form of governance. An important aspect of this shift is that gender equality policies have become more and more aligned with neoliberal governance. The shift from government to governance – a shift that involves the passage from traditional top-down bureaucracy to networks and markets and other distinctive forms of governing (Fawcett et al. 2018) – has also changed and challenged gender equality policies and practices. The growing use of gender experts as well as the implementation of tactics and tools of public governance in promoting gender equality have resulted from efforts to render gender equality policies more ‘effective’ (Kantola and Squires 2012). These tactics and tools, such as gender mainstreaming and gender-impact assessments, audits, indicators, and monitoring systems tend to simplify complex gender equality problems and replace discussions about power and structures with technocratic ‘best practices’ (Griffin 2015; Prügl 2011). Yet another effect of the neoliberalization of gender equality policy is the professionalization of feminist knowledge in governmental institutions. The more technocratic the tools to promote gender equality, the more expertise promoting gender equality is seen to require (see Kantola and Squires 2012; Kunz and Prügl 2019). Previous research has identified depoliticizing tendencies in the production of feminist knowledge and the packaging of such knowledge as gender expertise. Gender experts and gender expertise have, for example, been accused of technicizing the feminist agenda and reducing the struggle for gender equality to checklists and gender-training toolkits or to the ‘gender washing’ of policy documents (Kantola and Squires 2012; Kunz and Prügl 2019). The professionalization of feminist knowledge is particularly evident in the emerging emphasis on evidence-based policy-making, which feminists in Finland as well as internationally have been quick to exploit. Feminist researchers and NGOs, for example, have produced policy-relevant expert knowledge and ‘gender analyses’ of policy reforms in order to sway politicians and the general public with supposedly objective, value-free knowledge, ‘feminist knowledge made useful for the purposes of practical administration’ (Prügl 2011, p. 76). While the emergence of evidence-based policy-making has offered feminist activists (especially those based in academia) new opportunities for making feminist knowledge claims, it has also resulted in the supply of policy-relevant, governance-friendly knowledge that is framed in objective rather than interest-based terms – in other words, in the depoliticization of feminism. In Finland, for example, women-oriented NGOs’ critique of austerity policies did not challenge the government’s austerity-driven agenda or take a stance on how the planned cuts should be made (Elomäki and Kantola 2017). Instead, in their critique, the NGOs required the government to assess the impacts of austerity policies on women’s employment (Elomäki and Kantola 2017). Gender equality policies tend also to be affected by governance reforms that are not directly concerned with gender equality policy. A ‘strategic governance reform’, implemented in Finland in 2015, serves as a good example. The long-planned, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-inspired reform changed the form of the government programme as well as its implementation process; it also changed the way policy areas like gender equality policy are steered (Mykkänen 2016). One of the most visible concrete changes was that the government set both a long- and a short-term ‘strategic vision’ for Finland and organized its work around a limited number of horizontal ‘strategic objectives’ and concrete measures to reach these objectives. As a result of the government’s strategic prioritizing,

220  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state gender equality was pushed off the government’s agenda. The scope of gender equality was also narrowed down: compared to the previous government’s 68 gender equality objectives, the government introduced later in its strategic gender equality action plan only 30 gender equality objectives. In other words, the government’s efforts to make governance more ‘effective’ weakened gender equality policies in Finland dramatically (Elomäki 2019; Elomäki and Ylöstalo 2017).

19.6 CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I have analysed recent shifts in the relations among the Nordic welfare state, political economy, feminism, and gender equality in Finland, while also engaging with the neoliberalization of the welfare state, feminism, and gender equality policy more broadly. In so doing, I have demonstrated the existence of spatially variegated feminist political-economic landscapes, within which the content and intentions of feminism are constantly negotiated and reworked. I have also introduced contributions of feminist political economy to these debates and, more generally, to debates about the economy. The main aim has been to show that even though economies, economics, and economic policy are often seen as neutral and rather technocratic questions that have little to do with gender and gender equality, they are profoundly ‘gendered’. In order to understand political economies of the state, the gendered aspects of the economy, including the political economy of reproduction, need to be taken into account. This will not only bring in what is often excluded, to the detriment of political-economic analyses, but also enable ‘a more robust and nuanced understanding of what counts as “the economy” and how it functions’ (Werner et al. 2017, p. 4). I have shown how neoliberal state reforms have affected the ‘woman-friendly’ structures and policies of the welfare state, as well as feminism, gender equality policy, and feminist alliances within the state. Many of these shifts have had a weakening effect on feminism and gender equality policy. The actors, priorities, practices, discourses, and knowledge base of feminism and gender equality policy have changed their form – often in a way that economizes and depoliticizes feminism and weakens the transformative potential of gender equality policy. Furthermore, even as discussions about the economy, economics, and economic policy have fallen silent about their gendered underpinnings, the austerity policies in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis have had detrimental effects on gender equality. Even though feminists have increasingly taken part in discussions about the economy and economic policy – as exemplified in debates about gender-inclusive budgeting initiatives – the possibilities for feminist actors to have an impact on economic policies remain limited. To end on a more positive note, it can be argued that austerity policies in Finland have also opened a space for a strong feminist discourse about inequality, racism, and power (Elomäki and Kantola 2017, 2018). A new set of feminist actors has appeared in Finland, including new actors in politics (such as the Feminist Party, a feminist network in the Finnish Parliament), new NGOs (the anti-racist organization Fem-R and the feminist men’s association Miehet ry), and new grassroots activists (HelFem, Feminist Forum). In addition, new cultural actors and products have brought feminism into public discussion, including Koko Hubara, author of Brown Girls, and the feminist think tank Hattu (Elomäki et al. 2020). These new actors have challenged the traditional alliances between feminism and the state, and found pathways to feminist activism beyond the collaboration between feminist state actors, women-oriented

Feminist political economies of the Nordic welfare state  221 NGOs, and academic researchers. This shows that the state-feminist approach can be supplemented and/or challenged with new forms of feminist critique and activism, which may be able to challenge neoliberalism more effectively than state feminism.

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PART IV THE STATE, ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

20. Introduction: the state, energy and the environment Natalie Koch

States have always been key strategic-relational fields for the unfolding of environmental governance, though that relationship is nowhere fixed or uniform. Yet with the growing global awareness of the challenges presented by climate change, international policymakers and scholars alike have increasingly positioned environmental concerns as part of a broader set of geopolitical challenges in the current geological age commonly referred to as the ‘Anthropocene’ (e.g. Clark-Sather et al. 2017). Political geographers have always been concerned with the intersection between state power, nature and the environment, but only recently have scholars begun to push beyond the familiar concerns of ‘environmental security’ (see Dalby 2002) to undertake a broader study of ‘environmental geopolitics’ or ‘geopolitical ecologies’ (e.g. Bigger and Neimark 2017; Dalby 2014). In part, this is due to political geography’s deeper cross-fertilization with nature-society geography and political ecology. But it is a reflection of the actually changing geographies of the state with respect to natural processes related to climate change, shifting energy economies and infrastructures and new modes of measuring and governing the natural world. Yet our changing natural geographies are inextricable from the political geographies of the state, which are variably understood as the root cause, challenge and solution to the global challenges of climate change, energy use and environmental transformation. States have figured centrally in shaping contemporary environmental politics. The rise of the Anthropocene discourse – both as reality and rhetorical benchmark for state policy – has developed in tandem with the intensifying permeation of ‘environmental sustainability’ as a core value, advanced not only by more traditional ecological activists and international organizations, but by state policies and development plans in countries as diverse as Qatar, Kazakhstan and Rwanda. As sustainable development has been mainstreamed through institutions like the United Nations and new forms of environmental accounting, many states are now taking a leading role in promoting ‘green economies’ – simultaneously ‘greening’ their image and presenting their economies as modern or modernizing. This part explores the multiple geographies of the state, the environment, and energy – sometimes in conflict, sometimes in confluence – by asking practically and ethically what it means to call something ‘green’ and by putting environmental discourses like the ‘Anthropocene’ under the microscope. While promoting environmental sustainability has been increasingly promoted through centralized state-scale policies in some contexts, it has elsewhere largely been decentralized, as municipalities around the world have taken on policy agendas that state actors cannot or will not themselves underwrite (Bulkeley 2013). Largely unfolding in liberal democratic contexts, these transformations have gone hand in hand with the neoliberalization of state governance and biopolitical regimes of managing populations, natures and material resources within and beyond conventionally defined territorial states (Whitehead et al. 2007). And yet, given the colonial origins of today’s geopolitical order defined by the territorial state, critical 225

226  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state geographers advocating environmental conservation must not lose sight of the fact that energy and the environment have always been central to Indigenous experiences of both inclusion and exclusion, survival and decline in settler colonial settings (Curley 2018; Norman 2014; Voyles 2015). That is, scholars need to hold in focus the power inequalities inherent to the changing geographies of the state as they critique the pernicious impacts of neoliberal environmental governance and the carbon-fuelled climate crisis. As Indigenous scholars and feminist political ecologists have shown, the easy narratives of being ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ are just as prone to reinforce structural inequalities and state violence as they are to advance any goal of environmental protection (Harcourt and Nelson 2015; Simmons 2019). This part considers precisely this uneven – and uneasy – relationship between individuals subject to environmental harms and the state in a world grappling with dramatic changes from climate change and shifting energy landscapes. In Chapter 21, Tom Perreault introduces key literatures on the relationship between resources, states and nations – showing how they co-produce one another as a ‘trialectic’ of socionatural ordering. These concepts represent far more than academic constructs: they form the core of contemporary environmental policy and governance, which produce states fiscally and territorially through resource extraction. Furthermore, Perreault underscores the affective dimension of these processes, as resource nationalisms not only justify individual state-led extractive projects, but also entrench the statist system writ large. Afton Clarke-Sather likewise illustrates how state power is reified through recent consumption-based forms of environmental accounting. Taking the example of ecological footprints, water footprints and carbon accounts, he argues that the geopolitical effect of these measures may appear on the surface to shift away from state-centrism in environmental governance. However, even though they do tend to move the locus of environmental responsibility to the individual, these accounting frameworks ultimately derive from – and thus reinforce – state-based forms of knowledge and environmental governance. In Chapter 23, Andrew Curley and Majerle Lister take the critique of the state system further by investigating how the politics of climate change and energy debates play out in and through tribal sovereignty and institutions in North America. Focusing on the history of oil, uranium, and coal in the Navajo Nation, they move away from essentialist frames around energy and the environment to decolonize the ‘Anthropocene’ by taking Indigenous philosophies and experiences seriously. They show how such perspectives are not only missing from academic discussions of the Anthropocene, but also in the climate justice movement more broadly, which simplistically positions and conceptualizes Indigenous peoples as frontline communities, divorced from the violence of settler colonial histories and presents of ‘wastlelanding’ (Voyles 2015) that contemporary state formations entail. The need to foreground resource politics and colonial histories of extraction in the changing geographies of the state are also a key theme in Chapter 24 by Stephanie Hitztaler and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, who consider hydrocarbon development in the Russian Arctic. There, the parastatal company Gazprom Neft works in tandem with federal, regional, and local governments to extract oil – but to enact its paternalist vision of ‘corporate social responsibility’ through social, economic and environmental sustainability. Through their case study of the company’s Rodnye Goroda (‘Home Cities and Towns’) initiative in the Yamal-Nenets region, they also show how Gazprom Neft reduces Indigenous communities to icons, while continuing to repurpose tribal lands for extractive enterprises. Hitztaler and Tynkkynen show how the Russian state’s Arctic paradox – of celebrating the rewards of extraction today and failing to properly plan for a post-production

Introduction: the state, energy and the environment  227 scenario tomorrow – is in fact a microcosm of the global challenges on the horizon in the era of climate change. Meredith DeBoom’s chapter continues this theme of how climate change is impacting global imaginaries of risk, sovereignty and environmental governance across multiple scales. She offers ‘climate necropolitics’ as a conceptual framework for evaluating how these debates around environmental geopolitics are playing out, integrating recent research on planetary sovereignty, sociotechnical imaginaries and necropolitics. To consider how climate change is (re)shaping political imaginaries about sovereignty, she examines the Chinese Communist Party’s discourse of ‘Ecological Civilization’, which elevates environmental protection as a top domestic priority alongside economic growth. Incorporated into the Chinese Constitution in 2012, the doctrine has been an important justification for the expansion of China’s nuclear energy strategy. Yet the implications of these new policies are not just domestic: they have far-reaching international implications, which DeBoom traces to recent investments in Namibia’s uranium mining sector. As with all environmental and energy discourses today, ‘green’ is a relative term that does not just reflect the new spaces of geopolitics, but actually constitutes them in the shifting optics of sovereignty and resource governance. While the chapters in this part offer no easy solutions as to how to effect ‘just’ energy transitions or promote a healthier natural environment, they showcase the utter diversity of issues that might be encompassed by a critical lens on environmental geopolitics. Whether individuals are acting in the name of the state, outside of it or against it, energy and the environment will always beg a global perspective. Whatever this global imaginary entails, whether a de-bordered fantasy of Spaceship Earth or a continuation of the dominant statist order, the geographies of the state will be changing.

REFERENCES Bigger, P. and B. Neimark (2017), ‘Weaponizing nature: The geopolitical ecology of the US Navy’s biofuel program’, Political Geography, 60, 13–22. Bulkeley, H. (2013), Cities and Climate Change, New York: Routledge. Clarke-Sather A., B. Crow-Miller, J. Banister, K. Anh Thomas, E. Norman and S. Stephenson (2017), ‘The shifting geopolitics of water in the Anthropocene’, Geopolitics, 22 (2), 332–59. Curley, A. (2018), ‘A failed green future: Navajo green jobs and energy “transition” in the Navajo Nation’, Geoforum, 88, 57–65. Dalby, S. (2002), Environmental Security, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dalby, S. (2014), ‘Environmental geopolitics in the twenty-first century’, Alternatives, 39 (1), 3–16. Harcourt, W. and I. Nelson (2015), Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the ‘Green Economy’, New York: Zed. Norman, E. (2014), Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States and Indigenous Communities, New York: Routledge. Simmons, K. (2019), ‘Reorientations: Or, an Indigenous feminist reflection on the Anthropocene’, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 58 (2), 174–9. Voyles, T. (2015), Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Whitehead, M., R. Jones and M. Jones (2007), The Nature of the State: Excavating the Political Ecologies of the Modern State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

21. State of nature: on the co-constitution of resources, state and nation Tom Perreault

21.1 INTRODUCTION How do we understand the relationship between nature and the state? Between nature and nation? My goal in this chapter is to illuminate the relationship between the state, the nation and natural resources, and specifically how resources are enrolled in forms of state power and national imaginaries. To do this, we must distinguish conceptually between state and nation. As a starting point, I turn to Sutherland (2012), who refers to the nation as comprising a people who share an imagined history and common geography, and as the legitimating basis for authority, while she sees the state as embodying the territorial and institutional dimensions of that authority. In this sense, the nation underpins and legitimizes the modern state, and justifies the emplacement and enforcement of state borders. As such, ‘a nation need not have a state, but states need some kind of national construct to legitimate their control’ (Sutherland 2012, p. 10). State legitimation is thus achieved through the project of nation building, which Sutherland understands to be one of state-led nationalism. Nationalism, in this sense, pre-dates and helps constitute the nation. This is a fundamentally relational view, which understands the state as historically and geographically contingent and embedded in broader social and political systems that extend well beyond it. Here, I am drawing on Jessop’s (2008) view of the state as a social relation, or what Poulantzas (2000, p. 128) referred to as the ‘material condensation’ of the relationship of forces among classes and class fractions. In this view, the state both reflects and reproduces the shifting balance of power between social forces. The state is not, however, an empty terrain or neutral arbiter of competing interests, as it is sometimes represented in conservative scholarship. Rather, it actively and selectively – strategically, in the terminology of Jessop (2008) – constitutes particular social orders (Andreucci 2017). In this view, the material and discursive forms that states take – institutions, territories, armies, laws, policies – represent the crystallization of power relations among social forces. If the state is emergent, contingent and relational, the same can be said of natural resources. Critical resource geographers take as axiomatic that natural resources are socially produced and historically and geographically contingent. Zimmerman’s (1933, p. 15) well-known aphorism that ‘Resources are not; they become’ gestures in this direction, a point made more forcefully by Harvey (1974, p. 265), who argued that resources can only be defined in relationship to the mode of production which seeks to make use of them and which simultaneously ‘produces’ them through both the physical and mental activity of the users. According to this view, then, there is no such thing as a resource in the abstract or a resource which exists as a ‘thing in itself”.

228

State of nature  229 In this instance, Harvey is critiquing the neo-Malthusian environmentalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but he makes a broader point. In contrast to the Aristotelean perspective that sees resources as discreet things to be discovered in nature, Harvey argues for a dialectical view, in which resources exist only in relation to historically and geographically specific modes of production and consumption that produce them and assign them value and social meaning. In this view, resources are ‘cultural appraisals of nature’, and a central axis along which we organize our social and socio-natural relations (Bridge 2009; Le Billon 2013). As Bakker and Bridge (2008, p. 219) put it, ‘the production of nature as natural resources inevitably entails an exercise of power’. Resources, in this sense, are both products of and means for socio-natural ordering. What interests me in this chapter is not what resources, states and nations are, but rather how they are produced and understood in relation to one another (Bridge 2014). Neither states nor nations nor resources are settled, objective fact, but rather are best seen as immanent, emergent properties: historically contingent effects of an array of practices and social relations (Kuus and Agnew 2008). If nations provide the underlying moral justification for states, and states institutionalize and territorialize nationalist sentiments, then as Huber (2019) notes, it is the materiality of natural resources that forms the uneasy hyphen in the nation-state couplet (cf. Sparke 2005). As I argue below, resources are critical to both state and nation, in material and symbolic ways. Crucially, resources are not mere contingencies, scattered arbitrarily across the earth’s surface, as some mainstream analysts would have it (e.g. Wilson 2015), but rather are produced through uneven patterns of capitalist production and consumption, and are constitutive of the state and the nation. In this sense, nations, states and resources are, in various ways, mutually constitutive: state making, nation making and resource making are all manifestations of the same process (Loftus 2018). My argument proceeds as follows: I begin by discussing the state as an environmental actor. Here, I highlight the centrality of environmental policy and environmental governance in producing both the state and resources. This discussion leads to considerations of ground rent, state territoriality and the production of environmental subjectivities as central to state formation. The chapter closes with a consideration of resource nationalism and the ways in which natural resources figure into understandings of nationalism and the nation, along two axes: political economy and cultural politics.

21.2

THE STATE AS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTOR: POLICY AND GOVERNANCE

If, as McCarthy (2005) has argued, capitalism is an environmental project, then it is worth asking, in what ways is the state an environmental actor? Answers to this question are perhaps most evident in the cases of state environmental, resource and energy policy, central as they are to economic well-being and political stability. Environmental policy is crafted through the production of particular and always-partial forms of environmental knowledge, achieved through the dual processes of simplification and legibility (Robbins 2008; Scott 1998; Whitehead 2008). The first task of environmental policy, then, is to reduce the natural world into particular, identifiable, measurable, knowable qualities, which can be made the object of law and regulation. This act of abstraction (Robertson 2011) is as essential for the governance of fisheries and forests as it is for carbon dioxide and tradable environmental

230  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state services (Agrawal 2005; Mansfield 2004). Environmental policy thus represents a form of state institutionalization, centered on the governance of socio-natural relations, and as such is a powerful form of state making. Contemporary state environmental policy is comprised of organizations and institutions that emerged with the post-Second World War internationalization of environmental governance, and the role of such actors as the United Nations Environmental Programme, the World Bank (and its Global Environmental Facility) and the Food and Agriculture Organization, among others (Bakker and Bridge 2008). In the industrial states of North America and Europe, environmental policies as such date to the nineteenth century and began with efforts to manage natural resources such as forests, fisheries and minerals, and provide drinking water and sanitation to growing urban populations (Bakker 2003; Swyngedouw 2004). Such efforts accelerated and expanded during the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century (Ioris 2015; Wilson 2015). ‘Environmental (or resource) governance’ signals the institutional diversification of environmental and resource management as part of broader processes of political-economic restructuring under neoliberalism (Bridge and Perreault 2009; Himley 2008). The concept of governance refers to the functions of the state, but it also refers to the relations between state, quasi-state and non-state actors. The shift from state-centric government to market-centered governance has been experienced in historically capitalist and formerly socialist states alike, as they transitioned to neoliberalism. In both contexts, environmental governance is principally concerned with the practices involved in governing resources and environments, as well as the coordination of organizations, institutions, norms and practices across a multitude of scales (Bakker 2015; Robertson 2015; Yeh 2013). Crucially, environmental governance is concerned with producing particular social orders through the deployment of particular institutional arrangements. In other words, environmental governance is less about governing nature per se than it is about governing society through nature, and it is here that this understanding of governance most closely resembles Foucault’s notion of governmentality (Foucault 1991; see also Agrawal 2005). Particular scales of governance – the watershed, the irrigation canal system, the community forest, the fishery – typically reflect social relations more than they do ecological imperatives, and the institutional arrangements of resource governance inevitably stem from a desire to achieve particular socio-spatial orders: governing through nature. Neoliberalism can thus be seen as an institutional realignment away from state-centric (public-sphere) toward market-based (private-sphere) forms of governance – the well-known shift from government to governance (Jessop 2002). In a broad sense, neoliberalism is an economic and political project that seeks to liberalize trade (particularly international trade), privatize state-controlled industries and services and introduce market-oriented management practices to the reduced public sector. Of interest to analysts of neoliberal environmental governance seeking to understand the changing geographies of the state is how particular institutional configurations – for example resource rights, policies regarding resource extraction and conservation or codified social norms and management practices – mediate the metabolic relationship between nature and society, and thereby stabilize environmental and social regulation within a given regime of accumulation (Bakker 2015; Bridge 2000; Prudham 2015). From a regulation perspective, such institutional arrangements are seen as responses to the social and ecological contradictions of capitalism (Himley 2014). At its core, environmental governance is concerned with the twin concepts of property and privatization, and considerable geographical work has been focused on the contradictions

State of nature  231 and complexities involved in defining property and forming markets for resources and environments where none had previously existed (see, for instance, Robertson 2004). These are also central concerns of international trade agreements, which carry profound implications for environments and natural resources insofar as such agreements subsume environmental governance under the rubric of ‘free market’ capitalism. In this regard, efforts to neoliberalize environmental governance closely resemble the neoliberalization of other economic sectors, such as the privatization of pension funds or the opening of state-controlled industries to market forces. As McCarthy (2006) notes, however, nature’s materiality asserts itself in ways that set environmental governance apart from other regulatory domains. The biophysical properties of natural resources, as factors of production distinct from one another and from human-made commodities, pose particular challenges for their metabolism into capitalist relations of production (Bakker and Bridge 2006). By extension, the materiality of natural resources also poses particular challenges for states attempting to govern natural resources, as ministries charged with the appropriation, transport and delivery of water or electricity, or the monitoring and containment of contaminants, must contend with an array of unruly biophysical properties. For example, drawing on Polanyi’s (1944) discussion of nature as a ‘fictitious commodity’, Bakker (2003) exposes the ‘uncooperative’ nature of water as a commodity: although frequently subject to market-based modes of allocation, water’s materiality – a product of climate, geology and ecology, and an essential component of life – resists full commodification. In this way nature presents barriers to and opportunities for accumulation, which can necessitate a reconfiguration of the institutional form of capitalist processes (Prudham 2005). The fact that natural resources such as water, copper and wood are essential to the primary circuit of capital but are not themselves produced by capitalism sets them apart from other, human-produced commodities: here we see Polanyi’s ‘fictitious commodities’ at work in the service of capital.

21.3

GROUND RENT, STATE TERRITORY AND SUBJECTIVITY

If environmental governance is a primary means for institutionalizing the state as an environmental actor, then the collection of ground rent is a principal force in state territorialization. Rent – payments made to a landowner in exchange for use rights – is of crucial importance to states dependent on the extraction of oil, natural gas and/or minerals. The political and economic importance of resource rents is illustrated by the fact that the top ten oil reserve-holding entities, which together account for nearly 80 percent of global reserves, are all national oil companies (Bridge and Le Billon 2013). The revenues derived from rent depend on two factors: the surplus profits of the capitalists (from which rents are deducted) and the property of the landowner (to whom the rents are paid). As Coronil (1997) points out, ground rent lies at the heart of Marx’s trinity form of capital/profit – land/ground rent – labor/wage which, as Marx says, ‘completes the mystification of the capitalist mode of production’ (Marx 1981, p. 969, cited in Coronil 1997, p. 46). In spite of its fundamental importance to state making in the context of extractive economies, ground rent has received relatively little attention from resource geographers, political ecologists and other critical geographers. Like the state itself, rent is a social relation: a product of the relationship between the owner of an asset and those who wish to make use of it (Li 2017). Andreucci et al. (2017, p. 31) helpfully distinguish between two moments of associated

232  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ground rent: (1) the creation of property rights that establish the rent relation – what the authors refer to as a process of ‘pseudo-commodification,’ and (2) the appropriation and distribution of surplus value generated by the rent relation itself. The state figures centrally in this process. On the one hand, the state facilitates and regulates each of these moments insofar as it establishes and enforces exclusive property rights (even acting as the de facto landlord in the case of public lands). On the other hand, the state plays a leading role in appropriating and distributing rents among competing classes and class fractions. Ground rent is thus a vital point of contact between the state, capital and natural resources; without the preconditions established by the state for the extraction and distribution of surplus value (made possible by the rent relation), capitalist production itself could not take place (Andreucci et al. 2017; Huber 2018). This recognition directs our attention to the role of property and property regimes and their relationship to sovereign state territory (Sayre 2018; Wegenast and Schneider 2017). Emel et al. (2011) argue that state territorial sovereignty is fundamentally rooted in understandings of resource sovereignty, in turn literally grounded in the property relation. State sovereignty over natural resources is codified in the 1962 United Nations Declaration of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, a product of the post-war decolonization struggles that institutionalized state sovereignty over sub-surface resources – a property regime adopted by nearly every country in the world. While sovereignty cannot be territorially circumscribed (Agnew 2005), resource sovereignty is a powerful factor in processes of (and struggles over) territorialization, at state, sub-state and supra-state scales (Emel et al. 2011; Koch and Perreault 2019). The titling of lands, the allocation of exclusive ‘oil blocs,’ the material practices involved in the exploration, extraction, transport, processing and distribution of natural resources, are all inherently territorial and territorializing practices. Of particular importance here is the role of extractive infrastructure – roads, pipelines, electrical transmission lines, mines, fracking pads, etc. – in coordinating and structuring social life (Carse 2012; Khalili 2018; Low forthcoming). As Bridge et al. (2018) point out, such infrastructure serves to produce space and scale by reflecting, reproducing and reconfiguring territorialized relations of power. A further consideration regarding the state and resources is that of citizenship and subjectivity. What forms of political belonging are engendered by which kinds of resource regimes? Mitchell (2009, 2011) examines the social embeddedness of fossil fuels and argues that carbon energy – first in the form of coal and later oil – has structured the conditions for political organization since the nineteenth century. Far from a deterministic reliance on the physical properties of oil and coal (e.g. Kaplan 2013; Klare 2004), Mitchell argues that the strategic importance of fossil energy to industrial capitalism and liberal democracy was the result of a multitude of strategic choices. By tracing the histories and geographies of carbon energy, he argues, we can better understand the limitations imposed on politics and political subjectivities, as well as the relationship between ‘spectacle and violence … [and] pipelines and pumping stations, refineries and shipping routes, road systems and automobile cultures, dollar flows and economic knowledge, weapons experts and militarism’ (Mitchell 2009, p. 422). Tracing these relations exposes the connections between forms of knowledge and expertise, on the one hand, and forms of power and political organization, on the other, all of which are facilitated and structured by oil. Others have made similar arguments. Watts (2004), for instance, examined Nigeria’s ‘oil complex’, replete with its spasms of violence, underlying corruption and apocalyptic levels of contamination. In Bolivia, natural gas extraction on Indigenous lands has produced a form of ‘hydrocarbon citizenship’ (Anthias 2018), through which the Indigenous Guaraní peoples

State of nature  233 have come to structure their relations with extractive firms, the Bolivian state and each other. Something similar is at work in the United States (US), where oil represents the ‘lifeblood’ of the American dream, fueling individualized automobility and the spatial expansion of urban and suburban life (Huber 2013). To be sure, forms of subjectivity and collective belonging are also formed in relation to resources other than hydrocarbons, as has been documented in the case of Chilean salmon farming (Bustos 2010), North American forests (Biermann 2016; Kosek 2006) and Spanish water politics (Swyngedouw 2015). But it is in the context of extractive industries – hydrocarbons and mining – that the nexus of state, resources and subject formation is apparent and most politically potent. This recognition directs our attention to resource nationalism, to which the chapter now turns.

21.4

RESOURCE NATIONALISM

If a focus on the environmental state highlights the material and discursive practices through which the institutions of the state are produced, then resource nationalism highlights the ways that nature and natural resources are enrolled in the ideological project of constructing national imaginaries (Childs 2016). While there are many ways of characterizing resource nationalism, I juxtapose conservative, realist approaches with critical, constructivist perspectives. As portrayed in industry-oriented trade journals, business-oriented popular press and realist analyses by scholars in international relations, policy studies and political science, resource nationalism is an outcome of economic and national security concerns of the central state. These mainstream, conservative analyses emphasize state control of resources, which they represent as a threat to wealthy northern states and their ability to access resources from developing countries. In this view, resource nationalism is a pathology unique to the resource-exporting countries of the Global South, and these authors rarely trouble themselves with the policies, politics or imperial histories of resource-importing northern states. Such analyses demonstrate an evident bias in favor of neoliberal trade and investment, and represent nationalization and protectionist policies alternately as a ‘spectre’, a ‘weapon’, and a ‘peril’ for extractive industries and resource-importing countries (Hirsch 2008, p. 881). Joffé et al. (2009, p. 3), for example, warn of the ‘growth of radicalism among [Global South] oil producers’ who pose ‘threats to the sanctity of contracts in Latin America’, and warn that this radicalism has spread contagion-like to North Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Central Asia. In a similar vein, Vivoda (2009, p. 523) laments that ‘major [international oil companies] have full access to countries with only six per cent of the globe’s known [oil] reserves, mainly in North America and Europe’. For their part, Bremmer and Johnston (2009, p. 150) warn that ‘revolutionary resource nationalism’ can have a ‘dangerous effect on international resource companies’ when ‘[o]wnership of prized assets may be wrenched away through forced renegotiation of existing contracts, using perceived historical injustice or alleged environmental or contractual misdeeds by the companies as justification’. The authors warn of the economic dysfunctions wrought by ‘resource-drunk politicians’ and the threat they pose to global economic stability (Bremmer and Johnston 2009, p. 152). Such statements make the political commitments of these analysts easy to discern. In contrast to the economistic view presented by mainstream analysts, I argue that resource nationalism is historically constructed through the interplay of two distinct but related spheres of social life: political economy and cultural politics. While there is no doubt that economic

234  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state policies are important to the geographies and histories of resource nationalism, analytical focus should also be trained on extra-economic factors – especially for geographers interested in new spaces of geopolitics. Moreover, critical analyses recognize that economic relations are inseparable from political relations: the unity of production and power under capitalism (Harvey 1974). This is more than just a material, economic process. Indeed, in a Gramscian sense, the production of resources and resource imaginaries is at its heart an ideological project that serves either to bolster or challenge the hegemonic power of ruling classes (Marston and Perreault 2017). The conjoining of political economy and cultural meaning is evident in the patriotic murals and statuary found in mining districts the world over. Such ‘banal’ or everyday examples of nationalist sentiment serve at once to produce a form of political subjectivity and bind it to particular resource regimes (cf. Billig 1995; Koch and Paasi 2016). This process of articulation (Hall 1996) is evident in the slogan país minero (‘mining country’), which has become politically salient at various historical moments in Peru, Bolivia and Chile. There is nothing inevitable about the joining of national identity and hard-rock mining; such an articulation must be actively forged and continually remade. Similar examples are not hard to find. Given its geopolitical importance, oil inspires considerable nationalist sentiment in countries as diverse as Niger (Hicks 2015), Ecuador (Rosales 2017) and Iraq (Podeh 2011). In Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves and a large national oil company (Petróleos de Venezuela, SA), oil has long been associated with national identity and national development. Under both center-right and more recently left-wing governments, oil has functioned to bind together people, state and nation (Schiller 2011). In his analysis of Venezuelan petropolitics, Fernando Coronil (1997) views Venezuela, as an ‘oil nation’ composed of two bodies, a ‘political body’ made up of citizens, and a ‘natural body’ comprising the sub-soil: ‘By condensing within itself the multiple powers dispersed throughout the nation’s two bodies, the state appeared as a single agent endowed with the magical powers to remake the nation’ (Coronil 1997, p. 4). For decades, Venezuelan oil endowed the state with political legitimacy, ushering in an era of modernity and vast wealth. Under the leftist government of Hugo Chávez, which coincided with a period of relatively high oil prices, oil was the central motor of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution, providing hard currency and thus a source of state largesse and political power (Bridge and Le Billon 2013). In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has sought to strengthen state control of natural gas, his government’s single largest source of hard currency and a potent symbol of national pride. Elected in December 2005 after five years of near constant protest, Morales was swept to power on a wave of resource nationalism centered on calls to nationalize the country’s natural gas industry (Perreault 2006). Shortly after assuming office, in January 2006, he released a presidential decree calling for the ‘nationalization’ of the country’s natural gas industry (to be accomplished through the forced renegotiation of contracts with international hydrocarbons firms). The decree’s name, ‘Heroes of the Chaco’ (Héroes del Chaco), references the calamitous Chaco War that Bolivia fought against Paraguay in the 1930s, in the eastern scrublands where the country’s gas fields are located. Bolivia suffered some 65,000 casualties and lost much of its national territory, but its forces managed to stop the Paraguayan advance and protect the country’s hydrocarbons resources. Thus, in referencing this war – fought in a region far distant from the Andean west where Morales’ political base is centered – the ‘Heroes of the Chaco’ decree discursively articulates Bolivia’s natural resource endowments to a spatial imaginary embodied in the heroic defense of national territory (Perreault 2013; Young 2017; see Figure 21.1).

State of nature  235

Source: Tom Perreault.

Figure 21.1

Bolivian mural depicting the ‘Heroes of the Chaco’ theme

Such narratives are not unique to resource-exporting countries of the Global South, and a version of it is found in the US, which is both a major producer and importer of resources. For example, the US coal-producing region of southern Appalachia figures prominently in nationalist narratives of energy independence, produced by rugged (mostly white) men. The West Virginia coal executive Don Blankenship was known to make speeches dressed in a star-spangled shirt and hat, standing before an enormous American flag. Coal also played a role in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, in which the declining fortunes of the coal industry were central to a campaign fueled by nationalist nostalgia and the politics of white grievance. These narratives rest on a sense of collective vulnerability to forces beyond people’s control: hostile foreign powers and insecurity arising from imperial overreach, coupled with cultural and demographic changes at home (Koch and Perreault 2019). In this context, for a particular segment of the US population, coal represents an atavistic longing for an imagined past of prosperity and security, safe from cultural change and the incursions of unknowable others. Aspirational narratives of ‘energy independence’ are productive of geographical imaginaries in which US lifestyles and energy consumption patterns are held hostage to the economic and cultural limits imposed by unseen global forces, which can only be defeated by relentless efforts to ‘drill baby drill’ (Huber 2013). Resource nationalism provides an ideological frame that conjoins the political economies of resource consumption with the cultural politics of national belonging, and thus figures centrally in today’s changing geographies of the state. While the power of Venezuelan oil,

236  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Bolivian gas and West Virginian coal are surely rooted in their economic might, their political potency extends well beyond issues of royalty payments and financial ledgers. To the extent that resources such as oil, coal and minerals are imbued with cultural meaning, they become signifiers of the nation: symbols of national belonging and nationalist sentiment (Perreault and Valdivia 2010). They are also potent bordering concepts, delineating who is, and who is not, of the nation.

21.5 CONCLUSION In this chapter I have argued that state making, nation making and resource making are mutually constitutive processes. Resources, as ‘cultural appraisals of nature’ (Bridge 2009), are materially produced and assigned social value through historically and geographically specific capitalist relations of production and consumption. Resources, in this sense, are both a means for, and an outcome of, social ordering. States and nations, like capital, are intimately enrolled in processes of resource making and are themselves materially and ideologically produced in the process. This happens in a variety of ways, three of which are outlined above: environmental policy and governance, resource rents and resource nationalism. Environmental policy and governance, as modes of regulating resource use, are perhaps the most obvious point of contact between nature and the state. Whereas environmental policy refers largely to state-centric modes of regulation, environmental governance signals the institutional and scalar diversification of environmental management, which has become a hallmark of neoliberalism (Bakker and Bridge 2008). Such processes serve to institutionalize the state as an environmental actor in relation to the interests of particular class factions, even as the state is decentered in relation to non-state and quasi-state actors. Similarly, resource rents serve to produce the state, both fiscally (as states come to rely on the rents provided by resource extraction) and territorially (as resource frontiers expand and harden in relation to extractive activities). States are actively produced – institutionally, fiscally and territorially – through the processes of resource production and consumption. Similar processes are at work with the nation. Resource nationalism is understood here as the ensemble of material practices and symbolic understandings through which resources are enrolled in constructions of nationalism and the nation. In contrast with mainstream accounts of resource nationalism, which focus almost exclusively on economic policies among resource-exporting states of the Global South, a critical approach to resource nationalism accounts for both political economic and cultural political processes (Koch and Perreault 2019). Resource nationalism, understood in this way, shapes understanding of national belonging in both resource-exporting and resource-importing states. As forms of socio-natural ordering, nation, state and resources form a trialectic, in which the production of one constitutes the production of the others. This relational view has bearing on environmental politics, from water and air pollution to deforestation to climate change. Our ability to address environmental degradation and injustice will depend less on how we understand physical processes than on how we organize our relations of production and consumption. These all depend greatly on how we imagine who ‘we’ are, and how we understand our relationship to one another and to the non-human world.

State of nature  237

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State of nature  239 Perreault, T. (2013), ‘Nature and nation: Hydrocarbons governance and the territorial logics of “resource nationalism” in Bolivia’, in A. Bebbington and J. Bury (eds), Subterranean Struggles: New Geographies of Extractive Industries in Latin America, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 67–90. Perreault, T. and G. Valdivia (2010), ‘Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context’, Geoforum, 41 (5), 689–99. Podeh, E. (2011), The Politics of National Celebrations in the Arab Middle East, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation, New York: Farrar and Rinehart. Poulantzas, N. (2000), State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso. Prudham, S. (2005), Knock on Wood: Nature as Commodity in Douglas Fir Country, London: Routledge. Prudham, S. (2015), ‘Property and commodification’, in T. Perreault, G. Bridge and J. McCarthy (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, London: Routledge, pp. 430–45. Robbins, P. (2008), ‘The state in political ecology: A postcard to political geography from the field’, in K. Cox, M. Low and J. Robinson (eds), The Sage Handbook of Political Geography, Los Angeles: Sage, pp. 205–18. Robertson, M. (2004), ‘The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance’, Geoforum, 35, 361–73. Robertson, M. (2011), ‘Measurement and alienation: Making a world of ecosystem services’, Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers, 37 (3), 386–401. Robertson, M. (2015), ‘Environmental governance: Political ecology and the state’, in T. Perreault, G. Bridge and J. McCarthy (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, London: Routledge, pp. 457–66. Rosales, A. (2017), ‘Contentious nationalization and the embrace of the developmental ideals: Resource nationalism in the 1970s in Ecuador’, Extractive Industries and Society, 4, 102–10. Sayre, N. (2018), ‘Race, nature, nation and property in the origins of range science’, in R. Lave (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography, New York: Springer, pp. 339–56. Schiller, N. (2011), ‘“Now that the petroleum is ours”: Community media, state spectacle and oil nationalism in Venezuela’, in A. Behrends, S. Reyna and G. Schlee (eds), Crude Domination: An Anthropology of Oil, New York: Berghahn, pp. 190–219. Scott, J.C. (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sparke, M. (2005), In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation-State, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sutherland, C. (2012), Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges and Responses, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Swyngedouw, E. (2004), Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swyngedouw, E. (2015), Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities in 20th Century Spain, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vivoda, V. (2009), ‘Resource nationalism, bargaining and international oil companies: Challenges and change in the new millennium’, New Political Economy, 14 (4), 517–34. Watts, M. (2004), ‘Antinomies of community: Some thoughts on geography, resources and empire’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 29, 195–216. Wegenast, T. and G. Schneider. (2017), ‘Ownership matters: Natural resources property rights and social conflict in sub-Saharan Africa’, Political Geography, 61, 110–22. Whitehead, M. (2008), ‘Cold monsters and ecological leviathans: Reflections on the relationships between states and the environment’, Geography Compass, 2 (2), 414–32. Wilson, J. (2015), ‘Understanding resource nationalism: Economic dynamics and political institutions’, Contemporary Politics, 21 (4), 399–416. Yeh, E. (2013), ‘The politics of conservation in contemporary rural China’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40 (6), 1165–88. Young, K.A. (2017), Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Zimmerman, E. (1933), World Resources and Industries, New York: Harper and Brothers.

22. Governmentality and the global geopolitics of consumption-based environmental accounting Afton Clarke-Sather

22.1 INTRODUCTION During the California drought of 2015 the almond became an unlikely symbol of avarice, with one writer going so far as to call it ‘the Devil’s nut’ (Walker 2015b). This maligning of the almond was based on its high water consumption. The statistics that one California almond required 1 gallon of water, and that almonds accounted for 8 per cent of California’s total water use (Walker 2015a) turned the almond into a symbolic measure of consumptive excess. Yet this moment, in which eating almonds could become a symbol of consumptive excess and profligate water use, presents an interesting way to think through the geopolitics of global sustainability discourses and the role of states as units of enumeration in such discourses. The claim that one almond required 1 gallon of water brought to the fore consumption-based environmental accounting methods, which have changed how we conceptualize global responsibility for environmental impacts over the past three decades. Forms of environmental accounting, which include ecological, carbon, and water footprints, are part of a neoliberalizing understanding of environmental impacts taking hold globally. The neoliberal underpinning of consumption-based accounting positions the individual as the locus of environmental responsibility, rather than larger structural actors such as corporations or the state. Shifting from structural to individual responsibility would appear to point away from state-centrism in environmental governance. Yet, the logics of consumption-based environmental accounting ultimately reify state power insofar as both the technical calculations that allow us to say that 1 gallon of water goes into each almond and the forms of visibility that bring these calculations to life are based on forms of knowledge about production and consumption created at the scale of states. Therefore, the knowledge and visualization of environmental impacts of consumption come to associate the consumption of residents with specific state spaces. Accounting-based forms of knowledge are also geopolitical insofar as they reorganize geographies of environmental responsibility across the globe. The application of consumption-based environmental accounting has largely, though not exclusively, been aimed at shifting the geographic imaginaries of environmental impact from their locations of impact in the global south, to the consumers who benefit from them in the global north. This chapter examines the complexity of consumption-based environmental accounting as a form of governmental power that is simultaneously edifying of state power and diffuses responsibility out to individuals. To do so, I examine three types of consumption-based environmental accounting frameworks to argue that the creation of these accounting frameworks had the geopolitical effect of moving the locus of environmental responsibility both from state-led environmental regulation to individual responsibility, and from the global south to the global north. Consumption-based forms of accounting represent a governmental form of power insofar as they shaped the desires and subjectivities of consumers in the global north. 240

Governmentality and consumption-based environmental accounting  241 I individually examine ecological, water, and carbon footprints, and consider the use of individualized calculators to show individuals’ environmental footprints. In doing so, I apply Dean’s (2010) understanding of episteme and forms of visibility as components of governmentality to understand how consumption-based accounting renders a new geopolitics of global environmental responsibility that simultaneously emphasizes individual consumption and reifies states as the organizing geopolitical units.

22.2

CONSUMPTION-BASED ACCOUNTING, NEOLIBERALISM, AND NEW WAYS OF BEING VISIBLE

The rise of consumption-based environmental accounting frameworks can be understood as a form of diffuse governmentality. Governmentality has often been associated with liberal and neoliberal forms of government (Clarke-Sather 2019), and has focused on how state power has ‘governed at a distance’ through the use of setting norms and cultivating desires. As such, governmentality has often been associated with the diffusion of power out from centres to individuals (Clarke-Sather 2017). This chapter illuminates how, even in the process of cultivating the environmental subjectivities of consumers in the global north, consumption-based accounting frameworks continue to reify state boundaries as epistemological units by statistically emplacing consumers within geographic territories. While consumption-based forms of environmental accounting may appear as neoliberal forms of environmental governmentality that cultivated the subjectivity of individuals (see Vos and Boelens 2018), they simultaneously reify states as centres of power through the forms of visibility and epistemes that are created by quantifying individual behaviour. Critically, these forms of governmental power do not originate with state actors, but instead emerge from civil society. Dean (2010) analyses governmental power in forms of visibility, techne, episteme, and identification. Forms of visibility include the ways that phenomena to be governed are made visible including charts, maps, and data tables. Techne refers to the techniques of government. Episteme refers to the new ways of knowing associated with governmental power, while forms of identification refers to the creation of new identities through governmental forms of power. My analysis focuses particularly on the creation of new forms of visibility and new epistemes of understanding environmental impact. Visibility and legibility are key elements in the creation of governmental forms of power. Two key points emerge from research on this topic. First, the expression of governmental power relied upon the expertise of those who could ‘render these worlds visible to policy makers’ as Murdoch and Ward (1997) have shown in their study of British agriculture, wherein reporting on farms as statistical units called those farms into being as functional actors because policies came to treat those farms as units upon which state policies could act. Second, as Braun (2000) has shown, creating statistical and scientific legibility also creates territories as units because statistical reporting of territories calls those territories and units of government into existence. New forms of science, including environmental social science, create new ways in which the environment becomes visible to states. While previous work has primarily focused on the role of state actors in creating such visibility, here I consider forms of visibility created by non-state actors that also remain state-centric. Dean’s (2010) notion of the episteme is equally important in thinking through how consumption-based forms of environmental accounting function as a governmental form of

242  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state power. The episteme of government represents the ‘forms of knowledge, reason and expertise’ (Rogers et al. 2016) that underlie a form of government. The episteme of consumption-based environmental accounting is based upon novel calculations and data that allow for the creation of knowledge about sources of environmental impacts based upon the end use of products, rather than their production. This knowledge has the effect of shifting the epistemological onus of responsibility for the adverse environmental impacts of material consumption from the geographical locations where environmental damage occurs, often in the global south, to the consumers who in the long run benefit from such environmental impact, often located in the global north. Doing so, however, requires a new form of knowledge that statistically atomizes environmental impacts into units that can be assigned based on consumption instead of production. Such a change renders a shift in the geopolitics of global responsibility, by which I mean the discursive geopolitical imaginaries of which places in the world are responsible for certain environmental impacts and which places are not. Dalby (2013) has described geopolitics as the politics of ‘how the world is made known’ and in the case of global environmental issues the process of making the world known carries with it intrinsic assumptions of responsibility for global degradation. The forms of visibility and epistemes I analyse here can be traced to the emergence of ecological footprints as a way of rethinking the environmental responsibility in the late 1980s.

22.3

ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINTS

The earliest example of consumption-based environmental accounting principles is likely the ecological footprint method popularized in the early 1990s by Wackernagel and Rees (Rees 1992; Wackernagel and Rees 1996). The ecological footprint method attempted to evaluate the comprehensive adverse environmental impacts of an individual’s consumption, measured in a common unit of hectares of land. The original method used data from consumption of food, housing, transportation, consumer goods, and services to calculate the amount of land required to support that consumption in four primary categories: energy, the built environment, food production, and forests. This approach inverted the idea of carrying capacity, which is measured in animals per unit of land, by instead asking how many hectares are required per individual human. Wackernagel and Rees’ footprint method responded to questions about the carrying capacity of the Earth that originated in debates about the impact of global population, an area of research with Malthusian underpinnings marked by assumptions of difference between the global north and global south (Sheppard et al. 2009). However, by inverting the notion of carrying capacity, and instead focusing on individuals, the environmental footprint method shifted the politics of environmental responsibility from the actions of states to the individual level. The environmental footprint method emerged out of a distinct milieu in the late 1980s. The 1980s saw a sharp rise in trade associated with consumer goods as manufacturing shifted from the global north to emerging economies in the global south. This rise in trade led scholars to ask whether, following the raft of 1970s environmental policy-making in the global north, improvements in a broad spectrum of environmental quality metrics (e.g. air and water quality, management of toxic waste) were real. Alternatively, many argued that negative environmental impacts of consumption in the global north were simply being exported to other regions, an

Governmentality and consumption-based environmental accounting  243 idea commonly known as the displacement hypothesis (Dinda 2004). Moreover, the increasingly global nature of trade meant that the environmental impact of individuals had become increasingly geographically disparate (Rees 1992): an individual’s environmental impact might include both a fractional share of deforestation in the Amazon and a fractional share of global overfishing. The footprint approach attempted to bring these individual slices of environmental impact together to create a comprehensive view of one’s impact by measuring in hectares. The new episteme of the environmental footprint method emerged out of a context of technological revolutions in computing and data acquisition. The rise of the personal computer in the mid-1980s made possible the repeated computation that was necessary to calculate environmental footprints. This was combined with the availability of novel statistics on average rates of individual consumption collected by state economic agencies, and average impacts of each unit of consumption. Moreover, the emergence of input-output models in global trade economics made visible the movement of goods between states and the consumption of those goods in each state. The combination of these novel statistics with increasing computing power enabled the creation of a new episteme of individual responsibility. The footprint calculation represented an episteme that allows for disparate types of impacts to become knowable through a standardized unit. By aggregating the different classes of environmental impact into one measure, hectares of impact, environmental impact came to be known and seen in previously unavailable ways. As a new episteme, ecological footprints also required new forms of visibility. The ecological footprint is best known today through personal footprint calculators produced by the non-profit Global Footprint Network, founded by Mathis Wackernagel. The Global Footprint Network uses two forms of visibility. One is a rendering of the Earth itself, representing how many ‘Earths’ a consumer would require based on their current level of consumption. ‘If everyone lived like you, we would need X Earths’ (Global Footprint Network, n.d.). If the adverse environmental impact of an individual’s consumption exceeds the global carrying capacity of 1.8 hectares per person, they are consuming multiple Earths. The average American, for example, requires 9 hectares of global land to support their consumption, which means that they would consume approximately five Earths. The second form of visibility the Global Footprint Network uses to reimagine environmental impact substitutes time for space. Using the principle of an annual budget, one can calculate for their ‘personal overshoot day’ when they have exceeded their share of the globe for the year. If one consumes their share of the Earth’s resources by 1 July (as they would if their annual consumption were 3.6 hectares per year), they are then living on borrowed resources, whether from the future or from others. In these forms of visibility, the calculations of the episteme become hidden (it must be found under ‘more details’) and the new forms of visibility that substitute space and time are put front and centre. Both of these forms of visibility emphasize the individual, yet the comparisons they draw reify states as the natural units of human organization. For each calculation, a comparison is made to both higher and lower consuming states. Individuals are asked to compare their footprints to those of other citizens of their own state, and those of other states. These selections are drawn for a variety of reasons: proximity, similar levels of development, or disparate levels of development. An overarching theme in these presentations is the lower environmental impact of the global south, shifting a geopolitics of personal responsibility onto residents of states of the global north.

244  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Novel technologies, data, and forms of visualization created a new episteme of consumption-based environmental accounting and in the process shifted responsibility for impact. The global footprint calculator network begins with the question, ‘What is your ecological footprint?’ Responsibility for environmental impacts in this model no longer rests with corporations who produce pollution as in the 1970s, or states that fail to govern pollution. Instead responsibility is enframed and quantitatively tied to the individual consumer. Yet in doing so it remains state-centric. Notably, these epistemes and forms of visibility were not created by state actors, as in the studies of Murdoch and Ward (1997) or Braun (2000), but instead emerged from civil society advocacy organizations. Although they did not arise directly from state-centric knowledge production, ecological footprint accounting continues to reify state power because it relies upon existing computations that themselves rely upon states as units of analysis and comparison. While Wackernagel and Rees’ (1996) attempt to connect global scale ecological problems to individuals, they cannot bypass states as units of analysis. Many critiques have been made of the ecological footprint method, and perhaps the most salient is the difficulty of quantitatively making disparate environmental impact commensurable in the same unit of land. The further growth to consumption-based environmental accounting frameworks moved past this difficultly by focusing on the consumptive impact on individual environmental measures. The two most notable among these forms of accounting are water footprints and carbon footprints.

22.4

WATER FOOTPRINTS: FROM NATIONS TO PRODUCTS

Water footprints emerged in the early 2000s out of the recognition that global trade in agricultural commodities accounted for a large portion of the beneficial uses of water. Though estimates vary according to the specific method used, globally approximately 88 per cent of global water use is for agriculture, and thus trade in agricultural products represents a large movement of the final products for which water is used (Hoff et al. 2010). This understanding of trade in ‘virtual water’, or water that has been used for the production of goods, was first popularized by Tony Allan (2003)1 to describe the water impacts of trade in global food products. Virtual water is water used to produce food or goods that were traded globally, and thus can be accounted for as water that is traded between states. This water became calculable due to records of food trade between states maintained by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and advances in estimating crop water use. The related analytical tool of water footprints was developed to account for total water trade by Hoekstra and Hung (2005), and was originally applied to estimating the water consumption of states, including water consumption that took place outside of their own borders. Hoekstra and Hung described the water footprint as the domestic water use of a country, plus the net virtual water trade, which could be understood as the total amount of global water resources that were appropriated by a state. Like ecological footprints, the water footprint attempts to trace the disparate global uses of water that go into producing material goods and consolidate it into a single measure. Like the ecological footprint, the water footprint shifts the onus of calculating environmental impact, in this case water use, ostensibly to the individual, however, in doing so it again relies upon state-level data. Hoekstra and Hung’s (2005) early choice to focus on water footprints of states was due largely to the availability of data sources. This was particularly true for sources of data on trade, but estimates of water use for crop production were also based on national

Governmentality and consumption-based environmental accounting  245 averages. With time, this method came to be developed more thoroughly into an assessment approach that allows for multiple types of assessment at different scales (Feng et al. 2012). Arjen Hoekstra, who came to be the leading global thinker on this issue, titled his book from 2013 The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society. Here he distinctly shifts the unit of analysis from the state as producer to individuals embedded in states as consumers. He does so by focusing on the water footprints of individuals as units of consumption. Yet this consumption-based accounting framework also shifts the geopolitics of accountability in understanding global water consumption. Hoekstra takes as an example water pollution and overexploitation due to export-related horticulture in the Lake Naivasha Basin in Kenya. He shows that each rose stem exported requires between 7.4–12.9 litres of water (Hoekstra 2013). Because these roses are primarily exported to Europe, responsibility for overexploitation of the Lake Naivasha Basin can be partitioned between countries that are the primary recipients of the flowers. Between 1996 and 2005, for example, the Netherlands was the net recipient of 11.1 million cubic meters of water (in the form of roses) from the Lake Naivasha region. This geopolitics of responsibility squarely places the onus for overexploitation of water resources in a region of the developing world in the hands of a European consumer. This form of visibility counters the narrative that developing world farmers are poor land managers who are to be blamed for environmental degradation in their backyard. The example of a rose’s water footprint creates a geopolitical episteme for understanding overexploitation of water in Kenya and other areas of the developing world by shifting responsibility from producers to consumers. Yet while shifting responsibility to the consumer (and presumably the individual), it continues to reify state-centric geopolitics in two key ways. First, by relying upon state-based export statistics, all consumers are ultimately grouped by the state where they reside. In the process, all members of those states are held similarly culpable for environmental degradation, eliding the vast differences between consumption behaviours within these receiving countries. Second, by focusing on the consumer as the end user, and enumerating users in terms of their membership in states, this approach also absolves the role of capital in the overexploitation of water. The shift to consumption-based accounting frameworks relies on an episteme wherein consumption, rather than production, is the source of environmental impact, and in the process elides questions of who may benefit from the production processes of such environmental footprints.

22.5

CONSUMPTION-BASED CARBON ACCOUNTING

Carbon accounting is perhaps the area of consumption-based accounting with the most direct geopolitical implications. Carbon accounting both distributes geopolitics of global responsibility and is fundamentally based in methodological choices and assumptions that can profoundly impact the distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation. The primary method for accounting for emissions has been the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) National Emissions Inventories (Peters 2008). This inventory approach assigns emissions to states’ territories based on the economic consumption of environmental resources within those territories and has been the basis of global climate negotiations. However, by the mid-2000s, consumption-based approaches came to be widely viewed as a potential solution to the readily apparent shortfalls in production-based frameworks (Peters 2008).

246  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The production-based IPCC approach, which remains the standard accounting method for global carbon emissions, begins with national statistics on the consumption of fossil fuels, which are then multiplied by emissions coefficients for each fuel to estimate the total emissions from a territory. These estimates are rooted in the state-based territorial practice of collection of statistics on the consumption of fossil fuels, and assign global responsibility for CO2 emissions according to the location where fossil fuels were burned. In this way, the role of states in gathering statistics and as territorial containers for emissions is clear. The shortcomings of this approach are readily apparent given the contemporary globalization of supply chains. Electricity, for example, is one of the largest sources of global emissions and is regularly traded across national boundaries. This leaves many energy-intensive production processes in regions of the world separate from the consumers benefiting from this production (Bergmann 2013). Consumption-based carbon accounting, in contrast, begins with the consumption of an individual product, and traces the emissions associated with that product to its origins. Consumption-based frameworks are used to compare emissions at a variety of scales, ranging from states, to regions, to individuals (Bergmann 2013; Liu et al. 2017; Wiedenhofer et al. 2016). Common to these approaches, and what they share with ecological footprints, is a geopolitical episteme of emissions responsibility that rests with the end user. At the global scale, consumption-based carbon accounting models are largely reliant upon the use of global economic Leontief input-output models which use trade relationships to trace the global impacts of consumption (Bergmann 2013). Leontief models have the ability to designate each stage of the production chain as final or intermediate steps. However, the modelling choice of whether an economic activity is designated as final or intermediate has a profound impact on the modelling outcomes. The most common approach to these modelling choices traces the final consumption of goods, while other approaches have focused on tracing emissions to the final point of capital accusation. Bergmann (2013) has shown that the choice of modelling criteria, specifically what are considered as final or intermediate steps, has a profound impact of net imports and exports. When considering trade and final consumption, between 20 and 30 per cent of emissions were attributable to consumption that was traded between states. From an investment perspective, in 2004 Europe had net imports of 72 per cent of total emissions (Bergmann 2013). While these global-scale models redistribute the burden of emissions responsibility between countries, they are still assigned at the state scale. At the national level, several studies have combined survey results with product chain approaches to estimate the varying level of emissions associated with households (Liu et al. 2017). While these studies switch the scale of analysis for the final user, they are also ultimately impacted by modelling derived from statistics derived at national or regional scales. While global Leontief models take trade and production relationships and multiply dollar values of trade by coefficients of emissions, survey-based consumption accounting frameworks multiply survey-derived estimates of consumption by emissions coefficients. This new episteme also serves to redistribute responsibility within countries and between regional state actors within countries, highlighting the variations in responsibility that can be obscured by state calculations of emissions. The geopolitical stakes of this redistribution of responsibility are seen at both the individual and state level. Individually, carbon accounts are translated into myriad carbon emissions calculators for individuals create new forms of subjectivity, as discussed below.

Governmentality and consumption-based environmental accounting  247 Global carbon emissions are the subject of some of the most fraught and difficult diplomatic negotiations, and knowledge of the geographical distribution of global responsibility for emissions and vulnerability to impacts of climate change play a central role in these negotiations. It is perhaps not surprising that the largest source of research on consumption-based carbon accounting frameworks are researchers and institutions associated with China, which is both the largest emitter of emissions based on production-based frameworks, and the largest exporter based on consumption-based accounting frameworks (Bergmann 2013). Thus, the visualization of carbon footprints is not merely governmental in the sense of shaping consumers’ subjectivity towards consumption. It is also geopolitically tactical in shifting the burden of emissions reductions towards those who consume, instead of those who produce.

22.6

CALCULATED SUBJECTIVITIES

Ecological footprints, carbon footprints, and water footprints have a similar approach of diffusing a geopolitical sense of responsibility for actions to individuals. In doing so, these forms of knowledge and visibility are used by their supporters in the environmental community as a governmental form of power that creates a new form of subjectivity. Although governmental power is often considered to be decentralizing, this form of subjectivity continues to emphasize state-centric identities in evaluating consumption. This is perhaps most apparent in the proliferation of online calculators to estimate one’s ecological, carbon, or water footprint. These online calculators function as a distinctly governmental form of power insofar as they establish a statistical norm against which an individual can compare oneself. Take, for example, Global Footprint Network’s ecological footprint calculator considered above. It begins with two questions, ‘How many planets do we need to live like you?’ and ‘When is your personal overshoot day?’ After entering the quiz (and providing the global footprint network with your email address), quiz takers are directed through a series of questions concerning their daily behaviour. At the end of the quiz the quiz taker is provided with the aforementioned forms of visibility: an estimate of how many Earths would be needed if everyone lived by them, and a date each year when their consumption overshoots the Earth’s capacity. As Murdoch and Ward (1997, p. 312) have argued, ‘“Counting” leads to the articulation of “norms” whereby people are considered “normal” if in their characteristics they conform to the central tendencies of statistical laws; those that do not are considered “pathological”’. The norms in this particular calculator are set by a central tendency derived from a series of calculations which convert individual behaviours into units of global land. If the cumulative behaviours of an individual exceed the proportional land that this calculation method renders available to them, they are viewed to be outside of the normal range. They are then given a list of activities that they can do to reduce their environmental footprint, ranging from carpooling more, to eating less meat, to having fewer children. Critically, when the test taker is informed of the number of Earths that her consumption would require, she is presented with an information button, and asked to compare their own behaviour with global norms. Table 22.1 then appears. This table is a comparison to a global norm, established through calculations, and shows how deviant the individual is relative to the average resident of other countries as well. Thus, individual action is framed within a geopolitics of global responsibility through a form of visibility that compares the self to both a normative goal (one planet per person) and also orders countries by their relative environmental impact.

248  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Table 22.1

Sample comparing an individual’s consumption patterns to global norms

Country

Average number of earths

United States

5.0

Germany

3.2

China

2.1

South Africa

2.0

Brazil

1.8

Insofar as online consumption-based calculators aim to influence the behaviour and cultivate the desires of individuals they function as a form of governmental power. This is accomplished through two of the elements of governmental power identified by Dean (2010): forms of visualization and a shifting episteme. The ecological footprint calculator in particular presents visualizations in the forms of graphics of the earth and data tables comparing and individuals’ behaviour to a global norm. These forms of visualization project a shifted episteme that places responsibility for environmental degradation. What is equally important in this episteme is what is missing. In the ecological footprint calculators’ four suggested areas for action, only one includes a suggestion to lobby one’s elected officials (specifically one’s city leaders) for action. The other suggestions all rest with individual choices. In this framing, the global responsibility for environmental degradation rests not with the actions or omissions of state environmental regulators or the producers of goods, but instead with the cultivated choices of individuals. This framing occurs despite the fact that the specific episteme and forms of visibility that the calculator draws on tie the individual to a specific state. While the governmental approach of calculators appears to decentre responsibility for global environmental degradation away from states and towards the individual, the episteme that undergirds this way of making environmental impact legible remains deeply state-centric. Another online calculator of environmental impact, Nature Conservancy’s carbon footprint calculator, illustrates a similar dynamic. This calculator first asks respondents what geographic location they live in (having available levels of zip codes through states). Computationally this makes sense: electric grids vary in carbon intensity from place to place. Many calculators also rely on individuals self-reporting spending on energy services rather than actual energy services as they are more likely to know these values, so specific locations allow for calculation of energy consumption based on local prices. Yet epistemologically, this also frames the individual who is being governed first and foremost as a consumer based in one geographic space. Consumers are not just global consumers, they are British consumers who have global impacts. The ecological footprint network’s calculator asks quiz takers to compare themselves to national averages, including the norms of their own state. It is important to note that these new central tendencies to which consumers are being compared arise not from a state-backed statistical production, but instead from the world of decentred environmental governance through advocacy organizations. This feature of global consumption being imbedded in states, and indeed the statistics produced by those states, appears in water footprints as well. Global water footprints are calculated based on the average water consumption of plants in each state and global trade accounts between states in food. This modelling choice is reasonable from an empirical perspective: states are members of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization which provides most of the data for models of global water use. Yet, it ultimately creates an episteme that priv-

Governmentality and consumption-based environmental accounting  249 ileges the data of states and does not consider the consumptive and hydrological heterogeneity within states.

22.7 CONCLUSIONS Consumption-based environmental accounting represents a governmental form of legibility around environmental impact that simultaneously diffuses responsibility out to the individual, while relying on an episteme of state-based quantification maps onto the globe a specific geopolitics of global environmental responsibility. A geopolitics of global responsibility is a remapping of who is responsible for what environmental damages. If the 1970s and 1980s were characterized by a series of ecological crises that placed responsibility for global environmental damage in the developing world, whether through fears of Asian population growth (Boland 2000) or placing responsibility for deforestation in the Amazon on the hands of Brazilian ranchers (Hecht 1985), consumption-based accounting creates a new geopolitics of responsibility that shifts culpability for these issues to the global north. The shift towards consumption-based approaches is governmental insofar as it relies upon shifting responsibility for environmental degradation from production to consumer. By diffusing responsibility for environmental impact outward, these form a diffuse and governmental form of power that aims to shape the subjectivity of consumers in the global north. Yet this new episteme still relies upon states as units of data aggregation, such that even when proffered by civil society environmental organizations, consumption-based accounting methods reify the basis of environmental impacts in specific territorial states. By shifting the locus of geopolitical culpability for environmental impact to individual consumers, consumption-based accounts also paradoxically absolve both the role of capital accumulation in environmental degradation and the very real involvement of local governments and exploitative social relationships of capital accumulation in the global south. The poor almond, whose short-lived tenure as an environmental pop culture villain, perhaps had an undeserved infamy. Rather than focusing on the almond milk in the consumer’s latte as a point of global geopolitical inflection, attention could be directed instead at the political and economic structures that enable irrigated almond agriculture in California.

NOTE 1.

Allan himself notes that this idea was derived from the work of Israeli economists in the 1980s.

REFERENCES Allan, J.A. (2003), ‘Virtual water – the water, food, and trade nexus: Useful concept or misleading metaphor?’, Water International, 28 (1), 106–13. Bergmann, L. (2013), ‘Bound by chains of carbon: Ecological–economic geographies of globalization’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103 (6), 1348–70. Boland, A. (2000), ‘Feeding fears: Competing discourses of interdependency, sovereignty, and China’s food security’, Political Geography, 19 (1), 55–76.

250  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Braun, B. (2000), ‘Producing vertical territory: Geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada’, Ecumene, 7 (1), 7–46. Clarke-Sather, A. (2017), ‘State power and domestic water provision in semi-arid Northwest China: Towards an aleatory political ecology’, Political Geography, 58, 93–103. Clarke-Sather, A. (2019), ‘From the heavens to the markets: Governing agricultural drought under Chinese fragmented authoritarianism’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (2), 456–64. Dalby, S. (2013), ‘The geopolitics of climate change’, Political Geography, 37, 38–47. Dean, M. (2010), Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage. Dinda, S. (2004), ‘Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: A survey’, Ecological Economics, 49 (4), 431–55. Feng, K., Y.L. Siu, D. Guan, and K. Hubacek (2012), ‘Assessing regional virtual water flows and water footprints in the Yellow River Basin, China: A consumption based approach’, Applied Geography, 32 (2), 691–701. Global Footprint Network (n.d.), Footprint Calculator, accessed 4 January 2019 at www​ .footprintnetwork​.org Hecht, S.B. (1985), ‘Environment, development and politics: Capital accumulation and the livestock sector in eastern Amazonia’, World Development, 13 (6), 663–84. Hoekstra, A.Y. (2013), The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society, London: Routledge. Hoekstra, A.Y. and P.Q. Hung (2005), ‘Globalisation of water resources: International virtual water flows in relation to crop trade’, Global Environmental Change, 15 (1), 45–56. Hoff, H., M. Falkenmark, D. Gerten, L. Gordon, L. Karlberg, and J. Rockström (2010), ‘Greening the global water system’, Journal of Hydrology, 384 (3–4), 177–86. Liu, L., J. Qu, A. Clarke-Sather, T. Maraseni, and J. Pang (2017), ‘Spatial variations and determinants of per capita household CO2 emissions (PHCEs) in China’, Sustainability, 9 (7), 1277–19. Murdoch, J. and N. Ward (1997), ‘Governmentality and territoriality’, Political Geography, 16 (4), 307–24. Peters, G. (2008), ‘From production-based to consumption-based national emission inventories’, Ecological Economics, 65 (1), 13–23. Rees, W.E. (1992), ‘Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: What urban economics leaves out’, Environment and Urbanization, 4 (2), 121–30. Rogers, S., J. Barnett, M. Webber, B. Finlayson, and M. Wang (2016), ‘Governmentality and the conduct of water: China’s South–North water transfer project’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41 (4), 429–41. Sheppard, E., P. Porter, D. Faust, and R. Nagar (2009), A World of Difference, 2nd ed., New York: Guilford Press. Vos, J. and R. Boelens (2018), ‘Neoliberal water governmentalities, virtual water trade, and contestations’, in R. Boelens, T. Perreault, and J. Vos (eds), Water Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 283–301. Wackernagel, M. and W. Rees (1996), Our Ecological Footprint, Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers. Walker, T. (2015a), ‘California is running out of water and people are turning on farmers who grow one particular crop’, The Independent, 5 May. Walker, A. (2015b), ‘Seriously, stop demonizing almonds’, accessed 7 January 2019 at https://​gizmodo​ .com/​seriously​-stop​-demonizing​-almonds​-1696065939 Wiedenhofer, D., D. Guan, Z. Liu, J. Meng, N. Zhang, and Y.-M. Wei (2016), ‘Unequal household carbon footprints in China’, Nature Climate Change, 7 (1), 75–80.

23. Already existing dystopias: tribal sovereignty, extraction, and decolonizing the Anthropocene Andrew Curley and Majerle Lister

23.1 INTRODUCTION ‘We made history’, the refrain from the Indigenous delegation of the 2014 Climate March through New York City. Curley joined the march as an Indigenous person concerned about climate change. It was hyped as the most important march in the climate justice movement to that point. He learned about the march through word of mouth, social media, and public chatter. Participants travelled from across the country to New York City to join. There were Indigenous environmental organizers mixed with celebrities. This was two years before the unfolding of the tragic events at Standing Rock that reminded the world of the real colonial violence Indigenous peoples face every day in protecting their lands, sovereignty, and environments. The Indigenous contingent at the 2014 march was placed in the front of the procession to suggest that Indigenous peoples are at the frontline of global climate change. Organizers distributed stickers that read, ‘Co2lonialism’, that linked production of carbon emissions with colonization. Other marchers asked to take a picture of the banner against the backdrop of steam rising from a New York City sewer hole. Curley walked for a time with the banner that read ‘Air’, which symbolized one of the four vital elements of life in addition to fire, water, and earth. For most of the march, the sun was a muted grey overcast. In a movement looking for symbols and irony, pictures of the brightly coloured banners against a bleak sky highlighted for some the perceived starkness in potential environmental futures. In this chapter, we therefore interrogate the linkage of colonialism and carbon production in the context of the march. How are tribes ‘frontline’ communities and what is the relationship between tribes and carbon production? Placing Indigenous peoples at the front of the march was meant to acknowledge that Indigenous communities were at the frontline of global climate change. Some of this recognition is progressive, but some of it is also cultural stereotyping. Organizers believe that Indigenous communities are the first peoples impacted by global climate change because they see Indigenous peoples as primarily subsistence-based communities living on a knife’s edge of survival. This rendering is not too different from past racist assumptions and it fails to conceptualize Indigenous peoples as modern peoples whose greatest threats are political marginalization at the hands of continued colonial processes. Although there is truth in the sense that Indigenous peoples are frontline communities, that frontline is more complicated than just the first communities to experience environmental change. It also includes, as this chapter will demonstrate, the fusing of Indigenous futures with extractive industries that is a by-product of decades of assimilation efforts. The barometer of tribal economies are tribal institutions that encourage and manage development activities on tribal lands. For many nations, these have become resource regimes 251

252  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state dependent on extractive industries for survival. The messiness of tribal institutional ties to extractive industries are briefly described here, but admittedly require more depth. Instead, this chapter will focus on some of the implications in how we frame the Anthropocene among Indigenous peoples if we consider Indigenous peoples and nations as politically and economically marginalized peoples within global capitalism. In short, we need to account for the complicated factors that inform contemporary Indigenous life and not simply assume the impacts of climate change onto these people and places based on outmoded stereotypes. Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte challenges dystopian narratives of climate change as erasing Indigenous perspectives and presence from the land. Indigenous peoples have experienced world-changing catastrophes before. Settler states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States (US) are already existing Indigenous dystopias. One does not need to turn to science fiction, but to history texts to witness death, destruction, social, and environmental change (Whyte 2018). Heather Davis and Zoe Todd write that the dating of the ‘golden spike’ or start date of the Anthropocene should be moved from current consensus at the middle of the twentieth century to much earlier, to the advent of colonialism at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Davis and Todd 2017). The political implications of such dating would be to bind the problem of permanent human environmental impacts with colonialism and suggest that we cannot meaningfully address climate change without addressing generations of settler colonialism. In this chapter we bring into consideration tribal political institutions to the complicated questions of climate change’s impacts on Indigenous peoples. Tribal institutions in Indigenous communities usher in practices of extraction and resources development. Rather than seeing Indigenous nations as only ‘frontline’ communities based on subsistence, we need to understand Indigenous peoples as groups that are politically marginalized in structures of colonial states and who might not stand to benefit – perhaps are even threatened by – climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. The popular understanding of Indigenous peoples and the environment represented in the 2014 march avoids real challenges facing Indigenous communities, challenges over questions of sovereignty, development, and sustainability. The conditions of many Indigenous communities, where we do our research, are areas of high unemployment, political inequality, and lack of resources – already existing dystopias. For many tribes, the major industries are oil, natural gas, and coal. Indigenous nations are not only subsistence communities on the frontline of environmental change but they are also communities embedded in minerals and extraction at the frontline of energy transition. This chapter considers the role of tribal institutions in navigating these existing circumstances that pertain to extraction, energy, and climate change.

23.2

TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

Among Indigenous scholars, there is a debate on the future forms, functions, and practices of tribal sovereignty. Mohawk scholar Taiake Alfred has forcefully argued that formal political institutions are foreign to philosophies of Indigenous governance and that tribes should abandon these forms where possible (Alfred 2006). Cultural anthropologist Paul Nadasdy has offered similar points about the nature of political sovereignty and citizenship among First Nations in Canada (Nadasdy 2017). Mohawk anthropologist Audra Simpson takes this insight a step further to describe the particular forms of ‘nested sovereignty’ and traditional

Already existing dystopias  253 citizenship still in practice among Indigenous nations in colonial New York (Simpson 2014a). Yellowknife Dene Glen Coulthard writes that the modern state form in Indigenous communities not only strengthens colonialism but is necessary for modern capitalism (Coulthard 2014). On the other hand, Lenape professor Joanne Barker says that tribal sovereignty is imperfect and often serves colonial interests but is also a reflection of hard-fought struggles against colonialism (Barker 2005). Carroll (2015) and Corntassel’s (2012) consideration of ‘sustainable self-determination’ is a useful entry point when thinking about decolonizing environmental governance and practices of Indigenous sovereignty. This chapter considers the legacy of tribal institutions and extractive industries, illustrating how deeply embedded resource extraction is in the landscape of Indigenous nations (Corntassel 2012). Although tribes have the right to political sovereignty, Wallace Coffey and Rebecca Tsosie (2001) write about the necessity for evaluating Indigenous self-determination beyond political rights. They argue that we have to incorporate cultural sovereignty, especially as it relates to the environment, into consideration. They write that Indigenous people should govern their lands and resources as they see fit and as a way to resist, survive, and reverse the effects of climate change. Daniel Wildcat (2013) calls Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and practices Indigeneity. Cherokee political scholar Jeff Corntassel (2012) argues for sustainable sovereignty and Cherokee geographer Clint Carroll echoes this sentiment and suggests tribes can incorporate environmental values into tribal political institutions (2015). Some have argued that the initial steps for the international community is to recognize Indigenous knowledge systems as crucial for solving this pressing environmental issue (Inoue and Moreira 2016). If the Anthropocene translates into an intensification of colonialism, then what does it mean for Indigenous nations that have become reliant on extractive practices as a means of economic and political power? The colonial entanglements of extractive industries within Indigenous nations are hard to extricate. Tribal institutions are complex and cannot be reduced to the function of colonial interests. New ethnographies on Indigenous governance in and around official institutions speak to this difficulty (Pasternak 2017; Montoya 2018; Powell 2017; Lewis 2019). Our own foray into decolonizing Indigenous institutions have focused on the work of Diné activists and organizer Janene Yazzie, who suggests sovereignty is an on-the-ground relationship with place and land (Lister and Curley 2017) – which has direct implications for how we might understand tribal resource governance in the Anthropocene. Despite this, Indigenous nations retain their philosophies and approaches to conceptualizing the Anthropocene (Whyte 2018). In many Indigenous philosophies, the human is not the top species. Rather, humans exist in a cosmology determined by natural law of non-human persons which include many diverse species (Nadasdy 2016). The Anthropocene and our climate change politics do not account for Indigenous natural laws. Indigenous generation challenges are not between the young and the boomers, but between the living and ancestors. Indigenous nations in the US are also among the most vulnerable communities impacted by changing energy landscapes. Our conventional thinking about the Anthropocene is one of impending doom and destruction (Gergan et al. 2018). Whyte and others push back against Eurocentric narratives about the end of Earth to ask what Indigenous perspectives and practices might teach us (2018). This chapter reminds us that Indigenous experiences are not limited to doom spelt by the collapse of the environment as the march in New York City suggested. For Davis and Todd, the ‘golden spike’ is tied more directly to colonialism and recent research demonstrates a link between colonialism and the Earth’s changing climate (Koch

254  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state et al. 2019). As Wildcat and Whyte write, colonialism attempted to destroy the Indigenous world far beyond some of the worst predictions of climate change. Attempted genocide, forced removal, assimilation, and, at best, political marginalization have done tremendous damage to Indigenous life. To survive, many nations did the best with what they could on the little bit of land left to them. This often turned into long-term mining operations on tribal lands. Jobs, revenues, and resources keep Indigenous nations alive as much as grasslands and sheep. Tribal institutions, working with Indigenous lands, often express a desire for economic adaptation to changing energy regimes. However, the hardship of this transition is born by energy-producing communities with little regard from utility companies, power plants, or cities that benefit. We can expect political responses to climate change to follow in the same way unless something is done to change the political marginalization of tribes in settler states.

23.3

ALREADY EXISTING DYSTOPIAS: OIL, URANIUM, AND COAL IN THE NAVAJO NATION

Over the last ten years, Indigenous nations have experienced new energy-related pressures on their lands, economies, and overall social well-being as a result of changing patterns of carbon production and regulation in the US. Oil and natural gas development are proliferating across the Great Plains, putting pressures on Indigenous lands to develop mine sites or construct pipelines beneath reservations. For the Navajo Nation, the largest tribe in the US, a 50-year coal industry recently collapsed, impacting tribal coffers and jobs for Navajo and Hopi people. These booms and busts are part of a new resource curse plaguing reservation lands. The expansion of oil production in the Dakotas and the decline of coal in the Navajo Nation are interrelated issues along a changing carbon landscape that shapes global discourses on climate change, carbon production, and ideas of the Anthropocene. Indigenous nations in the US are also among the most vulnerable communities impacted by changing energy landscapes. In 2016, much of the world witnessed the violence against water protectors at Standing Rock, where oil developers built new energy infrastructures beneath unseeded tribal lands and over the objection of community members and the tribal government. In this section we consider the history of two resources on tribal lands: coal and oil. As members of the Navajo Nation, understanding the histories of these resources helps us to understand our tribe’s politics around climate change. Oil was first discovered in the Navajo Nation in 1922 and was an impetus for creating the tribal government. Other Indigenous nations might present a different configuration of topics, although the colonial dynamics are always the same. Coal was found in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s. Coal operations supported the Navajo Nation budget from the early 1970s until 2006 when the mines and powerplants started to close down. More than any other resource, coal and oil bear on climate change discourse and notions of the Anthropocene in important ways. 23.3.1 Oil Oil is perhaps the energy resource with the longest and most troubled history among Indigenous peoples in the Americas (Fixico 2012). Oil is one of the world’s most profitable industries and is the basis for world conflict today, including the 2003 US invasion of Iraq (Mitchell 2009). In the early twentieth century, oil production boomed in the US, especially in places

Already existing dystopias  255 like Texas and Oklahoma. The most notorious instance of colonial guile involved the Osage, whose identities later became intertwined with the profits of oil companies (Dennison 2017). When oil exploration boomed in the 1910s and 1920s, profiteers murdered members of the tribe and took their lands, titles, and oil monies. The killing was so widespread that the federal government took notice and it is argued by some that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was created in response to these murders. It was at this time when oil leases between companies and tribes took on new importance. The Harding administration was favourable to oil contracts on public lands with little to no federal scrutiny. His secretary of interior, Albert Fall, had cosy relationships with companies. He was an immigrant to New Mexico from Kentucky but was elected to the Senate and eventually joined the Harding administration. As a lawmaker from New Mexico, Fall had some experience with tribes and understood federal–Indian legal arrangements. During this time, the Standard Oil Company from Texas ‘explored’ for oil beneath Diné lands in the northern and eastern portion of our reservation. When the company’s geologists found bountiful reserves, the company needed to figure out a way to extract it. Standard Oil could not get at it without an agreement from the tribe and the tribe had no political mechanism with which to negotiate. Fall instructed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to create a tribal government haphazardly comprised of ‘representatives’ from the region who could review the terms of land leases between ‘the tribe’ and the company and approve them. This became the first tribal government of the Navajo people. Although the government was replaced after Harding died and Fall went to prison for accepting bribes from oil companies, many Diné people today believe that the organizing purpose of creating tribal governments was to facilitate contracts with oil and mining companies based on this history (Chamberlain 2000; Powell and Curley 2008). Oil development fell on fractured Indigenous lands. Over the previous half century, the US unilaterally violated its treaties with tribes, especially those whose lands were in the Great Plains, and Congress passed the General Allotment Act of 1877. In effect, the act took commonly held lands and fractured them into individual allotments. Indian agents and the US Land Office (today the Bureau of Land Management) distributed the lands to Indian applicants, many of whom were swindled out of their titles by settlers. The intent of the law was to promote individual grazing and agriculture, but allotment titles were still held in trust by the federal government. When oil entered the picture nearly half a century later, royalties generated on these lands would create more controversy. The records of oil contracts for individual allotments as well as tribes were poorly stored. Millions of dollars of assets were lost due to poor record keeping, leading to the Cobell class action lawsuit against the US. Today there is a boom in US and Canadian oil production. This has put renewed pressure on tribal lands. The controversial mining technique, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is making old oil sources accessible in new ways. The cheaper mining technique makes extraction of these hard-to-access oil fields profitable. Canada is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in pipeline technology to take crude oil from the interior of the country to port along its Pacific coast (Stanley 2016). Such actions work against the goals of environmental activists who warn against putting more carbon into the atmosphere. The notorious Tar Sands field in Alberta is one of the dirtiest and most inaccessible oil fields in North America. But the possibility of developing these fields is attracting finance from banks and corporations across the world to bring this oil out of the earth, into market, and into the permanent contribution of human-produced greenhouse gasses warming the planet and destabilizing the climate.

256  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The Keystone XL pipeline was a proposed infrastructure to connect the Tar Sands with the Gulf Ports in Texas that would then ship this oil across the globe. Indigenous environmental groups protested this pipeline at the height of US president Barack Obama’s ‘all of the above’ approach to energy development. In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline connected the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to refineries and ports along the gulf. This pipeline was constructed through the lands of the Great Sioux Nation, an Anglicized reference to the Nakota, Dakota, and Lakota peoples who share kinship and governing responsibilities with each other. The project was planned and built through ancestral lands and crossed the Missouri River. Climate activists and Indigenous peoples from across the world joined the Standing Rock tribe in opposing this pipeline construction in 2016. But the new administration of Donald Trump removed all federal regulatory holdups shortly after taking over the presidency in January 2017. Oil booms bring another kind of threat to Indigenous communities, man camps (Deer 2015). These places are temporary settlements designed around the construction of pipelines or the development of oil fields. Men with no ties to the land on which they work participate in illicit buying and selling of Indigenous women, who are brought into sex work for a number of reasons, but often because of financial challenges or misinformation. Many of these women go missing, presumably abducted or murdered (Dhillon 2015; Anderson et al. 2018). The tragedy was so widespread in Indigenous communities both in the US and in Canada that a movement started to highlight the names, faces, and dates of disappearance of many women. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women started in Winnipeg where women would wash up in the banks of the Red River that runs through the centre of the city. It has since spread to the US and also takes into account women who are the victims of domestic abuse or who are killed by the police. The targeting of Indigenous women by ‘non-Indian men’ (read White) is especially difficult to stop because racist US law prevents tribal law enforcement over non-Indians under the racist assumption that Indigenous jurisdiction will be unfair to white people. This created jurisdictional problems over domestic violence against Indigenous women on tribal lands, some of which was amended in 2013 in the amendments and reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.1 23.3.2 Uranium As a consequence of racism and lack of political power, Indigenous lands and nations were subject to the worst effects of extraction. The history of nuclear and uranium is a good example of existing dystopic realities. In the Pacific, Indigenous island peoples suffered direct nuclear fallout from US and French nuclear testing. In the US, the Grants Mineral Belt in colonial New Mexico is one of the richest deposits of uranium ore in the world (a natural resources way of looking at the land) and was hazardously exploited for weapons during the Cold War (Brugge et al. 2006; Smith and Frehner 2010). Diné, Hispanic, Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna peoples worked in this industry without masks, air filtration, or adequate education about the radioactive risks of working with and around uranium. Uranium ore under the feet of Indigenous peoples and communities built up the US nuclear arsenal (Pasternak 2011). What is more, for Diné people, uranium mining occurred near people’s homes and within communities – exposing the people to radioactive waste. In addition to the risk associated with the work, the mine sites were poorly monitored and maintained. The companies who exploited uranium were ‘fly-by-night’ operations that folded soon after they made their owners profits. Such lax regulation benefited the uranium industry but cost Diné people their relatives, communities, and lands.

Already existing dystopias  257 To this day, many of these mine sites are in need of mitigation and monitoring – even decades after operations ceased. Uranium mining in the US southwest in the 1950s also introduced a fundamental paradox that still challenges tribes today – the paradox of the social embeddedness. Uranium mining ushered in revenues and provided scores of jobs. However, when uranium declined in the 1970s, uranium companies left much of the radioactive waste open and unmitigated (Jorgensen 1978; Jorgensen et al. 1978). What is more, a milling spill in 1979 dumped millions of gallons of radioactive water into creeks that Diné people have relied upon for generations, causing permanent contamination in some areas. The spill, known as the Churchrock spill, was the worst nuclear accident in US history and one of the most well-known examples of environmental justice against the continent’s Indigenous peoples today. 23.3.3 Coal In the US populist imagination, coal exists in Appalachia (Scott 2010), but its heart is in the west. The Powder Basin, between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, is the site for the most intensified mining activity today. The region is home to many large land-based tribes whose reservations overlap and intersect with places of known coal reserves.2 The Crow Nation and Northern Cheyenne in Wyoming and Montana allowed companies to mine for coal in their reservations in order to increase tribal revenues and create jobs. The pro-extractive attitudes of tribal governments led to backlash in tribal communities (Allison 2015). Although some saw the benefit of the industry, many younger Indigenous activists recognized the colonial nature of coal in their communities. They organized within new and militant Native liberation and self-determination movements to oppose coal and other resource exploitation and extraction (Powell 2017). In the Navajo Nation, Black Mesa became the site of some of the most controversial mining on Indigenous lands. From the 1970s, Peabody Coal transported coal from Black Mesa to a Nevada power plant via a water slurry that closed at the end of 2005 – a waste of potable drinking water for fossil fuel extraction. As the mine site was constructed in the early 1970s, Diné residents organized campaigns to ‘Save Black Mesa’. Some saw the use of industrial strip mining to convert the land into coal as destructive to the tribe’s homelands. The physical conversion of grasslands into an industrial mine site spoke to the stark contrast in what you can do with the land, from herding sheep for subsistence to mining it for coal. The Navajo Nation government supported coal mining as a source of jobs and revenues, but community members were split on its benefits. Some worked in the industry. Others saw familiar lands upended and objected to the use of aquifer water to slurry coal (Nies 2014). Diné and Hopi residents recognized the absurdity of using water for coal in a dry and drought-prone region. Turning Diné lands into former coal fields, in need of mitigation, unusable in the future is an example of what Voyles calls ‘wastelanding’ (2015). After more than 30 years of mining, the lands of the Black Mesa Mine are an uninhabited wasteland. Mining laws require that Peabody Coal restore the land it mined. It leaves the land undisturbed for ten years before it can return it to the Navajo Nation. The ability of Diné people to take up sheepherding and farming on these former mine lands remains questionable as geologists working for the tribe have told me in confidence that the land might remain toxic. The scared landscape of Black Mesa is equal to any dystopic vision in discourse among environmental organizers and activists.

258  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Discourse on the Anthropocene does not focus on the physically and emotionally scarred landscape of Black Mesa, long plundered for its wealth in coal. The Anthropocene is built on colonial relations, which forced tribes into political disempowered positions within a racist state and global capitalism. Climate change is a politics largely ignorant of Indigenous peoples’ complicated relationship with extractive industries. Environmental activists and organizers are the most explicit at bringing Indigenous peoples into consideration, but often at superficial levels. The depth of colonial entanglements is not well understood or accounted for within political proposals. The connection with Indigenous peoples to subsistence lifeways are fodder for arguments supporting climate change mitigation or trying to stop carbon-intensive projects from getting off the ground. The tribal economies engineered around the extraction of oil, coal, and other minerals is underappreciated. This is true especially for the right wing which opportunistically exploits Indigenous suffering to justify its own pro-fossil fuel agenda.

23.4

DECOLONIZING THE ANTHROPOCENE

Indigenous peoples control lands across the US and Canada. Especially in western states and provinces, tribes maintain large areas of land on top of highly coveted natural resources. Through colonization and ideas of economic underdevelopment that were thrust onto tribal communities, tribal governments participate in energy development and mineral extraction, from coal, oil, and uranium to hydropower and natural gas extraction. Shifting US energy policies and practices roll across tribal lands dramatically and unevenly. Energy policies and practices are interrelated and can have mixed or even opposite effects on different tribal communities based on their geographies on top of or around sites of extraction. A focus on energy and extraction complicates our understanding of colonization today on Native lands and reveals underappreciated sources of structural inequality. The complication of Indigenous lands in a colonial context contributes to our larger understandings of the Anthropocene as an uneven process. Indigenous scholars argue that the Anthropocene is a protraction of concepts that ‘are steeped in colonial understandings of modernity and its colonial Other that were inherited from the European Enlightenment’ (Simpson 2020, p. 55). The complication of Indigenous lands in a colonial context contributes to our larger understandings of the Anthropocene as an uneven process. Leftist critiques describe this unevenness as ‘the capitalcene’, attributing environmental change to the making of the modern world system. However, colonialism as a political and philosophical practice is destructive to environments. It helped shape the modern geological age and the modern world of unsustainable development and modernization efforts. Today, Indigenous lands are coveted more for their rich resources than for settlement. These new colonial desires engender new forms of colonization and underdevelopment. Land and energy become twin processes in the colonization of Indigenous homelands. Since the 1930s, colonization is both facilitated and contested through institutions of tribal governance. This chapter argues that decolonizing the Anthropocene in Indigenous North America requires attention to decolonizing tribal governance. Oglala Lakota scholar Kali Simmons (2019) argues that Indigenous people, through settler legal systems, were only treated as ‘human’ after they disavowed their kinship to non-human relatives. She suggests that the ‘human’ that comprises the Anthropocene is a settler colonial tool for assimilation and creates a separation between nature and society where nature

Already existing dystopias  259 becomes commodified and open to capitalist exploitation. Land, and other resources, is important to the fossil activity that defines the Anthropocene. Linking the Anthropocene with colonialism is key for understanding the social and political project that set the conditions of climate change (Davis and Todd 2017). The use of Indigenous lands and other resources for fossil fuels contributes to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Colonialism is the domination of one political entity over another and that relationship is demonstrated by the domestic state of Indigenous people within the US. As Indigenous scholars have noted, the Anthropocene is the intensification of colonial power relations and the practices that were produced by the power relations. In the US, those power relations are embedded in the political and economic arrangements between tribal institutions and colonial institutions. Due to the dominant colonial institutions, tribal institutions navigate the colonial practices that intensify the power relations and extractive practices that define the Anthropocene. These practices are defined as a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Modern tribal institutions emerged as a response to Indigenous activism (Wilkinson 2005). To combat colonial land grabs, displacement, and retain Indigenous lifeways, tribes negotiated a stronger sense of political sovereignty. They were able to do this through land occupations, mobilizations, marches, and after much hardship. The nature of these tribal institutions speaks to the challenges of decolonizing the Anthropocene and mitigating climate change. Survivability, for many tribes, are linked inherently with the ability of tribes to leverage their sovereignty in the form of mineral contracts. This particular brand of ‘sovereignty’ has been critiqued widely, but it is ultimately tied to how this ‘colonial entanglement’ has worked its way across Indigenous lands and across Indigenous communities (Fixico 2012; Dennison 2017). Although tribes have the right to political sovereignty, Wallace Coffey and Rebecca Tsosie (2001) write about the necessity for evaluating Indigenous self-determination beyond limited political rights. They argue we have to incorporate cultural sovereignty, especially as it relates to the environment, into consideration. They write that Indigenous people should govern their lands and resources as they see fit and as a way to resist, survive, and reverse the effects of climate change. Daniel Wildcat (2013) calls Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and practices Indigeneity. Cherokee political scholar Jeff Corntassel (2012) argues for sustainable sovereignty and Cherokee geographer Clint Carroll echoes this sentiment and suggests tribes can incorporate environmental values into tribal political institutions (2015). Some have argued that the initial step for the international community is to recognize Indigenous knowledge systems as crucial for solving this pressing environmental issue (Inoue and Moreira 2016). If the Anthropocene translates into an intensification of colonialism, then what does it mean for Indigenous nations that have become reliant on extractive practices as a means of economic and political power? We began this chapter with Curley’s experience at the 2014 climate march in New York City. During this march, Indigenous activists and organizers were positioned at the front of the march as a symbolic understanding about the risk of climate change for Indigenous and other ‘frontline communities’. For mainstream environmentalism, Indigenous peoples are impacted communities, the frontline victims of climate change. The assumption is that traditional and cultural landed practices are threatened. Indigenous peoples are land-based nations whose identities, stories, philosophies, and governance are directly connected to the land. Critics of tribal governments as inappropriate expressions of Indigenous practices often gesture toward

260  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the land, Indigenous relationships with the land, and resurgent cultural practices (Corntassel 2012; Simpson 2016, 2014b). However, extractive industries have helped assuage some of the longstanding impacts of genocide, violent displacement, and forced assimilation. For generations, Indigenous peoples were able to survive on their lands through strategic engagement with extractive industries and capitalism. The legacies of these practices scar the landscape. They helped us survive on the land but also destroyed much of it in the process. With colonization, Indigenous peoples saw their lands taken and lives permanently altered. This constituted its own dystopia. Tribes later suffered through forced assimilation, continued land theft, and the creation of tribal institutions with legal and political rights strongly associated with the expansion of capitalism and extractive industries within and around Indigenous communities. Oil and gas fracking around Indigenous lands have witnessed the abduction and murder of Indigenous women who are ensnared into man camps. Coal created hundreds of jobs, a sense of economic dependency, and eventual collapse. These multiple, overlapping, and current dystopias are lost on most commentaries on climate change. To decolonize the Anthropocene requires attention to the more complicated landscape of colonialism as they pertain to Indigenous peoples and nations.

NOTES 1. This section of the chapter uses the term ‘Indian’ and ‘non-Indian’, which might offend some readers but is the language of US colonial law. It is found in the official legislation and on government documents and websites. 2. Consider the Coalition of Large Tribes, see: http://​largetribes​.org/​.

REFERENCES Alfred, G. (2006), ‘“Sovereignty” – an inappropriate concept’ in R. Maaka and C. Andersen (eds), The Indigenous Experience: Global Perspectives, Toronto: Ontarioadian Scholars’ Press, pp. 322–36. Allison, J. (2015), Sovereignty for Survival: American Energy Development and Indian Self-Determination, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Anderson, K., M. Campbell, and C. Belcourt (2018), Keetsahnak/Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Barker, J. (2005), Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Brugge, D., T. Benally, and E. Yazzie-Lewis (2006), The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Carroll, C. (2015), Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Chamberlain, K. (2000), Under Sacred Ground: A History of Navajo Oil, 1922–1982, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Coffey, W. and R. Tsosie (2001), ‘Rethinking the tribal sovereignty doctrine: Cultural sovereignty and the collective future of Indian nations’, Stanford Law and Policy Review, 12 (2), 191–221. Corntassel, J. (2012), ‘Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous pathways to decolonization and sustainable self-determination’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1 (1), 86–101. Coulthard, G. (2014), Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Davis, H. and Z. Todd (2017), ‘On the importance of a date, or decolonizing the Anthropocene’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16 (4), 761–80.

Already existing dystopias  261 Deer, S. (2015), The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dennison, J. (2017), ‘Entangled sovereignties: The Osage Nation’s interconnections with governmental and corporate authorities’, American Ethnologist, 44 (4), 684–96. Dhillon, J. (2015), ‘Indigenous girls and the violence of settler colonial policing’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 4 (2), 1–31. Fixico, D. (2012), The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. Gergan, M., S. Smith, and P. Vasudevan (2018), ‘Earth beyond repair: Race and apocalypse in collective imagination’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 38 (1), 91–110. Inoue, C. and P. Moreira (2016), ‘Many worlds, many nature(s), one planet: Indigenous knowledge in the Anthropocene’, Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 59 (2), e009. Jorgensen, J. (1978), Native Americans and Energy Development, Cambridge: Anthropology Resources Center. Jorgensen, J., S. Davis, and R. Mathews (1978), ‘Energy, agriculture, and social science in the American West’, in J. Jorgensen (ed.), Native Americans and Energy Development, Cambridge: Anthropology Resources Center, pp. 3–16. Koch, A., C. Brierley, M. Maslin, and S. Lewis (2019), ‘Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492’, Quaternary Science Reviews, 207, 13–36. Lewis, C. (2019), Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Cherokee Small-Business Owners and the Making of Economic Sovereignty, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Lister, M. and A. Curley (2017), ‘The Little Colorado River Watershed Chapters Association and Kingsley Gardens: Moving the Navajo Nation toward land-based governance’, Journal of Social Justice, 7, 1–7. Mitchell, T. (2009), ‘Carbon democracy’, Economy and Society, 38 (3), 399–432. Montoya, T. (2018), ‘Violence on the ground, violence below the ground’, in Culanth.org, Hot Spots Research Blog, 22 December, accessed 27 December 2019 at https://​culanth​.org/​fieldsights/​violence​ -on​-the​-ground​-violence​-below​-the​-ground Nadasdy, P. (2016), ‘First Nations, citizenship and animals, or why Northern Indigenous people might not want to live in zoopolis’, Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 49, 1–20. Nadasdy, P. (2017), Sovereignty’s Entailments: First Nation State Formation in the Yukon, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nies, J. (2014), Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West, New York: Nation Books. Pasternak, J. (2011), Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos, New York: Free Press. Pasternak, S. (2017), Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Powell, D. (2017), Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Powell, D. and A. Curley (2008), ‘K’e, Hozhó, and non-governmental politics on the Navajo Nation: Ontologies of difference manifest in environmental activism’, World Anthropologies Network E-Journal, 4, accessed 4 June 2020 at https://​ram​-wan​.net/​old/​documents/​05​_e​_Journal/​journal​-4/​5​ -powell​.pdf Scott, R. (2010), Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Simmons, K. (2019), ‘Reorientations: Or, an Indigenous feminist reflection on the Anthropocene’, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 58 (2), 174–9. Simpson, A. (2014a), Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Simpson, L. (2014b), ‘Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 3 (3), 1–25. Simpson, L. (2016), ‘Indigenous resurgence and co-resistance’, Critical Ethnic Studies, 2 (2), 19–34. Simpson, M. (2020), ‘The Anthropocene as colonial discourse’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 38 (1), 53–71.

262  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Smith, S. and B. Frehner (2010), Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest, Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Stanley, A. (2016), ‘Resilient settler colonialism: “Responsible resource development,” “flow-through” financing, and the risk management of Indigenous sovereignty in Canada’, Environment and Planning A, 48 (2), 2422–42. Voyles, T. (2015), Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Whyte, K.P. (2018), ‘Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1 (1–2), 224–42. Wildcat, D. (2013), ‘Introduction: Climate change and Indigenous peoples of the USA’, in J. Maldonado, B. Colombi, and R. Pandya (eds), Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States, New York: Springer, pp. 1–8. Wilkinson, C. (2005), Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations, New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

24. Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’: paradoxes of hydrocarbon development in the Russian Arctic Stephanie Hitztaler and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen

24.1 INTRODUCTION The ‘New Yamal’, a phrase originated by Dmitry N. Kobylkin, the former governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO, see Figure 24.1), refers to the momentous socio-economic and environmental transformation of the region (Federal Press 2016). It is perhaps an understatement given the rapid pace at which life in this part of Russia is being reshaped by the burgeoning hydrocarbon industry. Although geographically remote, YNAO (and the Yamal Peninsula, in particular) have become a focal point of Russia’s largest and most influential energy companies, including Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Rosneft and Novatek. In a country where oil and gas form the cornerstone of economic life (Shvarts et al. 2016; Kumpula et al. 2010), the current surge in fossil fuel production in YNAO has elevated this region to a strategic position on the national and global stages. YNAO has also earned recognition as a leader in public–private partnerships that extend beyond economic-based extractive projects to encompass social development as well (Federal Press 2016). This distinct combination, and its connection to sustainability in Yamalo-Nenets, lie at the heart of this chapter. By exploring the links among major fossil fuel extractors, policies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the communities affected by these policies, we help elucidate the effects of Russia’s energy policy on local sustainable development in the Russian Far North. These insights are crucial today as large-scale, international projects aimed at hydrocarbon production are launched in the area (Gritsenko et al. 2018). We thus ask: to what extent are CSR initiatives contributing to socially, economically and environmentally sustainable communities in YNAO? To address this question, we examine Gazprom Neft’s flagship CSR initiative, Rodnye Goroda – roughly translated as Home Cities and Towns. Through a systematic assessment of the Rodnye Goroda initiative, we aim to understand its potential and limitations in relation to social, economic and environmental sustainability. Further, by situating this initiative within the highly dynamic and paradoxical political, cultural and ecological sphere of the Russian Arctic, we explore what this study can illustrate about the changing geographies of the state and new spaces of geopolitics – both in the Russian Far North and globally.

263

264  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Note: Situated east of the Ural Mountains, and in the furthest northern stretch of the West Siberian lowland, YNAO contains expansive areas of tundra interspersed with a myriad of rivers and lakes; this region also contains vast reserves of oil and gas. Major gas and oil fields are indicated on the map. Source: Map created by Claire Franco.

Figure 24.1

24.2

YNAO area

THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC PARADOX AND THE YAMALO-NENETS REGION

In the Nenets language, Yamal means ‘edge of the world’ (Raygorodetsky 2017). This word describes the northernmost extension of YNAO, the Yamal Peninsula, with an expansive area of approximately 122,000 km2 and a low population density, consisting primarily of the Nenets Indigenous people. Yamal would most likely have remained isolated at the edge of

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  265 the world – and in the national consciousness – but for the discoveries of oil and gas. The exploration and exploitation phases of oil and gas development began in the 1960s. The first production sites were concentrated in the subarctic and boreal zones of YNAO, where existing roads and railways made this region readily accessible from the south. The urban population in the cities of southern YNAO began to rise steadily at this time in step with the nascent expansion of fossil fuel extraction. During the 1980s, several major hydrocarbon deposits were identified on the Yamal Peninsula; by 2008 there were 200 recognized gas fields here. Three of the major deposits alone (Bovanenkovskoye, Kharasaveyskoe and Novoportovskoye) hold an estimated 5.8 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, 100.2 million metric tons of gas condensate and 227 million metric tons of oil (Walker et al. 2011). Such volumes easily distinguish the Yamal Peninsula as a great force in fossil fuel production. In fact, 72 per cent of all investments in the Russian Arctic are put into hydrocarbon projects in YNAO (Kommersant 2017). Between 2005 and 2015, resource extraction in YNAO increased more than threefold in terms of gross value (Gritsenko and Efimova 2018). This leap in the production and export of hydrocarbons in fragile, frigid and unpredictable terrains has been facilitated by investment in highly technical and sophisticated infrastructure, including the Arctic Gates terminal (where oil is transferred from subsea pipelines into large oil tankers) and nuclear icebreakers (to cut paths in the sea ice for these tankers). Gazprom Neft is one of the leaders in these developments and continues to push forward in YNAO. For instance, the company is augmenting oil production through the utilization of small gas deposits found within large oil fields. This step is integral to Gazprom Neft’s strategic goal of growing hydrocarbon production to 100 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2025 (Gazprom Neft 2017a). YNAO exemplifies the expansion of Russia’s oil and gas empire into the country’s uppermost reaches. This region also symbolizes the Russian Arctic’s full transition to ‘a geopolitically central area interwoven with nation-building and great power political identity construction in a novel way’ (Tynkkynen 2018, p. 1). Power here is directly equated with massive hydrocarbon reserves and large-scale production. Namely, the resources extracted from YNAO are fundamental in maintaining high levels of oil and gas output, and their related rents, which subsequently reinforce Russia’s status as a great power. An Arctic-centred development path presents several paradoxical risks to Russia, however, including the promotion and funding of non-viable (at least for the time being) oil projects. Within this ‘Russian Arctic paradox’ (Tynkkynen 2018), what is seen as empowering also has the real potential to be impoverishing. So while a huge influx of funds has noticeably raised living standards today, strategies for the eventual post-production period are non-existent. These paradoxes at the regional and local levels are situated within the greater global Arctic paradox in which the consequences of global climate change facilitate increased hydrocarbon extraction, which in turn further exacerbates climate shifts (Heininen 2018). Indeed, the natural environment itself is subjected to the short-term logic of the Russian Arctic paradox, which comes at the expense of a more environmentally sustainable future. Although the Russian Arctic paradox is predominantly based in political economy, it is also shaped through cultural practices and identity, as they develop alongside and through the country’s now firmly entrenched dependence on hydrocarbons. Reflecting the state’s priorities, fossil fuel giants like Gazprom have helped embed a deep national sense of hydrocarbon attachment, emphasizing it as a clear reinforcement of Russia’s Great Power status (Tynkkynen 2016a, 2016b). As this chapter illustrates, cultural practices in the Arctic are propped up by the

266  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state oil and gas industry, which increasingly aligns national identity to the hydrocarbon state, while precluding any real vision of society in a post-production scenario. As we show, the narrow vision of ‘sustainability’ articulated in the CSR policies of Russia’s hydrocarbon sector aims more toward upholding the existing social order and people’s privileged position in a state organized around extractivism. Against this backdrop, much more research is needed on how social and environmental responsibilities are being handled in the Arctic – by both state and non-state actors. This chapter seeks to fill this knowledge gap by unpacking the Rodnye Goroda initiative and its impact on sustainability outcomes in the Yamalo-Nenets region. Moreover, our findings provide important insights into the paradoxes specific to Rodnye Goroda’s Arctic context, as well as on how state power works through parastatal institutions more generally.

24.3

NOT JUST AN EXTRACTION COMPANY: GAZPROM NEFT AND CSR

CSR is commonly defined as ‘a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis’ (European Commission 2001, p. 6). While many observers question the degree to which such action is voluntary, a wider view of CSR recognizes that companies bear a responsibility for: (1) their impact on society and the natural world; (2) the actions of others with whom they do business; and (3) their relationship to both their stakeholders and the wider society in which they operate (Prieto-Carrón et al. 2006; Nekhodka et al. 2015). This sense of responsibility also applies to a company’s internal operations, for instance, in ensuring a good quality of life for its workforce and their families. In short, CSR is generally understood to embrace transparency, stakeholder interests, labour rights, safety and a pledge to protect the environment (Henry et al. 2016; Khayrullina 2017; Tysiachniouk et al. 2018). Critiques of CSR often focus on global trends, but there is also a distinct variation in how CSR is understood and implemented in local contexts (Henry et al. 2016; Prieto-Carrón et al. 2006). In the Russian context, CSR is relatively new and is readily distinguished by the firm role of the state in its development. As Marina Khayrullina (2017) has argued, Russian initiatives tend to fall in the middle of the CSR continuum: bounded at one end by a purely business-initiated model and at the other by one that is solely state-initiated. More specifically, CSR in Russia involves a limited group of stakeholders consisting of the state and company owners and employees; local communities have typically not been fully included. CSR initiatives are often discussed with respect to another continuum, with socio-economic issues at one end and environmental actions at the other. In Russia, CSR initiatives lean heavily toward the social end, tending to fall into patterns resembling the Soviet legacy of ‘paternalist welfare provision’, such as providing social services and building infrastructure in the local communities of operation (Henry et al. 2016). Essentially, some state functions are redirected to companies as evidenced by the common procedure of agreements made among these companies and officials at the regional, district and village tiers of government (Tysiachniouk et al. 2018). This trend of paternalism is a hallmark of CSR policies within Russia’s oil and gas sector, even as these policies have become more prominent due in part to increased competition in export markets, the necessity of attracting foreign investment and the chance to take part in multinational consortiums on hydrocarbon development (Henry et al. 2016).

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  267 Gazprom Neft ranks among the top companies in Russia’s oil and gas sector for CSR, based on official company documents and self-reporting (Khayrullina 2017). In 2012, Gazprom Neft united all of its CSR-based initiatives into one broad-scale programme, named Rodnye Goroda (Poznakhareva 2017). According to Aleksandr Dyukov, chief executive officer of Gazprom Neft, Rodnye Goroda was envisioned as a departure from philanthropic-based CSR, representing a new, conceptual movement toward CSR grounded in the positive transformation through developing human potential in the regions where the company operates (Gazprom Neft 2019). The initiative reflected a fundamental shift in its CSR policy that emphasized more equal partnerships between Gazprom Neft and the people created through active community engagement (Gazprom Neft 2017b; Orlov 2018). Rodnye Goroda has accordingly been packaged as a people-driven initiative encompassing the following actors: local residents; corporate, governmental and non-profit partners; and Gazprom Neft employees who serve as volunteers. Overall, this programme stresses inclusivity and the creativity of all who unite to make it a reality (Gazprom Neft 2017b, 2019). Rodnye Goroda, however, must be understood within prevailing societal power structures in which the company operates. As a parastatal enterprise, Gazprom Neft operates under the authority of the Russian state and President Putin’s rule, while also retaining its status as a commercial enterprise (i.e. open joint-stock company). More specifically, the Russian state holds 50 per cent plus one share of Gazprom Neft stock. This arrangement means that while decision making in the company is not solely motivated by politics, Gazprom Neft’s strategic agenda, including its nationwide programmes, is still executed under the approval of President Vladimir Putin and those in his inner political circle. Steered by the country’s elite, the company ‘enjoys privileges and space to manoeuvre in the Russian economic and political context unseen by any other company, even compared to the other state champion, Rosneft’ (Tynkkynen 2016a, p. 377). Moreover, Gazprom Neft is the first in line to fulfil the serious and ambitious presidential directive to construct hydrocarbon production facilities in the Arctic Zone (Federal Press 2016). Thus, the company’s position and power are significant; these factors undoubtedly dictate how Rodnye Goroda is authored and put into practice, which is namely in ways that maximizes gains for the company, and for those who back it in the state. Indeed, the Russian state now mandates major companies like Gazprom Neft to institute certain CSR-based programmes. Although these programmes take many different forms, an underlying goal of Rodnye Goroda is to provide access for residents of Russia’s peripheral regions to some of the same cultural and recreational opportunities enjoyed in large metropolises. Accordingly, the programme spans a wide range of interests, more specifically divided into the following categories: sports; culture and the arts; science and education; transformation of urban environments; support of people with disabilities; and support of Indigenous peoples of the North. The latter category is a particular priority for Gazprom Neft (EnergyLand 2018), as many members of YNAO’s Indigenous population still follow traditional ways of life and are especially affected by oil production. The most distinctive feature of Rodnye Goroda is the administration of a grant competition programme that selectively funds project proposals submitted by leaders of community groups. Its overarching aim is community betterment through citizen empowerment. A similar programme is also organized within Gazprom Neft for its employees, which encourages them to volunteer and allows them to choose where and how to target their efforts, for instance in environmental or educational projects. By weaving together many diverse strands into one

268  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state single programme, Gazprom Neft’s CSR policies have achieved a level of sophistication that is unprecedented among Russian companies (Orlov 2018; see also Frynas 2005). To understand the broader impact of Rodnye Goroda, we conducted a systematic review of Russian media coverage of the programme. We gathered the bulk of our data through the Integrum Profi Database, which offers the world’s largest archive of mass media pertaining to Russia and the former Soviet Union. We collected 217 news articles over a three-year period (1 January 2016 to 31 December 2018), collectively appearing in regional and local newspapers, online news sites and more specialized channels, such as the official government website of YNAO. We then performed a systematic content analysis using MAXQDA and SPSS to evaluate how each of the component categories of Rodnye Goroda was presented. The full results of this study cannot be presented here, but Table 24.1 shows the frequency of media coverage of the various constituent parts of the programme in the Yamalo-Nenets Region. As we initially expected, the athletic aspect of Rodnye Goroda emerged as one of the top priorities of this programme. This finding is largely explained by the steady construction of new sports facilities, including fitness centres, stadiums, swimming pools and ice rinks. The opening of ice hockey arenas, as well as updates on the progress of their construction, were particularly prevalent in the articles we examined. Such projects serve a twofold purpose. First, they are a major boost to Gazprom Neft’s image in YNAO, etching the company’s presence in the market and in the minds of the people living there. Second, large, state-of-the-art sports facilities hold great sway in pulling cities and towns into the larger project of nation building, for instance, through promoting success in athletics (Tynkkynen 2016b). Given the spectacular nature of these conspicuous sports projects, however, they tend to stifle murmurs of dissent among the population by dominating public discourse. This silencing effect ultimately leads to the consolidation of Gazprom Neft’s power within the community and its privileged status in relation to the Russian state. The name Rodnye Goroda is itself significant here. In Russian, the basic form ‘rodnoi’ translates as ‘native’, yet the word has strong connotations of one’s own of something, for instance, a country, city, language or relatives, that is close to the soul. In this case, the name may tacitly encourage attachment to the corporate and state power structures that are reshaping communities into brighter and more liveable places. Yet, like so many aspects of development in the Russian Arctic, Rodnye Goroda’s focus on sport is also built on a paradox: it glorifies the production of healthy bodies through physical activity, while overlooking the fact that its vision of a pristinely healthy nation is undermined by severe pollution and other forms of environmental contamination resulting from local hydrocarbon extraction. The following section therefore considers how the environment fits into Gazprom Neft’s CSR programme and the political implications of this programme vis-à-vis sustainability.

24.4

ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY AND GAZPROM NEFT’S CSR

The environmental aspects of Gazprom Neft’s CSR work are puzzling because this sphere of activity has not been designated as one of the six official categories of Rodnye Goroda. Nonetheless, the programme has supported major efforts, including the recent large-scale shore clean-up initiative in the village of Novy Port, and the longer-term programme in

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  269 Table 24.1

Number of coded segments in news articles about Rodnye Goroda, 2016–18 (n=191 articles)

Main code

Number

Subcodes

Sports

263

a) Hockey - Ice rink/arena (91) - ‘Avangard’ Youth Hockey League (30) b) Soccer - Stadium (18) - Indoor or ‘mini’-soccer (11) c) Sports facilities - Sport/sport-therapeutic complex (53) - Swimming pool (13) d) Specific programmes - ‘A drug-free zone’ (21) - ‘Sports in your backyard’ (24) - ‘Your home yard’ (2)

Transformation of

125

urban environments Culture and arts

Overall infrastructure development (37) Construction (daycare centres, housing, apartment buildings) (88)

161

Leisure time/cultural programmes - City festivals (17) - ‘Stenograffia’ Street Art and Graffiti Festival (86) - ‘Breath of the Arctic’ (33) - ‘Where Art Is Born’ (20) - ‘Echo of the Spirit of Fire’ (1) - ‘New Year’s Fairy Tale’ (4)

Science and education

105

Science education programmes for school-aged children - ‘The Multiplying of Talent’ (72) - ‘The Classroom of Exact Science’ (28) - ‘Muravlenko – City of the Future’ (1) - ‘Soon in School’ (4)

Support of Indigenous

84

peoples of the North

Preservation of cultural and lifestyle traditions (13) Festival of the Reindeer Herders (22) Festival of the Fishers (35) Restoration of the largest underground ice cave in the world (used to preserve fish) (11) Financing projects of the social organization, ‘Indigenous, Small-Numbered People of the North – Yamal’ (1) Gasification of Novy Port (an Indigenous village) (2)

Support of people with 19

Handicap access at sports facilities (12)

disabilities

Work with special-needs children (7)

Grant programme/

59

corporate volunteerism

Grant competition – general public (43) Grant competition – Gazprom Neft employees to pursue volunteer projects (9) Work Saturdays (7)

Environmental projects 52

Environmental action/events - Shoreline clean-up (4) - Recovery from a ‘legacy of historical waste’ (e.g. on Vil’kitsky Island in the Kara Sea) (45) - Replenishing fisheries (3)

Total coded segments

868

270  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state conjunction with the YNAO administration to address the ‘legacy of environmental waste’ (Programma po utilizatsii ‘ekologicheskogo naslediya’), or the scrap metal and other waste on Arctic islands left from the Soviet-era oil and gas exploration in this region (e.g. Vil’kitsky Island in the Kara Sea). Gazprom Neft seems to have got a lot of mileage from these events, which have considerably boosted the company’s visibility in environmental protection and safety (even as the picture of the company’s and its subsidiaries’ aggregate environmental impact in YNAO remains opaque). In fact, such projects like shore clean-ups constitute a very superficial, if not symbolic, approach, focusing on relatively small or localized problems that skirt the much graver and broader environmental issues caused by large-scale hydrocarbon production in the Arctic. While these projects may initially relay a sense of genuine stewardship and steps toward environmental sustainability, they actually often numb participants to the severity of environmental degradation and its effects on the socio-economic sphere (Welker 2009). Thus, empowerment, which is one purpose of the Rodnye Goroda initiative, effectively detaches people from the environmental realities Gazprom Neft itself is causing. In this sense, empowerment can be understood as ‘responsibilization’ of people to take better care of the environment – a massive undertaking when one considers the impact of hydrocarbon extraction on local ecosystems, and one that is far out of reach for ordinary people. This reality eclipses the foundation necessary for environmental as well as social and economic sustainability. Even so, as a major oil company operating on the world stage, Gazprom Neft endeavours to align itself with the concepts of sustainability as is evidenced in the company’s Annual Report on Sustainable Development. Filled with substantial content and vibrant visuals, this report details progress in both internal and external operations of the company (Gazprom Neft 2017b). For instance, Gazprom Neft has created policies to address the well-being of its employees, and of the wider society in which these employees live. This view of sustainability also underpins the vision of Rodnye Goroda as a forward-looking programme dedicated to the development of human capital (Orlov 2018). Framed around equipping active citizens with the tools, opportunities and guidance necessary for positive changes at the local level, the company’s stated intentions align with the mainstream discourse of global developmental agencies promoting ‘people-centered, bottom-up, participatory, empowering, sustainable, and environmental development’ (Welker 2009, p. 146). Toward this end, the grant-based programme of Rodnye Goroda has been regarded as the most popular and effective means of social investment, even to the point of being recognized as the formula of the company’s success (Orlov 2018). Gazprom Neft’s justification and advancement of Rodnye Goroda may seem sufficiently rooted in the company’s broader commitment to sustainability (social sustainability in particular). A more critical look, however, points to a clear predicament in the actual implementation of CSR policies. Namely, while Gazprom Neft portrays itself as a partner of the people, our analysis shows that a top priority of the Rodnye Goroda programme has been to create a comfortable and hospitable environment in YNAO through a donor-based approach. In the end, the sweeping changes done for the people have far overshadowed those done by the people, leading to the conclusion that Gazprom Neft has been more intent on enhancing public relations than on fostering long-term sustainable development within local communities of YNAO (see Frynas 2005). A further challenge of Rodnye Goroda is its place within Gazprom Neft’s orientation toward short-term socio-economic objectives. A socially, economically and environmentally

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  271 sustainable CSR model, even one based on the idea of weak sustainability where human-made capital is considered more important than natural capital (see Davies 2013), would include activities centred on tackling the environmental consequences of fossil fuel extraction. The Rodnye Goroda initiative, by contrast, has failed to advance any measures, policy-based or budgetary, to incorporate the economy into ecology (see Tokunaga 2018), or even to address the expanding effect of production on key environmental indicators. Moreover, this initiative subtly and not so subtly promotes oil and gas as a privileged way of life, shaping a collective identity and cultural ways and values that are misaligned with the principles of sustainability. For instance, mainstream culture has become dismissive of the huge negative environmental impact of hydrocarbon exploitation in fragile Arctic ecosystems (Tokunaga 2018; Tynkkynen 2018). In fact, as one Moscow-based researcher who has worked extensively in YNAO explained to us in 2018, criticism directed toward the hydrocarbon companies is meagre to none, owing to the dominance of these companies that has and continues to permeate the society, economy and culture of the YNAO. Such shortcomings are visible in the CSR programmes of other oil and gas companies, and they spotlight bigger questions about whether such policies can be classified as ‘sustainable’ at all. Jedrzej George Frynas (2005) contends that even if best practices are adopted, CSR policy still could not solve the most basic problems of oil production, specifically the negative influence of the hydrocarbon industry on the environment, society and governance. This deficiency is due in part to a tendency of policies to be concentrated on the micro-level effects as opposed to the macro-level effects of the hydrocarbon industry. This issue of differing scale is a major impediment to the effectiveness of Rodnye Goroda. Today, as new fields and infrastructure are developed, the massive production levels in YNAO are only slated to climb and strengthen the region’s place as a national resource empire. At the same time, socio-economic development here remains regionally oriented. Rodnye Goroda is thus hamstrung by the pronounced divergence of the scales on which costs and benefits are measured, ultimately failing to promote social, economic and environmental sustainability in YNAO. What, then, might this assessment of Gazprom Neft’s CSR policies and sustainability outcomes tell us about the changing geographies of the (Russian) state and new spaces of geopolitics today?

24.5

(PARASTATAL) POWER AND EMERGING VOICES

While there have been some gestures toward a more far-reaching, citizen-driven and sustaining form of CSR, the underlying power dynamics that determine socio-economic development throughout YNAO remain firmly in place. Thus, the power of tradition prevails, embedding Rodnye Goroda in a primarily paternalistic mode where the state remains a dominant actor (Tysiachniouk et al. 2018; see Henry et al. 2016).1 The upshot is a much more top-down (in contrast to bottom-up) and philanthropic initiative despite the initial intent of actively engaging all local groups interested in issues of community development. Our analysis suggests that the company’s innovative CSR policies may, in fact, be little more than a formality and a way to boost the company’s image. In this regard, the possibility of rebalancing Rodnye Goroda into what it was meant to be seems to be steadily undermined by the primary interests of Gazprom Neft and the state. These interests are consolidated in corporate–state partnerships formed under the guise of socio-economic contracts meant to improve the overall conditions of administrative districts within the Yamalo-Nenets Region.

272  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The Yamal District (covering the Yamal Peninsula), home of Gazprom Neft’s lucrative Novoportovskoye oilfield, is a prominent site of such corporate–state integration. Press articles (e.g. Kormilitsyn 2017) often reinforced the strong connection between the Novoportovskoye field and the well-being of the Novy Port and Mys Kamenny villages (both with Indigenous populations and both in the Yamal District – see Figure 24.1). Gazprom Neft’s investment in the villages in such areas as infrastructure development has offered ‘powerful’ support to the district and all those residing there (Vremya Yamala 2017). The ensuing transformation of these villages has surprised visitors not expecting to encounter such modern amenities in Russia’s remote northern periphery (Belen’kii 2017). Such aid is a prime case of a ‘paternalistic interpretation of local needs’ (Tysiachniouk et al. 2018) in which the influence to help shape the rights and responsibilities that structure socio-economic agreements is not equally distributed. This ultimately grants Gazprom Neft and governments in YNAO greater leverage to fulfil their own best interests (see Newell 2005). Overlooking the involvement of Indigenous and local groups has engendered a culture of expectation reminiscent of the Soviet economic model (Tysiachniouk et al. 2018). Corporate provision may even be seen as a gift or ‘tribute’, granted by the company to the region (Frynas 2005; Tysiachniouk et al. 2018). Moreover, tributes (or gifts) from the outside do not instil a sense of ownership among the local people. As Frynas (2005) notes, projects introduced in this way cannot continue to function without the steady support from the outside, which contradicts a basic principle of sustainable development. An especially striking example of a tribute is Gazprom Neft’s organization of the Festival of the Reindeer Herders (Den’ Olenevoda) and the Festival of the Fishers (Den’ Rybaka). These day-long annual festivals, which are part of the Rodnye Goroda initiative, are meant to celebrate Indigenous livelihoods and culture. As such, they generate a lot of fanfare through traditional Indigenous competitions like sleigh races, wrestling and hurdling matches, and include high-value prizes for the winners (e.g. snowmobiles, gas-powered chain saws, satellite television) (North-Press 2016). Although the actual long-term benefits to Indigenous peoples seem negligible, these events still appear to be very effective in giving the impression that Gazprom is making good on its pledge to do everything possible to preserve the traditional lifestyle and culture of the Nenets (URA 2018). Yet beneath this facade of ‘honouring’ Indigenous culture, Indigenous peoples have had little choice in how, when and where development is planned (Balzar 2016). Such exclusions in the face of hydrocarbon companies’ increasing moves to repurpose tribal lands has led to growing tensions over territorial rights and access to age-old grazing pastures and migration routes for expanding reindeer herds (Magomedov 2019). When Indigenous peoples in the Yamalo-Nenets region have taken a stand against the highly ambitious development agenda of the hydrocarbon giants (e.g. Gazprom, Gazprom Neft) in this region, they have been threatened. In the face of such opposition, a community of rural protesters has formed. Called the Voice of the Tundra (Golos tundry), they are led by a young Nenets reindeer herder from the tundra and they organize extensively through social networking sites (e.g. the popular Russian social media site VKontakte). As Arbakhan Magomedov (2019) explains, the Voice of the Tundra movement has ‘brought politics back to the indigenous life of Russia’ by advocating for the environment and the people on the front line of land preservation who are increasingly suppressed by the paternalistic policies of corporate–state partnerships. Indeed, Voice of the Tundra may typify a new form of geopolitics emerging in parallel with the shifting geographies of the state.

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  273

24.6 CONCLUSION The Rodnye Goroda initiative is a vivid symbol of the Russian Arctic paradox, and of Gazprom Neft’s stance on sustainability. Throughout the Yamalo-Nenets region, the ubiquitous Rodnye Goroda graphic is displayed prominently on festival stages, the walls of new indoor swimming pools and on the t-shirts of volunteers at work (including Gazprom Neft employees) as if it is heralding the infusion of colour, activity and energy that YNAO’s ‘black gold’ has brought to this region. In one sense, Rodnye Goroda – as it was meant to be – speaks of an ecomodernist ideology within a changing state that embraces socio-economic and technological processes as central to long-term economic advancement and environmental protection.2 Yet, our analysis of the programme, as it is actually being implemented, suggests a sceptical perspective of ecomodernist and sustainable ideals. Rodnye Goroda falls far short of its intended aims. Instead, there were deep discrepancies in this model, namely: short-term socio-economic versus long-term sustainability objectives; Gazprom Neft as sponsor versus partner of the people; state-led versus citizen-driven projects; and empowerment versus ‘responsibilization’ of people. Even as some advantages are evident in both urban and rural areas, these discrepancies nonetheless undermine the best aspirations of Rodnye Goroda, as well as its potential to lead YNAO into a sustainable future. In the fragile and frigid environment of the Russian Arctic, the growing disparity between the costs of oil and gas production, and the benefits stemming from it, could eventually spell distress, or even calamity for this region. Whatever its intentions, the Rodnye Goroda CSR model simply does not have the capacity to correct such a deep imbalance, especially in the present circumstances where the confluence of technology, vast hydrocarbon reserves and a power-driven state have led to a colossal quest for more resource extraction. In a land where hydrocarbons have clearly worked miracles, the urgency of sustainability seems to have been eclipsed, leaving the question of life after hydrocarbons in YNAO still largely unanswered. Indeed, while this question of a post-hydrocarbon scenario may take special significance in the Arctic, it will also surely define the new spaces of geopolitics all around the world for many years to come.

NOTES 1. Henry et al. (2016) describe this form of paternalism as neo-paternalism, which occurs when the state, unable to provide for the needs of distant communities, engages in negotiations with corporations to identify the types of infrastructure and social needs to address within a community. 2. Personal comment from Pey-Yi Chu, 23 November 2019. See also: www​.ecomodernism​.org/​ manifesto​-english.

REFERENCES Balzar, M. (2016), ‘Indigeneity, land and activism in Siberia’, in A. Tidwell and B. Zellen (eds), Land, Indigenous Peoples and Conflict, New York: Routledge, pp. 9–27. Belen’kii, A. (2017), ‘The edge of geography: How people survive in a village in the middle of tundra’ (Krai geografii: Kak vyzhivayut v poselke sredi tundry), LiveJournal Travel Blog, 26 April, accessed January 2019 at https://​macos​.livejournal​.com/​1520239​.html

274  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Davies, G. (2013), ‘Appraising weak and strong sustainability: Searching for a middle ground’, Consilience: Journal of Sustainable Development, 10 (1), 111–24. EnergyLand (2018), ‘The program for the recovery of historical legacy in Yamal is planned until the year 2019’ (Programma utilizatsii istoricheskogo naslediya na Yamale rasschitana do 2019 goda), EnergyLand, 24 August, accessed 12 November 2018 at www​.energyland​.info European Commission (2001), Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility, Brussels: European Commission. Federal Press (2016), ‘The Captain of the Arctic has laid out a new course: “The main thing is the creation of a respectable climate”’ (Kapitan Arktika zalozhil novyi kurs: ‘Glavnoe—sozdanie dostoinogo klimata’), Federal Press, 3 October, accessed 15 July 2017 at www​.fedpress​.ru Frynas, J. (2005), ‘The false developmental promise of corporate social responsibility: Evidence from multinational oil companies’, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944–), 81 (3), 581–98. Gazprom Neft (2017a), Annual Report, accessed 9 October 2018 at https://​ar2017​.gazprom​-neft​.com/​ #technological​-leadership Gazprom Neft (2017b), Annual Report on Sustainable Development, accessed 18 January 2019 at https://​ csr2017​.gazprom​-neft​.com/​#aiming​-higher Gazprom Neft (2019), ‘Gazprom Neft: Rodnye goroda’, accessed 15 January 2020 at www​.rodnyegoroda​.ru Gritsenko, D. and E. Efimova (2018), ‘Planning for a sustainable Arctic: Regional development in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russia)’, in V.-P. Tynkkynen, S. Tabata, D. Gritsenko and M. Goto (eds), Russia’s Far North: The Contested Energy Frontier, New York: Routledge, pp. 67–83. Gritsenko, D., M. Goto, V.-P. Tynkkynen and S. Tabata (2018), ‘Foreword: A multidisciplinary effort to understand Russia’s Arctic policy and politics’, in V.-P. Tynkkynen, S. Tabata, D. Gritsenko and M. Goto (eds), Russia’s Far North: The Contested Energy Frontier, New York: Routledge, pp. xi–xvii. Heininen, L. (2018), ‘The twofold development of the Arctic: Where do the Arctic states stand?’, in V.-P. Tynkkynen, S. Tabata, D. Gritsenko and M. Goto (eds), Russia’s Far North: The Contested Energy Frontier, New York: Routledge, pp. 84–95. Henry, L., S. Nysten-Haarala, S. Tulaeva and M. Tysiachniouk (2016), ‘Corporate social responsibility and the oil industry in the Russian Arctic: Global norms and neo-paternalism’, Europe-Asia Studies, 68 (8), 1340–68. Khayrullina, M. (2017), ‘CSR in sustainable development: Comparative analysis’, Quality Innovation Prosperity/Kvalita Inovácia Prosperita, 21 (3), 36–49. Kommersant (2017), ‘Our demands for our partners are extremely high’ (Trebovaniya k partneram u nas kraine vysokie), Kommersant (Ekaterinburg), 129, 19 July, accessed 12 November 2018 at www​ .vsluh​.ru Kormilitsyn, S. (2017), ‘The path of oil: The heavy extraction of “light” oil’ (Put’ nefti: eta tyazhelaya ‘legkaya’ dobycha), Business Peterburg (Delovoi Peterburg), 16 October, www​.dp​.ru Kumpula, T., B. Forbes and F. Stammler (2010), ‘Remote sensing and local knowledge of hydrocarbon exploitation: The case of Bovanenkovo, Yamal Peninsula, West Siberia, Russia’, Arctic, 63 (2), 165–78. Magomedov, A. (2019), ‘“Where is our land?”: Challenges for Indigenous groups in the Russian Arctic’, Russia File: A Blog of the Kennan Institute, 14 November, accessed 9 December 2019 at www​ .wilsoncenter​.org/​blog​-post/​where​-our​-land​-challenges​-for​-indigenous​-groups​-the​-russian​-arctic Nekhodka, E., Y. Kolbysheva and V. Makoveeva (2015), ‘Corporate social policy: Problems of institutionalization and experience of Russian oil and gas companies’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 27, 1–6. Newell, P. (2005), ‘Citizenship, accountability and community: The limits of the CSR agenda’, International Affairs, 81 (3), 541–57. North-Press (2016), ‘In the village of Novy Port the Festival of the Reindeer Herders was revived with the support of the oil workers’ (V sele Novy Port pri podderzhke neftyanikov vozrodili Den’ olenevoda), North-Press: News of the Yamal region (Sever Press – Novosti Yamal’skogo regiona), 22 April, accessed 15 July 2017 at https://​sever​-press​.ru/​2016/​04/​22/​v​-sele​-novyj​-port​-pri​-podderzhke​ -neftyanikov​-vozrodili​-den​-olenevoda/​

Sustainability as ‘corporate social responsibility’  275 Orlov, S. (2018), ‘Quality of life: A Russian business is changing the model of social investments’ (Kachestvo zhizni: Rossiiskii biznes menyaet model’ sotsial’nykh investitsii), Siberian Oil (Sibirskaya Neft), 148 (1), 10–15. Poznakhareva, E. (2017), ‘The studio of kindness’ (Masterskaya dobroty), Vslukh.ru, 25 December, accessed 12 November 2018 at www​.vsluh​.ru/​longreads/​285 Prieto-Carrón, M., P. Lund-Thomsen, A. Chan, A. Muro and C. Bhushan (2006), ‘Critical perspectives on CSR and development: What we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know’, International Affairs, 82 (5), 977–87. Raygorodetsky, G. (2017), ‘They migrate 800 miles a year: Now it’s getting tougher’, National Geographic, accessed 15 October 2017 at www​.nationalgeographic​.com/​magazine/​2017/​10/​nenets​ -yamal​-herders​-energy​-development/​ Shvarts, E., A. Pakhalov and A. Knizhnikov (2016), ‘Assessment of environmental responsibility of oil and gas companies’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 127, 143–51. Tokunaga, M. (2018), ‘Russian Arctic development and environmental discourse’, in V.-P. Tynkkynen, S. Tabata, D. Gritsenko and M. Goto (eds), Russia’s Far North: The Contested Energy Frontier, New York: Routledge, pp. 129–46. Tynkkynen, V.-P. (2016a), ‘Energy as power: Gazprom, gas infrastructure, and geo-governmentality in Putin’s Russia’, Slavic Review, 75 (2), 374–95. Tynkkynen, V.-P. (2016b), ‘Sports fields and corporate governmentality: Gazprom’s All-Russian Gas Program as energopower’, in N. Koch (ed.), Critical Geographies of Sport: Space, Power and Sport in Global Perspective, New York: Routledge, pp. 75–90. Tynkkynen, V.-P. (2018), ‘Introduction: Contested Russian Arctic’, in V.-P. Tynkkynen, S. Tabata, D. Gritsenko and M. Goto (eds), Russia’s Far North: The Contested Energy Frontier, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–8. Tysiachniouk, M., A. Petrov, V. Kuklina and N. Krasnoshtanova (2018), ‘Between Soviet legacy and corporate social responsibility: Emerging benefit sharing frameworks in the Irkutsk oil region, Russia’, Sustainability, 10 (3334), 1–23. URA (2018), ‘Oil workers congratulate the dwellers of Yamal who catch “living silver” [fish]’ (Neftyaniki pozdravili yamal’tsev, dobyvayushchikh ‘zhivoe serebro’), URA, 12 July, accessed 12 November 2018 at www​.ura​.ru Vremya Yamala (2017), ‘A housewarming in comfortable apartments’ (Novosel’e v komfortnykh kvartirakh), Vremya Yamala, no. 19, 12 May. Walker, D., B. Forbes, M. Leibman, H. Epstein, U. Bhatt, J. Comiso, D. Drozdov, A. Gubarkov, G. Jia, E. Kaarlejärvi, J. Kaplan, A. Khomutov, G. Kofinas, T. Kumpula, P. Kuss, N. Moskalenko, N. Meschtyb, A. Pajunen, M. Raynolds, V. Romanovsky, F. Stammler and Q. Yu (2011), ‘Cumulative effects of rapid land-cover and land-use changes on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia’, in G. Gutman and A. Reissell (eds), Eurasian Arctic Land Cover and Land Use in a Changing Climate, Amsterdam: Springer, pp. 207–36. Welker, M. (2009), ‘“Corporate security begins in the community”: Mining, the corporate social responsibility industry, and environmental advocacy in Indonesia’, Cultural Anthropology, 24 (1), 142–79.

25. Sovereignty and climate necropolitics: the tragedy of the state system goes ‘green’ Meredith J. DeBoom

25.1

TWO MOMENTS IN CHANGING ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY

China entered the twenty-first century as both an environmental pariah and a rising geopolitical power. Media coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics – an opportunity for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to enhance its ‘soft power’ and showcase China’s infrastructural modernity – was literally and figuratively clouded by images of a smog-choked cityscape. At the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, the CCP’s insistence on ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ despite China’s emergence as the world’s largest state-based source of greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms prompted criticism that it was using ‘last season’s playbook’ (Conrad 2012, p. 435). More recently, analysts have expressed concerns that the CCP is using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to outsource carbon-intensive industries, with negative implications for global emissions targets and for communities and environments near investment sites (see Tracy et al. 2017; Elkind 2019; Jun and Zadek 2019). Persistent geopolitical representations of China as a climate change laggard reflect its ongoing environmental challenges, but they also mask a significant shift in the CCP’s approach to the environment at both national and global scales. In the mid-2000s, a new discourse began to circulate within the CCP: ecological civilization. Initially advanced by then-vice minister of environmental protection Pan Yue, ecological civilization calls for environmental protection to be elevated to the domestic priority status long accorded to economic growth (Zhou 2006). After several years on the political margins, the CCP incorporated ecological civilization into its constitution during the 18th National Congress of 2012 (Geall and Ely 2018; Hansen et al. 2018). The implementation of ecological civilization remains most evident in the domestic realm, but Xi Jinping has elevated its geopolitical prominence since his confirmation as president in 2013. In his 2017 report to the 19th National Congress of the CCP, for example, Xi (2017, p. 5) characterized ecological civilization as a ‘global endeavour’, with the CCP-led state as its ‘torchbearer’. Although the extra-territorial significance of ecological civilization remains uncertain, Xi’s discursive rescaling suggests that it may have implications for global norms of environmental sovereignty as well as for national norms of environmental management. Around the time that ecological civilization was gaining traction within the CCP, another ruling party was making its own case for a change in environmental sovereignty norms. For Namibia’s SWAPO party, the most pressing issue was not climate change but rather sovereignty over a commodity that fuels its mitigation: uranium. As domestic unemployment and inequality ticked upward, SWAPO faced a populist backlash against the neoliberal mining policies it had pursued since Namibia’s 1990 independence. In lieu of outright nationalization – a difficult prospect for a state with little geopolitical clout and limited financial resources 276

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics  277 – SWAPO launched a state-owned mining company in 2008. It aptly named the company Epangelo – ‘government’ in Namibia’s Oshiwambo language – and promised that it would make ‘the people of Namibia meaningful participants in the mining business’ (Katali 2011). After several years on the margins of Namibia’s mining sector, Epangelo took a modest step towards pursuing its lofty mission in 2015, when it secured a 10 per cent ownership stake in the Husab uranium mine. The planetary ambitions of the CCP’s ecological civilization and the national aims of SWAPO’s Epangelo initially appear to be at odds. Yet these two environmental sovereignty projects are deeply intertwined: China’s state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) is the majority (90 per cent) owner in the Husab mine. The rationale beyond CGN’s ownership stake is self-evident. Husab is expected to become the world’s second-largest uranium mine upon reaching full production. Its uranium will help the CCP achieve its ambitious targets for nuclear energy, one of several low-carbon energy strategies prioritized under ecological civilization. The rationale behind Epangelo’s stake is less obvious. For CGN, co-ownership with Epangelo provides neither financial nor technical benefits. For Epangelo, a 10 per cent ownership stake is a far cry from national sovereignty over natural resources. Yet SWAPO’s leadership has welcomed CGN’s majority ownership of Husab, framing the mine as a ‘win–win opportunity’ (Geingob 2015). CCP leaders have expressed similar support for the mine’s ownership structure, praising the Namibian government for creating a ‘superior investment environment’ that is producing ‘win–win fruits’ (Zhang 2018). How can we explain this unlikely alliance between the Chinese state’s extra-territorial resource ownership, which might otherwise be characterized as ‘resource grabbing’, and the Namibian state’s resource nationalism, which is typically associated with anti-foreign investment sentiments? This chapter introduces ‘climate necropolitics’ as a framework for answering this question and considering, more broadly, how sovereignty is changing in association with both environmental and geopolitical change – and with what consequences for whom and where. Climate necropolitics integrates three theoretical concepts from geography, science and technology studies (STS) and political theory: planetary sovereignty (Mann and Wainwright 2018), sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2009; Jasanoff 2015) and necropolitics (Mbembe 2003). Geographers have demonstrated the value of each of these concepts, separately, for analysing environmental issues (see Sparke and Bessner 2019 on planetary sovereignty, Bouzarovski and Bassin 2011 on sociotechnical imaginaries, and Cavanagh and Himmelfarb 2015; Davies 2018; Alexis-Martin 2019; Margulies 2019 on necropolitics), but integrating them into climate necropolitics facilitates new insights into the changing geographies of environmental sovereignty. Grounding each concept in the example of ecological civilization, I use climate necropolitics to consider why climate change could provoke the emergence of a planetary sovereign, how such a sovereign might cultivate support for and implement its strategy for planetary management, and why planetary sovereignty may simultaneously facilitate rapid mitigative action and deepened socio-ecological violence. Before turning to these inchoate environmental sovereignty futures, we need to begin with the paradox that characterizes the environmental sovereignty present: the ‘green’ tragedy of the state system.

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25.2

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ‘GREEN’ TRAGEDY OF THE STATE SYSTEM

‘[T]he link between the control of nature and the realization of state power’ (Whitehead et al. 2007, p. 6) has emerged as a major theme in political geographic scholarship on climate change (Gerhardt et al. 2010; Dittmer et al. 2011; Kythreotis 2012; Dalby 2013; Oels 2013; O’Lear and Dalby 2015; Bennett 2016; O’Lear 2016). Through both its atmospheric scale and localized effects, climate change challenges the assumption that environmental sovereignty neatly aligns with the territorial boundaries of states. Yet despite this scalar mismatch, the system of state-based environmental sovereignty has persisted. States have decision-making power over the terms and implementation of international climate change agreements, which in turn fortify state-based environmental sovereignty by measuring greenhouse gas emissions at the scale of the state (Kythreotis 2012; O’Lear 2016). These agreements also reinforce the assumption that the apparatus of the state is the most legitimate means of representing the interests of the population – the idealized nation – within its borders. Even climate change inaction has been used to fortify states’ claims to environmental sovereignty. Military and civilian ‘environmental security’ strategies that frame the state as the last defence against the anticipated anarchy of the environmental future have proliferated in recent years (Oels 2013; Dalby 2014). Indeed, ‘far from putting an end to the state framing of nature’, most state actors have responded to climate change by redoubling their efforts to render nature governable (Whitehead et al. 2007, p. 203). The paradoxical entrenchment of statist geopolitics in the context of climate change is the ‘green’ iteration of what Agnew (2017) calls the ‘tragedy of the nation-state’: state-based sovereignty has proven inadequate and flawed as a structure through which to address climate change, yet mitigation and adaptation efforts have often reinforced that very structure. In response to this ‘green’ tragedy, debates over the feasibility and desirability of a ‘world state’ or ‘world government’ have intensified in recent years (Wendt 2003; Tännsjö 2008). Proponents argue that a global sovereign could, ostensibly, identify and enforce a climate change strategy that transcends the parochialism of the state system to reflect the ‘global interest’ – or at least claims to do so. Could a sovereign with global environmental authority overcome the ‘green’ tragedy of the state system? If so, how and from where might such a sovereign emerge, and with what costs for whom? These questions prompt us to move beyond the state system to consider an alternative structure through which nature might be rendered governable: planetary sovereignty.

25.3

ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION: A NASCENT SHIFT TOWARDS PLANETARY SOVEREIGNTY

In Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, Mann and Wainwright (2018) bring together theories of critical political economy (drawing on Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci) and sovereignty (including those of Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt) to consider how the foundational political assumptions that structure our world may ‘adapt’ to climate change. They identify the replacement of the current system of state-based sovereignty with ‘planetary sovereignty’ as the most likely such political adaptation. Mann and Wainwright’s (2018, p. 29) combination of planetary and sovereignty is twofold, describing

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics  279 a sovereign ‘capable of acting both at the planetary scale … and in the name of planetary management – for the sake of life on Earth’. A planetary sovereign, in other words, could both proclaim a planetary state of exception (a climate emergency) and implement the actions it deems necessary given that emergency on a planetary scale (such as deciding who may and may not emit carbon). Its sovereignty would be constrained only by the atmospheric limits of Earth itself. Given the persistence of the state system in the face of climate change, Mann and Wainwright acknowledge that the emergence of planetary sovereignty is not a foregone conclusion. Yet they argue that such a change in sovereignty’s character, form and scale is not as implausible as it may seem. Drawing on Agamben’s (2005, p. 14) identification of the ‘paradigm of security’ as the ‘normal technique of government’ in the contemporary world, Mann and Wainwright (2018, p. 31) note that rescaling security to encompass the ‘making-secure of planetary life’ could provide a pathway for planetary sovereignty’s legitimation. They anticipate that such a pathway is most likely to be pursued by one or more Western states, which together could form a ‘Climate Leviathan’ ‘armed with democratic legitimacy’ and devoted to the preservation of the capitalist system (Mann and Wainwright 2018, p. 30). Although Mann and Wainwright acknowledge that China could someday pursue planetary sovereignty, they do not dwell on this possibility or evaluate ecological civilization as a potential pathway for such a pursuit. This is understandable, particularly given the CCP’s fierce opposition to perceived violations of state-defined sovereignty in the past. Under the leadership of President Xi, however, the CCP has begun to adopt a more assertive geopolitical role, including in the realm of the environment. In his 2017 report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, Xi (2017, p. 5) went so far as to characterize China as ‘taking a driving seat’ in global efforts to combat climate change. China, he continued, had become ‘an important participant, contributor, and torchbearer in the global endeavour for ecological civilization’ (Xi 2017, p. 5). Xi’s rescaling of ecological civilization from a domestic initiative into a ‘global project’ certainly does not imply that the CCP will seek planetary sovereignty. Speaking a mere three years after then-United States (US) president Obama (2014) chastised China for not fulfilling its ‘special responsibility to lead’, Xi may have merely seized the opportunity to recast China from climate pariah to environmental leader – particularly in the wake of the US government’s announced intention to abandon the Paris Climate Accord. Indeed, Xi’s speech carefully contextualized ecological civilization in the broader framework of international cooperation. Yet we should not overlook the significance of Xi’s characterization of ecological civilization as a global endeavour, particularly given the CCP’s historical prioritization of state-defined sovereignty. Even if this shift remains limited to the realm of rhetoric, it raises novel possibilities for environmental sovereignty futures – including the prospect of a planetary sovereign whose geopolitical strategy centres around non-interference, ‘win–win’ cooperation and state capitalism rather than democracy promotion, ‘soft power’ and ‘free market’ capitalism. How might such a sovereign justify and enact a planetary strategy for environmental management? And how might it contend with the persistent allure of nationalism, both at home and abroad? To address these questions, we must consider how visions of the future like ecological civilization gain collective appeal and are ‘built into the hard edifices of matter and praxis’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2015, p. 323).

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25.4

REALIZING ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION: SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IN CHINA

Jasanoff and Kim (2009) developed the concept of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ to explain how ideas of scientific and technological progress become enrolled in the pursuit of collective visions of the future. Bridging STS work on hybridity, including Haraway (1989), with political theory on social identity, including Anderson (1983) and Appadurai (1990), sociotechnical imaginaries refer to ‘collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology’ (Jasanoff 2015, p. 4). Sociotechnical imaginaries are similar to master narratives (Lyotard 1984 [1979]) in that they provide ‘a rationale for society’s long evolutionary course while also committing that society to keep performing the imagined lines of the story’ (Jasanoff 2015, p. 20), but they extend beyond master narratives by identifying a specific strategy for achieving that future. Sociotechnical imaginaries, in other words, are Janus-faced; they are simultaneously past-grounded and future-oriented; prescriptive and normative. By identifying futures that are achievable and futures that ought to be achieved, they identify what has been as well as what can and should be. In explaining why some sociotechnical imaginaries gain collective support while others flounder, Jasanoff and Kim foreground contextual factors, including history, national identity, and culture. They first developed sociotechnical imaginaries to explain why the governments of the US and South Korea adopted radically different rhetoric and implementation strategies to govern nuclear energy. Whereas US leaders framed nuclear energy as a ‘potentially runaway technology’ that required a ‘responsible regulator’, South Korean leaders characterized it as a transformative technology (‘atoms for development’) that could only be optimized through the deft guidance of the developmental state (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, p. 119). In each case, leaders used a dystopian or utopian vision of a technology, grounded in the norms and history of their respective society, to justify a different ‘necessary’ role for the state. As these examples suggest, political leaders often play an outsized role in naturalizing sociotechnical imaginaries, but it is the shared understandings of social life and order (including what constitutes the public good) upon which they are based that facilitate their systemic adoption. This is why sociotechnical imaginaries, although subject to contestation (Delina 2018), often become naturalized to such a degree that alternative visions of the future – and strategies by which to accomplish those visions – are foreclosed upon. Applying sociotechnical imaginaries to ecological civilization sheds light on why nuclear energy has emerged as a key strategy for its implementation – and for reasons that extend well beyond carbon emissions. First, as Mitchell (2011) has demonstrated, particular energy systems complement and are complemented by particular types of politics. The CCP’s approach to domestic politics facilitates the rapid development of nuclear energy, which requires long-term planning (to ensure that its high up-front costs will not be in vain), a technocratic approach (to counter safety concerns), and centralized structures of authority (to mitigate protest and promote regulatory consistency) (DeBoom 2020a). Second, nuclear energy is associated with technological mastery, military might, and nationalist pride. These overtones support the ‘Chinese dream of national rejuvenation’, a utopian geopolitical vision that Xi has promoted since 2012. Third, nuclear energy is a high-wage industry with an expanding

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics  281 export market in the Global South – commercial features that align with the CCP’s ‘going out’ geo-economic strategy and its descendant, the BRI. Finally, nuclear energy is associated with an imaginary of ‘limitless’ possibility (Cohn 1997; Hecht 2012). This connotation is well suited to a ruling party that uses economic development as a governmentality strategy and has built its legitimacy around promises of limitless progress (Geall and Ely 2018; Grant 2018; Pow 2018). The CCP’s quest to make China the world’s nuclear energy leader is already well under way. Despite connecting its first reactor to the grid only in 1991, China is expected to surpass the US as the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy by 2030 (WNA 2019a). Yet ecological civilization will require more than rapid reactor construction to achieve its geopolitical potential. Jasanoff (in Jasanoff and Kim, 2015, p. 326) argues that sociotechnical imaginaries become ‘embedded’ and expand beyond their place of origin by latching onto ‘tangible things’, including commodities. To implement its nuclear energy strategy, the CCP will need to secure both the foundational commodity of nuclear energy – uranium – and the cooperation of actors who control that uranium. The CCP’s current plans for nuclear energy suggest that China will require 1 million tons of uranium per year by 2050 – an amount equivalent to what the entire world consumed in 2015 (Zhang and Bai 2015). How will the CCP secure this supply of uranium, and how might its strategy for doing so intersect with Xi’s characterization of ecological civilization as a ‘global endeavour’? These questions bring us to the shadow of utopian visions that promise collective life for some: dystopian realities that require collective death of others.

25.5

ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION BEYOND CHINA: THE NECROPOLITICS OF THE HUSAB URANIUM MINE

Achille Mbembe (2003) developed the concept of ‘necropower’ to explain how and why sovereigns exercise violence against some populations in the name of promoting life for other populations. Necropower refers to ‘the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable [emphasis in original] and who is not’ (Mbembe 2003, p. 27). Whereas biopolitics is characterized by ‘the power to “make” live and “let” die’ (Foucault 2003, p. 241), necropolitics entails ‘the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die’ (Mbembe 2003, p. 11). Necropolitics and biopolitics are thus ‘two sides of the same coin’, as Braidotti (2007, p. 2) argues, but they theorize power from radically different starting points. Mbembe inverts the Europe-centric genealogy of biopower by tracing the genealogy of necropower through the extractive violence of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid. He argues that sovereigns can render such necropolitical violence ‘legitimate’ because they execute it not against subjects but rather against populations deemed to be ‘savages’. These ‘savage’ populations reside at the ‘frontiers’ of the state, places ‘where the controls and guarantees of judicial order can be suspended … where the violence of the state of exception is deemed to operate in the service of civilization’ (Mbembe 2003, p. 24). Does ecological civilization condemn some to death so that others may live? To answer this question, we need to extend our analysis of environmental sovereignty beyond the territorial limits of the Chinese state. China’s annual domestic uranium demand has outpaced domestic supply since the mid-2000s. This situation is not due to a lack of domestic uranium resources. China ranks eighth in the world in proven uranium reserves (WNA 2019b). Even with the

282  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state CCP’s ambitious targets for nuclear energy, China could be self-sufficient in uranium through at least 2030 using only currently operating mines (Zhang and Bai 2015). Yet most of the CCP’s investments in uranium mining over the past ten years have occurred abroad. By 2019, China’s two state-owned nuclear giants, CGN and CNNC, had amassed overseas uranium holdings equal to three times China’s total domestic reserves (WNA 2019b). The Chinese state’s single largest source of foreign uranium is the Husab mine in Namibia, which is expected to become the world’s second-largest uranium mine when it reaches full production. A $5.2 billion project, Husab was the largest-ever Chinese state investment in sub-Saharan Africa when it began construction in 2012. It is located in the Namib desert, where annual rainfall rarely exceeds 10 inches and many rural communities rely on aquifers to support their subsistence livelihoods as farmers and herders. The combination of intensified uranium mining and a series of climate change-associated droughts has undermined the sustainability of local aquifers and in turn jeopardized the survival of agriculturally dependent communities (DeBoom 2017). Uranium mining may also endanger the health of local populations via gale-force winds that can dislodge radioactive dust and toxins from mine tailings and structural failures that can contaminate groundwater (DeBoom 2020a). Yet far from protesting the CCP’s exercise in extra-territorial resource ownership – which appears to undermine both its own goals for resource sovereignty and the health and livelihoods of rural communities – Namibia’s SWAPO ruling party has endorsed the Husab mine as a ‘win–win’ project. To make sense of this seemingly perverse outcome, we need to turn, finally, to climate necropolitics.

25.6

CLIMATE NECROPOLITICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY FUTURES

Integrating planetary sovereignty, sociotechnical imaginaries, and necropolitics into the framework of climate necropolitics reveals that the Chinese state is not alone in executing the sovereign calculus of who ‘may live’ and who ‘must die’. Reflecting its geopolitical emphasis on ‘win–win’ cooperation and respect for state-defined sovereignty, the CCP is not imposing ecological civilization on the Namibian state. Instead, the CCP has enrolled Namibia’s ruling party, SWAPO, in ecological civilization by providing it with an opportunity to pursue its own sociotechnical imaginary: a utopian future in which Namibia’s resource wealth is harnessed to fuel national development. During the mining license approval process, SWAPO negotiated with CGN to secure a 10 per cent ownership stake in Husab for the Namibian state’s Epangelo mining company. As a state-owned entity that prioritizes politics as well as profit, CGN welcomed this proposal – and, importantly, helped to secure a Chinese government loan to fund Epangelo’s stake. Once this loan is repaid, Husab is expected to generate $170–200 million in annual revenues for the Namibian state, an amount roughly equivalent to 5 per cent of its pre-Husab annual revenues. The Husab loan raises additional sovereignty issues (see DeBoom 2020b), but it is unlikely that Epangelo – which previously operated on annual budget of $500,000 in an industry in which one haul truck costs $4 million – would have an ownership stake in a world-leading uranium mine without it. Husab’s benefits for SWAPO extend beyond revenue. Resource nationalism ‘is rooted in the question of who gets to legitimately speak in the name of the state or the nation, where, and at what scale sovereignty or autonomy is claimed’ (Koch and Perreault 2019, p. 617, emphasis in original). Epangelo was created in 2008 in response to rising populism, which SWAPO’s

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics  283 leadership interpreted as a threat to the party’s longstanding electoral dominance. SWAPO attempted to co-opt these populist sentiments by arguing that problems like unemployment and inequality were caused by an inadequate state role in mining – not, as some populist leaders claimed, by SWAPO’s failed leadership. Epangelo, SWAPO officials promised, would end Namibia’s status as an ‘Eldorado of speculators’ by making ‘the people of Namibian [sic] meaningful participants in the mining business rather than rent-seekers’ (Katali 2011). Today, SWAPO officials cite Husab as the first step towards fulfilling that promise. When I asked one SWAPO leader to explain how increased government revenue from Husab will benefit Namibians, he replied, visibly bewildered by the question, ‘government is the people. As government benefits, the people are beneficiaries.’ This sentiment and others like it suggest that Husab is not only a tool to strengthen SWAPO’s electoral dominance; it is also a tool to consolidate the Namibian state – under SWAPO’s leadership – as the legitimate guardian of both natural resources and the ‘national interest’. Returning, then, to the question set out at the beginning of this chapter, climate necropolitics reveals that the alliance between the CCP’s ecological civilization and SWAPO’s resource nationalism is not as unlikely as it first seems. Far from undermining one another, these two geo-imaginaries have enabled one another. For the CCP, Husab presents perhaps the best of all possible environmental sovereignty situations. It is a reliable source of uranium to support the CCP’s nuclear energy strategy that does not directly condemn Chinese subjects or environments to mining-associated violence. Even better, the CCP has secured Husab’s uranium through ‘win–win’ cooperation rather than conflict. This is a valuable outcome at a time when Western leaders are accusing China of outsourcing its environmental pollution and threatening the sovereignty of Global South states through initiatives like the BRI. The CCP is not Husab’s only beneficiary. Just as the mine fuels the CCP’s geopolitical ascendency, it also fuels SWAPO’s own vision for environmental sovereignty: an extractivist future in which the SWAPO-led state uses Namibia’s natural resource wealth to consolidate its status as the ‘legitimate’ representative of the idealized Namibian nation. As for Namibians living near Husab who may lose their livelihoods and their health to intensified uranium mining, it is likely not a coincidence that these communities disproportionately consist of politically marginalized minority groups. In rendering these populations disposable, SWAPO is also rendering them governable. The result is a mutually beneficial, trans-scalar exercise in environmental necropower. Beyond ecological civilization, geographers can use the framework of climate necropolitics to identify emerging spaces and relations of environmental sovereignty and assess the distribution of their geopolitical and environmental consequences. Are planetary sovereignty and the state-based system of environmental sovereignty necessarily incompatible? Climate necropolitics raises the possibility that planetary sovereignty could emerge through rather than in opposition to state-based sovereignty. Does the persistent allure of nationalism undermine the possibility of planetary sovereignty? Climate necropolitics opens space for considering how an emerging planetary sovereign could use nationalism to cultivate support for its vision of the geopolitical and environmental future at home as well as abroad. Is planetary sovereignty the best option for overcoming the ‘green’ tragedy of the state system? Climate necropolitics cautions us that changes in the form, character and scale of sovereignty may facilitate rapid mitigative action while simultaneously deepening socio-ecological violence. As the implications of geopolitical and environmental change continue to take shape, transdisciplinary frameworks like climate necropolitics can help geographers think anew about the assumptions

284  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state of environmental geopolitics – and consider novel possibilities for environmental sovereignty futures.

REFERENCES Agamben, G. (2005), State of Exception, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Agnew, J. (2017), ‘The tragedy of the nation-state’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5 (4), 347–50. Alexis-Martin, B. (2019), ‘The nuclear imperialism-necropolitics nexus: Contextualizing Chinese-Uyghur oppression in our nuclear age’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 60 (2), 152–76. Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1990), ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, Public Culture, 2 (2), 1–24. Bennett, M. (2016), ‘Discursive, material, vertical, and extensive dimensions of post-Cold War Arctic resource extraction’, Polar Geography, 39 (4), 258–73. Bouzarovski, S. and M. Bassin (2011), ‘Energy and identity: Imagining Russia as a hydrocarbon superpower’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (4), 783–94. Braidotti, R. (2007), ‘Bio-power and necro-politics’, accessed 18 December 2018 at https://​rosibraidotti​ .com/​publications/​bio​-power​-and​-necro​-politics/​ Cavanagh, C.J. and D. Himmelfarb (2015), ‘“Much in blood and money”: Necropolitical ecology on the margins of the Uganda protectorate’, Antipode, 47 (1), 55–73. Cohn, S.M. (1997), Too Cheap to Meter: An Economic and Philosophical Analysis of the Nuclear Dream, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Conrad, B. (2012), ‘China in Copenhagen: Reconciling the “Beijing climate revolution” and the “Copenhagen climate obstinacy”’, China Quarterly, 210, 435–55. Dalby, S. (2013), ‘Biopolitics and climate security in the Anthropocene’, Geoforum, 49, 184–92. Dalby, S. (2014), ‘Rethinking geopolitics: Climate security in the Anthropocene’, Global Policy, 5 (1), 1–9. Davies, T. (2018), ‘Toxic space and time: Slow violence, necropolitics, and petrochemical pollution’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108 (6), 1537–53. DeBoom, M. (2017), ‘Nuclear (geo)political ecologies: A hybrid geography of Chinese investment in Namibia's uranium sector’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 46 (3), 53–83. DeBoom, M. (2020a), ‘Toward a more sustainable energy transition: Lessons from Chinese investments in Namibian uranium’, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 62 (1), 4–14. DeBoom, M. (2020b), ‘Who is afraid of “debt-trap diplomacy”? Geopolitical perceptions and the multi-scalar geographies of risk’, Area Development and Policy, 5 (1), 15–22. Delina, L. (2018), ‘Whose and what futures? Navigating the contested coproduction of Thailand’s energy sociotechnical imaginaries’, Energy Research and Social Science, 35, 48–56. Dittmer, J., S. Moisio, A. Ingram, and K. Dodds (2011), ‘Have you heard the one about the disappearing ice?’ Political Geography, 30 (4), 202–14. Elkind, J. (2019), ‘Toward a real green Belt and Road’, Report of the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, 25 April. Foucault, M. (2003), Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, London: Allen Lane. Geall, S., and A. Ely (2018), ‘Narratives and pathways towards an ecological civilization in contemporary China’, China Quarterly, 236, 1175–96. Geingob, H. (2015), ‘Statement by H.E. Hage G. Geingob, President of the Republic of Namibia at the opening of the FOCAC’, 7 December. Gerhardt, H., P. Steinberg, J. Tasch, S. Fabiano, and R. Shields (2010), ‘Contested sovereignty in a changing Arctic’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100 (4), 992–1002. Grant, A. (2018), ‘Hyperbuilding the civilized city: Ethnicity and marginalization in eastern Tibet’, Critical Asian Studies, 50 (4), 537–55. Hansen, M.E., H. Li, and R. Svarverud (2018), ‘Ecological civilization: Interpreting the Chinese past, projecting the global future’, Global Environmental Change, 53, 195–203. Haraway, D. (1989), Primate Visions, New York: Routledge.

Sovereignty and climate necropolitics  285 Hecht, G. (2012), Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jasanoff, S. (2015), ‘Future imperfect: Science, technology and the imaginations of modernity’, in S. Jasanoff and S.-H. Kim (eds), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–33. Jasanoff, S. and S.-H. Kim (2009), ‘Containing the atom: Sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea’, Minerva, 47 (2), 119–46. Jasanoff, S. and S.-H. Kim (eds) (2015), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Jun, M. and S. Zadek (2019), ‘Decarbonizing the Belt and Road: A green finance roadmap’, Climate Works Foundation Report, 4 September. Katali, I. (2011), ‘Media statement’, Ministry of Mines and Energy, Government of the Republic of Namibia, 10 May. Koch, N. and T. Perreault (2019), ‘Resource nationalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 43 (4), 611–31. Kythreotis, A. (2012), ‘Progress in global climate change politics? Reasserting national state territoriality in a “post-political” world’, Progress in Human Geography, 36 (4), 457–74. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984 [1979]), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mann, G. and J. Wainwright (2018), Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, London: Verso. Margulies, J. (2019), ‘Making the “man-eater”: Tiger conservation as necropolitics’, Political Geography, 69, 150–61. Mbembe, A. (2003), ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, 15 (1), 11–40. Mitchell, T. (2011), Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, London: Verso. Obama, B. (2014), ‘Remarks by the President at UN Climate Change Summit’, Office of the President of the United States, 23 September. Oels, A. (2013), ‘Rendering climate change governable by risk: From probability to contingency’, Geoforum, 45, 17–29. O’Lear, S. (2016), ‘Climate science and slow violence: A view from political geography and STS on mobilizing technoscientific ontologies of climate change’, Political Geography, 52, 4–13. O’Lear, S. and S. Dalby (eds) (2015), Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics, New York: Routledge. Pow, C.P. (2018), ‘Building a harmonious society through greening: Ecological civilization and aesthetic governmentality in China’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 103 (3), 864–83. Sparke, M. and D. Bessner (2019), ‘Reaction, resilience, and the Trumpist behemoth: Environmental risk management from “hoax” to technique of domination’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (2), 533–44. Tännsjö, T. (2008), Global Democracy: The Case for a World Government, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tracy, E.F., E. Shvarts, E. Simonov, and M. Babenko (2017), ‘China’s new Eurasian ambitions: The environmental risks of the Silk Road Economic Belt’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 58 (1), 56–88. Wendt, A. (2003), ‘Why a world state is inevitable’, European Journal of International Relations, 9 (4), 491–542. Whitehead, M., R. Jones, and M. Jones (2007), The Nature of the State: Excavating the Political Ecologies of the Modern State, Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Nuclear Association (WNA) (2019a), Plans for New Reactors Worldwide, accessed 2 June 2019 at www​.world​-nuclear​.org/​information​-library/​current​-and​-future​-generation/​plans​-for​-new​-reactors​ -worldwide​.aspx World Nuclear Association (WNA) (2019b), World Uranium Mining, accessed 2 June 2019 at www​ .world​-nuclear​.org/​information​-library/​nuclear​-fuel​-cycle/​mining​-of​-uranium/​world​-uranium​-mining​ -production​.aspx Xi, J. (2017), ‘Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’, 19th CCP National Congress Address, 18 October.

286  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Zhang, H. and Y. Bai (2015), ‘China’s access to uranium resources’, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Report, Harvard University, 26 May. Zhang, Y. (2018), ‘China and Namibia stride into a new era of comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership: Warm congratulations on the great success of President Hage Geingob’s state visit to China’, Statement by the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of Namibia, 5 April. Zhou, J. (2006), ‘The rich consume and the poor suffer the pollution’, interview with Pan Yue, ChinaDialogue, 27 October.

PART V SECURITY AND THE STATE

26. Introduction: security and the state Christopher Lizotte

Security is, as Marx notes, the ‘highest social concept’ (1975, p. 163) of capitalist society. It is a term that describes an intuitive and visceral sense of personal safety as well as a highly technocratic apparatus carrying out the dictates of an unelected bureaucracy. It is concerned with physical well-being, ontological wholeness, and economic functioning. And it is inherently spatial: to be secure is to possess an inviolable core defended by clearly demarcated boundaries, whether at the scale of the body politic or the human body. Geographers have long been implicated in performing definitions of security, but it is only recently that they have critically examined the term and its practice over time and across space. What has emerged as security’s consistent trait over time is that it is an oppositional concept that defines a space of safety against a space of danger that threatens that safety. As Albert (2000) notes, both academic discourse and material conditions have shifted the spaces of safety and risk from a relatively straightforward defense of the state against invasion to a host of risks that can be internal, transnational, or global in scope. This also has implications for the objects of security discourse and practice, which eclipse the traditional notion of barbarians at the gates to include disease organisms (Ingram 2005), financial regulation (Amoore and de Goede 2011), or articles of clothing considered to be a sign of religious radicalization (Hancock 2008; Lizotte 2020). A second set of questions pertaining to security revolves around understanding who determines the terms of security, and for whom spaces are made more (or less) secure. Marx’s point seems to indicate a fairly straightforward role for the state to secure space for capitalist production and reproduction, and indeed much security practice is oriented towards ensuring geoeconomic continuity and contiguity to move certain bodies and goods while barring passage to others (Coleman 2005; Sparke 2007). But it is not always the case that a coherent ‘script’ for security exists or that security discourse is a verbatim transcription of state ideology. Drawing attention to the performative and relational aspects of security narratives demonstrates how they are produced in a variety of sites and by a variety of actors including, but not limited to, the state (Bialasiewicz et al. 2007). Such an understanding of security also highlights how a personal sense of ontological security can be amplified and scaled up to an entire body politic and back again to the individual’s sense of identity safety (Mitzen 2006; Whittaker 2018). ‘Successful’ security regimes can also result in a very different set of conditions for different spatially and racially situated subjects, leaving some to enjoy an improved quality of life and others to live under de facto martial law (Jobard 2005; Mitchell 2010; Nguyen 2014). As the spaces and objects of security have become increasingly more complex, there has been an understanding of how matters of internal and external security are assimilated to each other in what Bigo (2001) describes as a ‘Möbius ribbon’. Jerónimo Ríos Sierra and Heriberto Cairo’s chapter on regimes of security governance in Latin America complicates this ‘progress narrative’ in security studies by noting that in several countries, the line between internal and external security has always been blurred due to the involvement of the military in anti-drug-trafficking efforts. In contrast to North America and Western Europe, where the 288

Introduction: security and the state  289 War on Terror is commonly cited as the point at which domestic policing and foreign warfare have become inextricably blurred, the melding of these functions has a much longer history in South America’s postcolonial context. Internal and external modes of security are also blurred in Nicole Nguyen’s chapter on the school–security nexus, which acknowledges that states – in her case, the United States – have long pursued security objectives through compulsory and post-secondary education systems. Her approach makes use of an ‘outward-looking’ perspective on geographies of education (Hanson-Theim 2009) to show that public schooling is not simply a passive recipient of these efforts, but also exerts influence on how and on whom these efforts are exercised. In the case of the United States, efforts to leverage education towards international security priorities simultaneously perform internal policing functions as ‘risky’ student populations are subject to soft and hard disciplinary practices meant to make them productive subjects for the state’s colonial and military projects. The state’s changing geographies when it comes to security do not necessarily mean paradigm shifts but can involve a recalibration of previously dominant modes of thought. This is what Stefanie Ortmann describes in her chapter on the resurgence of ‘spheres of influence’ as a hermeneutic for describing Russia’s relationship to the former Soviet Union and her case of Kyrgyzstan. She argues that this framework, increasingly popular among Western observers, risks masking how influence is relationally produced across different segments of Kyrgyz society rather than wielded over a handful of elites. Ortmann asks us to consider the discursive work that spheres of influence do in the halls of Western power to produce a certain kind of geopolitical and security approach to Russia. Long-standing paradigms that are being adapted to new circumstances are also the theme of Frédérick Douzet’s chapter on cybersecurity. She contrasts two dominant paradigms that have governed approaches to securing the internet: a state-driven one that territorializes cyberspace as a space of competition and conflict, and a more technical one that emphasizes the algorithms and physical infrastructure that make the internet work. States have an outsize influence in ensuring that it is the former, territorial representation of cyberspace that predominates – even though this particular geographic imaginary is not necessarily a good fit for the realities of how the web works, and perhaps makes it difficult to defend adequately against cyberattacks from non-state actors. In all, the chapters in this part treat the concept of security in ways that reflect the term’s polysemantic diversity as well as its multiple embeddedness within the apparatuses and instruments of the state itself. We are presented here with state practices of security grounded in ‘traditional’ approaches that are also responsive and adaptive. The common thread that emerges is that what is considered within the realm of ‘security’ is very much a contingent outcome of processes unfolding among multiple actors and at multiple geographic scales. Above all, we are reminded that although security is often a state-led process, it is not only the state that drives processes of securitization.

REFERENCES Albert, M. (2000), ‘From defending borders towards managing geographical risks? Security in a globalised world’, Geopolitics, 5 (1), 57–80. Amoore, L. and M. de Goede (2011), ‘Risky geographies: Aid and enmity in Pakistan’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29 (2), 193–202. Bialasiewicz, L., D. Campell, S. Elden, S. Graham, A. Jeffery, and A. Williams (2007), ‘Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy’, Political Geography, 26 (4), 405–22.

290  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Bigo, D. (2001), ‘The Möbius ribbon of internal and external security(ies)’, in M. Albert, D. Jacobsen, and Y. Lapid (eds), Identities, Borders, Orders Rethinking International Relations Theory, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 160–84. Coleman, M. (2005), ‘US statecraft and the US–Mexico border as security/economy nexus’, Political Geography, 24 (2), 185–209. Hancock, C. (2008), ‘Spatialities of the secular: Geographies of the veil in France and Turkey’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15 (3), 165–79. Hanson-Thiem, C. (2009), ‘Thinking through education: The geographies of contemporary educational restructuring’, Progress in Human Geography, 33 (2), 154–73. Ingram, A. (2005), ‘The new geopolitics of disease: Between global health and global security’, Geopolitics, 10 (3), 522–45. Jobard, F. (2005), ‘Le nouveau mandat policier. Faire la police dans les zones dites de “non-droit”’, Criminologie, 38 (2), 103–21. Lizotte, C. (2020), ‘Laïcité as assimilation, laïcité as negotiation: Political geographies of secularism in the French public school’, Political Geography, 77. Marx, K. (1975), ‘On the Jewish question’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, trans. C. Dutt, New York: International Publishers, pp. 146–74. Mitchell, K. (2010), ‘Ungoverned space: Global security and the geopolitics of broken windows’, Political Geography, 29 (5), 289–97. Mitzen, J. (2006), ‘Ontological security in world politics: State identity and the security dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations, 12 (3), 341–70. Nguyen, N. (2014), ‘Education as warfare? Mapping securitised education interventions as War on Terror strategy’, Geopolitics, 19 (1), 109–39. Sparke, M. (2007), ‘Geopolitical fears, geoeconomic hopes, and the responsibilities of geography’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97 (2), 338–49. Whittaker, N. (2018), ‘The island race: Ontological security and critical geopolitics in British parliamentary discourse’, Geopolitics, 23 (4), 954–85.

27. Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside: the critical geopolitics of security and the armed forces in Latin America (1960–2018) Jerónimo Ríos Sierra and Heriberto Cairo

27.1 INTRODUCTION Historically, since the Peace of Westphalia, in nation states the armed forces (the Army, the Navy and the Air Forces) have dealt with ‘outside’ security, while the public forces (the police and other militarized bodies) with the ‘inside’. It is widely noted, however, that as the twentieth century drew to a close, this arrangement changed. This is due to the fact that thereafter – especially after September 11, 2001 and the United States (US) initiated the so-called War on Terror – the demarcation between external and internal forces has become increasingly blurred. Indeed, we can connect this to a broader global context, in which, ‘globalization creates an interpenetration of foreign and domestic affairs that national governments have to consider when developing their policies … This “intermestic” approach to security policy [is related to] the trans-nationalization of threats’ (Cha, 2000, p. 397). As North American and European states undertook ostensibly innovative steps to merge their internal and external security apparatuses, Latin American states had already been involved in such a process for decades. The fact that the countries in the region may have witnessed more coups over the past two centuries than any other part of the world can alone be taken as evidence that the armed forces have played a predominant role in the security design of modern states. During the 1960s and 1970s as these various coups were unfolding, numerous analysts began examining the causes and consequences of the military dictatorships that ensued. From these analyses various conceptualizations emerged characterizing these new regimes as, variously: authoritarian, fascist, neo-fascist, dependent fascist or national security regimes. We will not deal extensively in this study with this theoretical and conceptual debate, instead focusing on how political space is conceived, and specifically the ebbing away of the prior sharp distinction between internal and external security, and the consequent expansion of the duties of the armed forces according to the national security doctrine. At the time it was common to associate the dictatorial situation with that anomalous internal security role of the armed forces, but our hypothesis is that this is not the case. The return to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s in many countries represented a ‘normalization’ of the internal and external political space and the consequent division of the activities of the armed forces and the security forces of the state. In some countries, however, this separation did not occur on the pretense of a ‘war’ against ‘communism’ or ‘terrorism’ as such duties were in fact assumed by security forces. As a result, a blurred division remained between the two that did not exist in European countries at the time. As recently as in the 2000s the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime has been militarized in many Latin American countries, in which democratic principles and practices 291

292  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state have been adopted – despite what some have described as ‘a turn to the right’. This bolsters our central hypothesis that the type of regime is not necessarily key to understanding this ‘anomalous’ discourse and practices of the armed forces in Latin America. By the same token, it is not convincing to accept that the critical contributing factors are ‘the weak presence of the rule of law and high levels of corruption’ (Alda, 2019, p. 22). Accordingly, in this chapter we intend to respond to several questions regarding security discourse and the role of the armed forces in Latin America: (1) Is the intervention of the armed forces in the internal security of a state only typical of dictatorial political regimes? (2) Why would the new criminal challenges derived from globalization require the use of the armed forces in the fight against them in Latin America and not in, for example, the European Union? (3) Why do discourses on security in Latin American states repeatedly claim that the armed forces should have a significant role in governance? To address these questions, we are going to analyse three examples that are characteristic of the aforementioned time periods: the Argentinian National Security Doctrine (NSD) of the 1970s, the Democratic Security Policy (DSP) in Colombia of the 2000s and the New National Defense Guidelines in Brazil of the 2010s. It is important to note that these cases are by no means exceptional, as the doctrine of national security was adopted by almost all of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s and presently the fight against organized crime is carried out by the armed forces across the continent.

27.2

THE DOCTRINE OF NATIONAL SECURITY IN ARGENTINA

One of the salient features of the military dictatorships that occurred in Latin America from the 1960s onwards is that threats to the nation’s interest were presented simultaneously along two axes – an internal and an external one – which together formed what has come to be known as the NSD (Comblin, 1989; Tapia Valdés, 1986; Lozada et al., 1983). For Comblin (1989), the NSD views the origins of the political crises of Latin American states being related to an ‘internal enemy’. The goals of this hypothetical enemy consist of ‘satellizing’ the country around a great hostile power at the expense of national objectives. The real threat posed by this internal enemy is thus not so much military but political, ideological and moral in nature. Therein, as an enemy of foreign inspiration, they are an ‘outsider’, dedicated to politically and morally perverting society and destroying the state. Seen as such, this threat can and should be fought by the armed forces – just like any other enemy. This political discourse of national security in many ways echoes other previous incarnations of security discourse, especially those based on hemispheric security. Indeed, striking similarities to these earlier versions can be seen, highlighted well in the concept used by Ravines: Victory over Communism can never be an economic victory, nor a battle of dollars, neither of houses nor of schools. It will be an ideological and political victory, a conquest of the minds of millions of Latin Americans … The conditions for taking on the ideological struggle of the local orbit are ripe, and now this mission can be spread throughout Latin America, seconded and supported without doubt by a vigorous Inter-Americanism that we must make monolithic. In this way, it will be possible to conquer the security of the whole hemisphere. (1965, pp. 138–9)

Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside  293 Notwithstanding this prior evidence, many authors such as Comblin (1989) contend that the NSD is in its nature an original and distinct discourse. In the specific case of Argentina, the doctrine was adopted in 1966, during the government of General Onganía, and overseen by Chancellor Costa Méndez through the National Security Council. Here we can see a precise characterization of the double-faceted enemy, in which ‘[t]he external threat “communism” does not come only from the outside, but it is inside the countries themselves’ (Lohlé, 1988, p. 194). This conceptualization of the enemy as both internal and external becomes useful to the state as the violent methods that had been used in fighting the internal enemy – in essence state terrorism – can be applied against foreign enemies with the same legitimacy. Indeed, as Borón points out: Since brute force and absolute impunity were considered by modern barbarians as legal and ethically acceptable procedures, the militarization of domestic politics was followed by the militarization of international politics, and instead of long and tedious negotiations and discreet diplomacy, direct action was used because only the sceptics and the weak could doubt that military force was the most efficient means of intervention in international affairs. (1987, p. 140)

Internal and external enemies, moreover, did not necessarily have to be communist to qualify as foes; democrats of diverse natures and states with governments of different types were also included. In fact, the option of the foreign war was considered by Argentina on several occasions; almost erupting against Chile in 1978 and embarked upon against Great Britain in 1982 (Lipovetzky, 1984). One of the most prolific Argentinian military writers, General Osiris Guillermo Villegas, reflected on the NSD in several of his books. His first important work (1962) laid out the arguments and fundamental characteristics of the counterinsurgency doctrine through an analysis of the ‘Communist Revolutionary War’ and the consequent communist ‘danger’: The revolutionary war seeks to seize power and totally alter the legal structure of each country, as well as the Western world in general, in order to implant communism as a single and global solution. The counterrevolutionary struggle, as it is deduced from its own name, opposes that purpose; it could not be effective, then, if it considered only partial aspects of the conflict. (Villegas, 1962, p. 195)

From these definitions several common and salient features of the NSD can be deduced: (a) the genesis of the NSD set out by Villegas correlates with the US national security discourses: the enemy operates along a double axis, inside and outside; (b) the ‘total’ nature of the insurgency seeks to oppose a systematic struggle: the enemy operates on all fronts and the ‘terrorists’ and the intellectuals who justify them must be eliminated; (c) conceiving the ‘revolutionary war’ as such implies that the central protagonists of the ‘counterrevolutionary war’ must be, therefore, the armed forces. As expounded by Villegas (1962, p. 13), ‘if the armed forces do not notice the danger and react in time, this favors the enemy’, which can be further legitimized under the guise of protecting ‘indiscriminate freedom’ in a democracy that does not apply ‘preventive and repressive laws’. After serving as a member of the National Security Council during the Onganía dictatorship, Villegas published another important work in 1969 which was greatly influenced by the NSD. Within this we can plainly see the organizing conception of the state as well as a Ratzelian conception of interstate relations: ‘We must understand that human societies’ struggle for survival has to remain indefinite and periodically relentless, each time in more subtle forms and

294  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state means and we should also understand that, with its tremendous wisdom, experience teaches that victory has always been for the strongest’ (Villegas, 1969, p. 13). In this fight, four elements are of particular salience: (a) a national project, which is the explicit definition of the vital interests of the future nation; (b) a national elite, that are concerned with the creation and direction of change; (c) a leader, who interprets this national project, and (d), a social dynamic that abides by and executes it, that is, people willing to follow the dictates of such an elite. The third issue of relevance from Villegas’ work is his 1975 book on Argentinian geopolitics, just a year before the beginning of what would become the bloodiest military dictatorship in the Southern Cone. Despite this not being the place to analyse it more thoroughly, it is important to note the striking similarities between the formulation of the Argentinian NSD and the geopolitical discourse of the German National Socialist period.

27.3

THE DEMOCRATIC SECURITY POLICY IN COLOMBIA

The DSP was conceived and implemented by Álvaro Uribe’s Government (2002–2006; 2006–10) and hinged on an increase in the use and size of the state’s military forces (Armed Forces and the National Police) in the Colombian internal armed conflict. The main principle of the policy was that peace was only possible through the military defeat of the various non-state armed groups that, at the beginning of the new millennium, still existed in Colombia. In a country that has historically remained uncharacteristically democratic for the continent, the counterinsurgency has always been carried out by the Army (Pécaut, 2006; Pizarro, 2011), and the DSP was a very important quantitative increasing in the deployment of both internal and external forces. This is something different, for example, to what happened in Peru, where until the end of 1982 the response of the public forces against a then incipient Sendero Luminoso (Singing Path) insurgent group initially fell on the National Police, and only thereafter was it taken up by the Army and Navy (Degregori, 2011). In the Colombian case, the DSP can be understood as an attempt to fully militarize security policy, justified in part by the failed negotiation attempts with armed insurgent groups during the 1960s and 1970s. Combined with the concurrent experience of Caguán’s flailing peace process, Uribe’s arrival as president in 2002 can be seen as being underpinned by the premise that the conflict can only end with a total military defeat of the insurgent groups. Accordingly, gross domestic product spending on security and defense surged to over 4 percent, resulting in defense spending amongst the highest in the world – double the gross average investment of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Alongside the $8 billion spent by Uribe, another 8 was pledged in aid from the bilateral anti-narcotrafficking agreement made with the US. Although initially signed by the Colombian and US leaders Andrés Pastrana and Bill Clinton in 1999, the plan was redefined by the presidencies of Uribe and George W. Bush, giving priority, above all, to military spending (Ríos, 2017): ‘Plan Colombia, once Álvaro Uribe arrived to the presidency, becomes blurred. It becomes disfigured. It lost the initial social component that Andrés Pastrana had given to it and becomes reduced to a purely warmongering policy of absolute negative peace’ (personal interview with the former minister Germán Bula Escobar, 2015). This mutual understanding between Bush and Uribe was perhaps not a surprise, considering the new geopolitical policy of a post 9/11 US in their fight against global terror:

Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside  295 The War against Terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt their plans and confront the worst emerging threats. In the world we enter, the only way to safety is action. And this nation will act … and our security will require that all Americans look ahead with decision and be ready for preventive action when it is necessary to defend our freedom and to safeguard our lives. (George W. Bush, Office of the Press Secretary, 2002, in Ahumada, 2007, p. 9)

The result was a noticeable swelling in public forces, so that the Colombian National Police increased from 110,000 to 160,000 and the armed forces from 203,000 to 270,000 members: an increase of some 40 percent. Alongside this, there were other advancements as the armed forces became better organized and more modernized – especially in the areas of intelligence, as well as air and night combat (Ministry of Defense, 2010). Thus, Colombia quickly became the fourth country in the continent in terms of highest military spending – after Chile, Venezuela and Ecuador – and the second with the largest number of soldiers per capita, with 881 to every 100,000 inhabitants, surpassed only by Bolivia (Ministry of Defense 2011, p. 17). The extent of Colombia’s militarization during the years of Uribe’s presidency can be seen strikingly in the state’s military confrontations against insurgent groups. During the three years of the Caguán dialogue the army carried out a total of 600 armed actions against the ELN (National Liberation Army) and another 1,256 against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), whilst in the first presidency of Álvaro Uribe, these numbers rose to 1,469 confrontations against the ELN and 5,618 against the FARC (ODHDIH, n.d.). Moreover, as a result of the increased support, between 2002 and 2010 more than 20,000 coca-producing laboratories were destroyed and more than 1,200 tons of marijuana and cocaine seized (UNODC, 2016). Similarly, in the same period the FARC’s numbers dropped from almost 20,000 to just over 8,000 and the ELN’s from 5,500 to 2,000. Resultantly, the 154 armed actions of the ELN and the 1,042 of the FARC in 2001 sharply dropped to 65 and 724, respectively, in 2010 (ODHDIH, n.d.). In addition to losing half of the territory under their control to the state in just eight years, there are many that contend that their operational capacity saw similar reductions, by 77 percent for the ELN and 83 percent for the FARC (Security and Democracy Foundation, 2008, p. 5). Qualitatively, Uribe’s unparalleled belligerency also takes place in an exceptional situation in which the limits of the rule of law were often blurred and even ignored, yet always justified by a superior good that prioritized security over freedoms. In fact, Uribe himself, when asked about the internal armed conflict, denied its existence, arguing the following: I never spoke or used the word conflict. The word conflict applies to the dispute between insurgents and dictatorships. Between guerrillas and non-democratic systems. In Colombia there has always been a strong democracy, challenged by groups that ended up being reduced to narcoterrorism. Nor have I ever used the concept of war because of our problem: in Colombia, we had a public order problem. What we had to do was to guarantee security and ensure compliance with the citizens. (Personal interview with Álvaro Uribe, 2015)

Viewed this way, any problems of internal order in Colombia could be blamed on ‘narcoterrorism’. Palacio and Rojas (1990) point out that couched as such, efforts to destroy insurgent groups were seen as valid even if such efforts were not always legal. Therefore, although not explicitly mentioned in the DSP, quasi-legal procedures complemented its execution. Three examples are of particular pertinence in the Colombian case: paramilitarism, ‘parapolitics’ and ‘false positives’.

296  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state It cannot be denied that paramilitary groups, and in particular the United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC), would serve as a convenient ally in the carrying out of the DSP. This was particularly true during Uribe’s first term. Paramilitarism – hegemonic in much of the north of the country thanks to its membership of over 12,000 soldiers – served to expel the guerrillas from huge enclaves such as almost the entire Caribbean region and much of the Magdalena Medio region: The truth is that everything benefited Uribe. He and people very close to him benefited from the war and hence his position to not end up negotiating [with the guerrillas]. While Uribe has not formally been at the head of anything, his tentacles encouraged this situation. The AUC, along with other paramilitaries and ‘Convivir’, eradicated some of the existing insurgents in the region. In only one region, Urabá, 7,000 people were killed, 4,500 of whom were guerrillas. All the police, army, and the AUC acted against a common enemy. (Personal interview with paramilitary chief Freddy Rendon, 2015)

Furthermore, beside the strictly (para)military response, there was another strategy of ‘pacification’, particularly during Uribe’s first term. Here, once the enemy was expelled from an area, a local political order was (re)instated to suit the president. Thus, alliances between drug traffickers, paramilitaries and political parties and business groups were forged towards a common political set of interests, which, according to the Ombudsman’s Office (2011), involved over 100 congressmen and senior officials in 200 municipalities of the country. Additionally, there was what would come to be known as the ‘false positives’ scandal. This saw the commissioned murdering by the public forces of over 5,000 civilians who were later dressed and presented, falsely, as guerilla fighters. The purpose of this deception was to inflate statistics of insurgents killed and legitimize increased spending on security and defense. This practice exponentially increased following Directive 029 promoted by the then defense minister, Camilo Ospina, that incentivized army members to kill guerillas. Similarly, this veneer of legality was bolstered as Army operations were carried out with the public support of the Attorney General’s office. Any allegations of human rights violations could be thus be rebuffed – seen strikingly in the ‘Mariscal’ and ‘Orión’ military campaigns in the slums of Medellin. Finally, it is important to note that all of this can only be understood through a consideration of how the DSP was developed and viewed internationally. The DSP was not only inspired by a new US geopolitical doctrine that redefined guerillas simply as terrorists. Indeed, Colombia further developed this to allow it to label Ecuador and Venezuela as collaborators to the guerilla cause. This sparked off political and diplomatic tensions between the countries, which would peak in a regional crisis in 2008 when Colombia bombed territory in the north of Ecuador to kill one of the FARC commanders, ‘Raúl Reyes’. To these strains we can add internal tensions in the Andean Community economic bloc, Uribe’s suspicion of post-liberal regionalism, as well as the need to strengthen the relationship between Bogotá and Washington in its opposition to an increasingly leftist South America. In fact, in testament to the deterioration in Colombian– Venezuelan relations, upon leaving his presidency Uribe would use the increased guerilla presence in some of the Colombian-Venezuelan border departments to openly consider waging a conflict with his neighbor: ‘[due to this situation] I can do two things, either stand still or start a military operation in Venezuela. I chose the latter, but I didn't have the time’ (personal interview with Álvaro Uribe, 2015).

Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside  297

27.4

THE NEW IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE GUARANTEE OF LAW AND ORDER IN THE NATIONAL DEFENSE OF BRAZIL

In a recent study on the new mandate of the armed forces in Latin America, Alda points out that ‘the armed forces are being used to fight organized crime, even though their nature, legal framework, and capacities only constitute a force for external defense’ (2019, p. 35). The author does not even discuss this issue – indeed he considers the debate ‘obsolete’ – simply framing it in the global trend, especially marked in Latin America, of constructing multipurpose or multi-mission armies (Alda, 2019, p. 38). Despite being realistic in its global perspective, given the nature of the military training this argument overlooks the fact that the use of the military in domestic situations poses a risk to human rights violations (Norden, 2016, p. 248). The Brazilian Army is perhaps one of the best regional examples of this trend which began with Fernando Henrique Cardoso and increased with the presidencies of Lula da Silva and Djilma Rouseff. Here, the armed forces are concerned not only with ensuring sovereignty, but also – to mention only some unconventional tasks – with encouraging economic development, avoiding ecological degradation, controlling vast spaces such as the Amazon, as well as fighting organized crime at the borders and other internal parts of the country. This last task has long been a tradition in Brazil and is enshrined in the doctrine of the Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO). Indeed, since 1891 it has been part of the constitutional mandate for the Armed Forces (Passos, 2019) and has been used to justify the use of the armed forces in various domestic situations, including those deemed as ‘counterinsurgent’ by the NDS. In Brazil, the definition of the duties and objectives, organization and structure of the armed forces are set out in three main documents: Livro Branco da Defesa Nacional (LBDN) [White Book of National Defense], Estratégia Nacional de Defesa (END) [National Strategy of Defense], and Política Nacional de Defesa [National Policy of Defense]. Based on this view that the Army is unconventionally versatile, the END (Ministry of Defense, 2012b) attributes various duties that would traditionally not be associated with the military, covering areas such as education, science and technology, development and infrastructure. At the same time, it declares the strategies of defense and national development as being inseparable. The DNP clearly states that one of the duties of the Brazilian Armed Forces is ‘to carry out internal operations of law and order when the constituted powers cannot guarantee public peace and one of the Chiefs of the “three powers” [legislative, executive and judicial] requires it’ (Ministry of Defense, 2012b, p. 58). In other words, internal security tasks are entrusted to the armed forces through constitutional mandate. An example of the implementation of this doctrine of GLO, which includes the LBDN, is the creation of a ‘peacekeeping force’: ‘To cooperate with the Government [of the State of Rio de Janeiro] in restoring social peace after acts carried out by organized crime. The Complexo do Alemão-Penha [an area of 15 favelas in Rio] was occupied through coordinated operations between the Army, the Navy, and the Military Police of the State’ (Ministry of Defense, 2012a, p. 166). This use of ‘peacekeeping forces’ has become relatively common since 2010 in this as well as other favelas. They are a response to organized crime, particularly that linked to the drug trade, which has become a transnational threat to globalization and, indeed ‘in this way, peace and tranquility, which characterized South America in the recent past, have disappeared’ (Freire, 2018, p. 7).

298  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Passos (2019) describes how these military operations in the area of public security result from the armed forces’ experience in both domestic counterinsurgency, as well as humanitarian missions in various countries in recent years. The discourse of humanitarianism and even the imagery of the soldiers in such missions – particularly in Haiti – has been increasingly adopted in recent years by domestic GLO operations. As a result, the negative stigma of the military’s counterinsurgency campaigns has shifted to one which is more palatable to the wider public. Moreover, this narrative has been peddled not only in Brazil, but elsewhere in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, to justify the military’s increasing involvement against domestic drug trafficking. That is, the military should act because organized crime is beyond the capability of the police, further hindered by prevailing rampant police corruption. For example, in an interview with a general who commanded one such favela intervention, Passos expresses his conviction that ‘the people in the favela had been “abandoned by the state government” for a long time and the pacification had finally provided public services’ (2019, p. 219). It is not, however, only the protagonists of these operations who propagate this narrative; it is also widely disseminated by the media. The 2007 film Tropa de Élite (Elite Troop), for example, deals with police corruption and its extension to the political class, and the resulting inability to combat drug trafficking. It therefore subscribes to the idea that the fight against these crimes should be carried out by a body allegedly not tainted by these problems, and that the military offers an effective solution to the problem. Finally, it is important to understand that in many post-dictatorial states in Latin America efforts have been made to overcome the statist and nationalist conceptions of the NSD through ostensible formulations of protecting the citizenship. A striking result, however, is that democratic security has ‘put into play a contradictory logic in which, at the same time that military participation in the security realm was eschewed, the declaration of an existential threat to democracy called for extraordinary and eventually militarized measures’ (Tickner, 2016, p. 75).

27.5 CONCLUSION As we stated at the beginning of this chapter, one of the key issues that we sought to clarify was whether the national security discourse was unique to the Southern Cone countries studied, or a phenomenon seen in other democratic countries. That is to say, is the NSD an exception or a feature common to authoritarian regimes? Walker (1990) has long since argued that the theoretical tradition tracing back to Machiavelli or Hobbes leads to the demarcation of political spaces, i.e. territorially defined states. Here, security is defined in terms of spatial exclusion, and national enemies are thus considered as any other enemies found in or working for those from other nations. Critically, within this conception the fundamental role of the state is to provide security for its inhabitants. This tradition has since the sixteenth century been formulated in various constructions and, after the Second World War, gave rise, as Dalby points out, ‘In the United States, and in a more general sense in the “Western World”, [to the existence of] a constant preparation for war with the Soviet Union, a perpetual condition that is summarized in the phrase “the state of National Security”’ (1990, p. 13). In this sense, the NSD in the Latin American Southern Cone is not a singular discourse in the wider system of states, yet it does have specific traits regarding the

Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside  299 preponderant role of the military in politics. Not only are the military in control of government ministries, but they transfer the concepts of common criminal law to military criminal law (Reyes, 1990). In Argentina, for example, under Law 16970 on National Defense, the military was given the ability to prosecute in civil offenses; the 1974 Law 20840 on ‘state security’ established severe restrictions on freedoms of the press; and the 1976 decree 20338 reinstated the death penalty. These practices were later extended to other Latin American states. The Latin American national security theorists denied, and continue to deny, the existence of a specific guiding doctrine; in their formulations, the national security mechanisms exerted by the regions’ military dictatorships would be in the same order as those provided by other states, and any definition of an NSD would be seen as ‘leftist propaganda’: ‘In this case, the idea of wishing to disqualify the principles and protective measures of the state as if they were deceptions of the oppressive interests clearly reveals the lack of sincerity and coherence of those groups of left-wing intellectuals’ (Meira-Mattos, 1987, p. 580). The same attempt to define NSD formed part of a strategy of democratization, which sought to isolate these dictatorial regimes by pointing to their exceptionality within a broad alliance of democratic forces. In this sense, the diffusion of the early work of Comblin (1979) by the Vicarage of the Solidarity of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile can be seen as part of this strategy. Discourses that warn of the existence of internal enemies and associate the armed forces with the maintenance of national security are not exclusive to military dictatorships, as the Colombian case underscores. It is important to point out that it is not just conservative governments that make such use of the armed forces, but also progressive governments such as Evo Morales in Bolivia or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela who have also militarized national security to confront separatist or coup d’état threats. In other words, it is easier for a democratic political leader in Latin America to use the armed forces to solve domestic political problems than it would be, for instance, in Europe or the US. The militarization of national security cannot be understood solely through the lens of the Cold War conflict and its subsequent manifestations, even if the case of Colombia might suggest otherwise. This is apparent when we look at the counterbalancing post-Cold War case of the new NPD of the GLO doctrine in Brazil as well as other experiences in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in the fight against drugs. The strong intervention in internal security policies by the armed forces of Latin American countries – in other words, the deep militarization of national security in these countries (with the exception of Costa Rica) – does not necessarily mean an authoritarian turn, nor does it result from the local experience of the global conflict of the Cold War. It does, however, probably have more to do with the structural and institutional weakness of peripheral and semi-peripheral states and their greater difficulty in building a democratic and legitimate consensus of their law and order policies. Whilst the security discourses used by Latin American states might serve to legitimize the internal intervention by the armed forces, they are also quite adaptable to prevailing discourses surrounding global security. Thus, while the NSD was in keeping with discourse of the Cold War’s distinct ideological geopolitics, new national defense policies situate themselves on discourses of fighting against organized crime and (militarily) defending human rights – in turn legitimizing interventions under the label of ‘humanitarian’. It is clear that national security is extremely militarized in Latin America. Indeed, it is one of the regions of the planet in which military solutions to domestic problems is viewed not only as acceptable, but even in a positive light. As Enloe (2016) expounds: it is important to

300  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state underscore that this does not have to be the case, and there exists a plethora of hitherto little contemplated alternatives.

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Imagining the ‘outside’ danger inside  301 Ombudsman’s Office (2011), Decimonoveno Informe del Defensor del Pueblo. Available at: www​ .defensoria​.gov​.co/​public/​pdf/​02/​19​_informe​_congreso​_I​.pdf. Accessed on June 17, 2020. Palacio, Germán and Fernando Rojas (1990), ‘Empresarios de la cocaína, parainstitucionalidad y flexibilidad del régimen político colombiano: narcotráfico y contrainsurgencia’, in Germán Palacio (ed.), La irrupción del paraestado. Ensayos sobre la crisis colombiana, Bogota: ILSA-CEREC, pp. 69–104. Passos, Anaís (2019), ‘¿Guerra al crimen organizado? Favelas e intervención militar en Brasil’, in Sonia Alda and Carolina Sampó (eds), La transformación de las Fuerzas Armadas en América Latina ante el crimen organizado, Lima: Centro de Estudios Estratégicos and Madrid: Real Instituto Elcano, pp. 207–26. Pécaut, Daniel (2006), Crónica de cuatro décadas de política colombiana, Bogota: Norma. Pizarro, Eduardo (2011), Las FARC (1949–2011). De guerrilla campesina a máquina de guerra, Bogota: Norma. Ravines, Eudocio (1965), ‘Ideology, intellectuals, and the security of the hemisphere’, in Norman A. Bailey (ed.), Latin America: Politics, Economics, and Hemispheric Security, New York: Praeger, pp. 115–39. Reyes, Alfonso (1990), ‘Legislación y seguridad nacional en América Latina’, in CEMCAP, El pensamiento militar latinoamericano: 1. Democracia y seguridad nacional, Ciudad de Mexico and Guadalajara: Casa de Chile en Mexico and Universidad de Guadalajara, pp. 44–55. Ríos, Jerónimo (2017), Breve historia del conflicto armado en Colombia, Madrid: La Catarata. Security and Democracy Foundation (2008), ‘El debilitamiento de los grupos irregulares en Colombia, 2002–2008’, Revista Coyuntura de Seguridad, 23, 5–11. Tapia Valdés, Jorge (1986), Estrategocracia: el gobierno de los generales, Santiago de Chile: Las Ediciones del Ornitorrinco. Tickner, Arlene B. (2016), ‘Securitization and the limits of democratic security’, in David R. Mares and Arie M. Kacowicz (eds), Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security, London: Routledge, pp. 67–77. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2016), Colombia. Monitoreo de cultivos de coca 2015, Vienna: United Nations. Villegas, Osiris G. (1962), Guerra revolucionaria comunista, Buenos Aires: Círculo Militar. Villegas, Osiris G. (1969), Políticas y estrategias para el Desarrollo y la Seguridad Nacional, Buenos Aires: Pleamar. Villegas, Osiris G. (1975), Tiempo geopolítico argentino, Buenos Aires: Pleamar. Walker, R.B.J. (1990) ‘Security, sovereignty, and the challenge of world politics’, Alternatives, 15, pp. 3–27.

28. The school–security nexus and the changing geographies of the state Nicole Nguyen

28.1 INTRODUCTION Since its founding, the United States (US) has mobilized public schooling to achieve its military and security objectives. In 1802, for example, Congress passed the Military Peace Establishment Act, which authorized federal funding for the formation of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, an original training outpost for the Revolutionary War. First authorized in 1916, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs on college campuses implemented curriculum prescribed by the War Department, with the intention of preparing officers for the reserve forces and ‘training the popular public mind to the necessity and needs of defense’ (Major Williams, as quoted in Coe, 1927, p. 176). In 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, arguing that the ‘security of the Nation requires the fullest development of the mental resources and technical skills of its young men and women’ through educational initiatives that expanded access to and proficiency in ‘subjects critical to American national security’ like engineering and linguistics (Kay, 2009, p. 2). Today, the US continues to develop and mobilize strategic educational initiatives as ‘power asset[s] in the contemporary security environment’ (Kay, 2009, p. 1). State actors increasingly view ‘educational capacity’ as a ‘strategic component of American power’ (Kay, 2009, p. 1). As the state’s dynamic goals, formation, and spatial relations shift, so too do its institutional arrangements with schools and schooling. Despite the centrality of education in maintaining state power and global dominance, social scientists often have approached schools as derivative – sites affected by broader security and military exigences – rather than as key contributors to and spaces of state-sanctioned security discourses, policies, and practices. Such analyses reduce schools to places affected by already existing processes of securitization and militarization instead of strategic sites continually reorganized to enact, extend, and achieve the state’s geopolitical goals. Although these ‘inward-looking’ contributions importantly investigate how prevailing socio-spatial processes impact schools and schooling, they miss ‘how educational systems, institutions, and practices (and the political struggles that surround them) effect change beyond the sector’ (Thiem, 2009, p. 157). Emerging geographic scholarship, however, has disrupted these conventional understandings of Western state schools by ‘thinking through’ education, ‘ask[ing] what educational institutions and practices reveal about the cultural, social, and economic processes in which they are embedded’ (Thiem, 2009, p. 157). Political geographers, for example, have examined the role of public education systems in statecraft, nation building, transnational/global flows, and security agendas. Such scholarship takes seriously how schools are implicated in and affected by broader geographical processes, including the changing spatial constitution of the state. 302

The school–security nexus  303 Aligned with these ‘outward-looking’ approaches to the dynamic geographies of education, I examine how state-sponsored schools in the US are both securitized – organized by prevailing security orientations – and securitizing – contributing to dominant geopolitical goals related to national security. Like scholars reframing the school-to-prison pipeline as the school–prison nexus, I theorize this symbiotic relationship between public education systems and the state’s security agenda as the ‘school–security nexus’. Within this nexus, contemporary public schools continue to capitulate to a nationalist agenda while supporting global flows of capital, war making, and dominance. Through this outward-looking analysis, I explore the contradictions within, and contestations over, state schooling, which demand rethinking notions and practices of safety and security outside of state imaginations. In other words, this chapter traces what schools can tell us about the US security state and its dynamic spatial transformations. To stage this exploration, I first document the early history of the school–security nexus in the US, from the Revolutionary War through the Cold War. Second, I examine how neoliberal social, cultural, and political-economic changes ushered in a new era of the school–security nexus, further defined by the onset of the global war on terror and changing state objectives. Third, I investigate how schools, parents, children, and communities negotiated these contexts, often countering or resisting the school–security nexus. Finally, I offer concluding thoughts on the relationship between the school–security nexus and the changing geographies of the (embodied) state. Although this analysis narrows its scope to the school–security nexus, it is indebted to the work of geographers who have documented how educational arrangements articulate with the state’s geopolitical goals, from the use of Indigenous boarding schools as intimate sites ‘vital in the transmission and enactment of colonial ideologies’ (de Leeuw, 2007) to the ‘inter/nationalisation of higher education’ that advances ‘broader authoritarian political configurations’ (Koch, 2014) to the cultivation of ‘strategic cosmopolitans’ in schools that service the globalized neoliberal economy (Mitchell, 2003).

28.2

HISTORIES OF THE SCHOOL–SECURITY NEXUS

Educational systems and state power have been imbricated since the initial formation of the US. Writing on the history of US military schools, John Alfred Coulter II reports that ‘initial interest in developing military schools in the United States’ like West Point ‘grew from the requirement of the Revolutionary War and the influence of European military schools’ that trained Napoleon Bonaparte and Gilbert du Motier (2017, p. 21). Confronting a highly trained British military, emerging political leaders like John Adams sought to professionalize the officer corps through the establishment of a military educational system. George Washington specifically argued for military academies to ‘teach military art, with a special emphasis on the skills associated with military engineering and artillery’ (Coulter II, 2017, p. 25). For many agents of statecraft, establishing military academies was critical to achieving and maintaining independence from British rule as well as dominating Indigenous resistance. Although military priorities certainly shaped the embryonic military education system within the US, military academies also actively contributed to the state’s geopolitical agenda, informing the art and science of war making since the Revolutionary War. During the Civil War, for example, military academies produced both Federal and Confederate officers, ultimately playing a key role in the geopolitical struggle for territorial control and the making

304  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state of the state. Although the shifting social, political, and economic conditions across history influenced the dynamic military school movement, the US has continued to fund, support, and valorize military academies to achieve its geopolitical goals, both at home and abroad. In addition to these domestic educational arrangements, following the 1898 Spanish– American War, the US sent thousands of teachers to the Philippines and other new territories to teach in new US-sponsored schools as a part of its empire-building strategy. These teachers followed in the footsteps of soldiers as ‘more than diplomats or merchants or journalists, teachers put a human face on America as it assumed new powers and prominence on the global stage’ (Zimmerman, 2006, p. 3). To gain legitimacy, facilitate assimilation, and expand capitalist enterprise, the US sent teachers to its new territories as it advanced its imperial aims. Teachers, however, came to question their role in empire building and the imposition of US values as preeminent cultural universals through US-sponsored schools. Teachers and administrators, for example, struggled to determine the language of instruction, whose values would shape classroom culture, and whose learning styles would organize teaching and learning (Zimmerman, 2006). Despite the imperial aims of the US, teachers tasked as colonial agents often worked counter to the goals of the state. Such contestations illustrate the embodied, rather than monolithic, character of the state, as school staff labored amid competing understandings of the role of the US in the new territories, the role of education in the pursuit of imperial power, and the role of teachers in achieving such power. As Alison Mountz (2003) writes on state power and transnational migration, ‘behind each decision are individuals acting within varied institutional and geographical contexts’ (p. 625). Despite coherent geopolitical discourses that narrate statecraft, ‘bureaucratic work is internally conflictive’ (Heyman, 1995, p. 264). Far from a coherent and monolithic entity, the state is embodied, continuously reworked and remade by its institutional agents and subjects whose varied understandings and performances of their work are shaped by prevailing social, political, and economic contexts (Blacker, 2000; Painter, 2006). Notwithstanding these contestations, the US continued to rely on schools and schooling to maintain state power and advance its national security agenda throughout the twentieth century. Often domestic initiatives aligned with foreign efforts to achieve specific geopolitical goals through education. Calls to establish military training in US public schools to prepare the nation for war at the onset of the First World War, for example, synchronized with state desires to assimilate the influx of immigrants arriving in the US. In 1916, Major-General Wood argued that military training in high schools like the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) could ‘heat up the melting pot’ with students ‘living under exactly the same conditions, wearing the same uniform, and animated by a common purpose’ (as quoted in Bartlett and Lutz, 1998, p. 123). By ‘disciplining social difference’ and assimilating immigrants, military training could relieve the perceived social stress driven by increased immigration, while preparing future military officers and shoring up public support for the military (Bartlett and Lutz, 1998). The JROTC and other similar high school programs supported the muscular state as it entered the First World War. The introduction of these programs demonstrates how changes to schooling shaped, and were shaped by, the changing geographies of the state. Despite the state’s eager desire to prepare students for war, First World War veterans enjoyed few educational opportunities following their military service. Furious with their limited post-war educational and economic opportunities, in 1932, veterans marched toward the US capital, demanding their financial bonuses promised in exchange for their military service. Dubbed the ‘Tombstone Bonus’, many soldiers argued that they would be dead

The school–security nexus  305 before the government paid out their bonuses. Denying returning soldiers access to jobs, educational opportunities, and financial benefits generated political protest and social unrest. Facing a similar wave of returning veterans during the Second World War, the US passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (known as the GI Bill) to provide educational benefits for veterans to ‘ensure social and economic stability by providing education and training’ (Kay, 2009, p. 1). Political leaders ‘recalled that unemployed World War I veterans had become a substantial source of political protest and potential instability’ and therefore committed to ‘educational investments’ to prevent such unrest (Kay, 2009, p. 1). The GI Bill’s provision of educational benefits to decommissioned troops sought to protect the state against political protest, particularly as the US continued to assert itself as a global superpower through military interventions. After the Second World War, the US feared the Soviets outpaced its technological advances on the precipice of nuclear war. Congress, for example, argued in 1958 that ‘the defence of this Nation depends upon the mastery of modern techniques developed from complex scientific principles’. As David Meltzer and Valerie Otero report, ‘Cold War worries about technological security, combined with war-induced shortages of technical personnel, catalysed significant re-allocation of resources into scientific and technical education’, ultimately facilitating ‘processes that would in many respects transform US physics education and science education in general’ (2015, p. 451). The US security state once again turned to schools to thwart Cold War threats, particularly after the 1957 Soviet launch of the space satellite Sputnik. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, for instance, provided federal funds to ‘expand access to education in the sciences, mathematics, and foreign languages’. In addition to developing linguistic knowledge to expand human intelligence capabilities and scientific expertise to enhance the US nuclear arsenal, schools played an active role in cultivating an anxious yet prepared citizenry. As sociologist Jackie Orr (2004) writes on Cold War fears, ‘Under conditions of atomic threat, the boundary between national security and national fear is reconfigured: national security IS national fear’ (p. 467). In this way, the ‘management of fear – avoiding the dangers of its excess (the chaos of panic), or its absence (the unpreparedness of apathy) – [became] a primary aim in constructing the ideal civilian-soldier’ during the Cold War (Orr, 2004, p. 467). Schools therefore undertook the work of managing fear, ensuring an informed public both normalized to nuclear threats and fearful of their own annihilation. Following these national commitments, the Wisconsin Board of Vocational, Technical, and Adult Education asserted that educators ‘need[ed] to help students and other members of the community be informed about the nature and effects of nuclear attack and civil defence plans for such eventuality’ (1964, p. 8). The Board argued that such education should include ‘teaching about the implications of living in a nuclear age’ (p. 12). Clara McMahon of the Federal Civil Defense Administration wrote in the Elementary School Journal that ‘any threat to our national security makes it imperative that the schools intensify their efforts to accomplish their goals, while assuming responsibility of adjusting the curriculum to develop in the pupils the qualities and characteristics needed in such an emergency’ (McMahon, 1953, p. 440). Such publications in academic and practitioner journals reveal how schools and staff began changing their curricular goals and practices to meet the perceived psychological and academic demands of the Cold War. As these examples illustrate, the US security state turned to its public school system to cultivate fearful yet prepared youth ready to respond to nuclear emergencies in prescribed ways

306  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state (Nguyen, 2018). As a multi-scalar project, Cold War schooling undertook the intellectual, ideological, psychological, discursive, and material work to support the state’s geopolitical goals and their aftershocks. These institutional arrangements provided the framework, funding, and architecture that continues to shape the school–security nexus, albeit in ways reworked by prevailing social, geopolitical, and economic contexts as well as the daily work of state agents. In this way, schools have responded to the changing geographies of the state, simultaneously contributing to and organized by shifting geopolitical goals.

28.3

NEOLIBERAL RESTRUCTURING AND THE REMAKING OF THE SCHOOL–SECURITY NEXUS

Neoliberal restructuring simultaneous to shifting perceptions of the military draft continued to remake the school–security nexus. As the US began withdrawing troops from the Vietnam War, many anti-war activists celebrated the 1973 abolition of the military draft, first authorized by the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act. Neoliberal economists like Milton Freidman viewed the shift to an all-volunteer force (AVF) as a positive step toward advancing individual freedoms and economic efficiencies. President Nixon supported efforts to end the draft, asserting that the US needed a professional military and that the turn to an AVF could defuse the anti-war movement (Glass, 2012). Given these different arguments, the implementation of an AVF generated bipartisan praise. Despite widespread support for abolishing the draft in the 1970s, today critics warn that the AVF merely ‘exploits the lack of opportunity elsewhere for poor people of colour in the US and targets them to become its unwilling “cannon fodder” for fighting its imperialist wars abroad’ (Tannock, 2005, p. 166). More specifically, critics caution that the turn to an AVF marks a shift from a ‘de jure draft’ to a ‘de facto poverty draft’ that enlists poor and working-class youth with limited economic opportunities. In this view, participation in the AVF rarely is a voluntary choice but, rather, a decision determined by broader social contexts, including scarce economic opportunities available in poor and working-class communities. By exploiting state abandonment, the military pressures working-class youth to join the military in exchange for financial security, healthcare, dignity and respect, and retirement benefits otherwise unavailable to them. The AVF thus functions as a ‘market-model military’ that defers to the economic market to determine who serves in the military. These competing views of the AVF have fueled debates about the role, influence, and ethics of military recruitment and programming in schools, through which the state seeks to ‘shape … school space and human relations in service of military objectives through physical presence and social interaction’ (Wall, 2010, p. 107). In fact, the US Army asserts that its School Recruiting Program is ‘a well-planned, prioritized, and coordinated effort designed to create positive awareness and interest in available Army programs … [and] assist recruiters in penetrating their school market … to obtain the maximum number of quality enlistments’ (2004, p. 2). In this view, schools play a critical role in fulfilling the state’s market model military objectives by cultivating a more favorable opinion of the US military and encouraging poor and working-class youth to enlist in exchange for economic, social, and cultural benefits. The rise of neoliberal capitalism and the changing geographies of the state facilitated the turn to market logics to organize military recruitment. As both a political-economic model and form of governance, neoliberalism refers to an ideology that advocates the privatization of the

The school–security nexus  307 public sector, redefines democracy as market choice, and reshapes relationships between the governing and the governed. As an economic model, neoliberalism proposes that unregulated markets offer the optimal conditions for unfettered economic growth and capitalist expansion while limiting wasteful spending. As a form of governance, neoliberalism ushers in a new social imaginary that values competitive individualism over social responsibility. Even though the state appears to retreat, or weaken, under neoliberal capitalism by rolling back from social welfare programs, new forms of state activity, like intensified coercive policing, roll out, ultimately re-entrenching state power in reworked ways. Schools have responded to these changing geographies of the now neoliberal state. To facilitate this process, neoliberal policies destroy current institutional arrangements and create new infrastructures calibrated to the rule of capital. Critics refer to this path-dependent and context-specific priming of communities for capitalist expansion as creative destruction. Destroying the US public school system, for example, facilitates the creation of a new school infrastructure that transforms education from a public good to a capitalist enterprise. Chicago has long served as a testing ground for neoliberal school policies (Lipman, 2011). In 2013, for example, the city closed 50 public schools and opened 33 publicly funded but privately operated charter schools, marking an important shift toward privatizing the public school system and offering a ‘portfolio’ of school choice options. The city justified these school closures as a way to create a more efficient, accountable, and competitive education system driven by market logics. Education scholar Alex Means reports that ‘in the dominant media and among the financial and political elite, a corporate consensus has emerged that has declared public schooling to be a failed experiment – an antiquated social institution incapable of meeting the demands and assorted crises of the global era’ (2013, p. 1). By blaming the public nature of the education system for school failure, these neoliberal narratives erased the years of economic disinvestment, inequitable school funding schemes, racist pedagogies, and persistent segregation that have affected teaching and learning in Chicago public schools (Lipman, 2011). Such narratives also justify the privatization of the public school system and punitive disciplinary regimes. Rejecting these reforms, Chicago parents warned that closing neighborhood schools would destabilize communities and force children to walk longer distances to get to school, both of which would increase neighborhood and school violence. Keith Harris cautioned that the closing of four high schools in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and ‘bringing children from all over Englewood together in one place’ is ‘like lighting a powder keg’ (as quoted in Black, 2018). Although Chicago created provisions to reduce violence, including the Safe Passage program that scatters volunteers along the most dangerous walking routes to school, parents and children report an increase in violence brought about by the school closures (Stovall, 2014). Although policymakers argue that neoliberal school reforms inject market choice into the education system, few poor and working-class families of color are empowered to ‘shop’ around for the best school, especially given the complexity of the school choice system, lack of transportation to privatized schools, required parental contracts, and selective enrolment policies that require high test scores and near perfect disciplinary records. Neoliberal school restructuring in Chicago therefore ‘contributes to sorting the most disadvantaged into a bottom rung of disinvested [neighborhood] schools’, often stigmatized as low-performing, chaotic, and violent (Means, 2013, p. 62). This ‘sturdy neoliberal policy matrix’ generates ‘cumulative

308  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state disadvantage for youth of colour and academic water wings for most young people who are white, especially if they are wealthy’ (Fine and Ruglis, 2009, p. 20). Despite its ongoing disinvestment in public schools in communities of color, the city of Chicago simultaneously has committed extensive resources to militarized policing in Chicago public schools, most evident in the growing number of police officers, surveillance cameras, and other policing technologies, like social media monitoring, used in schools. As Michelle Fine and Jessica Ruglis assert, ‘with a public sector sleight of hand, there is perhaps no more vivid illustration of accumulation by dispossession than policies that infuse public schools with criminal justice surveillance, literally sucking out time, resources, relationships, and space from teaching and learning, redirecting these resources into criminal surveillance and pursuit’ (2009, p. 21). As the city disinvests in its public school system, it reinvests in both privatized education schemes and coercive policing. These school reforms support broader neoliberal restructuring enacted by the state. Although many Chicago residents reject policing as the preeminent solution to pressing social problems, many parents fear for the children’s safety, particularly as the state has ‘engineered, manufactured conflict’ through school closures to ‘justify police brutality, gentrification, and disinvestment’ (Stovall, 2014, para. 8). Chicago families therefore are attracted to ‘no-excuses’ charter schools given their rigorous pedagogical methods and strict discipline policies. Given the reputation of traditional public schools, these no-excuses charter schools appear to be a safe and rigorous alternative (Waitoller et al., 2019). Chicago also has responded to the educational crisis wrought by neoliberal school restructuring by developing and investing in military high schools and other school-based programs like the JROTC. One Chicago parent, for example, committed more than 50 hours to navigating the high school application process before learning that her child most likely would not be accepted into her top-choice selective enrolment school. School staff at Rickover Naval Academy, however, reassured this mother that their military school could provide additional resources, a college-preparatory experience, and a rigorous learning environment. In a context of chronic disinvestment and state abandonment, this mother viewed Rickover as a safe, clean, and orderly alternative to her neighborhood school (Meiners and Quinn, 2011). For many children, ‘joining the JROTC was, and still is, a way to resist being shut out from other educational tracks and an attempt to push back against the uncertainties visible in their neighborhood’ (Meiners and Quinn, 2011, para. 27). Given the educational crisis ushered in by racialized neoliberal policies, many Chicago parents have come to view military academies and JROTC programs as viable schooling opportunities for their children, particularly in the absence of high-quality, well-funded, and safe public schools. With the renewed rise of the carceral state, the school-to-military pipeline often has been sold as an alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline by disciplining non-dominant youth and providing post-schooling job opportunities. In the context of neoliberal capitalism and state restructuring, the military is understood as the ‘preeminent site of workfare’ and the soldier the ‘model social citizen … worthy of public support’ (Cowen and Siciliano, 2011, p. 1520). This means that schools view the military as a viable and valuable school-to-work alternative to incarceration that creates disciplined subjects deserving of the state’s support (Han, 2018). Schools therefore have been reorganized to meet the active search for military enlistees, respond to the educational crisis produced by neoliberal restructuring, reinforce racial and class hierarchies, and facilitate securitized social reproduction whereby poor and working-class youth of color increasingly are given the choice between prison and military futures (Cowen

The school–security nexus  309 and Siciliano, 2011). To protect state power, the US turned to JROTC, believed to discipline youth to dominant norms, shore up support for the military, and quell social unrest. Given these social aims, schools contribute to the state’s broader security objectives, evident in how military programs undertake the ideological work to gain support for military aggression, discipline social difference, and funnel youth toward military enlistment. Despite the promises of high school military programming, military service rarely ‘bridges careers’ for people of color, as ‘Black men are no longer more likely to join the military than whites’ and, instead, ‘now face a much higher risk of incarceration’ (Han, 2018, p. 615). Military programs do not meet the promises made to its youthful participants and often fail to achieve the goals that justify their existence. Furthermore, the persistence of military programming and recruiting has changed the ‘grammar of schooling’ such that the presence of the military in schools is now taken for granted and unquestioned. A military ethos has infused US public schools, particularly in rural and urban communities, foreclosing imagining and implementing other types of programming to promote children’s success in schools. Today, the state has not limited its use of educational arrangements to respond to neoliberal crises and meet the demands of the global war on terror to K-12 schools. Institutions of higher education also have reorganized to fill the perceived ‘post-9/11 education security gap’ by fostering linguistic and scientific expertise that services the global war on terror (Kay, 2009, pp. 3–4). Similar to Cold War arguments, security experts have asserted that ‘current investments are focusing on more immediate means of applying educational advantages to meet the needs of the new security environment’ (Kay, 2009, p. 4). These programs invariably target ‘minority students’ at ‘predominately African-American and Latino universities which are chronically underfunded’ (Gonzalez, 2010, p. 36). The state offers resources, research support, and prestige in exchange for establishing new programs that support its agenda. Such institutional arrangements follow the urging of House Intelligence Committee chair Jane Harman, who testified after the September 11 attacks that ‘We need spies that look like their targets, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who speak the dialects that terrorists use, and FBI agents who can speak to Muslim women that might be intimidated by men’ (Gonzalez, 2010, p. 35). For Harman and others in the intelligence community, the emerging security environment requires an increasingly diverse intelligence force. Building on and redeveloping Cold War-era institutional arrangements, universities have offered one way to train and recruit future national security workers. In the midst of the global war on terror, gaining competitive advantage in education has facilitated global dominance. Colleges and universities across Chicago have taken advantage of these increasing global war on terror educational opportunities, particularly in cash-strapped and resource-scarce public institutions. Consistently ranked by USA Today as one of the most ‘ethnically diverse’ universities in the US, the University of Illinois-Chicago celebrated joining the CIA’s Signature School Program in 2018. The university’s chancellor Michael Amiridis reported that the partnership would provide students with a ‘greater breadth of career opportunities’ (as quoted in Boynés, 2018), while the CIA (2018) asserted that the program would build a ‘talented and diverse workforce to ensure mission success and improve the CIA’s ability to keep Americans safe’. As with the aftermath of the Spanish–American War, the US sought to intervene in foreign educational systems as a part of its global war on terror strategy. In a leaked 2003 memo, for example, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld sensationalized religious schools – madrassas – as ‘ticking bombs’ and ‘Taliban factories’, ultimately key sites in the global war on terror.

310  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state To address this ‘madrassa problem’, journalist Nicholas Kristof (2011) encouraged his readers to donate to development organizations like the Citizens Foundation, which could ‘moderate Pakistan and defeat extremists’ by ‘bolster[ing] secular education’ (para. 12). Effectively fighting the global war on terror depended on intervening in the educational systems of its military targets and imposing secular education driven by US values. As these examples demonstrate, schools synchronize with broader geopolitical goals, ultimately reorganizing their institutional structure, aims, and mission to meet the needs of the global war on terror and the shifting geographies of the state. US schooling therefore serves as an ‘essential asset for successful military operations in the new global security environment’ (Kay, 2009, p. 1). As the state continuously restructures consonant with increasingly transnational flows of capital (Mitchell, 2003), schools both shape and are shaped by prevailing national security exigencies. These institutional arrangements shift to meet the dynamic demands of the state and its changing spatial configurations.

28.4

RESISTANCE: RETHINKING (STATE) SECURITY

Although the US has imposed educational initiatives to maintain state power and global dominance, schools, researchers, teachers, and children have contested these arrangements, from teachers sent to the Philippines in 1898 to families living in Chicago in 2020. For example, many scientists opposed nuclear weapons policies and classified weapons research conducted in university labs during the Cold War (Bridger, 2015). During the ‘cultural turn’ in the global war on terror, the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (2009) protested the use of ‘anthropology as a weapon in dubious battles’, particularly through the embedding of anthropologists with military units. More specifically, this scholar-activist group argued against deploying ‘second-rate mercenary academics … charged with an investigation of the cultures of the local peoples sufficient to determine if and how they can be subjugated or, failing that, taken out’ (Network of Concerned Anthropologists, 2009, p. iii). Chicago’s youth-led Education Not Militarization! campaign has worked to remove military recruiters and programs from Chicago public schools and replace them with initiatives that center restorative justice (National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, 2016). Voices of Youth in Chicago also pushed the Illinois Public Act 99-456, which forces schools to limit their use of suspensions and expulsions and increase academic and behavioral supports for students. These social movements have reimagined the role of the state and its relationship with schools. Rather than mobilizing schools to enact and achieve state security policies, organizers have struggled for schools that serve as: community anchors that promote the social welfare of children and their families, sites of safety that seek to transform the social contexts that drive human insecurity, and places that foster critical thinking. Chicago families, for example, have fought for, and won, 20 ‘sustainable community schools’, sites where ‘students, parents, and their communities play a key, self-deterministic role in public education’ (Chicago Teachers Union, 2018). This model envisions public schools as central community spaces that provide comprehensive supports for children and their families in addition to a safe and rigorous learning environment. Although the changing geographies of the state often influence the restructuring of schools, communities participate in the reclaiming and remaking of school spaces in more democratic and less violent ways.

The school–security nexus  311 These efforts redefine security according to the needs of those most vulnerable to (state) violence and reassert schooling as a public, rather than private, good. Voices of Youth in Chicago fought to redirect state energies toward restorative justice programs and social services, rather than coercive policing. Although the state continually has reorganized schools to meet its shifting geopolitical goals, the imposition of these state policies always has been contested by those tasked with their enactment as well as those subjected to such policies and practices. As the case of Chicago illustrates, such struggles have created chaotic, rather than coherent, state policies, opening up the possibility for alternative state formations and schooling opportunities.

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312  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Kay, S. (2009), ‘From Sputnik to Minerva: Education and American national security’, Defense Horizons, 65 (January), 1–8. Koch, N. (2014), ‘The shifting geopolitics of higher education: Inter/nationalizing elite universities in Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and beyond’, Geoforum, 56, 46–54. Kristof, N. (2011), ‘Gifts that say you care’, New York Times, December 3, p. SR11. Retrieved from www​.nytimes​.com/​2011/​12/​04/​opinion/​sunday/​kristof​-gifts​-that​-say​-you​-care​.html on June 6, 2020. Lipman, P. (2011), The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City, New York: Routledge. McMahon, C.P. (1953), ‘Civil defense and education goals’, Elementary School Journal, 53 (8), 440–2. Means, A.J. (2013), Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the Struggle for Democratic Life, New York: Palgrave. Meiners, E.R. and T. Quinn (2011), ‘Militarism and education normal’, Monthly Review, 63 (3). Retrieved from http://​monthlyreview​.org/​2011/​07/​01/​militarism​-and​-education​-normal on June 6, 2020. Meltzer, D.E. and V.K. Otero (2015), ‘A brief history of physics education in the United States’, American Journal of Physics, 83 (5), 447–58. Mitchell, K. (2003), ‘Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: From the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, 28 (4), 387–403. Mountz, A. (2003), ‘Human smuggling, the transnational imaginary, and everyday geographies of the nation-state’, Antipode, 35 (3), 622–44. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1111/​1467​-8330​.00342 National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (2016), Military Recruiting Tools and Methods, New Windsor, MD. Retrieved from https://​nnomy​.org/​en/​who​-are​-we/​contact​-nnomy​.html on June 6, 2020. Network of Concerned Anthropologists (ed.) (2009), The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual: Or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society, Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press. Nguyen, N. (2018), ‘“That’s just my own homeland security instinct”: Teaching terror in times of war’, Critical Military Studies, 4 (1). https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​23337486​.2016​.1215073 Orr, J. (2004), ‘The militarization of inner space’, Critical Sociology, 30 (2), 451–81. https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1163/​156916304323072170 Painter, J. (2006), ‘Prosaic geographies of stateness’, Political Geography, 25 (7), 752–74. Stovall, D. (2014), Cities in Revolt: Chicago, Kalamazoo, MI. Retrieved from www​.kzoo​.edu/​praxis/​ cities​-in​-revolt​-chicago/​ on June 6, 2020. Tannock, S. (2005), ‘Is “opting out” really an answer? Schools, militarism, and the counter-recruitment movement in post-September 11: United States at War’, Social Justice, 32 (3), 163–78. Thiem, C.H. (2009), ‘Thinking through education: The geographies of contemporary educational restructuring’, Progress in Human Geography, 33 (2), 154–73. US Army. (2004), ‘School recruiting program handbook’, USAREC Pamphlet 350-13. Waitoller, F., N. Nguyen, and G. Super (2019), ‘The irony of rigor: “No-excuses” charter schools at the intersections of race and disability’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32 (3), 282–98 Wall, T.J. (2010), ‘“School ownership is the goal”: Military recruiting, public schools, and fronts of war’, in T. Monahan and R.D. Torres (eds), Schools under Surveillance, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 104–19. Wisconsin Board of Vocational, Technical, and Adult Education (1964), Schools and Civil Defense, Madison, WI. Zimmerman, J. (2006), Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

29. Spheres of influence Stefanie Ortmann

29.1 INTRODUCTION Spheres of influence are back – or are they? The concept is certainly making a comeback, part of a renewed fashion for geopolitical analysis (Ferguson and Hast 2018). As the story goes, rising non-Western powers are undermining the rules-based liberal international order and are bringing Great Power politics back to the international stage. A quest for spheres of influence, it is often suggested, is a particular feature of would-be Great Powers, insecure about their status and stuck in an old-fashioned geopolitical imagination that the post-modern West has already overcome (Götz 2015; Auer 2015). The Kremlin is seen to be at the forefront of this development, not least with the project to create a Eurasian economic union (EAEU) that triggered the conflict in Ukraine. In 2017, United States (US) president Donald Trump’s first national security strategy put it bluntly: ‘Russia seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders’ (Trump 2017, p. 25). More hardened geopolitical analysts are already thinking about the benefits of a mutual recognition of spheres of influence between Russia and the US to ensure the security and stability of Europe (Mearsheimer 2014). However compelling this narrative appears, it is both empirically limited and normatively problematic. It is certainly true that security always is a socio-spatial practice (Adamson 2016). Equally, elements of what John Agnew has called the modern geopolitical imagination are once again driving political developments around the globe, including the core West – evidenced not least by the recent repoliticization of sovereign control over territorial borders (Agnew 2003). The narrative of a ‘return of spheres of influence’ is part of this trend. It evokes particular assumptions associated with the modern geopolitical imagination, not only about a world dominated by Great Powers, but also particular ontologies of space, essentialized as fixed, bounded territory under the exclusive control of a powerful state actor (Hast 2014). Security, then, becomes once more about the defense of a delineated territory against an outside intruder, as was the dominant understanding of the nexus between space and security when ‘spheres of influence’ first emerged as a concept of international politics in the nineteenth century. However, both conceptions of security and the spatialities of security have seen considerable evolution since then and do not fit into the fixed, binary spatial imaginaries underpinning ‘spheres of influence’. This is vividly illustrated in the tension between the widespread assumption that there is a Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia and the multiscalar, ambivalent spatialities underpinning Russian power in Kyrgyzstan, which will be explored in this chapter. The countries supposedly in a sphere of influence today are not empty territories, used as ‘buffers’ to guarantee the territorial security of Great Powers. Local agency is central to the relational production of Russian power in Central Asia, and the security produced in these relations may be the regime security of local elites, securing the legitimacy of the Krygyz state, or indeed securing the possibility of local people to migrate to Russia for work and thus ensure the survival of their families. 313

314  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The assumption of a ‘return of spheres of influence’, part of a broader revival of essentialized understandings of political space, may be politically active, but is misleading, unable to capture the complex entanglements that co-produce state, space and power at the present global juncture. The performance of modern geopolitical imaginaries today coexists with, and indeed depends on, much more fluid, multiscalar spatialities, the result of both historical legacies and the transformation of state power over the past few decades. In this, local agency is central to the relational production of state power at a distance (Allen 2011). Spheres of influence, projecting very different spatial ontologies, are therefore an inadequate analytical lens for understanding the empirical dynamics of the current geopolitical moment. Their increasing popularity among Western (and indeed Russian) analysts is nevertheless illustrative of the political and normative functions of the modern geopolitical imagination today.

29.2

WHAT ARE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE?

‘Spheres of influence’ are an explicitly spatial concept, expressing the idea of external influence by means other than the use of force through specific imaginaries of space and power. In this, the concept evokes particular ontological assumptions, analytical ‘lenses’ that enable particular questions and lines of inquiry and discourage others (Hacking 2004). These assumptions are not neutral. As all concepts do, ‘spheres of influence’ projects layers of meaning from past contexts, and this inevitably influences its current use (Hacking 2004). Added to this, it is a concept of political practice as much as a concept of analysis, and over the course of its history has become increasingly controversial as it came to express the tension between imperial politics and the idea of sovereign equality and territorial inviolability (Hast 2014). It first emerged as a concept of political and legal practice at the high point of European imperialism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, part of a cluster of concepts and theories about space and sovereign power that legitimized European colonial oppression (Grovogui 1996; Anghie 2006). The nineteenth-century geopolitical imagination that produced imperial Great Powers as the ultimate autonomous agents in international politics was inextricably intertwined with thinking space and power territorially, parceled up into fixed blocs and entities (Agnew 2003; Vollaard 2009). It is often overlooked that this imaginary was grafted onto much more ambivalent European spatialities, not least the continuing role of imperial dynastic relations. Nevertheless, by the turn of the twentieth century exclusive control over territory had become a widely shared political ideal, deemed necessary for economic prosperity, security and strategic advantage, and shaping economic and social relations as well as technological developments. As Alexander Murphy put it, it dominated political imaginaries to such an extent that it ‘crowded out competing conceptions of how power might be organized’ (1996, p. 91). Sovereign power was imagined not only as territorially bounded but as capability, something that could be possessed and accumulated (not least in the form of territory), fueling the autonomous agency of entities distinct in time and space. A focus on capabilities implied a vision of state power as ‘power over’, as Stephen Lukes put it, power as control, be it over territory or people (Lukes 2005). If the concept reflects the assumptions of the modern geopolitical imagination, it also highlights just how much this imagination is rooted in the racialized Eurocentrism that underpinned nineteenth-century imperial practices (Hobson 2012). Spheres of influence came into use as a concept of diplomatic practice and of geopolitical theorizing in the late nineteenth century,

Spheres of influence  315 notably in relation to the ‘Great Game’, Russia’s expansion into Central Asia and purported ‘drive to India’. The idea that the Tsarist empire was planning to conquer India and gain access to the Persian Gulf greatly exercised British observers at the time and led to calls for a British sphere of influence in the region (Keal 1976; Kearns 2009). Subsequently, spheres of influence came to denote a situation where an outside actor – normally one of the European Great Powers – had at least partial control over a territory, even if that territory was a sovereign state. The Afghan state, for once, was a British creation, a newly delineated territory given sovereignty precisely in order to become a sphere of influence and thus act as a barrier to Russia’s expansion (Keal 1976). In the 1907 Anglo-Russian convention that formalized Russian and British spheres of influence in Central Asia, Afghanistan was described as ‘outside the sphere of Russian influence’, and committed to conduct all its external relations ‘through the intermediary of His Britannic Majesty’s Government’ (Hurewitz 1975). This highlights the core meaning of exclusion and distinction in spheres of influence, as in the exclusive influence of one Great Power. It also illustrates how spheres of influence were agreed in direct negotiation between imperial powers, sometimes but not always codified in treaties, some secret, some public, but always without any agency for the (brown, non-European) peoples finding themselves in a determinate sphere (Rutherford 1926; Hast 2014). This reflects the racialized gradations of sovereign agency that legitimized colonial conquest (Callahan 2004; Hobson 2012). Assumptions about the passivity of black peoples, or the irrational, inferior agency of Oriental peoples, underpinned colonial rule. These racialized assumptions fed into the image of a passive, empty territory without any local agency, controlled from the outside, that forms the core of ‘spheres of influence’ – a depersonalized space without human relationships and the history and meaning that comes with them (Vollaard 2009, p. 694). And indeed, it was well understood at the time that spheres of influence were an integral part of colonial practice, part of a process, a succession of degrees of control that culminated in colonial possession (Rutherford 1926, p. 304). Like the racialized geopolitics of which they were part, spheres of influence survived the end of the First World War, the development of the doctrine of self-determination of peoples, and calls for an end to imperial ‘secret diplomacy’. By the 1920s, they were no longer regarded as an acceptable legal norm, but the remaining imperial powers, including the US in Central America, continued to regard them as part of their international practice (Rutherford 1926; Hast 2014). And spheres of influence continued to flourish in Europe too, as German national socialist ideology applied racialized geopolitics to Europe, not least in the secret additions to the non-aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. Stalin, of course, combined secretly negotiated spheres of influence with public professions of anti-imperialism, foreshadowing a dynamics that came to dominate the Cold War era. As decolonization gathered pace after the Second World War and anti-imperialism became a central part of the ideological battlefield between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the US, the right to self-determination and the idea of sovereign equality became global currency. Spheres of influence became something both the US and the USSR strenuously denied seeking, a political battle concept with which to denounce the actions of the adversary (Keal 1976, p. 67). However, at the same time the Cold War was perhaps the high point of performing the modern geopolitical imagination, producing a spatial ordering of the majority of the world into clearly delineated opposing camps. The fixation and division of space was deepened by the addition of a new element – ideological antagonism, not just as foreign orientation but pervading all structures of society, inscribing spatialized difference at a much deeper, totalizing, level (Agnew 2003). As the Cold War

316  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state settled into a prolonged stasis, there developed a largely adhered-to tacit agreement between the US and USSR that both sides had exclusive control over particular core territories, the First and Second Worlds, with alterations of the status quo prevented by force, or manipulation of political processes (Keal 1976). The Eastern bloc is just one illustration of how Cold War geopolitics once again treated spheres of influence as a step towards full imperial control, with illegitimate puppet regimes installed or maintained in power in the face of ongoing opposition from significant parts of the population. That said, the transformative, totalizing dimension of Cold War geopolitics, and especially its sudden end, also shows that it became increasingly difficult for the US and USSR to treat spheres of influence as empty spaces without local agency. It wasn’t just that spheres of influence were stigmatized as incompatible with the now established norm of national self-determination. Equally significantly, the domestic sphere, namely the social and political orientation of societies into communist or liberal democratic systems, became a main concern of international politics, and this inevitably put a spotlight on local legitimacy and local choices. This was a concern for the US, which extolled freedom of choice as a fundamental part of Western ideology but orchestrated far-right coups in Latin America. Above all, it turned out to be the Achilles heel of the USSR, whose ‘external empire’ or sphere of influence, the Eastern bloc, crumbled when people took to the street in the name of national self-determination and whose final collapse and disintegration was precipitated by the same demands.

29.3

RETURN OF (NON-WESTERN) GREAT POWERS, RETURN OF SPHERES OF INFLUENCE?

The dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War superpower rivalry also signaled the end of spheres of influence as exclusive spaces maintained by agreement between outside powers. Over the ensuing three decades, discourses and practices around global space developed in a very different direction, directly challenging the link between territory and state power (Murphy 1996). The end of Cold War divisions and the spread of new technologies – above all the borderless, fluid realm of cyberspace – enabled a sudden intensification of global networks and flows that was seen by many commentators as the beginning of the end of the modern geopolitical imagination, and perhaps of sovereign state power itself (O Tuathail 1998; Agnew 2009). The concept of Great Powers and its associated practices certainly seemed obsolete at a time when the US was in an unchallenged position of global hegemony and security concerns shifted to the threat posed by transnational terrorist networks. But in recent years, the pendulum has swung back. The narrative of the end of state-centric spatial orderings has been overtaken by claims of a return of Great Power politics. The conflict in Ukraine, for one, has been described as ‘the return of geopolitics to Europe’, a battle for spheres of influence between Russia and the West that effectively turned the European Union (EU) into a geopolitical actor (Mead 2014). And long before that, Central Asia was described as the site of a ‘new Great Game’ for spheres of influence in the region, first between Russia and the US, and later between Russia and China (Edwards 2003). It is true that the Kremlin increasingly uses and performs classical geopolitical tropes, most spectacularly in the invasion of Georgia, the conflict in the Donbass and the annexation of Crimea. In the West, too, the modern geopolitical imagination and elements of nineteenth-century power politics have persisted and are becoming more visible. The US

Spheres of influence  317 in particular regularly performs Great Power-ness as sovereign independence of action, and long before the current widespread fetishization and politicization of territorial sovereignty, ideas about bounded territory continued to underpin Western international practices. Claims of a return of spheres of influence are part of this development, but not because they are returning as an acceptable practice. It is telling that post-Cold War interventions and attempts at projecting influence by both the West and Russia are structured around and legitimized by the language of popular self-determination, be it in Western democracy promotion policies, or the doctrine of responsibility to protect, invoked by the Kremlin to legitimate the annexation of Crimea. At the same time, both Russian and Western politicians now habitually accuse the other side of trying to establish spheres of influence, interpreting each other’s actions along conventional geopolitical lines (Ferguson and Hast 2018). The Kremlin, for one, speaks of the former Soviet Union (FSU) as a ‘region of privileged interests’, but accuses the West of establishing spheres of influence in the form of regime change through color revolutions or the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and EU membership and association agreements (Trenin 2009). All of this could be taken to replicate the divide between the language of anti-imperialism and the geopolitical practices of spheres of influence during the Cold War – a ‘return to the Cold War’, another currently popular geopolitical narrative. But it is taking place in a context that has evolved into something so substantially different that the comparison is rendered problematic, a politicized claim rather than a description of current developments – and one that reproduces the racialized Eurocentric assumptions the concept continues to project. At a fundamental level, this ‘return’ is occurring without the shared imaginary of a world divided into separate blocs and the tacit understandings around this imaginary that allowed both sides to treat the space under their control as empty territories defined only by their ideological orientation (Agnew 2003). In Western political discourse today, accusations that Russia is seeking a sphere of influence are linked to broader narratives stabilizing the geopolitical identity of ‘the West’ against substantially different non-Western Others, in this case focusing on particular ideas of statehood and geopolitics. Liberal Western states are depicted as ‘post-national’, their sovereignties entangled and increasingly deterritorialized, the distinction between domestic and external space blurred, their registers of power soft and diffuse in reflection of these new, more fluid spatialities. Against this, the non-Western rising powers, it is claimed, remain modern rather than post-modern, fixated on territory, exercising power through old-fashioned territorial control (Auer 2015). This is an updated version of the familiar Eurocentric narrative in which the non-West is portrayed as lagging behind, stuck in an earlier state of development. The often-repeated claim that Russia inevitably seeks spheres of influence as part of its Great Power identity is part of this, reflecting a long-standing geopolitical narrative that posits a rational, restrained West against the ‘instinctive expansionism’ inherent in the Russian and later Soviet national character (for examples see Semple 1908; Pipes 1980). The differentiation between the post-modern West and modern in the current version of this account is totalizing in a manner resembling Cold War imaginaries, but extended from mere ideological divisions into a claim that there are now fundamentally different forms of state-ness and thus state power in the West and among non-Western Great Powers. It is perhaps not surprising that this account is an oversimplification. Spatial practices of (state) power in Russia are much more complex and diffuse than these binaries suggest. In fact, both in the West and Russia, the ‘state effect’, as Timothy Mitchell put it, is constituted through an often contradictory assemblage of different spatial imaginaries and practices, some

318  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state territorial and some de-derritorialized (Mitchell 1991; Agnew 2009). Not only is the West contributing to the global return of geopolitical imaginaries and binary exclusions, but the post-Soviet Russian state continues to use liberal ‘post-modern’ languages and practices and associated spatial imaginaries across a wide array of issue areas. This is part of a long-standing ambivalence between liberal and geopolitical imaginaries in Russian official discourse that persists in spite of the Kremlin’s current illiberal turn (Ortmann 2018). The EAEU, often described as simply a vehicle for a Russian sphere of influence, openly mimics the structures of the EU, not least in its facilitation of labor migration between members. Putin’s original blueprint for the EAEU imagined it as networking Russia into the EU and other regional economic blocs, a ‘harmonised community of economies stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok’ (Putin 2011). While the EAEU remains in important respects a virtual regional organization and, in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, is locked in a spatial dynamics of mutual exclusion with the EU, it has also remained a vehicle for opening up economic spaces, with free trade agreements concluded or in the making with a number of Asian and Middle Eastern countries (Silk Road Briefing 2019). Even if this is dismissed as mendacious contestation of liberal forms of global governance, it effectively still reproduces its open spatialities. Beyond this open mimicry of Western liberal practices, there are particular, ambivalent spatialities around Russian stateness, rooted in a local context shaped by Soviet and imperial legacies. For one, the highly informal, networked character of the Soviet state has been reproduced in the post-Soviet kleptocratic state, where lines between public and private, state and business, and legal and illegal are habitually blurred (Easter 2000; Dawisha 2015). This blurring of boundaries extends to the foreign/domestic distinction, as state/business elite networks extend across the region and beyond (Kononenko and Moshes 2011). The ambivalent spatialities reproduced in informal state practices coexist with a continuation of spatial imaginaries of openness and fluidity that have a long history in Russia (von Hagen 2004). ‘Boundless space’ is an old trope in Russian representations of state space, linked as much to experiences of vulnerability of territory as it is to the history of a rapidly expanding land empire whose borders were never fixed (Widdis 2004). The continuation of this imaginary is reflected in the widely used trope of the FSU as ‘near abroad’, an ambivalent space between domestic and international. Both in the West and Russia, fluid, non-linear spatialities, whatever their concrete forms and origins, are central to current dominant registers of state power abroad (Agnew 2009; Allen 2011, 2016). As a result, there are limitations to understanding the current complex assemblage of geopolitical imaginaries and practices through the concept of spheres of influence. The Eurocentric erasures inherent in the concept, especially the denial of local agency, are not sustainable in a world in which power over distance often has little to do with intensive control over a delineated territory. John Allen has highlighted how such power should be understood not only as dispersed and fractured, but above all dependent on concrete relationships, and the complicity of those willing to secure particular outcomes (Allen 2011). As he put it, power is a series of ‘relational effects’, constituted in interactions and always mediated in space and time (Allen 2011, p. 63). Resources, be they material or ideational, matter for the exercise of power at a distance – but it is only ever present in specific, situated relations. Space, in this reading, is never just empty territory but itself the product of concrete relations, dynamic and evolving rather than static and fixed (Massey 2005). And indeed, it is impossible to fully understand Russian power in the region without taking into consideration the manifold material and ideational entanglements and concrete relations that are its condition of possibility – and with this, local agency and local choices, of elites but also populations at large. Russia has

Spheres of influence  319 economic and military resources that can be mobilized to give it influence within the region, but this happens within a specific context of entanglements and affective geographies. This often makes Russian influence pervasive, but weak – not only can it be resisted, but Russian actions are interpreted locally and Russian influence is co-constituted through local agency, with effects that are always relationally co-produced and often uncertain.

29.4

A SPHERE OF INFLUENCE? RUSSIAN POWER AT A DISTANCE IN KYRGYZSTAN

As Gerard Toal put it, the trope ‘Near Abroad’ acknowledges ‘a longstanding spatial entanglement and a range of geopolitical emotions’ (Toal 2017, p. 4). These affective geographies don’t only go one way, from Russia to the countries of the FSU, but are also reflecting the lived experience of the inhabitants of the former Soviet republics. Soviet and ultimately imperial legacies have continuing effects across the region, in shared imaginaries, forms of sovereign power and networks and flows of people that continue to reach across state borders. This can be illustrated by a more detailed look at Russia’s influence in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan is a small and poor Central Asian state that is often described as a ‘client state’ firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence, especially since it joined the EAEU in 2015 (Cooley and Laruelle 2013). Geopolitical narratives of a ‘new Great Game’ put Kyrgyzstan at the mercy of outside Great Powers, first in a tussle between the US and Russia over the American airbase in the country, and currently in a narrative that pits the EAEU against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Some accounts do acknowledge the agency of local elites, especially when there are several outside players competing for influence that can be played off against each other (Cooley 2012). Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev did exactly this when he cited Russian pressure to close the US airbase to extract ever higher rents from the US in return for extending its lease. However, Russian influence is predicated on being relationally produced, not just in regard to a select few elite networks, but the wider Kyrgyz population, and the affective geographies and imaginaries of state power that exist between Kyrgyzstan and Russia as a result. Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the EAEU, for example, is sometimes narrated as proof that the Kremlin was able to cajole Kyrgyz elites into joining against the economic interests of the country, in spite of the heavy reliance of Kyrgyzstan on trade with China (Michel 2015). This narrative of Russian control omits that promises of free movement rights and the facilitation of labor migration made EAEU accession popular among the Kyrgyz population (IRI 2015). This is not surprising, given how many Kyrgyz are affected by labor migration to Russia. About one third of Kyrgyz gross domestic product depends on remittances, and about one fifth of the population are migrants, though much larger family networks depend on their income (IRIN News 2015). In spite of increasing xenophobia towards migrants in Russia, migration also plays a central role in reproducing affective geographies between Kyrgyzstan and Russia (Reeves 2014). Kyrgyz spatial imaginaries of Russia depict a sense of ‘felt closeness’, a blurring of domestic and foreign space. Russian sports teams are habitually referred to as ‘ours’, and in villages in the Fergana valley, where a large proportion of the population migrate to Russia in search of work, ‘going to town’ no longer refers to the local district capital, but Moscow (Reeves 2012). Such ‘felt closeness’ is also expressed in shared political imaginaries circulating between Russia and Kyrgyzstan, which help to prop up the fragile legitimacy of Kyrgyzstan’s polit-

320  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ical elites. In the region, statist imaginaries revolve around the figure of the strongman, the embodied sovereign able to guarantee unity, stability and order (Adams 2010). Unlike other Central Asian states, Kyrgyzstan is not ruled by such a strongman. Instead, political elites rotate through political office, and instability and fragile legitimacy are a recurrent feature of Kyrgyz politics. In this context, the figure of Putin has become a stand-in for embodied sovereignty, reflected in consistently high approval rates in Kyrgyz opinion polls, but also in popular invocations of Putin to resolve local issues (Matveeva 2011). Kyrgyz politicians are aware of this and attempt to shore up their own legitimacy by displaying their closeness to Putin or other prominent Russian political figures – a practice that is deemed so significant that there was a law against using such imagery on election billboards, among fears that this would give an unfair advantage to one particular politician (Ortmann 2018). The extent and limitations of Russian relational power that emerges from this is vividly illustrated in the 2010 overthrow of Bakiev, said to be orchestrated by the Kremlin in order to rid Kyrgyzstan of the US airbase and install a pro-Russian president. After Russian state television, widely consumed in Kyrgyzstan, broadcast a news item about the corruption of the Bakiev family and fuel duties were raised a few months later, a popular uprising toppled Bakiev in April 2010. This illustrates the role of popular agency in understanding Russian influence. The uprising may or may not have been intended by the Kremlin, but it would not have happened without deep-seated dissatisfaction with Bakiev among a large part of the population (Toktomushev 2015). In a situation where Bakiev’s legitimacy was already fragile, the Kremlin’s public distancing further delegitimized him and thus enabled the protests. However, the episode also illustrates the limitations of Russia’s relational power. Bakiev’s successor Almazbek Atambyaev publicly performed his friendship with Putin but was by no means a Kremlin stooge, not least because of his public support for the color revolutions elsewhere in the FSU. The US airbase remained in the country until the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. This account of Russian relational power in Kyrgyzstan does not map onto the ontologies of power and space projected by the concept of spheres of influence. It also undermines another core premise of spheres of influence, that they are zones of exclusive control, tacitly or explicitly acknowledged by other Great Powers. There are strong binaries at work in the concept – a territory is either controlled, in a sphere of influence, or it is not. This is very visible in geopolitical accounts of Kyrgyzstan, which tend to either over- or underestimate Russia’s power. Some accounts see an inexorable decline of Russian influence as it cannot compete with China’s economic strength. Others take Kyrgyzstan’s EAEU membership as an indication that the country is in Russia’s sphere of influence. However, what the example of Kyrgyzstan really shows is that Russian influence is resistible, but has also been resilient, precisely because it is rooted in widespread local attitudes and local agency. It is not a continuous presence, and exists only in concrete, situated relationships. In this, it overlaps and coexists with that of others, in an always fluid scenario in which relational power waxes and wanes according to context. The idea of fixed zones of exclusive control is unsustainable in in an age of fractured power at a distance, where what John Allen has called ‘quiet registers of power’ dominate and are not stopping at borders – be they those of NATO, EU, EAEU, the imagined space of ‘the West’, or state borders (2016, p. 2). In the case of Kyrgyzstan, Western and Chinese engagement coexists with that of Russia. But even in Ukraine, where binary, exclusionary spatial dynamics have been driving events ever since the Ukrainian government was put before a mutually exclusive choice to join either

Spheres of influence  321 the EU accession agreement or the EAEU project, the ambiguities of local agency, relational power and attendant spatialities persist. The conflict in the Donbass, habitually represented in the West and Ukraine as one between Moscow and Kiev, cannot simply be understood as Russian occupation but has deep roots in the open spatialities between the Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian population and Russia, build not only on language and history, but also open borders and the economic and personal relations of its inhabitants (Toal 2017; ICG report 2019). As Gerald Toal has rightly pointed out, rather than a sphere of influence, the conflict has created ‘spaces of dependency and instability’, spaces that are fluid rather than fixed – which may indeed be the Kremlin’s aim, in countering the West’s perceived attempt at creating spheres of influence. However, even in this situation, where there is material dependence on Russia and the Kremlin is propping up local warlords, the Kremlin’s influence is limited by the increasing lack of legitimacy of local leaders and the reactions of a population becoming disillusioned with all sides (ICG report 2019). Here, as in Kyrgyzstan, the Kremlin is not in control of local imaginaries of Russia, and thus a central component of relational power at a distance – and may be kept in power as much by the Ukrainian unwillingness to treat the inhabitants of the Donbass as full Ukrainian citizens as by Russian statecraft (ICG report 2019). This, however, does not mean that affective geographies and entanglements that underpin the reach of relational power are no longer present – nor are they vanishing in the rest of Ukraine, in spite of the current polarization and the slow processes of economic untangling from Russia since 2014. Recent opinion polls that largely excluded the Donbass region show that even in the current polarized context, almost half of Ukraine’s population is now expressing a positive attitude towards Russia, much lower than before the start of the conflict, but on the rise again – with figures, as always, much higher in predominantly Russian-speaking regions (KIIS 2018).

29.5 CONCLUSION There have been recent calls for a rethinking of spheres of influence as an analytical concept, suggesting adaptations to try and incorporate the complexity of current spatial arrangements (Ferguson and Hast 2018). Such redefinitions tend to nevertheless reproduce the majority of the ontological assumptions that make the concept so problematic. The racialized erasures inherent in the concept and the spatial ontologies it projects underplay the role of local agency and impose linear binaries that are unable to capture the topologies of power operating today, the coexistence of different and often contradictory geopolitical imaginaries, or the rapidly evolving fluidity of global dynamics. The imaginary of spheres of influence is also ill-suited to analyzing the complex spatialities of the current geopolitical moment between Russia and the West. When the crisis in Ukraine erupted in 2014, it seemed credible, if not compelling, to argue that this was a return of classical geopolitical logics, a binary struggle between a liberal West, cemented by membership in Western institutions such as NATO and the EU, and an illiberal/geopolitical East. However, this account has since been overridden by events that show the limitations of thinking power in terms of binaries and territoriality – however much this is making a reappearance in political discourse. As illiberalism and nationalism reveal themselves not to be features of the ‘non-West’ but, once again, an intrinsic part of Western social and political fabrics, the Kremlin’s relational power at a distance is reaching into Hungary, Italy, but also the United Kingdom and US, be it via its cultivation of far-right

322  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state networks in Western Europe and the US, or the proliferating effect of social and news media on already present attitudes and values. On the other hand, the Kremlin cannot protect itself from such Western power reaching into Russia itself. Long-standing Kremlin conspiracy theories around Western encroachment and a direct link between the color revolutions of the mid-2000s and Western attempts at ‘regime change’ in Russia itself have led to numerous attempts to suppress political opposition to the Kremlin, from ‘foreign agent’ laws to electoral manipulation, with diminishing success. The fact that narratives of foreign intrusion and of vulnerability of domestic space exist in parallel on both sides is a noteworthy part of the current return and politicization of geopolitical language. Rather than a return of spheres of influence as an analytical concept, it may be useful to ask how and in what context the concept, and other elements of the modern geopolitical imagination, is making a return and what this may tell us about the present global political juncture.

REFERENCES Adams, L. (2010), The Spectacular State: Culture and National Identity on Uzbekistan, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Adamson, Fiona B. (2016), ‘Spaces of global security: Beyond methodological nationalism’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 1 (1), 19–35. Agnew, John (2003), Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics, 2nd ed., London: Routledge. Agnew, John (2009), Globalization and Sovereignty, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Allen, John (2011), Lost Geographies of Power, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Allen, John (2016), Topologies of Power: Beyond Territory and Networks, Abingdon: Routledge. Anghie, Antony (2006), ‘The evolution of international law: Colonial and postcolonial realities’, Third World Quarterly, 27 (5), 739–53. Auer, Stefan (2015), ‘Carl Schmitt in the Kremlin: The Ukraine crisis and the return of geopolitics’, International Affairs, 91 (5), 953–68. Callahan, William A. (2004), ‘Nationalising international theory: Race, class and the English School’, Global Society, 18 (4), 305–23. Cooley, Alexander (2012), Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooley, Alexander and M. Laruelle (2013), ‘The changing logic of Russian strategy in Central Asia: From privileged sphere to divide and rule?’, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, 261. Dawisha, Karen (2015), Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, New York: Simon and Schuster. Easter, Gerald M. (2000), Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, Matthew (2003), ‘The new Great Game and the new great gamers: Disciples of Kipling and Mackinder’, Central Asian Survey, 22 (1), 83–102. Ferguson, Iain and Susanna Hast (2018), ‘Introduction: The return of spheres of influence?’, Geopolitics, 23 (2), 277–84. Grovogui, Siba N’Zatioula (1996), Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Götz, Jonas (2015), ‘It’s geopolitics, stupid: Explaining Russia’s Ukraine policy’, Global Affairs, 1 (1), 3–10. Hacking, Ian (2004), Historical Ontology, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. Hast, Susanna (2014), Spheres of Influence in International Relations, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Hobson, John M. (2012), The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hurewitz, John C. (1975), The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Spheres of influence  323 International Crisis Group (ICG report) (2019), ‘Rebels without a cause: Russia’s Proxies in Eastern Ukraine’, Report no 254, July 16, accessed August 1, 2019 from www​.crisisgroup​.org/​europe​-central​ -asia/​eastern​-europe/​ukraine/​254​-rebels​-without​-cause​-russias​-proxies​-eastern​-ukraine IRI (2015), Opinion poll, accessed August 12, 2019 from www​.iri​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​wysiwyg/​2015​ -09​-25​_survey​_of​_kyrgyz​_public​_opinion​_july​_22​-31​_2015​.pdf IRIN News (2015), ‘Hope and fear: Kyrgyz migrants in Russia’, April 24, accessed August 16, 2019 from www​.irinnews​.org/​report/​101398/​hope​-and​-fear​-kyrgyz​-migrants​-russia Keal, Paul Ernest (1976), ‘Spheres of influence in international politics’, Thesis, Australian National University. Kearns, Geoffrey (2009), Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder, Oxford: Oxford University Press. KIIS (2018), ‘Attitude of the population of Ukraine toward Russia and of the population of Russia toward Ukraine, September 2018’, Press release, accessed August 30 2019 from www​.kiis​.com​.ua/​?lang​=e​ ng​ &​cat​=​reports​&​id​=​795 Kononenko, Vadim and Arkadii Moshes (eds) (2011), Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not?, New York: Springer. Lukes, Stephen (2005), Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Massey, Doreen (2005), For Space, London: Sage. Matveeva, A. (2011), Violence in Kyrgzystan, Vacuum in the Region, working paper 02.11, December, London: London School of Economics. Mead, W.R. (2014), ‘The return of geopolitics: The revenge of the revisionist powers’, Foreign Affairs, 93, 69–79. Mearsheimer, John (2014), ‘Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault: The liberal delusions that provoked Putin’, Foreign Affairs, 93, 77. Michel, C. (2015), ‘Russia’s narrative finds an audience in Central Asia’, The Diplomat, April 28. Mitchell, Timothy (1991), ‘The limits of the state: Beyond statist approaches and their critics’, American Political Science Review 85 (1), 77–96. Murphy, Alexander B. (1996), ‘The sovereign state system as political-territorial ideal: Historical and contemporary considerations’, in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds), State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 81–120. Ortmann, Stefanie (2018), ‘Beyond spheres of influence: The myth of the state and Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan’, Geopolitics, 23 (2), 404–35. O Tuathail, Geraoid (1998), ‘Postmodern geopolitics?’, in Geraoid O Tuathail and Simon Dalby (eds), Rethinking Geopolitics, London: Routledge, pp. 16–38. Pipes, Richard (1980), ‘Militarism and the Soviet state’, Daedalus, 1–12. Putin, Vladimir (2011), ‘A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making’, Izvestia, October 4. Reeves, Madeleine (2012), ‘Black work, green money: Remittances, ritual and domestic economies in southern Kyrgyzstan’, Slavic Review, 71 (1), 108–34. Reeves, Madeleine (2014), Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rutherford, Geddes W. (1926), ‘Spheres of influence: An aspect of semi-suzerainty’, American Journal of International Law, 20 (2), 300–25. Semple, Ellen Churchill (1908), ‘Geographical location as a factor in history’, Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 40 (2), 65–81. Silk Road Briefing (2019), ‘China-Russia Great Eurasian partnership on development track as EAEU agree to regional free trade’, accessed August 28, 2019 at www​.silkroadbriefing​.com/​news/​2019/​02/​ 12/​china​-russia​-great​-eurasian​-partnership​-development​-track​-eaeu​-agree​-regional​-free​-trade/​ Toal, Gerard (2017). Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toktomushev, K. (2015), ‘Regime security, base politics and rent-seeking: The local and global political economies of the American air base in Kyrgyzstan, 2001–2010’, Central Asian Survey, 34 (1), 57–77. Trenin, Dmitri (2009), ‘Russia’s spheres of interest, not influence’, Washington Quarterly, 32 (4), 3–22. Trump, Donald J. (2017), National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC.

324  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Vollaard, Hans (2009), ‘The logic of political territoriality’, Geopolitics, 14 (4), 687–706. von Hagen, Mark (2004), ‘Empires, borderlands, and diasporas: Eurasia as anti-paradigm for the post-Soviet era’, American Historical Review, 109 (2), 445–68. Widdis, Emma (2004), ‘Russia as space’, in Emma Widdis (ed.), National Identity in Russian Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30–50.

30. Cyberspace: the new frontier of state power Frédérick Douzet

30.1 INTRODUCTION In 1976, the geographer Yves Lacoste wrote a foundational – and provocative – book stating that ‘geography is primarily used to wage war’ (Lacoste, 1976). This intellectual approach proves particularly useful when applied to cyberspace as a new space of geopolitics. To be sure, the Internet was not invented in order to wage war. The global interconnection of digital networks initially served academic research purposes and eventually transformed our lives and economies. It has profoundly changed the way we work, communicate and interact as human beings, allowing tremendous progress for our societies. But it is also true that cyberspace has become a space of conflict, a space of confrontation and a space of fierce strategic competition between a multitude of actors. The very notion of security is therefore evolving. What is a national or international threat in cyberspace and what does ‘secure cyberspace’ mean? This issue is still under debate, with many points of view depending on the different states and non-state actors. The notion of securitization advanced by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver in the 1990s – that is, the way in which the political actor takes an object and, through speech, actually addresses a security issue – is highly relevant in this context (Buzan et al., 1998). It allows us to reflect on the ongoing political process that sees all social actors – especially states – discussing what constitutes a threat in cyberspace, and what could be implemented to achieve a ‘state of security’. This chapter argues that the construction of a geopolitical representation of cyberspace as a territory and a warfighting domain has led states to the securitization and militarization of cyberspace, with profound consequences for the shape, stability and security of digital space. In the wake of tremendous challenges to state sovereignty brought by the global expansion of cyberspace, states have developed a digital arsenal and cyber strategies to protect their national security, ensure their power and, in some cases, even try to regain a form of territorial control in/over digital space. Yet because of the specific nature of this new environment, these developments create in turn new risks that remain difficult to assess and anticipate, questioning the very notion of (collective) security in cyberspace. Section 30.2 provides elements of definition for cyberspace and explains the dynamics of territorialization that led to the construction of cyberspace as a new military domain. The second section (30.3) documents how cyberspace has become a battlefield of geopolitics. Section 30.4 explores the security dilemma states are faced with when addressing cyber risk and how it affects international negotiations to promote peace, security and stability of cyberspace in a context of exacerbated geopolitical tensions and enhanced strategic competition.

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30.2

TERRITORIALIZATION AND SECURITIZATION OF CYBERSPACE

There is no consensual definition of cyberspace. Instead there are multiple definitions that reflect the diversity of representations about the emergence and reality of this new space (Bingham, 1996; Singer and Friedman, 2014). One of the difficulties in defining cyberspace is that it looks nothing like it did in the mid-1990s, when fewer than 40 million people, mostly located in North America and Northern Europe, were connected (Warf, 2013). In 2019, there were 4.5 billion Internet users across the world, with over 850 million in China alone. The shape of cyberspace has indeed tremendously changed along with its usage, perception and role in geopolitics. What most definitions try to capture is the idea that cyberspace is a new and highly dynamic environment generated by the global interconnection of information and communication systems that encompasses both the Internet – i.e. the interconnected material and logical infrastructure that allows the automated processing of digital data – and the space it generates, a space of interactions and confrontation between multiple stakeholders. The nature of this space is still under debate, whether it should be conceived as a territory (with physical distances and contiguity), a network (with nodes and connectedness) or a fluid space (composed of multiple changing flows), with some researchers proposing to combine these three elements (Balzacq, 2016). A useful simplification is a representation by three (or more) superposed layers, which are somewhat permeable and interact with each other. This representation bears some analogy with the orders of magnitude in geopolitics (Lacoste, 1993), articulating multiple scales of analysis from the most geographical layer to the most abstract. The first layer – or lowest layer – is the physical layer composed of submarine and terrestrial cables, servers, satellites and other physical equipment that constitute the material infrastructure of cyberspace. This layer is grounded in physical territory and therefore in political geography. It is the most tangible and can easily be mapped with the traditional tools of geography and related to states’ jurisdictions. The two other layers are much more challenging to map, as they are more abstract and intangible. Their cartography requires interdisciplinary work and innovative methodologies, and cannot easily be related to physical geography. The second layer is the ‘logical’ layer, made of a stack of programs and protocols that allows data to travel from one point of the globe to the other. As we will discuss in Section 30.4, the geography of connectivity and cartography of data routing can reveal state strategies to reterritorialize cyberspace in order to exert sovereign control in or over cyberspace (Salamatian et al., 2019). The third layer is the informational layer, also called the cognitive or semantic layer. It refers to human usage and social interaction through the web, social networks, instant communication, spread of information and exchange of ideas at the global level. The term cyberspace therefore captures both a material reality (the physical layer) and an immaterial space of information and interactions – a space more difficult to apprehend and represent. This space has become a relevant object of study for the field of geopolitics since it has become a space of conflict and a strategic priority for many states (Douzet, 2014a). The speed, ubiquity and anonymity provided by these interconnected networks, along with the low cost and wide accessibility of the technology, has empowered multiple actors who use it as a vector of attack to perpetrate crime or conduct operations of sabotage, espionage, disruption or subversion (Rid, 2012; Maurer, 2018).

Cyberspace  327 The notion of territory is at the heart of the scientific approach in geopolitics, since geopolitics studies rivalries of power and influence over a territory at multiple levels of analysis (Lacoste, 1993, 2003). According to Gottmann (1973), a territory is a social construction ensuring security through the control of defensible space, along with a range of opportunities through the economic organization of that space. Territories are indeed organized and politicized space (Storey, 2012; Elden, 2013). Although cyberspace does not meet the usual criteria of the definition of a territory in geography, it does respond to the notion of a space organized by humans, a space appropriated or claimed by different types of actors that could be regarded as a spatial expression of power (Sack, 1986). This new space has its own geography that we need to comprehend in order to understand the strategies of actors that contribute to shaping this environment (Warf, 2013; Robine and Salamatian, 2014; Dodge and Kitchin, 2001; Kellerman, 2016). Beyond these definitions, cyberspace is first and foremost a geopolitical representation – the metaphor of a territory. The very vocabulary used to describe cyberspace borrows from the lexical field of geography – data travels ‘routes’ and transits through ‘gateways,’ cyberspace is referred to as a ‘space,’ a ‘world,’ an ‘environment,’ a ‘domain’ – and more specifically the sea – information ‘flows’ through ‘canals’ and ‘ports,’ and we ‘navigate’ or ‘surf’ the web. The representation of cyberspace as a territory has strongly contributed to shape the debate but also the strategies and policies of actors, and it has legitimized the action of states within it. Interestingly, the concept of cyberspace appeared at two different moments in time, in two different communities, for diametrically opposed reasons that generated two opposite systems of representations with regards to their values and principles. But both bear in common the representation of cyberspace as a territory (Douzet and Desforges, 2018). The first system results from the utopian/dystopian representations of the pioneers of the Internet. The term was first coined by William Gibson in his science fiction novel Neuromancer (1984) in which he describes ‘a consensual hallucination,’ a space of ‘unthinkable complexity’. This mental representation strongly inspired the pioneers of the Internet, immersed in the counterculture of California campuses and utopian discourses about the benefits of information and communications for humanity. The advent of the information society and the ‘global village’ (McLuhan, 1967), the crucial importance of the free flow of information and communication for the good functioning of democracy (Wiener 1961), the myth of a pacification of the world through digital technology (Negroponte, 1995) and the advent of collective intelligence through global connectivity (Licklider, 1960) influenced the very architecture of the Internet. Open, distributed and self-administered, the Internet was initially conceived to avoid control, preserve data flow and automatically trust others. In the early 1990s, this representation gained clout with Al Gore’s information superhighway project to promote the fast expansion of the Internet. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and theories about the end of history (Fukuyama,1989), this representation was reinforced with the idea that the Internet could lead to the end of geography. It even developed into the representation of an independent territory, best articulated by the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation – a non-profit organization for civil liberties online – in his ‘Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace’ (Barlow, 1996). The name of the organization itself is a direct reference to the frontier in American history where, according to the thesis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, American democracy was formed. Barlow declares freedom of speech as a constituting principle of cyberspace and argues for the

328  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state non-interference of governments from the physical world into the affairs of cyberspace, which he declares an independent territory, free from state boundaries and power. This foundational text contributed to the symbolic territorialization of cyberspace while – unsuccessfully – arguing for its legal territorialization, in order for cyberspace to escape the laws and sovereignty of governments and remain controlled and self-governed by its users. The text remains a reference for a number of online freedom activists which take it literally to defend online freedom. Barlow’s declaration was indeed used by the famous hacktivist movement Anonymous to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act bills proposed in the United States (US) Congress in 2012. This representation lost ground in the next decade with the multiplication of geopolitical conflicts following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first investigations and court decisions against companies and individuals for illegal conduct on the Internet. But the term cyberspace came back quite strongly in the late 2000s, only this time in the discourses and strategies of governments with a completely different set of representations. Faced with new challenges they don’t know yet how to handle, states appropriated the territorial representation of Internet pioneers by creating a discursive link between what they call ‘cyberspace’ and national security (Desforges 2014; Dunn Cavelty, 2008; Haddad, 2018). Cyberspace then became a territory to conquer and control in the name of security. States denounced cyberspace as a threat to national security, a space with a lack of frontiers and a lack of order. Governments, policy makers and strategic thinkers exacerbated the threat through dramatic analogies such as Cyber Pearl Harbor (Bumiller and Shanker, 2012) or Cyber Armageddon (Dunn Cavelty, 2008). They used territorial references to characterize cyberspace and what occurs through digital networks, and insisted on the need to develop capabilities to defend their security, their borders, their national interests, their laws and their sovereignty in this new space. This representation was built up through the early 2010s in the context of the proliferation of cyberattacks by an ever increasing, diverse, sophisticated and imaginative set of actors, and largely contributed to the justification and legitimization of resources devoted primarily to security. Interestingly, despite the rise and challenges of cybercrime by non-state actors, the securitization of cyberspace became rapidly associated with its militarization (Dunn Cavelty, 2012). The primacy of the military in the understanding of the Internet and digital technologies, in the anticipation of the threat and ability to advertise it and in the ability to quickly devote new resources to this new field, has contributed to shape state priorities around national security over other security threats. This perception was predominant in Western states, unlike Russia or China which were first and foremost focused on information security to preserve domestic political stability (Goldsmith and Wu, 2006; Limonier, 2018). The materialization of cyberwar through the rise of publicly known state-sponsored attacks (Kaiser, 2015) eventually led to the wide adoption of the representation of cyberspace as a new warfighting domain, the fifth military domain after land, air, sea and space. This association between cyberattacks and the militarization of cyberspace can however be questioned. It implies that states should qualify the cyber threat as national – whereas other qualifications could be used, such as technical or criminal approaches (Nissenbaum, 2005; Dunn Cavelty, 2012) – and that states designate the enemy, a political act by nature (Rid and Buchanan, 2015). Representations are not neutral; they play a role in geopolitics. The territorialization of cyberspace was first initiated by the pioneers to shield it from geopolitical rivalries. It eventu-

Cyberspace  329 ally gave way to the securitization and militarization of cyberspace by states. These two sets of representations are diametrically opposed but not exclusive of each other, they coexist and mutually reinforce the representation of cyberspace as a territory. This territorialization of cyberspace has an impact on state conduct and policies that in turn shape the geography and security of cyberspace.

30.3

A NEW BATTLEFIELD OF GEOPOLITICS

As Martin Libicki (2012) notes, the pertinence of calling cyberspace a warfighting domain has been widely discussed in the literature. He considers that the metaphor is not well suited to understand cyberspace and what needs to be done to defend and attack interconnected systems, because of its specificities. Libicki also believes the metaphor to be misleading since it ‘shifts the focus of thought from the creation and prevention of specific effects to broader war fighting concepts, such as control, manoeuvrability, and superiority’ (p. 328) which are not appropriate to respond to the specific challenges of cyberspace. This highly dynamic environment is in rapid and permanent reconfiguration. Its plasticity requires constant adaptation and a global and multidisciplinary approach based on risk management which is not best reflected by the metaphor of a warfighting domain. Control is difficult if not illusionary. In addition, in cyberspace, the success of an attack is uncertain and highly dependent on the target, with a real possibility to minimize vulnerabilities and impact, and promote deterrence by denial. As a result, states do not manoeuvre in the same battlefield as their adversary. There is no consensus either over the use of the concept of cyber war to describe the campaigns observed so far, which according to Thomas Rid are ‘merely sophisticated versions of three activities that are as old as warfare itself’ – sabotage, espionage and subversion – and do not meet the threshold of a ‘potentially lethal, instrumental, and political act of force conducted through malicious code’ (Rid, 2012, p. 6). Despite these caveats, the representation of cyberspace as a military/warfighting domain has permeated the strategic literature and is at the heart of political discourse and government strategies and doctrines. This representation prevails among decision makers and the military for two main reasons. First, the global expansion of cyberspace has brought serious challenges to state powers and privileges, starting with the power to ensure national security. Second, conflict has exploded in cyberspace and provoked a series of strategic surprises. Cyberspace has indeed become a space of confrontation between multiple actors, with a proliferation of offensive operations, the most sophisticated and persistent of which are state-sponsored attacks. The question is therefore not whether this representation is relevant but what purpose it serves and what role it plays in the extremely tense geopolitical context of the end of the 2010s. States have been challenged on many fronts by multiple actors in cyberspace (activists, hackers, criminals, other state actors) due to the low cost and wide accessibility of the technology, combined with the possibility to operate from a distance, hide their identity and exploit the legal loopholes and inadequate cooperation in this complex space. According to Agnew, the sovereign powers of an individual state are constantly challenged and contested (Agnew, 1994, 2005). Sovereignty is growing even more complex an issue in the digital age (Betz and Stevens, 2011). To some extent, cyberspace is a catalyser for the evolving and imperfect relationship between territory and state sovereignty.

330  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state This is best exemplified by the rise of Internet giant companies – such as Google, Facebook, Baidu and Alibaba – that operate across borders. Their ability to collect, process and cross huge amounts of data provides these companies with a form of power that challenges states’ powers in many ways. In a sense, global platforms are becoming their own territory in cyberspace over which states struggle to exert their sovereign powers, even when facing cyber-enabled terrorist threats. This challenge reinforces the desire of states to regain control over cyberspace in the name of national security, particularly in a context where the proliferation of state-sponsored attacks led to the materialization of cyberspace as a space of confrontation. The cyberattacks against Estonia in 2007 came as a wake-up call for many nations or have been used as such. According to Robert Kaiser, this event catalysed the materialization of cyberwar and continued to affect how the threat of future cyberwars is imagined (Kaiser 2015). In the wake of protests against the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, a wave of cyberattacks shut down the websites of many Estonian organizations, including banks, ministries, media and the Estonian Parliament. Since then, cyberattacks have proliferated but also become more creative, targeted, sophisticated and damaging. The evolution of the landscape threat leading to a rapid succession of strategic surprises has compelled states to constantly adapt, revise their strategies and update their capabilities. The wave of cyberattacks against Georgian websites in July 2008, weeks before the Russian invasion of the country, was the first known occurrence of a cyberattack led in coordination with a military operation on the ground. In 2010, the Stuxnet attack against the nuclear installation of Natanz in Iran, a joint effort by the US and Israel to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme, marked the first major attack against a critical infrastructure and possibly the only known example of what could be interpreted as the use of force in cyberspace with regards to international law. In 2014, attacks against the entertainment company Sony Pictures took the US administration by surprise, showing that private companies too – not just critical infrastructures – could be targeted to create a strategic effect. This was also the case for TV5 Monde in France in 2015. The success of these attacks revealed the great vulnerability and lack of preparation of states in the face of this new threat, and how the risk they were exposed to could undermine their power. But they also revealed how they could be leveraged to reinforce state power against other states but also over non-state actors. This approach led to the proliferation of offensive operations in the purpose of defence, best captured by the concept of ‘active cyberdefence’ (Douzet 2014b). Espionage and surveillance, in particular, have been brought to an unprecedented scale. In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the mass surveillance programme developed by the US across the world, bringing espionage to a scale that altered its nature while marking the entry of these issues in the political field. The scope of these operations raised serious trust and sovereignty issues in many countries – particularly in Europe – that became suddenly aware of their dependency over American technologies and platforms. These revelations occurred in the midst of a ‘cool war’ between the US and China over economic espionage and intellectual property theft that culminated in 2015 with the indictment by the Justice Department of five officers from the People’s Liberation Army of China. In 2015, another strategic surprise came from the sophisticated use of cyberspace by the Islamic State to spread propaganda, encourage online radicalization, organize recruitment and foment terrorist attacks, forcing targeted countries to broaden their approach to take into account the information layer into their threat landscape. The 2016 Russian interference in the presidential election also caught

Cyberspace  331 the US administration off guard, demonstrating that most of the focus of the US cyber security community was on the technical threat with little attention paid to information. For Russia and China, on the contrary, information represents the main threat to the security and stability of the regime. The dreaded use of connected objects to launch an attack became a reality in 2016, when the servers of Dyn were targeted by a network of infected Internet-connected devices (printers, cameras, baby monitors, etc.). But the most devastating attacks to this day have been the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks, which propagated uncontrollably, massively and rapidly across the world, hitting over 150 countries and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to organizations and companies that were even not initially targeted. NotPetya alone caused $10 billion of damage according to the White House. These attacks emphasized not only the need to protect the systems but also to be able to react very fast to their cascading effects, pointing to the systemic risk our societies are exposed to due to the shared and interconnected nature of the networks. These developments have pressed states to set up cybersecurity agencies and update their institutional infrastructures to defend themselves against a threat that could undermine their power. But they have also convinced them that cyberspace should be considered a new military domain that justifies the mobilization of exceptional resources in the name of national security. This representation came as a political tool used by states to justify the means devoted to cyberdefence (Buzan et al., 1998). It encouraged the development of offensive capabilities to strengthen defence but also to seize the opportunities offered by cyberspace to support intelligence, surveillance and military operations in order to increase their power, leading to the proliferation of state-sponsored offensive tools and operations. These strategies reveal the extent to which the representation of security for states has prevailed among decision makers and led to the securitization and militarization of cyberspace, despite the risks for international peace and the stability of cyberspace illustrated by the devastating attacks of 2017. However, the very notion of security is ambiguous in cyberspace. What constitutes security for the military might bear some significant risks as well (Dunn Cavelty, 2012). Indeed, the capabilities developed by states to strengthen their defences and increase their security also directly contribute to increasing the risk they are exposed to. This is even more true in cyberspace than in other domains due to the specificities of this environment, as we will see below. In addition, security from the point of view of the military can generate insecurity in the other domains of security – economic, political, social and environmental – identified by Buzan et al. (1998). Compared to other military domains, states have much less control over the interactions they generate due to the level of interconnection of this domain which permeates every aspect of our societies. Networks are shared between governments, the private sector, the military and civil society, which means there is a multitude of actors involved, with a great variety of motivations. But they all use the same technology and the same networks. As a result, the cyber landscape offers multiple and complex interconnections and interactions between the different domains: economy, national security and civil liberties are all tied and entangled in cyberspace. Actions in one area have consequences for others, in ways that are not always predictable nor easy to anticipate or control. The notion of security is subject to diverging representations and competing interests between actors because cyberspace serves a great variety of uses by many different actors. There are conflicts of interest between governments and companies (e.g. companies want their data fully protected but sometimes governments keep vulnerabilities secret to conduct offen-

332  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state sive operations), conflicts of interest between governments and civil society (e.g. over mass surveillance and privacy) and considerable clashes of interests between nations. And there are also competing interests within companies but also governments, as the recurring debate over encryption has revealed (East-West Institute, 2018). These competing interests generate tensions among government agencies which pursue different – and sometimes contradictory – security objectives in cyberspace and don’t share the same risk referential. The trends observed therefore show the tremendous influence of the military representation of risk among decision makers, to the detriment of other approaches taking better into account the risks for the private sector – to enhance the overall cybersecurity for the economy or critical infrastructure – or the security of individual users – to fight cybercrime and protect privacy. The context of exacerbated geopolitical tensions and strategic competition among states contributes to explain this military influence and the security dilemma states face when addressing risk and security in cyberspace.

30.4

GEOPOLITICAL RISK VERSUS SYSTEMIC RISK: THE SECURITY DILEMMA

States are torn between the representation of a geopolitical risk that encourages them to maximize their power over potential adversaries in cyberspace in order to ensure their national security and the systemic risk over which they have limited control. But the offensive tools they develop contribute to increase the systemic risk that also threatens their own power and security. Cyber-offensive tools can indeed be stolen, copied, re-engineered and reused. The code can be analysed and concepts of attack imitated. Adversaries learn from cyberattacks which in turn contribute to increasing the overall danger of the environment. Most importantly, because the networks are shared between governments, the private sector, civil society and the military, these attacks can propagate uncontrollably at great speed. During the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks in 2017, the rapid and dramatic propagation of malware emphasized the systemic risk to which companies and societies are exposed due to the development of conflict in cyberspace, and how the cyber arms race increases this systemic risk. NotPetya was designed to look like a ransomware but turned out to be a wiper designed for sabotage and was obviously politically motivated. The uncontrollable propagation of the attack randomly affected a wide range of companies but also telecommunication and hospitals. And it hurt companies that initially were not even a target. In addition, the destructive malwares WannaCry and NotPetya used the EternalBlue tool developed by the National Security Agency that exploited a Microsoft vulnerability. EternalBlue had been stolen and made publicly available online, then reused by malicious actors to launch attacks that went out of control and backfired on the state that had initially developed it. These attacks reveal the cybersecurity dilemma states are caught in when dealing with offensive operations in cyberspace (Segal, 2013; Buchanan, 2018), opposing two understandings of security in cyberspace that are not exclusive of each other but tend to coexist, thus creating complex tensions and sometimes irreconcilable objectives within governments. On the one hand states recognize cyber threats as a new security challenge that creates systemic risk. This type of threat is highly complex, transnational, can spread fast, can have a massive impact and is hard to stop. It is in everybody’s interest to stop the contagion that could be disastrous.

Cyberspace  333 And this pulls states into the direction of greater international cooperation, information sharing and enhanced international regulation. The basis for trust is shared interests and the ultimate goal is stability. But on the other hand, cyber capabilities are also used as a tool for state and non-state actors to increase their own power, as they can be used for intelligence, espionage, warfare and influence. So, states also view cyber threats as a traditional geopolitical threat emanating from rival powers and economic competitors. And this representation pulls them in the complete opposite direction: limited cooperation and information sharing and a cyber arms race leading to proliferation. The goal is increased state power and sovereignty but the trade-off is a risk for stability. This later perception of risk undoubtedly prevails. The US Cyber Strategy of 2018 of Persistent Engagement with adversaries clearly reflects this trend (Healey, 2019). In 2017 the US director of national security, the director of the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command warned in a joint statement that 30 countries were developing offensive cyber capabilities and the number has kept on growing (Faesen et al., 2019). This representation of risk and security has also led states to project their national border onto cyberspace in order to enforce control, with mixed results. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, there were scattered initiatives throughout Europe to increase ‘digital sovereignty’, a fuzzy concept that reflected the sense of loss of power by countries highly dependent on foreign platforms, equipment and technology (Hohmann et al. 2014). More recently, however, Russia has tried to disconnect its network from the global Internet, in an effort to better understand the architecture of its connectivity in order to regain sovereign control of its digital space (Wakefield, 2019). In December 2019, in the wake of protests, Iran managed to cut off access to the global Internet for its citizens while maintaining its domestic network, demonstrating that the regime had succeeded in organizing the geography of data routing to permit censorship (Salamatian et al. 2019). These initiatives result from a representation of cyberspace as a space of geopolitics and in turn contribute to shape its form and geography, potentially prompting fragmentation and instability. The predominance of the geopolitical risk over the systemic risk creates distrust between states and encourages them to reinforce their ‘territorial control’ of cyberspace and strengthen their capabilities, stepping up the process of securitization and militarization of cyberspace. It also limits their ability to reach agreement on international norms of responsible behaviour and involve all relevant actors to ensure the security and stability of cyberspace. And this, in turn, increases the systemic risk for international stability and the general availability and integrity of the Internet. This predominance is also reflected in the international negotiations about the regulation of cyberspace that started at the end of the 1990s, in which states tend to prioritize national security over collective security. They also chose to assume the right to define security in cyberspace according to their own representations, despite their recognition of the indispensable role of other stakeholders who had stepped in and launched their own initiatives to enhance peace and promote their own representation of security in cyberspace. The representation of peace and stability of cyberspace can therefore be seen as the other side of the security coin, a political tool used by states to assert their power towards rival states and other stakeholders, while preserving their national security and stability. The territorialization and militarization of cyberspace had led states to mobilize the traditional instruments of collective security such as international law and non-binding norms

334  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state to regulate cyberspace (Delerue and Géry, 2018). In the phase of consensus building, these instruments helped save time and energy by providing an existing legal framework applicable to cyber operations as a basis for discussion. The first significant achievement was reached in 2013, with the recognition of the applicability of international law to cyberspace in the report adopted by the Group of Governmental Experts involving 20 participating countries including the US, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China. The report of 2015 brought consensus over a set of norms of responsible behaviour for states, principles and confidence-building measures that reflected the expectations of the international community but also the remaining difficulties to overcome. Yet in times of exacerbated geopolitical tensions since 2016, international law proved to be exactly what it is: an instrument in the service of state foreign policy – which led states to a stalemate. Other stakeholders got involved in the promotion of their own representation of security in cyberspace and their own solutions. The private sector, academic actors and multistakeholder groups who participate in other instances of Internet governance claimed their own legitimacy and interest in participating in the discussions over the security and stability of cyberspace. In 2017, Microsoft president Brad Smith proposed a Geneva Digital Convention for states to commit to protecting civilians against state-sponsored attacks and proposed to create a non-governmental organization for the attribution of cyberattacks. The propositions were regarded as infringing on states’ rights and privileges and criticized for shifting all the responsibility onto states while creating little constraints on the industry to secure its products. The company then shifted its focus to encourage cyber peace through a public petition, a commitment for the industry (Cybersecurity Tech Accord) and the launch in 2019 of the Cyber Peace Institute in partnership with the Hewlett Foundation and Mastercard. The deadlock among states also prompted the creation in February 2017 of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, a multistakeholder group of international experts. The Commission began its work ‘convinced that an issue traditionally reserved to states – international peace and security – could no longer be addressed without engaging other stakeholders’ (2019). In November 2017, the Commission issued a Call to Protect the Public Core of the Internet. The proposition has since been included in the European Union Cybersecurity Act of 2019. Because of their representation of cyberspace as a territory and a threat to national security, states consider that these discussions are their sole prerogative and can hardly be left to Microsoft or other multistakeholder groups. However, they do recognize the value of multistakeholder engagement. The Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace (Paris Call, 2018) was launched by the President of France in 2018 and strongly supported by Microsoft, and led to the commitment to a set of principles and norms of over 1,000 signatories, including 75 states. This initiative also demonstrates how some states attempt to draw from the legitimacy of multistakeholder support in order to build consensus over norms of responsible behaviour for states and the industry in cyberspace. Despite geopolitical tensions, states launched two multilateral dialogues in 2019 after a two-year freeze on international negotiations: the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts and the Open Ended Working Group. These two dialogues started in parallel, with similar and largely overlapping mandates, respectively sponsored by the US (United Nations General Assembly, 2018a) and by Russia (United Nations General Assembly, 2018b), reflecting geopolitical tensions over the regulation of cyberspace.

Cyberspace  335

30.5 CONCLUSION The Internet was initially conceived without security in mind. Its design reflects the initial distributed architecture to avoid control and the accumulation of successive protocols and long-lasting quick fixes that prioritized the free flow of data and the resilience of the network over other security concerns. The whole data routing system is designed to automatically trust users. This era of trust is long gone. Cyberspace has brought many security and sovereignty challenges for states and has become perceived as a space of geopolitics, a space of confrontation between a multitude of actors and a space of strategic competition. Confronted with the multiplication of cyberattacks and large-scale espionage, states have developed discourses to address new security challenges in cyberspace – a concept they borrowed from the science fiction literature and the pioneers of the Internet who viewed cyberspace as an independent territory. In the representation constructed by states, cyberspace becomes a territory to conquer and control due to the existential threat it represents. This territorialization of cyberspace has led to its securitization and militarization in the name of national security, to the point that many states declared it a new military domain. This securitization has in turn justified and legitimized the exceptional resources states have devoted to cyberdefence and the development of cyber-offensive capabilities to increase their power in the name of national security. However, this conception of security raises critical issues. First, the securitization and militarization of cyberspace encouraged the proliferation of offensive tools and operations that directly contribute to creating a systemic risk that can backfire on states and threaten collective and national security. Second, the representation of the geopolitical risk associated with cyber power tends to be prioritized over the systemic risk – despite the devastating attacks of 2017 that have demonstrated the dramatic impact on civil society and companies – which is likely to increase with the advent of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Third, the ability of states to reach consensus over the regulation of cyberspace to ensure collective security is impeded by their level of distrust and their will to keep the power to conduct offensive operations in cyberspace, whether for intelligence, deterrence or other purpose. Finally, states consider that the decisions about the security and stability of cyberspace is their exclusive prerogative, despite their recognition that cyberspace is a multi-actor domain by definition and that other stakeholders have a major role to play. Threats in cyberspace are serious considering societies’ dependency over the Internet and digital technologies. These threats could be brought to a lower level if all states and other stakeholders cooperated together to minimize vulnerabilities and defeat malicious actors instead of competing in a cyber arms race. But this would require states to better take into account other dimensions of security that tend to be submerged by the securitization and militarization of cyberspace.

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336  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Barlow, J.P. (1996), ‘A declaration of the independence of cyberspace’, Electronic Frontier Foundation, accessed 20 December 2019 at www​.eff​.org/​fr/​cyberspace​-independence Betz, D.J. and T. Stevens (2011), ‘Chapter two: Cyberspace and sovereignty’, Adelphi Series,  51 (424), 55–74. Bingham, N. (1996), ‘Objections: From technological determinism towards geographies of relations’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14 (6), 635–57. Buchanan, B. (2018), The Cyber Security Dilemma: Hacking, Trust, and Fear Between Nations, London: Hurst Publishers. Bumiller, E. and T. Shanker (2012), ‘Panetta warns of dire threat of cyberattack on US’, New York Times, 11 October. Buzan, B., O. Wæver and J. de Wilde (1998), Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Delerue, F. and A. Géry (2018), ‘La dimension juridique de la cyberdéfense’, in D. Danet, A.Cattaruzza and S. Taillat (eds), La cyberdéfense. Politique de l’espace numérique, Paris: Armand Colin, 61–75. Desforges, A. (2014), ‘Representations of cyberspace: A geopolitical tool’, Hérodote, 152–3, 67–81. Dodge, M. and R. Kitchin (2001), Mapping Cyberspace, London: Routledge. Douzet, F. (2014a), ‘Understanding cyberspace with geopolitics’, Hérodote, 152–3, 3–21. Douzet, F. (2014b), ‘Active cyber defense: A critical analysis’, in New Challenges to Global Security: From Russia Post-Crimea to Cyber Security Post-Snowden, Paris: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Global Security. Douzet, F. and A. Desforges (2018), ‘From cyberspace to the datasphere: The new frontier of geography’, Netcom, 32 (1/2), 87–108. Dunn Cavelty, M. (2008), Cyber-Security and Threat Politics: US Efforts to Secure the Information Age, London: Routledge. Dunn Cavelty, M. (2012), ‘The militarisation of cyberspace: Why less may be better’, 4th International Conference on Cyber Conflict, Talinn. East-West Institute (2018), Encryption Policy in Democratic Regimes, accessed 20 December 2019 at www​.eastwest​.ngo/​sites/​default/​files/​ewi​-encryption​-us​-version​.pdf Elden, S. (2013), The Birth of Territory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Faesen, L., B. Torossian, E. Mayhew and C. Zensus (2019), ‘Conflict in cyberspace : Parsing the threats and the state of international order in cyberspace’, accessed 15 December 2019 at www​.hcss​.nl/​pub/​ 2019/​strategic​-monitor​-2019​-2020/​conflict​-in​-cyberspace/​ Fukuyama, F. (1989), ‘The end of history?’, National Interest, 16, 3–18. Gibson, W. (1984), Neuromancer, New York: Ace. Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (2019), Advancing Cyberstability, Final Report, accessed 20 December 2015 at http://​cyberstability​.org Goldsmith, J. and T. Wu (2006), Who Controls the Internet?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gottmann, J. (1973), The Significance of Territory, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Haddad, S. (2018), ‘La cyberdéfense ou la construction d’un “champ de confrontation à part entire”,’ in D. Danet, A. Cattaruzza and S. Taillat (eds), La cyberdéfense. Politique de l’espace numérique, Paris: Armand Colin, pp. 44–51. Healey, J. (2019), ‘The implications of persistent (and permanent) engagement in cyberspace’, Journal of Cybersecurity, 5 (1), 1–15. Hohmann, M., T. Maurer, R. Morgus and I. Skierka (2014), ‘Technological sovereignty: Missing the point?’, accessed 20 December 2019 at www​.gppi​.net/​2014/​11/​24/​technological​-sovereignty​-missing​ -the​-point Kaiser, R. (2015), ‘The birth of cyber war’, Political Geography, 46, 11–20. Kellerman, A. (2016), Geographic Interpretations of the Internet, New York: Springer. Lacoste, Y. (1976), La géographie, ça sert, d’abord, à faire la guerre, Paris: La Découverte. Lacoste, Y. (1993), Dictionnaire de géopolitique, Paris: Flammarion. Lacoste, Y. (2003), De la géopolitique aux paysages. Dictionnaire de la géographie, Paris: Armand Colin. Libicki, M.C. (2012), ‘Cyberspace is not a warfighting domain’, I/S: Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 8 (2), 321–36.

Cyberspace  337 Licklider, J.C.R. (1960), ‘Man-computer symbiosis’, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-1, 4–11. Limonier, K. (2018), Ru.Net. Géopolitique du cyberespace russophone, Paris: Editions de l’Inventaire. Maurer, T. (2018), Cyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McLuhan, M. (1967), The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, London: Bantam Books. Negroponte, N. (1995), L’homme numérique, Paris: Robert Laffont. Nissenbaum, H. (2005), ‘Where computer security meets national security’, Ethics and Information Technology, 7 (2), 61–73. Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace (2018), accessed 20 December 2019 at https://​pariscall​ .international/​fr/​ Rid, T. (2012), ‘Cyber war will not take place’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 35 (1), 5–32. Rid, T. and B. Buchanan (2015), ‘Attributing cyber attacks’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38 (1–2), 4–37. Robine, J. and K. Salamatian (2014), ‘Peut-on penser une cybergéographie?’, Hérodote, 152–3 (1), 123–39. Sack, R.D. (1986), Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salamatian, L., F. Douzet, K. Salamatian and K. Limonier (2019), ‘The geopolitics behind the routes data travels: A case study of Iran’, accessed 20 December 2019 at https://​arxiv​.org/​abs/​1911​.07723 Segal, A. (2013), ‘Managing new security challenges in Asia: Between cybercrime and cyberconflict’, in M. Wills and R.M. Hathaway (eds), New Security Challenges in Asia, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, pp. 224–54. Singer, P. and A. Friedman (2014), Cyber Security and Cyber War: What Everyone Needs to Know, New York: Oxford University Press. Storey, D. (2012), Territories: The Claiming of Space, London: Routledge. Turner, F.J. (1893), ‘The significance of the frontier in American history’, in History, Frontier and Section: Three Essays, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. United Nations General Assembly (2018a), Resolution on Establishment of UN GGE in 2019, A/ RES/73/266, 22 December. United Nations General Assembly (2018b), Resolution on Establishment of OEWG, A/RES/73/27, 11 December. Wakefield, J. (2019), ‘Russia “successfully tests” its unplugged internet’, BBC, 24 December, accessed 25 December 2019 at www​.bbc​.com/​news/​technology​-50902496 Warf, B. (2013), Global Geographies of the Internet, London: Springer. Wiener, N. (1961), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

PART VI TERRITORY, THE STATE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

31. Introduction: territory, the state and urban development Andrew E.G. Jonas

The matter of where the ‘urban question’ fits within state theory (and, by extension, approaches to state territoriality) has already preoccupied the critical social sciences for several decades; yet it remains a vital intellectual point of departure in critical urban studies (Merrifield 2013). In the West, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, the urban question was typically framed in terms of the devastating fiscal and social impact of national urban renewal policies on inner-city communities or the failure of the Keynesian welfare state to deliver socially necessary consumption goods and services equally to all urban residents irrespective of class, race, or gender (Castells 1977; Saunders 1981). In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted towards understanding the role of neoliberal state policy and regulation in the restructuring and transformation of urban economies (e.g. efforts to attract and valorize ‘knowledge’ and ‘creativity’), the rise of urban entrepreneurialism, and the privatization of city services (Harvey 1989; Cochrane 1993). Even if the nation-state was seen as being hollowed out simultaneously from below and above, the state in some form or another nevertheless remained a visible player in the politics of urban development, particularly in countries emerging from decades of colonialism and seeking to align urban economic development with nationalist aspirations and imaginaries (Bunnell 2002). Today’s urban scholars and public commentators, however, are increasingly minded to separate the urban question altogether from the analysis of (national) state policies, processes, and spaces. If anything, cities – or at least their political representatives in urban government – are seen to be far more entrepreneurial and progressive than their national counterparts, taking the lead on a host of pressing global issues and geopolitical problems, such as climate change, wage inequality, security, and sustainable development. The nation-state, by contrast, has become ‘dysfunctional’ (Barber 2013) and is no longer a visible actor space in urban analysis. From the perspective of contemporary urban analysis, then, cities are becoming far more causally efficacious territorial units and geopolitical actors than nation-states, even to the point that the urban can to all intents and purposes be theorized as a discrete territory, scale, or site that somehow exists apart from the state and yet at the same time is irretrievably connected to wider (i.e. global) power networks and flows of resources. The aim of this part of the handbook is to challenge the perspective that the contemporary city and the modern state are somehow separate entities that operate independently of each other. We start with the familiar assertion that cities and larger metropolitan areas manifest all sorts of wider societal struggles, which continue to unfold within and around built-up urban areas and their constituent state territorial structures (Cox and Jonas 1993). If this insight might seem unremarkable, far less well understood is the evolving relationship between territory, urban development, and the changing geopolitical interests and strategies of the state. Whilst much attention in critical urban theory hitherto has focused on documenting the rise of urban entrepreneurialism as a seemingly inevitable and uncontested outcome of the rescaling of the 339

340  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state neoliberal state, all sorts of new policy questions, political interests, and geopolitical agendas are starting to colonize urban political space, ranging from climate change and sustainability to democracy and human rights. Yet such questions, interests, and agendas often struggle to find a political space in the city alongside more established urban development priorities such as promoting economic growth, planning for housing and land use, and providing infrastructure – hence the emergence of all sorts of new ‘spaces of urban politics’ (Ward et al. 2018), knowledge of which has yet to feature in investigations of changing state spaces. At the same time, the regional and national contexts for urban development continue to change dramatically as cities merge with other cities and evolve into mega-regions, and as urban political outcomes sharply diverge both within and between national territories. Given these trends, the conceptual tools used to investigate the urban as a scalar-relational component of state territoriality must of necessity be revisited and further refined (Brenner and Elden 2009). Accordingly, chapters in this part offer new entry points into the evolving political relations between state, territory, and urban development and are written from the vantage of quite diverse theoretical perspectives and, crucially, national settings. We start in the geopolitical East – in China, the epicentre of contemporary urbanization trends. In departing from a form-and-function dominant approach to such trends, the chapter by Yi Li and Fulong Wu seeks to highlight the close associations between city-regional transformation and territory, state and geopolitics. Governed by state-centric administrative structures inherited from a socialist state regime, China – a developing market-oriented country with a long tradition of building regional governance – provides a valuable case to study the role of the nation-state and its geopolitical motives in the planning and development of the country’s mega city-regions. By unpacking the complex, multi-layered, and intertwined formation processes of mega city- and city-regionalism in China, the chapter attempts to elaborate the way the Chinese state has shaped city-regionalism in the service of national geopolitical imaginaries and objectives. It suggests more attention should be paid to the geopolitical construction of city-regions, in which the production and reproduction of mega city-regions and city-regionalism embodies a mixture of sometimes subtle and sophisticated but nonetheless quite instrumental and coercive processes of state building and formation. David Wachsmuth’s chapter argues that local competitiveness policy and urban benchmarking have combined in the last two decades in the United States (US) to produce a systematic drive towards what he calls a process of ‘competitive upscaling in the state’. This process incorporates strategic initiatives by regional and local political actors to resolve local competitive pressures by restructuring state space and repositioning the locality (usually a grouping of contiguously situated cities) as the component of a larger, and hopefully more vital competitive entity, typically a multi-city region. This claim is elaborated through an examination of three dimensions of competitive upscaling: benchmarking as extrospective urban governance; the activation of new multi-city growth coalitions; and the reconfiguration of subnational state space. Competitive upscaling is not just a process driven by the needs of alliances of local business and political actors (local growth coalitions); it is also regarded by national state actors to be a strategy for responding to global competitiveness pressures through a kind of leapfrog logic. For national states, in particular, it signals the alignment of domestic policies of urban development with those designed to promote international competitiveness. This ‘geopolitics of city regionalism’ (Jonas and Moisio 2018) is itself fraught with contradictions. Competition strategies enacted in response to apparent external competitiveness pressures simply exac-

Introduction: territory, the state and urban development  341 erbate those pressures. Rather than becoming a ‘solution’ to local urban competitiveness pressure, competitive upscaling leads to a new set of multi-city competitiveness pressures, which coexist alongside the local (city) ones. Moreover, unlike national state- and city-level competitiveness policies, the multi-city regional scale often lacks corresponding institutions of democratic governance to keep elite power in check, a set of circumstances that is addressed in Chapter 34. The chapter by Igor Calzada examines how state spaces throughout the European Union (EU) are facing structural tensions as traditional ethnic nationalism increasingly comes into conflict with urban transformations. It argues that European citizenship is experiencing a unique set of city-regional and techno-political dynamics consisting of (1) geotechnologics (driven by blockchain), (2) geopolitics (driven by dataism; the ideology of Big Data’s determinism), (3) geoeconomics (driven by populism), and (4) geodemocratics (driven by devolution). Given these tensions and their associated claimed rights, Calzada poses several questions for future state-theoretical investigations of cities, citizenship, and urban politics. How will nation-states evolve? Will the urban age reconfigure the politics of nation-states through new and emerging citizenship regimes? Specifically, will the EU evolve towards a post-national polity from a platform of established nation-states? Or will the EU head for a city-regionalized federal network of nations determined voluntarily and democratically? Calzada’s chapter develops the concept of emerging citizenship regimes as a new theoretical framework for thinking about state rescaling by proposing four ideal types of citizenship: algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan, and stateless. It challenges the existing interpretation of how current citizenship regimes are transforming the city-regional and techno-political configuration of European nation-states. As Mark Davidson argues in his chapter, since the global financial crash of 2007–2008 the US national economy has forged a new normal, combining deep recession, economic reform, unprecedented stimulus spending, sequestration cuts, indefinite deficit spending, an unprecedented stretch of economic growth, and sizable tax cuts. Understanding how this restructuring has reshaped urban government and governance remains a work in progress. Davidson examines two currently competing characterizations of post-recession urban governance in the US: ‘austerity urbanism’ and ‘pragmatic municipalism’. The two characterizations are shown to differ on the key question of whether urban governance has converged (i.e. austerity urbanism) or diverged (i.e. pragmatic municipalism) over the past decade. If it has converged around austerity, we can understand urban governance as bound up with broader state restructurings and legitimation crises. If, however, urban governance has become more varied and diverged from nationwide austerity, local state restructuring requires a radically different theoretical approach. Discovering which trend is dominant will therefore require further research, which could reshape our knowledge of the urban question at least in the national US context. Chapter 36 offers a more global geopolitical reframing of the urban question. In it, Yonn Dierwechter suggests that the international political work of leading cities, especially around climate change and the existential crisis of planetary-wide unsustainability, demands a fundamental shift in empirical and theoretical readings of the presumed cartography of both urban and global politics. Drawing on urban examples located in various states and societies around the world, including the US, Canada, Germany, and Spain, he argues that new state spaces increasingly elevate the geopolitical agency of select cities even as they interface strategically with other territorial forms of extant power, regulation, and policymaking. Cities, states, and global environmental politics, the chapter specifically suggests, are co-shaping each other,

342  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state producing a global variety of green (and likely other kinds of) geopolitics in need of detailed investigations. The rising global agency of cities in a new era of green geopolitics ultimately represents a major new research agenda in comparative urban studies during the 2020s – and beyond. To summarize, chapters in this part of the handbook provide a range of perspectives on the evolving political relations between state, territory, and urban development. Together, they amount to a major critique of an idea that has come to the fore in urban analysis, which is that the contemporary city and the modern state can be examined and theorized as separate political spaces operating within seemingly dominant processes of economic globalization.

REFERENCES Barber, B. (2013), If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brenner, N. and S. Elden (eds) (2009), State, Space, World: Selected Essays, Henri Lefebvre, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bunnell, T. (2002), ‘Cities for nations? Examining the city–nation-state relation in Information Age Malaysia’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26 (2), 284–98. Castells, M. (1977), The Urban Question, London: Edward Arnold. Cochrane, A. (1993), Whatever Happened to Local Government?, Buckingham: Open University Press. Cox, K.R. and A.E.G. Jonas (1993), ‘Urban development, collective consumption and the politics of metropolitan fragmentation’, Political Geography, 12, 8–37. Harvey, D. (1989), ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation of urban governance in late capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler B, 71, 3‒17. Jonas, A.E.G. and S. Moisio (2018), ‘City regionalism as geopolitical processes: A new framework for analysis’, Progress in Human Geography, 42, 350–70. Merrifield, A. (2013), ‘The urban question under planetary urbanization’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (3), 909–22. Saunders, P. (1981), Social Theory and the Urban Question, London: Hutchison. Ward, K., A.E.G. Jonas, B. Miller, and D. Wilson (eds) (2018), Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics, London: Routledge.

32. Territory, the state and geopolitics of mega city-region development in China Yi Li and Fulong Wu

32.1 INTRODUCTION In recent years, the emergence of mega city-regions and their implications for regional governance have attracted wide attention from scholars in the fields of geography, planning and political science. Mega city-regions are new urban forms that operate within global production networks and new forces of economic agglomeration (Scott, 2001). Functional connectivity generates this spatially extensive form of urbanization, which is comprised of the main city acting as a node and its functional area extending far beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the main city (Hall, 2009). Although these cities are prominent in organizing global and national economies (Ohmae, 1996), they nevertheless pose formidable challenges to state territorial administration and collective governance (Kantor et al., 2012). Moreover, there is evidence that some mega city-regions are selectively constructed and promoted as (geo)politically powerful imaginaries to address nation-state politics and demonstrate national identity (Bunnell, 2002; Harrison, 2008; Roy, 2009). This latter (geo)political perspective provides a starting point for this chapter, which uses China as a lens for exploring the role of mega city-region development in state formation and state spatial restructuring. Extant studies on Chinese mega city-regions prioritize the analysis of urban spatial form and function. Prominent mega city-regions have been identified due to their large populations and active global economic interaction, including the Bohai Sea Rim ((Bei)Jing-(Tian) Jin-Ji(Hebei) or JJJ for short), the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) along the east coast. Previous studies have emphasized the role of global economic processes, such as foreign direct investment flows and global production networks, to explain the rise of these mega city-regions, which seemingly operate without regard to national and regional political boundaries (Zhao and Zhang, 2007). Although Chinese city-regions contain many challenges relating to territorial administration and governance – notably problems of jurisdictional fragmentation and fierce inter-city competition (Yeh and Xu, 2011) – the literature nevertheless tends to separate knowledge of the governance processes operating within city-regions from the processes operating without, such as domestic politics and the Chinese state’s internationalization agenda (Yang and Li, 2013). To the extent that state structures and processes feature in such analysis, the emphasis by and large is on public administration and spatial planning rather than on how a specific Chinese approach to city-regionalism has evolved in relation to domestic and international geopolitical processes (see Li and Jonas, 2019). Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to go beyond the well-discussed form and function approach and offer new insights into the close associations between Chinese mega city-regionalism and the geopolitical rationality of the nation-state. Rather than being perceived as an inevitable outcome of contemporary globalization processes, China’s mega 343

344  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state city-regions instead provide a valuable example that can be used to examine its relation with territory, state and geopolitics. In contrast to the regional economic context typical of a Western liberal-democratic state, the Chinese economy remains governed by state-centric administrative structures inherited from a socialist state regime. In light of this, China – a developing market-oriented country with a long tradition of building regional governance (Li and Wu 2012a) – potentially makes the role of the nation-state and its geopolitical motives far more transparent in the planning and development of the country’s mega city-regions. The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 32.2 provides a brief historical overview of the evolution of mega city-regional development and governance in China. Section 32.3 uses the generic framework set out by Moisio and Jonas (2018) employed to make distinctions between the mixed and overlapping practices in city-regional governance, namely, the geo-economic, political-administrative and geopolitical dimensions. By unpacking the complex, multi-layered and intertwined formation processes of mega city and city-regionalism, Section 32.4 elaborates the way the Chinese state has shaped city-regionalism in the service of national geopolitical imaginaries and objectives. In the conclusion, the chapter suggests more attention should be paid to the geopolitical construction of city-regions, in which the production and reproduction of mega city-regions and city-regionalism embodies a mixture of sometimes subtle and sophisticated but nonetheless quite instrumental and coercive processes of state building and formation.

32.2

MEGA CITY-REGION DEVELOPMENT IN GLOBALIZING CHINA: EVOLVING FORMS AND FUNCTIONS

In general, the evolution of Chinese mega city-regions can be divided into three stages. In the first stage under the planned economy, not only was China underurbanized but there was also the issue of regionalization. As a former socialist country, the Chinese economy lacked market and economic mobility because production materials were allocated and products procured under the system of central command. As a result, the urban core was rather compact and urban expansion strictly controlled. However, given that China is such a densely populated and vast country, potential megalopolises were still identified by, for example, Gottmann (1961). The second stage began with the inauguration of economic reforms in 1978; since then urban areas in China have experienced substantial transformation. Rapid urbanization was initially characterized by rural industrialization and the enormous transformation of existing settlements at the periphery (Lin, 2001b), which has been dubbed ‘bottom-up urbanization’ (Xu and Li, 1990). This development of peri-urban zones produced a significant mixture of agricultural and industrial activities in towns and villages (Lin, 2001a), which is similar to the spatial phenomenon of desakota found in other developing Asian countries (Lin, 2001b). Now the dispersed town development of the 1980s is being surpassed by new ‘city-based’ regionalization (Lin, 2007), which is reliant on heavy local government investment in infrastructure such as industrial parks at the urban edge (Xu and Yeh, 2005). Overall, the spectacular expansion of cities into mega city-regions in China is the visible result of industrialization and urban sprawl. Chinese mega city-regional development has stepped into a third stage since its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Not only is the evolving Chinese mega city-regional

Mega city-region development in China  345 space identified by rapid urbanization and physical expansion, but also increasingly by its relational character and external connectivity. On the one hand, mega city-regional space shows increasing functional connectivity in terms of logistics, business and daily mobility (Zhang et al., 2018). This functional transformation is due to an increasingly strong performance of networking and relational features (e.g. flows of capital) as a result of the rapid development of producer services as opposed to manufacturing (Zhang and Kloosterman, 2016; Yeh et al., 2015b). On the other hand, the large-scale city-region configurations feature profound global economic integration. The integration of the regional economy into the global economic production system has turned them into world factories. These evolving mega city-regions, which are home to a huge variety of industrial parks and economic zones, have become the bases of multiple transnational industrial clusters (Bathelt and Zhao, 2016). In other words, Chinese mega city-regions have not only been transformed into vast agglomerations of population and sprawl but also serve as the territorial platforms that integrate production and research and development into the global markets (Taylor et al., 2014). As such, these places are often referred to as ‘global city-regions’ by economic geographers due to their industrial entrenchment in global trade and production chains (Zhao and Zhang, 2007). Since the 2000s, global industrial networks and production chains have begun to perpetuate the regionalization process in particular; these emergent mega city-regions, previously defined by peri-urbanization, contiguous urban development and concentration of migrant population, now increasingly embody active global economic integration.

32.3

EMERGENT CITY-REGIONALISM IN THE CHINESE CONTEXT: A MULTITUDE OF PROCESSES

Previous discussions of China’s urban development seem to portray mega city-regions as newly identified emergent spatial configurations resulting from economic reforms (marketization) and opening up (globalization). However, such form and function-dominant approaches have been criticized as insufficient to grasp actually existing city-regionalism (Harrison and Hoyler, 2015). Beyond economic agglomeration processes, these exceptional spatial forms are also being presented, mobilized and imagined as coherent spaces for governance, planning and policymaking. In order to unpack these plural forces and hybrid processes, this section draws upon the framework proposed by Moisio and Jonas (2018) to analyse Chinese city-regionalism from the following perspectives: geo-economic, political-administrative and geopolitical. 32.3.1 City-Regionalism as Geo-Economic Processes China’s economic rise has been spearheaded by selected city-regions. The concentration of national population, exports and utilized foreign capital in such regions as JJJ around Beijing, PRD around Hong Kong and YRD around Shanghai has been widely documented (Zhao and Zhang, 2007). These mega city-regions have earned their status as regions not only on analytical maps but also in popular imagination due to their distinction from the rest of the country, even though they do not actually have a formal government structure or joint cultural identity. They have been commonly thought of as the richest parts of the country and the exemplar for others to learn from and catch up with.

346  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state In this context, efforts are ongoing to study how mega city-regional development is generated and the reasons why regional economies prosper in these areas. At first, the trajectory of economic city-regionalism was primarily studied from the perspective of urbanization and industrialization. That is, economic restructuring from a rural economy to the manufacturing sector was identified as the dominant force. In the Chinese context, three distinct models of regional development were identified depending on the endogeneity or exogeneity of the driving forces. The first is called the Sunan model, which attributes the development of Sunan (Southern Jiangsu Province in YRD) to the local state-directed, collectively owned, township and village enterprises (Ma and Fan, 1994). The second is called the PRD model, which conceptualizes the development of PRD (Southern Guangdong Province) as the result of foreign investment-driven industrialization and urbanization (Sit and Yang, 1997). The third is known as the Wenzhou model, which is credited to the economic success of bottom-up family-owned small businesses (Wei et al., 2007). However, the distinction between internally or externally driven economic growth was often blurred and soon was deemed inadequate to account for the development trajectories (Wei, 2010). A salient tendency towards the attraction of foreign investment is recognized even in those development models originally considered endogenous. This is because the productivity of township and village enterprises and family-owned small enterprises has been confronted with severe challenges when competing with foreign direct investment from multinational corporations (Shen and Ma, 2005). This phenomenon challenges the new regionalism orthodoxy, which overly emphasizes the critical importance of small firms and untraded regional assets (Wei et al., 2007). On the other hand, China’s rapidly globalizing city-regions do not rely upon the power of transnational firms in enabling territorially based accumulation strategies as suggested by the theory of global production networks (Wei, 2010). In fact, the Chinese state plays a significant role in primitive accumulation by land assets (Lin, 2009); and the economy is not subordinate to foreign direct investment from transnational corporations even though it is dependent on exogenous factors (Wei et al., 2009). Rather than arguing, based on Western experiences, for the hollowing out of the state (Ohmae, 1996), scholars working on China have instead put the role of the state at the centre of analysis. The theory of Western city-regionalism neglects the political and social origins of economic development apart from the economic sphere (Lin, 2009). Overall, economic city-regionalism in China presents some distinct features from Western regional counterparts. Instead of a Western-style expanding economic region which is so economically strong that it could even overcome state intervention for its own interests, Chinese mega city-regions are in fact a product of the interplay of multi-scalar states and, in particular, of the efforts of local states to flexibly cope with economic restructuring (Wei, 2007). It is also because of this peculiar state–market interplay that the Chinese economic growth model has a limited ability to be transferred to other developing economies (Yeh et al., 2015a). The history of China’s planned economies foregrounds the distinct state-market interplay model, which facilitates the state to govern the market rather than the market leading the administrative changes (Wu, 2010). However, the dominance of the state also has its drawbacks. Despite the global prominence of these mega city-regions in terms of economic agglomeration, there are doubts about the extent to which mega city-regions are really an integrated economic space. It is argued by some regional economists that the China’s domestic market is much more fragmented than the model of being integrated into the global market (Poncet, 2003). That is, mega city-regions may have much less ‘regionality’ than it seems. The status quo is perceived

Mega city-region development in China  347 as an obvious weakness of the Chinese economy in terms of sustainability and industrial improvements. For example, it is believed that the production network is virtually detached from the local community and is not an organic part of the local economic base (Wang and Lee, 2007). As a result, local governments have a weak bargaining position during negotiation with foreign investors (Wang and Lee, 2007). All these concerns and perceived potential crises lead to persistent political and administrative efforts to foster economic regional spaces. 32.3.2 City-Regionalism as Political-Administrative Practices There are two more or less parallel streams of political-administrative practices in governing at an emergent city-regional scale. One originates from the transition from planning economic activities to fostering functional economic connectivity. The other is created from city and regional planning, which targets primarily the physical expansion of urban forms into mega city-regions. In a sense, the former economic aspect, which manifests in building regional economic associations, resembles the practices of the European Union or other kinds of economic regionalism on the transnational level. In respect of the former, the Chinese domestic economy was once depicted as a ‘dukedom economy’ (Wong and Dai, 1992), in which administrative divisions of the national territory were blamed for functioning as hard borders constraining spontaneous economic flow. This is contextualized in the inherited socialist legacy of China, when China operated a central command economy dominated by vertical administration. Governed by a territorial administrative system made up of the central government and multiple local state levels, horizontal connections were inherently deficient under top-down hierarchical control (Xu and Yeh, 2013). Therefore, at the initial stage of economic reform, city-regionalism was encouraged by the central government in order to foster long-distance economic trade and connectivity (Xu, 2008). The major purpose was to boost economic connections between many state enterprises affiliated with the different levels of state in terms of sales, production, technology, capital and others. In a way, these efforts seem similar to the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of the Western state under the imperative of global capitalism and the needs of transnational economic flows. Another stream of political-administrative efforts of city-regionalism originated from the city and regional planning tradition. During the socialist period, planning performed a role in terms of site selection and infrastructure and residential planning in line with industrial projects. Land use efficiency and spatial coordination were the doctrines held by the planners. The resultant expansion of urban areas, endless land sprawl, lack of infrastructure coordination and environmental degradation concurrent with mega city-regional development have drawn considerable attention from planners. For example, economic regionalization is seriously impeded by transport separation; proposals to integrate the road network cannot be carried out because most local leaders believe transport integration would attract more investment to their neighbours while putting the consequently increased transportation pressure on their own jurisdictions. Lack of spatial coordination is blamed for the crisis of urban entrepreneurialism (Wu, 2016), resulting from administrative decentralization after economic reform (Chien and Gordon, 2008). It is in this context that planning attempts to reassert power at the regional level to coordinate local interests and achieve coordinated spatial development (Wong et al., 2008). Despite these tentative efforts to conquer localism by upscaling the plan towards the regional level, the rescaling of state administration and governance is not actually taking place

348  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state on the ground (Li and Wu, 2013; Li et al., 2015). Some documented regional attempts are not a fundamental departure from urban entrepreneurialism, but merely a regional strategy launched by the local urban government (Li and Wu, 2012b). The well-documented regionalization strategy of Kunshan (a small county-level city adjacent to Shanghai) to physically and functionally integrate with Shanghai is not a result of mutual efforts but mainly a local suburbanism strategy directed by the Kunshan government (Wu and Phelps, 2008). Far from full-fledged regional cooperation, the nature of the integration with Shanghai is to take advantage of the city’s spillovers to boost local economic growth. More recently, against the backdrop of the tightening national policy environment for land development, some types of regional cooperation which involve mutual collaboration have emerged under the banner of city-regionalism. Some well-documented examples are collaborative industrial parks in Guangdong (PRD) and Jiangsu (YRD) province (Xian et al., 2015). Such collaborative development is the consequence of the reduction of potential exploitable land resources, on the one hand, and the relative abundant land development quota, on the other (Luo and Shen, 2006). By providing land quotas according to specific allocation schemes, central and provincial governments intend to force developed central cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou to upgrade their industrial structure by transferring their manufacturing to other relatively undeveloped areas and make room for tertiary and productive service industries. In turn, it is hoped that collaborative development would help to foster industrialization in the relatively underdeveloped cities and hence close the development gap within the mega city-regions. Furthermore, in order to foster collaborative city-regionalism, regional institutions have been developed to deal with the previously territorially divided administrations. Through the mediation of the higher-level government, specific schemes over provision of land resources and distribution of fiscal revenues are negotiated between collaborative jurisdictions. Although the concept of city-regionalism has been used to promote trans-boundary cooperation between two discrete jurisdictions, the city-regional governance regime based on these cross-administrative industrial parks is not an established state space. It is only a temporary arrangement based on the current territorial politics of land development control and industrial development. This ad hoc coalition is fragile and dependent on the involvement of the higher-level government as a bridge builder (Li and Wu, 2013). To sum up, there are persistent political-administrative endeavours at the city-regional level in China, yet so far without any solid institutional foundation (Li and Wu, 2012a). For decades, scholars working on China have attempted to understand why state efforts at the city-regional scale have been in vain. It is an enigma that such an ‘authoritarian’ state as China cannot achieve its policy goal of coordinated development. In general, there are two lines of explanation that answer the question. The first places the blame on the Chinese socialist legacy. This explanation suggests that the political overintervention of administrative jurisdictions in local economic development served to divide functional economic connections (Chen, 2016). Efforts are thereby directed to creating incentives and reducing institutional barriers to building functional connections. The other attributes the failure to the territorial structure of the state at the local level, especially the high degree of metropolitan jurisdictional fragmentation (Xu and Yeh, 2013). Recommendations are thereby made to reconsolidate planning authorities at the city-regional scale of governance (Wang and Shen, 2017). Although both accounts are plausible on one level, they each fail to ask whether the state policy discourse of city-regionalism is

Mega city-region development in China  349 really directed to alleviate the invisible ‘border’ set up by territorial administrative divisions. The following section deals with this question. 32.3.3 City-Regionalism as Geopolitically Orchestrated Intervention At an abstract level, the formation of city-regionalism is not only about the internal challenges of the regions per se but also in the service of wider politics and objectives of the nation-state. This standpoint draws together the dimensions of fragmented authority and fragmented economic connections. That is, all the rationales, ranging from boosting economic growth, building functional economic space, to controlling land sprawl, ultimately come down to a paramount concern with competitiveness and sustainability. For instance, in the latest formation of national development policies concerning such mega city-regions as JJJ, YRD and PRD, their regional positionings are all formulated as ‘to be future world-class urban agglomerations as compared to global counterparts along the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes in the United States’. This is the central policy goal even though the challenges confronted by the respective city-regions are much different. That is to say, the making of these mega city-regions is integral to the nation-state’s aspiration to improve its economic structure and internationalize its economy (see Wu, 2003), which in turn allows the country to break out of its semi-peripheral status within the hierarchy of a capitalist world system. Another notable example is that these recently and centrally formulated city-regional strategies are all narrated under the Chinese national state’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Such efforts attest to the nation-state’s efforts to manage domestic political tensions as it simultaneously seeks to internationalize the Chinese state’s economy and territory. BRI was announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, when the domestic economy was perceived as entering a ‘new normal’ stage, featuring a lower growth rate, more industrial pressure and greater stress on changing the growth model from being investment- and land-driven to having endogenous growth and innovation. The inclusion of these mega city-regions within the larger BRI framework is characterized by a twin dynamic of rationale and utility. On the one hand, addressing regional infrastructural deficits in those neighbouring states with which China has traded for several centuries is intended to deal with the potential overcapacity challenges in China and in these mega city-regions in particular by increasing non-domestic consumption. On the other hand, the extensive programme of infrastructure development is ostensibly designed to connect China’s less-developed peripheral regions with the neighbouring BRI countries and regions, thereby stimulating external consumption and trade in order to address mounting domestic political tensions associated with the widening territorial-distributional disparities between less-developed provinces and cities in western China and the far more prosperous mega city-regions (Li and Jonas, 2019). In other words, the domestic imaginaries of city-regionalism are shaped by China’s nation-state politics and the internationalization of the state. The BRI strategy and its emphasized links to such mega city-regions as JJJ, PRD and YRD are demonstrative of the nation-state’s ambition to transform these mega city-regions from ‘world factories’ to ‘world builders’ (He, 2019). By fostering the country’s own hybrid global production networks and trade routes, these international developments and endeavours attempt to find an effective approach to cope with domestic pressure in terms of developing industries and sustaining single-digit economic growth. In turn, these city-regions are not only the location of global and national economic activities but also in effect a contingent geopolitical instrument by which

350  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the Chinese nation-state could rebuild its national identity and reputation on the international stage.

32.4

MATERIAL AND DISCURSIVE CITY-REGIONALISM AS NATION-STATE PROJECT

So far, this chapter has presented Chinese mega city-regional development from two different yet intertwined perspectives. First, the development manifests with notable urban expansion, striking economic growth, increasing population and increasingly dense flow networks that are clearly visible on maps. The sheer spatiality of the urban has definitely demonstrated the arrival of the age of the city-region. Second, judging from discourses on policy and strategy, an apparent spatial reference for city-regions emerges. It is very difficult to ascertain the extent to which the discursive making of city-regional governance is implied or impacted by the material processes of economic regionalization or vice versa. Nevertheless, the latter aspect of governance is not only an indispensable and complementary dimension to present city-regional development, but also provides a rich policy context for understanding the character of today’s city-regions (Harrison and Hoyler, 2014). In other words, rather than conceiving mega city-regional development as an inevitable outcome of contemporary globalization processes, city-regionalism can be understood as evolving in line with changing state policy priorities, that is, against the changing geopolitical dynamics and national objectives of the Chinese state. In fact, the Chinese government has a long tradition of intervening on the regional scale for state interests (Lim, 2016). Chinese regional development strategy was used to divide labour and resources of the whole national territory into six or seven administrative regions during its socialist period (Dunford and Liu, 2018). At that time, the imposed mission was to accelerate the process of industrial modernization under the central command, which was essential to national security and independence. Shaped by the socialist ideology of equality and seeing urbanism as the ‘tail of capitalism’, cities were not the point for organizing regional growth before economic reform. As a result, the economic processes of city-regionalism did not appear in China until the 1980s. Since then, the state’s approach to territorial organization has been guided by regional theories represented by François Perroux’s ‘growth pole’ theory and the ‘trickle down’ economic theory that evolved in the context of the liberal United States market (Perroux, 1950). These theories are based on the assumption of gradient transference of regional economic development, telling a story of how economic growth first happens in one place and then spreads to the wider region as a consequence of the marginal effect of economic agglomeration. Such theories of regional development were employed by Chinese experts to justify spatial preferential policies in the 1980s and 1990s. From a political-administrative aspect, the so-called ‘new regionalism’ of Western-based economic geography had been introduced by Chinese geographers and planners to further justify the significance of functional city-regions in building national economic competitiveness and to adjust for political overintervention of administrative jurisdictions in city-regional economic spaces. In a nutshell, these practices help to shed light on the wider geopolitical motives of the nation-state. By envisioning or positioning mega city-regions as unified economic spaces endowed with niche competitiveness on the global stage, the nation-state also strengthens its political nationalism and cohesion. It is also within this context that the theories of global ranking calculation and analysis of command nodes in global production networks have been

Mega city-region development in China  351 such powerful metanarratives among China’s government (Taylor et al., 2014). Influenced by these policy assumptions, the discourses of city-regionalism have become catchwords in policy and strategy making. The government has selectively chosen theoretical narratives to advocate for their goals, ranging from enhancing intra- and inter-regional mobilities, reducing inter-locality competition and improving industrial structure, which are all ultimately attributed to building world-class city-regions and developing regional/national competitiveness. Overall, the formation of mega city-regions in China is not simply an agglomeration of economic activities but also a result of a state technology governing human settlement for territorial development and state building. The production and reproduction of these city-regional territorial discourses are reflective of the role of territory in Chinese state governance and regulation. In this sense, the ultimate intent of creating these territorial discourses is not so much about building governance within the city-regions. Instead, it is more about producing the territorial terrain for the Chinese state to envision and legitimate its territorial development strategy for both domestic and international concerns, creating a united front for all subordinate governments.

32.5 CONCLUSION This chapter sought to give an overview on China’s mega city-regional development from a historical and, ultimately, constructivist state-theoretical approach. First, it looked into the historical trajectory of China’s mega city-region formation from the angle of urban form and function. In the beginning, Chinese mega city-regions had been analysed from the aspect of urban size and population. Later, the examination of these city-regions moved from tangible urban forms to invisible relational ties and dynamics. The functional development of city-regions was perceived as lagging behind their physical forms. The chapter further examined the policy discourses and governance practices pertaining to these mega city-regions. Policy debate about city-regionalism gathered momentum beginning in the 1990s. The notable concentration of flow of trade, people, traffic, logistics and capital has marked out these mega city-regions as successful examples to follow, yet has also generated tensions around planning and management, which in turn have generated new state spatial interventions. The tentative state attempts in setting up city-regional governance were initially illuminated by the internal ‘crisis’ of regional development. This crisis includes place-based tensions that are historically inherited from the territorial administrative divisions of the planned economy, which are conceived to be the major obstacle to fostering regional markets and cross-jurisdictional mobility. However, this kind of ‘crisis’ is common among world-wide struggles in the management of giant city-regions in terms of land use regulation, spatially coordinated development, environmental conservation and so on. Despite the rhetoric of policy efforts and heated discussion, there is not really an actual emergency. The real achievement of these regional attempts to facilitate cooperation and collective action is extremely constrained. So far, these city-regional spaces are not institutionalized but mainly represented by soft regional plans and informal government associations. Indeed, the five administrative hierarchies of the Chinese state governance structure have remained intact since the communist state’s foundation in 1949. These puzzling and enigmatic circumstances remind us to consider the state’s real intent in launching waves of city-regionalism. In fact, the rule of bolstering economic competitiveness

352  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state laid out by the central state comes before the policy obsession with building city-regional governance. Western-based theories of city-regional competitiveness and global city-region building have become powerful discourses for constructing collective regional identities and coalescing different levels of local and regional governments within the broad rubric of the city-region. In other words, the evolution of city-regions in China actually reveals a story about how the city-region is imagined and treated by the state in the service of its national objectives. The endeavours of the Chinese government to build BRI and create world-class city-regions have simply made the role of the national state and its geopolitical motives apparent. To conclude, the aim of this chapter has been to show that mega city-regions, and regions more broadly, are not ontologically or epistemologically pre-given. Even the physical development of city-regions is not a purely economic agglomeration process but is intervened into by state policies and shaped along with the transformation of state spatial agendas. The many different material, political and discursive manifestations of city-regions help to shed light on the political imaginaries of the state and the working logics of wider processes of state formation. In this way, the rise of city-regionalism does not pose challenges to the sovereign territorial nation-states in the least. Rather, the building of city-regionalism per se is integral to state-building processes.

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33. Competitive upscaling in the state: extrospective city-regionalism David Wachsmuth

33.1

‘THERE’S NOTHING SMALL ABOUT US’

In late September 2011, Arizona State University (ASU) president Michael Crow spoke to a gathering of business leaders and elected officials to drum up investment and interest in the Arizona Sun Corridor – the Phoenix–Tucson urban corridor (population 5.5 million) – which local economic development leaders had begun trying to market as a single destination for capital investment a few years earlier. ASU is located in Phoenix, but on this junket Crow was promoting the entire region. The speech and subsequent lunch were standard fair for local economic development – talking up the economic strength, vitality and diversity of the area – even if the area described was unorthodox. The Sun Corridor, after all, didn’t even exist as a name, let alone a state space, until the mid-2000s. A big part of Crow’s pitch was the sheer economic might of the Sun Corridor. ‘There’s nothing small about us’, Crow said, noting that, in gross domestic product terms, the Sun Corridor is bigger than Portugal, Finland, Malaysia, or the United Arab Emirates (Crow 2011). The force of these international comparisons was meant to drive home the message: come invest in the Sun Corridor; as one giant region we stack up globally, even if we don’t as our constituent cities. To reinforce this point, Crow (2011) went on to deliver an aphorism on the importance of scale in urban economic governance: ‘The megapolitan is the fighting unit. The megapolitan is the competitive unit.’ But there is a wrinkle in this story: Crow was not promoting the Sun Corridor to potential investors outside the United States (US), but rather to those businesses already driving local economic development in a large swath of the corridor. His speech was delivered in downtown Tucson, fewer than 200 km away from Phoenix. As a result, what might otherwise have appeared to be a straightforward boosterist message turns out to have been something else: an attempt at internal growth coalition transformation, simultaneously leveraging the threat of a competitiveness deficit and the promise of a solution through megaregionalism to spur institutional change. I call this spatial governance strategy ‘competitive upscaling in the state’: the attempt by regional and local political actors to resolve local competitive pressures by restructuring state space to position the locality as the component of a larger, and hopefully more vital competitive entity. This chapter explores the context in which such a strategy is being pursued and circulated as a new local governance ‘best practice’, and the implications of competitive upscaling for the broader field of state theory. I argue that the recent proliferation of policy-driven urban comparison and benchmarking (Peck 2011; McCann 2011, 2013), unfolding in the context of a broader neoliberal consolidation of competitive urban governance (Brenner and Wachsmuth 2012), has produced a systematic drive toward state spatial restructuring in the form of a process of competitive upscaling in the state. 355

356  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The chapter begins by reviewing developments in comparative urban governance, focusing in particular on the way state rescaling practices (and analysis of those practices) have come to focus on the unit of the metropolitan region. It then introduces the concept of competitive upscaling as a relational process of internal state spatial reconfiguration, and explores three distinctive dimensions of competitive upscaling: benchmarking as extrospective urban governance; the activation of new multi-city growth coalitions; and the reconfiguration of subnational state space. It concludes with a brief discussion of the wider relevance of the concept of competitive upscaling in the state for future work on urban governance and changing state spaces.

33.2

EXTROSPECTIVE GOVERNANCE: URBAN BENCHMARKING AS COMPETITIVE RESCALING INSIDE THE STATE

The practice of comparison is endemic to urban and regional competitiveness policy. Competition and competitiveness, after all, are inherently relational concepts; they only acquire meaning in a context where multiple actors are competing with each other. Correspondingly, there has been a substantial literature in urban studies on the growing importance of benchmarking, indicators, and best practices to urban governance – what Peck and Tickell (2002, p. 394) have characterized as ‘extrospective’ urban policy (see also McCann 2013). In this domain benchmarking and best practices proliferate (Greene et al. 2007; Kitchin et al. 2015), and are widely seen to be fundamental to the task of making city-regions competitive (Malecki 2004). While national competitiveness benchmarking has been commonplace – if contested (Fougner 2008) – since the 1979 Report on the Competitiveness of European Industry, it is only in the last two decades that benchmarking has become standard practice in urban and regional economic development. Two (overlapping) urban benchmarking strands are discernible. The first is a sustainability- and development-focused strand which emerged following the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The second is a competitiveness-focused strand which emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, initially inspired by the work of management gurus such as Porter (1998) and Florida (2002). Since then, one of the most consistently influential scholarly touchstones for competitiveness benchmarking has been the global city, via Friedmann and Wolff’s (1982) work on world cities and the new international division of labor and Sassen’s (2001) investigation of the concentration of command and control functions in specific urban regions. The concept of an urban hierarchy underlying both of these analyses has proven a natural complement to the underlying assumption of cities competing against each other for investment and workforce, and has provided a plausible ‘scoreboard’ in this competition (although global city benchmarking efforts inevitably bracket the critical thrust of Friedmann and Sassen’s work). Some important recent examples of these benchmarking exercises include the World Bank’s ‘Global City Indicators Facility’, A.T. Kearney and Foreign Policy magazine’s ‘Global City Index’, and the McKinsey Global Institute’s ‘Cityscope’. There is now a diverse set of creative city indices, global city indices, green city indices, smart city indices, livable city indices, and so on. Most are produced by consultancies, corporations, and non-governmental organizations, and their methodologies are as diverse as their provenances. Such indices, moreover, increas-

Competitive upscaling in the state  357 ingly serve as surrogate measures of national competitiveness as states seek to align urban economic development with wider geo-economic as well as geopolitical objectives (Moisio 2018). A skeptical strand of literature on urban benchmarking has convincingly revealed the shaky foundations upon which urban benchmarking exercises tend to rest, and has accordingly criticized these exercises for being wasteful, irrational, or regressive (e.g. Greene et al. 2007; Bristow 2010). While these critiques have merit, they are arguably more incisive to the extent that they contextualize urban benchmarking within broader transformations of contemporary urban governance. In fact, urban benchmarking is a practice of state rescaling (Brenner 2004; Jessop 2002), and particularly a component of what Brenner (2004) termed ‘urban locational policies’, and what Moisio (2018, pp. 116–52) calls ‘city geopolitics’. Urban locational policies are regulatory projects which ‘explicitly target cities and urban regions as sites for the enhancement of [state] territorial competitiveness’ (Brenner 2004, p. 176). Brenner observes that, in contrast to 1960s- and 1970s-era modes of urban governance, urban locational policies of the past 40 years have been explicitly multiscalar, in the sense that they attempt to strategically position a given scale within broader interscalar hierarchies or networks. It is precisely in this era of state rescaling that benchmarking has emerged into the mainstream of urban policymaking and geopolitical practice. In contrast to the national statistical realm, where borders are relatively unambiguous and statistics are both abundant and reasonably accurate, urban benchmarking has a kind of constitutive ambiguity to it. In some cases, the data one would like to use to rate cities’ performance is simply not collected, while methodological differences in defining cities and regions make international comparisons problematic. The search for better benchmarks has therefore intensified with the new urban information increasingly made possible by the arrival of big data and smart cities (Kitchin 2014; Kitchin et al. 2015). Vanolo (2014) refers to the production and circulation of smart-city benchmarks in Europe as a form of ‘smart governmentality’, which disciplines local governance actors through an objective- and comprehensive-seeming presentation of comparative data. Moreover, the emerging adoption of realtime dashboards – of which the Centro de Operacoes Prefeitura do Rio in Rio de Janeiro is the best-known example (Kitchin 2014) – lends a sense of urgency and adaptability to the quest for improved urban indicators. In spite of this diversity in competitiveness benchmarks, an increasing uniformity can be observed in the definition of the territorial unit which is assumed to be competing. National governments, international organizations, non-profit institutions, and corporate consultancies now all generally delineate urban space through the concept of the city-region or metropolitan area: a functional, non-administrative conception of urban space meant to approximate the spatial extent of daily economic integration, particularly via commuting patterns or labor market areas (Moisio and Jonas 2018). In the US, the metropolitan region was introduced as a statistical measure at the beginning of the twentieth century to define the functional extent of urban economies which were rapidly expanding beyond jurisdictional boundaries. While municipal governments in this era had typically annexed neighboring unincorporated territory as their built environment expanded, an increasingly urbanized landscape and the emergence of suburban secession jointly began to produce jurisdictionally fragmented urban agglomerations. Moreover, municipalities do not have an independent constitutional basis in the US federal system of government, but rather (in the memorable phrasing from a 1939 Supreme Court decision) are ‘creatures of the State’ governments. Municipalities were thus inherently

358  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state unable to cross state boundaries, even as the physical footprint of several large urban areas did so. Metropolitan areas thus provided some level of statistical uniformity for cities and their suburbs across the increasingly diverse urban landscape. International developments have followed a similar course, and the metropolitan region (or some variant thereof) is increasingly being adopted throughout the world as the standard urban measurement concept. The European Union has collaborated with national governments to standardize the measurement of the ‘larger urban zone’, which is a close proxy for the metropolitan region (Carlquist 2006). And the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) held a conference in 2006 on standardizing the measurement of metropolitan regions across its member states. One of the submissions to the conference makes the logic of urban governance by comparison plain: London … needs to compare itself with other cities for the purpose of identifying best practice for policy … It is our view that having a common standard is more important than having the right standard since in some senses if there is a common standard which represents city-regions in a reasonably consistent way then that itself is the ‘right’ standard. (Freeman and Cheshire 2006, p. 2)

From the perspective of local governance, a helpful distinction is between benchmarking as external marketing and internal discipline. Benchmarking and other forms of practical urban comparison have two main governance objectives, each corresponding to an audience. First, benchmarking can be an external-facing exercise in marketing aimed at mobile capital, stressing how competitive the region is. The emphasis here is on opportunities for profitable investment, and the indicators are chosen accordingly. Second, benchmarking can be an internal-facing exercise in discipline aimed at governance actors within the local growth coalition, stressing the need for market-oriented governance reforms to promote competitiveness. The emphasis here is on the threat posed by competitors. Urban indicators are thus a means for measuring the success of existing policy, but also can become a justification for the adoption of new strategies, new alliances, and, as I will now explore, entirely new scales of urban governance.

33.3

COMPETITIVE UPSCALING AS A STATE SPATIAL PROJECT

An implication of the preceding analysis is that there is a tension in local governance between: (1) the centrality of urban benchmarking for urban policy and the associated standardization of the metropolitan region as the spatial unit of analysis, and (2) the competitive pressure on local state actors to be more visible in a global marketplace for economic development and investment attraction. One practical resolution of this tension in entrepreneurial urban policy – between a proliferation of urban benchmarking and comparative practices on the one hand and a heightened perceived competitive pressure facing localities on the other – is a process I call competitive upscaling in the state. Locally situated economic actors turn to regional collaboration as an attempt to restructure state space to position the locality as the component of a larger, and hopefully more vital competitive entity: by redefining the competitive unit not as the locality but as the region.

Competitive upscaling in the state  359 The dilemma facing subnational state actors and local economic development interests – particularly in mid-sized cities – is illustrated by the following passage from a consultancy report commissioned by an alliance of Arizona metropolitan planning organizations: In the national economic landscape, there are 50 state economic development agencies each advocating for the cities and counties in its own jurisdiction and offering incentives to attract business. Metropolitan areas, cities, counties, and even towns add their own campaigns to the mix, leading to a diverse and sometimes chaotic competition for businesses relocating or expanding … A business seeking a large- to mid-size urban area has many possible options that meet its particular site requirements. (AECOM 2010, p. 22)

What are local state actors and their private-sector and civil-society economic development allies to do in the face of pressure to present a compelling picture of their locality in negotiations with site selectors, in place marketing materials, and at business investment trade shows? How to stand out in this crowded landscape? One answer is to ‘tier-jump’ within the urban hierarchy: competitive upscaling. Given the consolidation of urban benchmarking and comparison at the scale of the metropolitan region, we should therefore expect to see economic development initiatives forming above this scale. And indeed, ‘competitive multi-city regionalism’ is proliferating across the US (Wachsmuth 2017a, 2017b) – ground-up governance coalitions pursuing familiar local growth objectives but reconfiguring state space in order to operate on unprecedented scales across multiple metropolitan regions. Cleveland, Ohio, a metropolitan region of 2 million, is the 29th largest in the US, and one of dozens in the 1–3 million range. But, by forming an economic development partnership with its neighbors (Akron, Youngstown, and Canton), Cleveland can claim a region of 4.5 million – larger than San Francisco, and the 11th largest in the country. Indeed, this has been one of the motivations behind the formation of Team NEO in northeast Ohio – a state government-funded economic development partnership between the five leading chambers of commerce in the area, which proudly touts the combined population and gross domestic product of its upscaled multi-city region (Cleveland Plus Business 2014). In key informant interviews conducted from 2013 to 2014, I heard numerous variants of this theme from local economic development practitioners across the country – particularly in mid-tier cities such as Cleveland. Here is the president of the Central Florida Partnership in Orlando, discussing the ‘super region’ collaboration between the metropolitan chambers of Tampa and Orlando: ‘Regionalism essentially puts the “Super Region” on the map in a way that we have not been competitive previously, far outreaching what some may consider our traditional competitors: Austin, Jacksonville, Charlotte and Salt Lake City’ (Stuart 2013). Competitive upscaling is thus best understood as a relational process of external place marketing and internal institutional change. The exercises in institutional collaboration I have examined are generally not attempting to achieve major regional economic restructuring – which of course lies outside the short-term capacity of local state and civil society actors. Rather, these new organizations and partnerships are more often efforts to mobilize internal institutional change to outwardly rebrand a locality as part of a larger multi-city region which is more than the sum of its parts. In some cases they resemble traditional regional branding efforts which attempt to promote the innovation and productivity of a particular industrial cluster (Cigler 2008); this is the case with Kentucky’s Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement, where the Louisville–Lexington partnership has been developed specifically

360  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state around improving and promoting the corridor’s advanced manufacturing prowess. More often, though, the aim of competitive upscaling is simply to ‘put us on the map’, as the president of the Central Florida Partnership put it – to create a brand identity that is larger, more powerful, and able to compete in a higher tier. Where a city of a certain size struggles to differentiate itself from its peers, a region of two or three times that size potentially can leapfrog over those peers. I now briefly discuss three interrelated dimensions of competitive upscaling: the way it has connected place marketing to processes of extrospective urban governance; the way it has activated new urban growth coalitions at the multi-city scale; and the way it has facilitated a reconfiguration of subnational state administrative space. In each case I draw largely on examples from fieldwork across the US, although in principle the animating tension between comparison-driven urban governance and the imperative to project a larger urban region out to the world is sufficiently widespread that we should expect to see competitive upscaling across a range of global urban contexts.

33.4

BENCHMARKING AS EXTROSPECTIVE GOVERNANCE AND PLACE MARKETING

In dozens of key informant interviews with local state and civil society actors involved in new regional governance initiatives, respondents explained a key driver of these initiatives to be the simple fact that multi-city regionalism allows its participants to claim a larger population, economy or industrial profile than they could as individual cities. Here is an economic development official in Arizona speaking of the initial rationale behind the Arizona Sun Corridor Partnership, a collaboration between Phoenix and Tucson’s economic development organizations: ‘Most of it was just to get name recognition – the Sun Corridor has been in every economic development magazine. We’re going to have the most growth of any corridor in the US, certainly we’re going to have anything beat in the East. So how do we get our name out there? That was the thrust of it’ (interview with Arizona official 1). A city councilor from a suburb of Phoenix expressed a similar sentiment: ‘Together with Tucson, we’re a top ten market. If Phoenix tries to go it alone – or Tucson in particular is a good example. If Tucson tries to go it alone, you know, Tucson is really a top 50 market. It’s just not the same market as LA, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, you know, those kind of things’ (interview with Arizona official 2). A further set of specific competitive upscaling claims from US city-regions in the last several years is compiled in Table 33.1; most are assertions of the combined population of the region, although some make similar claims about combined gross domestic product, and collectively they demonstrate the ubiquity of this discourse. The discourse of competitive upscaling is not limited to the US, moreover. Shortly before winning the 2014 election which elevated her from deputy mayor to mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo wrote an op-ed in the London Guardian speculating about the possibility of London– Paris collaborative economic development and place marketing in the East Asian market: In the competition of an increasingly connected world, the size and diversity of skills and resources will matter … Greater London and Paris Grand, with a combined population of 20 million, may well be seen as a single conurbation. Indeed, in this not-too-distant future, London and Paris together could be seen from Asia, Latin America or Africa as a solid partner, possessing a critical mass of resources to reckon with. That’s if we can find a way to collaborate effectively. (Hidalgo 2014)

Competitive upscaling in the state  361 Table 33.1

Claims and reality in competitive upscaling

Economic development

Upscaling claim made

Population

Population rank as MSAsa

rank as region

partnership Arizona Sun Corridor

Larger economy than Finland or

Partnership

Portugalb

BEAM (KY)

$92 billion economy, 2 million

9

12 (Phoenix); 53 (Tucson); 214 (Yuma)

31

43 (Louisville); 107 (Lexington)

populationc CenterState CEO (NY)

39th largest metrod

40

80 (Syracuse); 163 (Utica); 346 (Ithaca)

Florida’s Super Region

15th largest economy in worlde

4

18 (Tampa); 26 (Orlando); 74 (Sarasota)

Hampton Roads Business

17th largest metrof

17

37 (Hampton Roads); 45 (Richmond)

4 million population in region

222

N/A (partnership is µSAs and partial MSAs)

Top-40 US metroh

38

73 (Greensboro); 82 (Winston-Salem)

Southeast Florida RPC

11th largest economy in USi

5

8 (Miami); 116 (Port St Lucie); 286

Southeast Super Region

2 million population and five

22

Committee (LA)

Fortune 1000 firmsj

Team NEO (OH)

$195 billion economy, 4 million

Roundtable (VA) I-74 Business Corridor (IN)

and adjacent countiesg Piedmont Triangle Partnership (NC) (Sebastian) 45 (N.Orleans); 69 (B.Rouge); 207 (Houma-Thibodaux) 11

29 (Cleveland); 77 (Akron); 97 (Youngstown)

populationk TechBelt Initiative (OH)

10th largest economy in USl

4

22 (Pittsburgh); 29 (Cleveland); 77 (Akron)

Upstate SC Alliance

Second largest urban region in

40

152 (Spartanburg); 234 (Greenville)

SCm

Note: (a) Only three metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in regions with more than three MSAs; (b) Crow (2011); (c) Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (2013, p. 2); (d) CenterState CEO (2010, p. 1); (e) Kaliski (2009, p. 10); (f) Delesline (2016); (g) Thomas P. Miller and Associates (2012, p. 2); (h) Piedmont Triad Partnership (2008); (i) Kaliski (2013, p. 10); (j) Southeast Super Region Committee (2012, p. 7); (k) Cleveland Plus Business (2014); (l) TechBelt Initiative (2012); (m) Brookings Institution (2013, p. 1).

Brexit put an end to the already slim chance that any such partnership would have actually emerged, but the very fact that a leader of one of the world’s most well-recognized cities would indulge in such speculation about the need for competitive upscaling underscores this intrinsically relational character of extrospective urban governance. Phoenix looks to competitive upscaling to stack up against Austin, while Paris looks to competitive upscaling to stack up against Shanghai. In other words, the place marketing claims which underlie competitive upscaling rest on novel imaginaries of a world of (multi-)city-regions. And, in the context of extrospective governance, where cities set policy through an outwardly oriented process of public–private entrepreneurialism, competitive upscaling correspondingly implies a reorientation of the inter-urban hierarchy.

33.5

ACTIVATING NEW GROWTH COALITIONS

The discourse that emerges around competitive upscaling frequently has a maximalist or even ridiculous tinge to it, with proliferating claims of the ‘10th largest’ this or a ‘world-class’ that. But this does not mean that the underlying governance strategies are empty rhetoric. The inflationary discourse is in fact perfectly functional, in that it facilitates a strategy of growth coalition restructuring. New organizations form, funding streams are reallocated, and local

362  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state growth priorities changed because competitive upscaling motivates local state and civil society actors to make new alliances. Competitive upscaling is largely framed in external comparative terms: the size and economic power of the region. But the real thrust of this external comparison points inwards: the need to work together as a region to remain competitive with more powerful neighbors. It is an attempt to channel currents within the relational, comparative field of urban comparison to reorient local governance configurations. In fact, the external-facing, place-marketing focus of many of the large-scale regional partnerships has been highly functional to assembling multi-city growth coalitions in the face of zero-sum regulatory challenges. Deal-making agencies, which are responsible for negotiating site-selection details with the corporation looking to relocate or expand, eventually face zero-sum decisions about the incentives and concessions they will offer: which jurisdiction actually gets the back office built, and who provides the tax breaks. By contrast, marketing agencies are theoretically engaging in positive-sum activities that benefit all their participants. Place marketing provides a lowest common denominator opportunity for collaboration among economic development actors more accustomed to seeing each other as competitors. The Tampa–Orlando ‘super region’ economic development initiative provides a particularly clear illustration of this dynamic. The Orlando-based civic leader perhaps most responsible for launching the partnership describes the need for institutional reform to respond to the opportunity that the super region’s economic power offers: When you map it, you see these incredible economic centres that are not as well connected as they could be, to really get great volume and great impact economically. Separate, Tampa Bay and the Central Florida/Orlando area are the eighteenth and nineteenth largest regions in the United States … When you put those two economies together, we become the tenth largest region in the United States. The power of that is incredible. But we do not have the organizational systems in place to take advantage of that. So that’s what we continue to work on, is getting our leaders to understand the power economically of working together. (Interview with Florida official 1)

Her conclusion here allows us to critically reinterpret the meaning of claims such as Orlando and Tampa together being ‘the tenth largest region in the United States’. Are these claims meant as external place marketing? Are they supposed to get the world thinking that Central Florida is actually an emerging global city? In part, yes, and these kinds of comparisons and statistics feature heavily into the marketing materials of competitive multi-city regional partnerships across the country. But more important in practice has been the way competitive upscaling has served as an internal-facing argument deployed by some elites to build a new growth coalition on a larger scale. Some growth coalition leaders in Orlando were already convinced of the utility of working together with their neighbors along the Interstate 4 corridor, on the basis of previous experiences with the failed high-speed rail development, or commitments to new logistics-based economic development strategies which are functionally matched to the multi-city scale (Wachsmuth 2017a), or a general sense that local competitive interests are best served through large regional partnerships. But other local Orlando elites remained committed to local or metropolitan growth strategies which would have seen Tampa as a rival rather than a collaborator. It was to this latter group that the competitive upscaling argument of the super region was primarily aimed, with arguments about the power of the Tampa–Orlando corridor and the mutual threat the corridor faced from larger, more united urban regions elsewhere in the country.

Competitive upscaling in the state  363 The Tampa–Orlando super-region initiative was extrospectively motivated through outward-looking comparisons with other urban regions in the US. And it was not long before this logic of competitive upscaling inspired similar regulatory experiments elsewhere in the state. One of these regulatory experiments was the Southeast Florida Regional Partnership, formed in early 2010 by two existing councils of government (the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council). The group developed a 50-year strategic plan for the seven-county, three-metropolitan area region headed by Miami, which it released in January 2014 (Southeast Florida Regional Partnership 2014). Called ‘Seven50’ (i.e. seven counties, 50 years), the plan hinged rhetorically around a distinction between an ‘accidental region’ and a ‘competitive region’ – implying that the region could only be competitive to the extent that it was coordinated. At a public event unveiling the Seven50 effort, one of the co-directors of the Partnership justified the need for economic regionalism with reference to the competitive threat posed by the Tampa–Orlando multi-city partnership: ‘The I-4 corridor [the Tampa–Orlando super region] is kicking our butt, because the 13 counties there are working together … They have accepted the fact that they are a region and are behaving that way’ (Hemlock 2014). In the face of locally felt competitive pressure, growth coalition elites are not simply looking for new solutions within existing spatio-institutional frameworks, but rather are actively seeking out new frameworks, and one of those frameworks is competitive upscaling and multi-city regionalism. To the extent that local elites come to believe that regionalism will bring their locality competitive advantage in attracting capital investment, they will be more likely to enter into multi-city partnerships. And, to the extent that such partnerships begin to proliferate, that proliferation becomes further inducement to elites to adopt these arrangements. The dynamic is mutually reinforcing.

33.6

RECONFIGURING SUBNATIONAL STATE ADMINISTRATIVE SPACE

A common motivation to regional governance is the desire among resource-constrained local governments to achieve economies of scale. Pooling resources to hire staff can make service delivery, business attraction or other initiatives feasible on a scale that members would struggle to accomplish on their own. By contrast, in most of the cases of competitive upscaling I am examining, the participants are already relatively high-capacity mid-tier city governmental agencies, chambers of commerce or economic development organizations, and collaboration is often a net drain on partner resources, since each collaborating organization has to divert some of its staff time away from core functions. In other words, the motivation underlying competitive upscaling is generally not more efficiently using existing economic development resources. Instead, the motivation is redirecting those resources toward an end that would not be possible within the existing scalar configuration of local state space. Frequently, that end is reaching larger markets for inward investment, or otherwise achieving a qualitative transformation in economic development possibilities. The state spatial restructuring which has followed from competitive upscaling initiatives has tended to follow the logic of ‘third-wave’ economic development policy, with a broad regional or sectoral focus and a preference for public–private partnerships as the institutional vehicle (Clarke and Gaile 1992). Some notable examples in the US include the Joint Planning Advisory

364  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Council in Arizona, which is an alliance between five regional associations of governments to coordinate transportation and freight planning throughout the Phoenix–Tucson ‘Sun Corridor’, and the Team NEO economic development partnership in the Cleveland-centered northeast Ohio region. In the latter case, Team NEO began as an informal cooperation agreement between four metropolitan chambers in Cleveland and neighboring cities, but it became progressively institutionalized within the state as it found success. In 2011, the state of Ohio reorganized and privatized economic development activities under the new statewide Jobs Ohio organization. Jobs Ohio decided to channel its operations through a set of regional partners, and chose Team NEO as the regional partner in northeast Ohio. But the consequence was that state funding that previously went to the various local and metropolitan chambers (a small amount of which was subsequently passed on to Team NEO) now began flowing directly to Team NEO, which was furthermore given responsibilities for business retention and expansion efforts from the state. Both of these changes upset a balance of power and responsibility that local parties generally agreed was effective or at least tolerable. The local chambers began to see Team NEO to some extent as a dangerous competitor – a ‘threat to their existence’, according to one informant – and many began agitating to dissolve it (interview with Ohio official 1). A few years prior, they would indeed have been able to dissolve it, since they controlled its funding and strategic direction. But once Team NEO became firmly entrenched with state support, this option disappeared. The case of Team NEO highlights a tension within the process of competitive upscaling as it pertains to internal state restructuring. If the benchmarking and place-marketing claims (‘we are bigger and better together’) are convincing, they not only encourage new inward investment but also drive a process of new growth coalition formation at the multi-city scale, and potentially eventually a reorganization of subnational state administrative space. To the extent that this reorganization takes the competitive upscaling claims seriously, it will entail an upward redistribution of state authority away from the local governance actors who initiated the process of competitive upscaling in the first place.

33.7

CONCLUSIONS: LOCAL GOVERNANCE BEYOND COMPETITIVENESS?

The purpose of this chapter has been to relate the increasingly hegemonic ‘extrospective’ policy regime of urban benchmarking, best practices, and comparison to the emergence of multi-city regionalism in US local economic governance. I have done so by introducing the concept of ‘competitive upscaling’. Under generalized conditions of urban competition for investment and workforce, where this competition is mediated through increasingly ubiquitous benchmarking, local governance actors are attempting to overcome local competitive pressure by redefining the locality as part of a larger competitive entity: not the city or the city-region, but a larger, multi-city region. While the resulting claims about the region’s power and economic vitality are superficially outward-facing place-marketing exercises, they are simultaneously inward-facing arguments mobilized by specific actors within local growth coalitions in favor of governance realignments to the multi-city scale. To conclude, I want to consider the implications of this development for the broader field of state spatial theory, and suggest that competitive upscaling, in contrast to the optimistic

Competitive upscaling in the state  365 pronouncements of its proponents in the policy world, is a trap that, if further institutionalized, will generate greater regulatory waste and political dysfunction rather than lasting competitive advantage for localities. The core thesis of the ‘competition state’ (Jessop 2002) rescaled to the city or region (Ward and Jonas 2004) is that cities face an external imperative to compete, and in response to this imperative must adopt strategies for increasing their competitiveness. Eisenschitz and Gough (1996) grimly summarize this policy model as ‘compete or die’. Competitive upscaling is readily understandable in these terms: it is increasingly seen by a range of local as well as national state actors as a strategy for responding to their competitiveness pressures through a kind of leapfrog logic. For many states, moreover, it signals a growing alignment of domestic policies of urban development with those designed to promote international competitiveness, creating the conditions for a new geopolitics of city-regionalism (Moisio and Jonas 2018). But this is a vicious circle. Competition strategies enacted in response to apparent external competitiveness pressures simply exacerbate those pressures. If competitive multi-city regionalism continues its growth trend, its endpoint will not be Florida’s super region enjoying unique competitive advantage because of its collaboration, but rather a country of multi-city collaborations: the status quo, but reproduced on a larger scale. Moreover, this new status quo will not even be a ‘solution’ to local urban competitiveness pressures, but rather a new set of multi-city competitiveness pressures coexisting alongside the existing local ones. Moreover, unlike with state-level and city-level competitiveness policies, at the multi-city regional scale there are no institutions of democratic governance to keep elite power in check. Competitive upscaling thus appears to represent the possible institutionalization of another opportunity for capital to extract value and surplus from labor and communities, and one with even dimmer prospects for democratic accountability. This gloomy conclusion raises the question of how to encourage the development and mobilization of alternative, more progressive regionalisms (Benner and Pastor 2015). Can progressive governance be upscaled? The answer to that question will have profound implications not just for issues of economic development and state structure, but for issues of social justice and democracy as well.

REFERENCES AECOM (2010), Sun Corridor, Future Corridor: A Global Megaregion in the 21st Century, Los Angeles: AECOM Global Cities Institute consultant report. Benner, C. and M. Pastor (2015), Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America’s Metro Areas, Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (2013), Seizing the Manufacturing Moment: An Economic Growth Plan for the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, Metropolitan business plan prepared in collaboration with the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Brenner, N. (2004), New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brenner, N. and D. Wachsmuth (2012), ‘Territorial competitiveness: Lineages, practices, ideologies’, in B. Sanyal, L.J. Vale, and C. Rosan (eds), Planning Ideas That Matter: Livability, Territoriality, Governance and Reflective Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 179–204. Bristow, G. (2010), Critical Reflections on Regional Competitiveness: Theory, Policy and Practice, New York: Routledge. Brookings Institution (2013), The Ten Traits of Globally Fluent Metro Areas, Greenville, Briefing paper. Available at: www​.brookings​.edu/​research/​the​-10​-traits​-of​-globally​-fluent​-metro​-areas/​. Accessed on January 28, 2020.

366  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Carlquist, T. (2006), ‘Larger urban zones in the urban audit’, Paper presented at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s ‘Defining and Measuring Metropolitan Regions’ conference, Paris, November 27. CenterState CEO (2010), Inaugural Report, Syracuse, NY: CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity. Available at: https://​www​.centerstateceo​.com/​news​-events/​publications/​annual​-report Cigler, B.A. (2008), ‘Economic development in metropolitan areas’, in D.K. Hamilton and P.S. Atkins (eds), Urban and Regional Policies for Metropolitan Livability, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 296–323. Clarke, S.E. and G.L. Gaile (1992), ‘The next wave: Postfederal local economic development strategies’, Economic Development Quarterly, 6 (2), 187–98. Cleveland Plus Business (2014), We Make Things Here. Available at: www​.clevelandplusmakesthings​ .com/​why​-cleveland​-plus​.aspx​#​.U1YYP​-ZdXds. Accessed on April 1, 2014. Crow, M. (2011), Your Future: Arizona’s Sun Corridor. Public address to Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities annual luncheon, Tucson, September 30. Delesline, III, N. (2016), ‘Mega-region advocate: 757 plus 804 could equal top 20 status’, Inside Business: Hampton Roads Business Journal. Available at: http://​pilotonline​.com/​inside​-business/​ mega​-region​-advocate​-plus​-could​-equal​-top​-status/​article​_89d15afd​-f495​-5478​-aa73​-92fe3b9da9c1​ .html. Accessed on August 31, 2016. Eisenschitz, A. and J. Gough (1996), ‘The contradictions of neo-Keynesian local economic strategy’, Review of International Political Economy, 3 (3), 434–58. Florida, R. (2002), The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books. Fougner, T. (2008), ‘Neoliberal governance of states: The role of competitiveness indexing and country benchmarking’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 37 (2), 303–26. Freeman, A. and P. Cheshire (2006), ‘Defining and measuring metropolitan regions: A rationale’, Paper presented at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s ‘Defining and Measuring Metropolitan Regions’ conference, Paris, November 27. Available at: www​.oecd​.org/​ dataoecd/​50/​29/​37788230​.pdf. Accessed on June 8, 2020. Friedmann, J. and G. Wolff (1982), ‘World city formation: An agenda for research and action’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6 (2), 319–44. Greene, F.J., P. Tracey, and M. Cowling (2007), ‘Recasting the city into city-regions: Place promotion, competitiveness benchmarking and the quest for urban supremacy’, Growth and Change, 38 (1), 1–22. Hemlock, D. (2014), ‘More jobs, better transit envisioned for South Florida: Sun Sentinel’. Available at: http://​articles​.sun​-sentinel​.com/​2014​-01​-15/​business/​fl​-seven50​- forum-20140115_1_more-job s-better-transit-i-4-corridor. Accessed on February 10, 2014. Hidalgo, A. (2014), ‘London and Paris: We could soon be part of the same conurbation’, The Guardian. Available at: www​.theguardian​.com/​commentisfree/​2014/​jan/​23/​ london-paris-soon-same-conurbat ion. Accessed on January 24, 2014. Jessop, B. (2002), The Future of the Capitalist State, London: Polity. Kaliski, J. (2009), Florida in the Future: Competing as a Megaregion, Presentation to Leadership Polk, Lakeland, November 19. Kaliski, J. (2013), Southeast Florida: A Seven County Super Region, Presentation to Southeast Florida Regional Partnership, Miami, June 3. Kitchin, R. (2014), ‘The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism’, GeoJournal, 79, 1–14. Kitchin, R., T.P. Lauriault, and G. McArdle (2015), ‘Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2 (1), 6–28. Malecki, E. (2004), ‘Jockeying for position: What it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete’, Regional Studies, 38 (9), 1101–20. McCann, E. (2011), ‘Urban policy mobilities and global circuits of knowledge: Toward a research agenda’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (1), 107–30. McCann, E. (2013), ‘Policy boosterism, policy mobilities, and the extrospective city’, Urban Geography, 34 (1), 5–29. Moisio, S. (2018), Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy, Abingdon: Routledge.

Competitive upscaling in the state  367 Moisio, S. and A.E.G. Jonas (2018), ‘City-regions and city-regionalism’, in J. Harrison, M. Jones, and G. MacLeod (eds), Handbook of Regions and Territories, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 285–97. Peck, J. (2011), ‘Geographies of policy: From transfer-diffusion to mobility-mutation’, Progress in Human Geography, 35 (6), 773–97. Peck, J. and A. Tickell (2002), ‘Neoliberalizing space’, Antipode, 34 (3), 380–404. Piedmont Triad Partnership (2008), Why Regionalism. Available at: www​.piedmonttriadnc​.com/​why​ -regionalism/​default​.aspx. Accessed on June 15, 2013. Porter, M.E. (1998), ‘Clusters and the new economics of competition’, Harvard Business Review, 76, 77–90. Sassen, S. (2001), The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2nd ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Southeast Florida Regional Partnership (2014), Seven50: Southeast Florida Prosperity Plan, Policy report. Southeast Super Region Committee (2012), Louisiana’s Southeast Super-Region, Marketing pamphlet. Stuart, J.V. (2013), Florida Regions Generate Prosperity. Available at www​.i4biz​.com/​money​-finance/​ florida​-regions​-generate​-prosperity/​. Accessed on June 22, 2013. TechBelt Initiative (2012), Manufacturing Regional Collaboration: 2012 Annual Report, Pittsburgh, PA: TechBelt Initiative. Available at: https://​vdocuments​.site/​tech​-belt​-annual​-report​.html Thomas P. Miller and Associates (2012), The I-74 Business Corridor: Regional Labor Market Snapshot, Marketing pamphlet. Vanolo, A. (2014), ‘Smartmentality: The smart city as disciplinary strategy’, Urban Studies, 51 (5), 883–98. Wachsmuth, D. (2017a), ‘Infrastructure alliances: Supply-chain expansion and multi-city growth coalitions’, Economic Geography, 93 (1), 44–65. Wachsmuth, D. (2017b), ‘Competitive multi-city regionalism: Growth politics beyond the growth machine’, Regional Studies, 51 (4), 643–53. Ward, K. and A.E.G. Jonas (2004), ‘Competitive city-regionalism as a politics of space: A critical reinterpretation of the New Regionalism’, Environment and Planning A, 36 (12), 2119–39.

34. Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling (European) nation-states: algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan and stateless citizenship ideal types Igor Calzada

34.1

INTRODUCTION: RESCALING EUROPEAN NATION-STATES

The idea of the nation-state was invented in Europe upon agreeing to the principle of fixed territorial integrity and sovereignty in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. In the meantime, the concepts nation and state – and the extent to which they converge around a single territorial structure – have continued to provoke debate and discussion. Arendt (1949) distinguished between nations and states when tracing the beginning of the statelessness phenomenon to the decline of the nation-state (Dasgupta 2018; Ohmae 1995). Whereas nation referred to a dominant group living in a bounded territory and sharing a culture, language, and history, state referred to the legal status of people who live in a territory and are considered citizens with legal rights. Since the origins of the modern nation-state, structural tension has existed between nation and state regarding which people were true members of a nation – whether certain people living in a territory were counted as citizens with legal rights or excluded as non-citizens. Arendt inferred that ‘no effective international or state mechanism existed to protect the rights of stateless citizens or minorities’ (cited in Bernstein 2018, pp. 15–17). As such, nation-states were homogenous entities with uniform attributes, many of which remain familiar today – in particular, they formed a set of fiercely enforced nation-state monopolies (for example, defence, taxation, and law) that gave the government substantial control over their national destiny. In return, a moral promise was made: the government would ensure the development (spiritual and material) of citizens and nation alike. According to Agnew (2017, p. 347), ‘[t]he nation-state, as the clear and coherent mapping of a relatively culturally homogeneous group onto a territory with a singular and organised state apparatus of rule, has long been the structural underpinning of most claims about political legitimacy and democratic participation.’ The literature on state rescaling hitherto has opened up new perspectives on nation-state spatial restructuring, highlighting how nation-state space has been hollowed out even as new powers and capacities have coalesced at other spatial scales, such as international, sub-national, regional, and local (urban) (Jordana 2019). As such, this literature has elucidated that the fragmentation of the nation-state scale has undermined the privileged position of the nation-state as a natural platform (Archer 2012; Goodwin et al. 2012; Jordana et al. 2019; Mykhnenko and Wolff 2018; Somerville 2004). However, while this literature yields diverse hypotheses on how different types of citizenship affect the rescaling phenomena in European nation-states (Arrighi and Stjepanović 2019; Bianchini 2017; Brenner 2003; Piccoli 2019; Scott 1998), empirical evidence remains scarce and inconclusive. In parallel, studies on citi368

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  369 zenship have combined the right of soil (jus soli) and the right of blood (jus sanguinis). While the jus soli principle states that a person’s citizenship is determined by the place where the person was born, the jus sanguinis principle states that citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but rather is granted when one or both parents are citizens of the state. Moreover, recent structural tensions demand further empirical, timely, and ambitious interdisciplinary research on the right to algorithmic transparency, technological sovereignty, and democratic city-regional accountability (jus algoritmi) (Calzada 2019a; Coletta and Kitchin 2017; Finn 2017; Luger 2019). Such approaches have advanced our knowledge of the relationship between the rescaling of nation-states and the emergence of new forms of citizenship in Europe (Arrighi 2019; Hennebry-Leung and Bonacina-Pugh 2019; Smith 2019). In contrast, this section adopts an interdisciplinary standpoint in order to open up new enquiry pathways on how European nation-states’ rescaling could be interrogated from an intertwined approach of citizenship among the fields of regional studies, social innovation studies, critical data science, and political geography. Citizens today are increasingly (though unwittingly) digitally connected through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning devices that remain unevenly and pervasively distributed, fuelling a liquid sense of global and algorithmic cosmopolitan citizenship (Bridle 2016; Castells 2017; Khanna 2016; Morozov 2014). This liquid sense of global and algorithmic cosmopolitan citizenship contributes to state rescaling through a diverse set of city-regional and techno-political dynamics. As such, against the backdrop of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect in the European Union (EU) – and unlike the United States (US) and China’s characterization by AI and data governance post-COVID-19 paradigms commanded by big tech corporations and super-state power, respectively – a debate emerged, even beyond nation-states and primarily in European cities, regarding the role of citizens and their relationship with data (Calzada 2019a). In this chapter, I argue that, in Europe, borders still matter as much as nations, although the current significance of both might be rapidly shifting through (1) algorithmic, (2) liquid, (3) metropolitan, and (4) stateless ideal types of intertwined citizenship, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive and overlap to a greater or lesser degree (Kostakopoulou 2019; Swedberg 2018; Turner 2017). A formulation of these four intertwined ideal types of citizenship is presented in Table 34.1. The four intertwined ideal types of citizenship discussed here (algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan, and stateless) are significant for two key reasons. First, they are novel, dynamic, and real-time representations of citizenship in permanent tension within nation-states in liberal democracies (Susskind 2018), which actually attempt to overcome the conventional static analysis about the increasingly brittle relationship between citizenship and the state by suggesting a nuanced explanation through a diverse set of drivers of change (such as blockchain, dataism, populism, and devolution). Second, and consequently, they are constantly in flux and are rescaling nation-states in an unexpected fashion by altering techno-political and city-regional configurations that directly affect citizenship by either undermining or bolstering their rights to have rights (Arendt 1949). According to Keating (2013, p. 6), rescaling can be understood as the ‘migration of economic, social, and political systems of action and of regulation to new spatial levels above, below, and across the nation-state’. Insofar as nation-states have never sufficiently contained identity (Fukuyama 2018), this section interrogates whether techno-political disruption will offer transitional alternatives for citizenship through diverse city-regional scenarios in Europe, even to the extent to which the geographies of the state at present might be shaped by volatile,

370  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Table 34.1

Four ideal types of citizenship rescaling European nation-states Rescaling European nation-states:

Ideal types of

seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage Drivers of Rights claimed Dynamics City-regional case

Literature

citizenship

change

studies

review

1. Algorithmic

Blockchain

Tallinn (Estonia)

Tammpuu and

Democratic

Geotechnologics

Technopolitical

accountability/

Masso 2018

transparency Dataism

2. Liquid

Privacy/digital

Geopolitics

Amsterdam

rights

Morozov 2014

(Netherlands) Barcelona (Catalonia)

3. Metropolitan

Populism

Access to reliable

Geoeconomics

City-

London (England)

regional

information/

RodríguezPose 2018

re-establish social capital 4. Stateless

Devolution

Right to decide/ freedom of speech

Geodemocratics

Glasgow (Scotland)

Calzada 2017,

Barcelona (Catalonia)

2018b

Bilbao (Basque Country)

interdependent, and uncertain geotechnologic, geopolitic, geoeconomic, and geodemocratic dynamics. However, political technology illuminates the varied failures of historical citizenship models to account for the myriad ways people live, behave, belong, and connect with others (Bridle 2016).

34.2

RATIONALE: SEEING LIKE A CITY-REGIONAL AND TECHNO-POLITICAL CONCEPTUAL ASSEMBLAGE

As Europe has exponentially and continuously urbanized over the last several decades (Faludi 2018), it has also rapidly metropolitanized by creating city-regions as significant political and economic constellations remarkably networked spatially even beyond their referential nation-states (Calzada 2015; Harrison 2015; Herrschel 2002; Moisio 2018; Moisio and Paasi 2013). Furthermore, these city-regions may be seen as transitions in the nation-states’ rescaling processes. Seeing themselves as interdependent international actors, city-regions are neither static territorial entities nor isolated geographical areas inside nation-states. Thus, city-regions may go beyond a containerized outlook of territory by viewing a wide range of nation-state rescaling processes (Keating 2013, 2018; Painter 2010) through the lenses of various ideal types of citizenship (Turner 2017). By conjoining debates on state rescaling and citizenship, city-regionalism opens up new perspectives on processes and politics of state spatial restructuring (Loughlin and Antunes 2019). According to Moisio and Jonas (2018, p. 285) ‘[city-region and city-regionalism] reveal much about the diverse ways in which the state and the economy are being spatially reconfigured, and also about the production of new state territorial formations at the city-region scale’. Thus, these new city-regional dynamics potentially challenge systems of democracy ‘which are premised upon the twentieth-century ideal of the territorially integrated’ and fixed nation-state operating within a Westphalian inter-state system (Moisio and Jonas 2018, p. 287). It is true, then, that large city-regions as mega urban agglomerations are stretching

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  371 fixed internal and external borders of nation-states through processes of rescaling. More recently, Scott (2019, p. 21) reconsidered the concept and asserted that city-regions are equivalent to small countries being ‘conditioned by idiosyncrasies related to local, material, social, and cultural circumstances’. As city-regions extend into wider socio-territorial contexts, European nation-states are struggling to manage their territories, both politically and economically; thus, the notion of territory – in a new form understood as city-regions – has re-emerged as an important element of policy discussion. City-regions are widely recognized as pivotal societal and techno-political-economic formations that (1) are key to national and international competitiveness and (2) rebalance political restructuring processes into nation-states, even changing the geoeconomic, geopolitic, geodemocratic, and geotechnologic dynamics beyond and between nation-states (Calzada 2018a). However, the ongoing transitional nature of city-regions raises the question of whether nation-states are truly disappearing, and prompts consideration that, instead, the rescaling processes are actually being provoked by the emergence of new citizenship regimes. With regard to the latter option, this chapter argues that ‘new regionalism’ (Storper 1997, p. 48) – which examines city-regions as ‘regional economies’ – may have overlooked city-regional dynamics being connected and hybridized, to some extent, with techno-political dynamics, which, in itself, may be pervasively reconfiguring the geopolitics of European nation-states through new citizenship regimes. Techno-political dynamics in Europe refer to those algorithmic phenomena that have resulted from the GDPR – data privacy, trust, surveillance, ethics, ownership, and democratic accountability, among others – that affect the sovereignty of states and thus might also undermine citizens’ digital rights through data disruption and extractivism (Calzada 2019a). Despite the expansion of the technological and organizational worlds that produce city-regions more generally, the rescaling of nation-states could in fact be provoked by a diverse set of emergent manifestations of citizenship. Accordingly, literature on nation-state rescaling must then disclose the type of political interests shaping democratic urban politics and citizens’ right to the city(-region) in their various forms of citizenship: algorithmic, liquid, metropolitan, and stateless. The four forms of citizenship thus respond through a set of citizens’ claimed rights (Table 34.1): algorithmic citizenship aims to enable democratic accountability through citizen-centric technologies such as blockchain (Allesie et al. 2019); liquid citizenship aims to protect citizens’ digital rights from data extractivism and surveillance (Zuboff 2019); metropolitan citizenship aims to re-establish the social capital among those fractions of communities having been left behind in post-austerity periods, and more recently now, in the aftermath of the post-COVID-19 crisis (Johnston et al. 2018; Rodríguez-Pose, 2018); and ultimately, stateless citizenship aims to claim the right to decide on the present and future relationship with the current state (Keating 2019). Paralleling city-regional dynamics, the techno-political domain is constantly evolving by forming a new layer with geographies. The techno-political domain, informed by recent studies, has raised several social, ethical, and legal concerns about the risk of biases, lack of transparency and accountability, surveillance, and challenges to defending citizens’ right, for instance, to (1) privacy (liquid), (2) fair democratic vote (algorithmic), (3) access to reliable information (metropolitan), and (4) freedom of speech (stateless). How does this layer or domain overlap and fuse with the city-regional domain (Cheney-Lippold 2011)? How can city-regions without nation-state sovereignty implement policies that transform bureaucratic

372  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state nation-states’ structures for citizens as end users towards more decentralized and devolved institutional frameworks? What is the role of blockchain as a consensus algorithm with human intervention for current trends in rescaling nation-states (Calzada 2018a), such as metropolitanization (fostering polycentric networked administrations), devolution (establishing data literacy and transparency of fiscal/tax policy regimes), and, ultimately, the right to decide (direct democratic voting systems by avoiding post-truth and fake news)? Blockchain is an emerging technology that potentially allows for the establishment of distributed networks for governance and policy-making (i.e. e-voting, digital currency, and naturalization processes), while apparently increasing the social capital and trust among citizens. The emergence of blockchain technology may change the bureaucratic mode of operation and the roles of the nation-states and governments that have historically functioned as trust machines (Atzori 2017). Blockchain technology promises to be a useful tool for social innovation, both by enhancing government effectiveness and grassroots innovation and by giving citizens a direct voice. It remains to be seen though, whether in the post-COVID-19 societies, blockchain could be equally useful for contact tracing apps by ensuring privacy and avoiding surveillance panopticon. Despite the fact that both the European techno-political post-GDPR scenario and city-regional networks have gained their transitional momentum, the EU is still currently a network of nation-states in an asymmetric representation of their citizenship types (Arrighi and Stjepanović 2019; Bauböck 2019; Piccoli 2019; Rodríguez et al. 2019; Stjepanović and Tierney 2019; Wilson-Daily and Kemmelmeier 2019). In this evolution, Brexit; Marine Le Pen in France; and the Polish, Italian, and Hungarian governments’ manoeuvres can be viewed as reactionary moves based on populism and ethnic nationalism (Calzada 2018b). The old narrative of the nation in certain European nation-states, which clearly conflicts with city-regional transformations that European citizenship is experiencing through a unique set of city-regional dynamics, has not been renewed or updated through diverse forms of citizenship (European Democracy Lab 2019). Thus, several city-regional dynamics are related to new forms of citizenship in Europe: (1) geoeconomics (metropolitan citizenship), (2) geopolitics (liquid citizenship), (3) geodemocratics (stateless citizenship), and (4) geotechnologics (algorithmic citizenship). These dynamics should (1) prompt reassessment and revision of what a nation-state is in the liberal democracies of modern Europe and (2) offer a corrective to Europe’s democratic dysfunctionalities and misalignments (Dijkstra et al. 2018). Regarding metropolitan citizenship, revelations that Cambridge Analytica’s stealthy manipulation of social media users may have played a decisive role in shaping the non-metropolitan voters’ support based on fake news and by fracturing the social capital of communities in events, such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US president, illustrate the resulting geoeconomic dynamics driven by populism (Kim et al. 2018). Along with these geoeconomic dynamics, dataism has caused a sense of liquidity such that citizens’ digital rights and privacy may no longer be protected by their referential states, which is causing a geopolitical rivalry between the data paradigms of the three big superpowers: China, the US, and the EU (Calzada 2019a). Consequently, a new regime of citizenship, known as algorithmic citizenship (Calzada 2018a), is increasingly emerging beyond states by claiming the democratic accountability of political decisions and fair democratic vote on either global or local geotechnological issues. Ultimately, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2019), devolution is among the most important reforms of the past 50 years, which may open up a new pathway

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  373 to consider structurally certain city-regions’ geodemocratic right to decide (and freedom of speech) on the political relationship with their referential state. Thus, rather than a series of regional institutions that are territorially fixed in some way (Allen and Cochrane 2010), city-regional assemblages are increasingly mediated by digital infrastructures, digital institutions, and techno-political imperatives of data privacy, security, ownership, transparency, and literacy, ultimately determining democratic accountability, digital rights, social capital, and the right to decide, which affect the citizenship status of citizens in Europe while gradually losing the legitimacy of state citizenship (Magnusson 2011; Sassen 2008; Scott 1998). The aftermath of these phenomena creates pervasive algorithmic and liquid citizenship ideal types. In addition, the internal territorial mobility or migration patterns of citizens within Europe are facing resistance in many nation-states, as the old narrative of the ethnic nation is still alive, resulting in a pervasive struggle between the non-metropolitan and metropolitan citizenship ideal types. Ultimately, these metropolitanization phenomena are increasingly shaping calls for devolution in small, stateless, city-regionalized European nations, resulting in the fourth new type of emerging citizenship: stateless citizenship. Figure 34.1 depicts the conceptual overarching, heuristic, and comprehensive assemblage and framework of the four ideal types of citizenship, as the core element of this chapter.

Figure 34.1

34.3

Ideal types of citizenship

CITY-REGIONAL AND TECHNO-POLITICAL DYNAMICS OF STATE RESCALING IN EUROPE

As the territorial coincidence of nation-states, governing order, economy, citizenship, and identity can no longer be taken for granted (Jessop 1990), this section deploys city-regional and techno-political analytical lenses to capture the intrinsic tensions in the understanding of

374  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the four emerging ideal types of citizenship identified in Table 34.1 (Carey 2018). In doing so, this section conceptualizes these ideal types in response to four timely drivers of change in Europe (blockchain, dataism, populism, and devolution) that stem from four city-regional and techno-political dynamics occurring in four European nation-states: Estonia, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK). Ideal types are specific politically produced and socially constructed phenomena that also capture matters of global concern. It is precisely this intersection of city-regional realities and European concerns that informs the selection of the ideal types (Swedberg 2018). 34.3.1 Emerging Citizenship Regimes Seen through Four Ideal Types of Citizenship Ideal type no. 1: algorithmic citizenship (from geotechnological techno-political dynamics) The EU increasingly operates online though geography and physical infrastructure remain crucial to controlling and managing borders through undersea fibre optic cables that trace legal or illegal citizens. According to the World Bank, approximately 1.1 billion illegal citizens do not have officially recognized documents to prove their identities (cited in Desai 2017). Thus, a scattered geography creates a different reality, one in which political decisions and national laws transform physical space into virtual territory (Schou and Hjelholt 2018). This virtual territory represents the space in which algorithmic citizens exist (or simply not). However, this virtual and analogic merger does not occur automatically and has even less regard for fixed territorial borders. As such, city-regional spaces blend with techno-political infrastructures and algorithmic protocols by modifying the established notion of nationhood. Hence, economies are integrated, populations are mobile, and the cyber or techno-political domain is merging with physical reality or the city-regional domain. Against this contextual backdrop, contemporary geotechnological dynamics based on algorithmic citizenship through the blockchain’s decentralized ledgers implemented by the small state of Estonia might offer models for rethinking citizenship in other European city-regions (Bridle 2016; Cheney-Lippold 2011; Tammpuu and Masso 2019). Insofar as a societal plurality pattern has increasingly claimed recognition and demanded equal treatment for minorities and voiceless citizens, the regional political agenda could be increasingly Europeanized through multi-level governance schemes. This trend could result in a form of citizenship that can be delinked from territory while being shaped by citizenship (Arrighi 2019; Stjepanović and Tierney 2019). Current debates on citizenship, changing geography patterns, political and democratic governance challenges, and more generally the legitimization of institutional and territorial nation-state power in liberal democracies could be addressed through cutting-edge transitions towards algorithmic discoveries embodied in e-state blockchain cases, such as Estonia. In 1991, Estonia restored its independence as a small sovereign state, defeating the Soviet Union. In 2000, the government declared internet access to be a human right. In 2014, Estonia became the first country to offer electronic residency to people from outside the country, moving towards the idea of a nation-state without borders. e-Estonia (2016) refers to a government movement, based on blockchain technology, to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through electronic solutions. Estonia has undoubtedly been the leader in the use of blockchain technology for e-identity verification for its citizens, as well as for electronic voting systems and digital currency. Ironically, however, Estonia has one of the largest state-

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  375 less populations in Europe. In common with its Baltic neighbours, a significant proportion of Estonia’s population is effectively stateless due to naturalization laws passed after the fall of the Soviet Union (Bianchini 2017). Given that not everybody benefits from mainstream national culture, groups who do not identify with the national culture would be allowed to opt out of both the membership and the financial maintenance of national cultures. Imposing a national culture and its associated claims, however, seems at odds with the spirit of European integration. Thus, this sub-section poses a specific research question: Could algorithmic citizenship in the EU allow for communities that can form an attractive narrative to grow in membership and endure? What are the implications and challenges for future research on state spatial restructuring in terms of shared sovereignty between the EU and member states through an algorithmic citizenship status that may inclusively overlap identities (beyond nationalities)? Ideal type no. 2: liquid citizenship (from geopolitical techno-political dynamics) As Bauman (2000) suggested, hitherto seemingly solid bodies of European nation-states have been abruptly liquefying through data-opolies (Stucke 2018) and algorithmic disruption. The giant technological flagship firms of surveillance capitalism, such as Google and Facebook, have already assumed many functions previously associated with the nation-state, from cartography to the surveillance of citizens, which has deterritorialized liquid citizenship. While liquid citizens remain highly distributed across a global grid of networks, the data they produce are concentrated in the hands of a few companies through the implementation of dataism: the emerging ideology in which citizens are dispossessed of their data and digital rights (Bigo et al. 2019; Harari 2015). In the aftermath of the GDPR, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and New York launched the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (2019), a joint initiative to promote and track progress in protecting citizens’ digital rights (Calzada and Almirall 2020). Digital philosopher Evgeny Morozov (2014) has argued that the economics of the data extraction by these giant firms enables the emergence of a new global geopolitical order called AI nationalism (Hogarth 2018), which contrasts with the needs and claims of citizens’ digital rights. According to billionaire investor and social philanthropist George Soros, these giant platforms have become obstacles to innovation and are menacing to citizenship (Hindman 2018; Sadowski 2019). In recent years, European city and regional authorities have claimed that (smart) citizens are as important to a successful smart city programme as the underlying data and technology, and these citizens must be convinced of the benefits and security the initiatives offer. Cities such as Barcelona and Amsterdam are leading a new digital transformation agenda that complements the EU’s GDPR, which mandates the ethical use of data to protect (smart) citizens from risks inherent in new, data-intensive technologies. Several authors have traced the contours of the liquid citizenship debate. They have explored the problem of how city and regional authorities can proactively establish policies, strategies, and initiatives to locally enhance digital rights and give citizens more control over personal data by protecting them from discrimination, exclusion, and the erosion of their data privacy and ownership (Calzada 2018c; Kitchin and Dodge 2017). In the European data-driven economy, AI, big data, machine learning, and blockchain technologies are reshaping the notion of citizenship in Europe by, on the one hand, pervasively challenging the rescaling of nation-states’ fixed dynamics and, on the other hand, demanding a counter-reaction from city-regions to bring the control of data to citizens (Micheli et al. 2018). Claims of technological sovereignty through data commons policy programmes and

376  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state the Decode EU experimental project currently taking place in Barcelona and Amsterdam (Barcelona City Council 2019; DECODE 2018) are presented as the flagship of this movement, which has already been replicated throughout other European city-regions (Calzada 2019a). In the post-GDPR scenario, (smart) citizens’ data privacy, security, and ownership ultimately need to be protected by localizing personal data via grassroots innovation and cooperative platforms (Calzada 2018d). How this type of citizenship will be influenced and shaped by the geopolitical dynamics between city-regions, states, and big firms is still unfolding. Thus, this sub-section poses a specific research question: How could citizens’ liquid data and digital rights be protected through further democratic empowerment to avoid digital dissent and dystopia? What are the implications and challenges for future research on state spatial restructuring in terms of the uneven interaction between AI devices and citizens (Craglia 2018)? Democracy in city-regions and states can only survive as long as citizens are able to make (still) better choices than machines. Ideal type no. 3: metropolitan citizenship (from geoeconomic city-regional dynamics) In the European context, metropolitan citizenship is a two-sided coin that involves blurred meanings and ambiguous political interests (Moisio 2015). The EU is an area with intensifying incompatibility between nation-state legacies, and the demand for transnational governance is escalating, with potentially widespread consequences in terms of social and political conflicts – not only between nations but also (and most likely) across nations through city-regions. In a 2016 Conservative Party conference speech, former British prime minister Theresa May stated, ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You do not understand what the word citizenship means’ (cited in Marsili and Milanese 2018, p. 213). This statement could be reversed to argue that all citizens are presently citizens in and of the world; however, until political forms of borders and volunteer belonging are created, people will remain citizens without political agency and civilian rights. Furthermore, in the recent post-Brexit scenario, May’s statement resonates clearly among the European nationals living in the UK by provoking an ongoing geographical divide produced by many, but not all, non-metropolitan voters who claim they want their country back (Johnston et al. 2018). This points to the non-metropolitan conditions of the left-behind voters in some city-regions. The outcome of this situation has been a growing sense of disempowerment and alienation among those who are not part of the system. Therefore, city-regional spaces beyond nation-states are seen as constitutive fields of ‘tensions between different spatial policy representations, discourses, and practices, embodied by different actions rationales and with potentially different scalar effects’ (Fricke and Gualini 2017, p. 6). Paralleling the pervasive side effects for metropolitan and non-metropolitan citizens, nation-states are being rapidly rescaled through a metropolitanization trend (Katz and Bradley 2013). This trend can be defined by the distinction between a more visible, articulate, and metropolitan class and those in the more peripheral, less articulated, non-metropolitan (rural), and often less-developed areas (Kauffmann 2018). Deep geoeconomic divides, such as between the metropolitan citizenship and the rest, are revealed under the surface of a discursive homogeneity of democratic representation in nation-states. These divides not only derive from the unevenness in perceived opportunities and a stake in political decisions about state development, but also shape those very divisions and borders. Such dynamics may lead to perceived underrepresentation or even the voicelessness of non-metropolitan citizens (Mulligan 2013). Regarding this metropolitan divide, to an

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  377 extent, the Brexit referendum in the UK and growing support for populist far-right candidates in Europe (Moffitt 2016; Müller 2016) clarified that the most potent divisions are between the so-called metropolitan London and the more peripheral (provincial), rural rest – that is, places that ‘don’t matter’ (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). This has produced new socio-political cleavages between those often highly educated and mobile citizens who can benefit from globalization (despite COVID-19; Calzada 2020) and those left behind, dependent on weakened national welfare states. Thus, this sub-section poses some specific research questions: How could metropolitan citizenship in Europe strike a balance and reconcile the perceptions and interests related to the post-austerity non-metropolitan losers of change? What are the implications and challenges for future research on state spatial restructuring in terms of the increase in populism among non-metropolitan citizens embodied by a deep crisis of liberal democracies? Newcomers in European nation-states often do not identify with their respective nation-states of residence in the same way that longtime residents do. In contrast, newcomers are now more likely to identify with European values of inclusiveness, as is paradoxically the case these days in post-Brexit London. Their view of the nation-state of residence is mainly instrumental: it provides them with rights (such as EU citizenship or access to schooling, health care, and welfare) they might lack in their countries of origin if they are not originally from an EU country. However, this narrative also encompasses citizens from de facto plurinational nation-states who are not recognized as such and, in many cases, such minority national groups are attempting to split from their nation-states through claims of devolution, secession, self-determination, and, ultimately, independence (Calzada 2019b). These claims translate into civilian rights to defend and exercise the right to decide upon a political destiny through referenda and consultation (Blings and Gattig 2019; Cetrà and Harvey 2018; Stjepanović and Tierney 2019). Ideal type no. 4: stateless citizenship (from geodemocratic city-regional dynamics) Stateless citizenship is frequently, but not always, fuelled by civic nationalism rooted in the metropolitan right to decide (as an updated version of the right to the city principle) and bolstered by metropolitan hubs through an increasing push by grassroots movements (Bollens 2007; Calzada 2018b). The study on stateless citizenship has been primarily carried out in Europe through three small, stateless, city-regionalized nation cases – Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Scotland – by paying special attention to their metropolitan hubs: Barcelona, Bilbao, and Glasgow (Calzada 2017; Jordana 2019; Rodon and Guinjoan 2018). As a result, self-government and devolution accommodation regimes provided by nation-states to city-regions continue to be perceived as insufficient by stateless civic nationalist movements and political representatives from the aforementioned city-regions, resulting in further tensions among territorial statehood, spaces of historical identity, and future secessionist aspirations (Mulle and Serrano 2018). One means by which nation-states can address this tension is to seek outright independence to reconcile small city-regionalized nations’ spaces of identity and statehood through referenda, as occurred in Scotland in 2014 (Hennebry-Leung and Bonacina-Pugh 2019; Qvortrup 2014; Sanghera et al. 2018). Nevertheless, Cetrà and Harvey (2018, p. 607) predicted that ‘independence referendums will continue to be rare events’. Indeed, a counterargument to the previous trend has surfaced: state-centric ethnic nationalistic expressions with different rationales have recently (re)emerged in Spain and the UK (Koch and Paasi 2016). That counterargument also opposes exercising the right to decide

378  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state through referendum or consultation by defending a fixed state-territorial integrity stemming from the Westphalian order of a nation-states’ club and from the principle of the empire of law. In 1979, Berlin noted that ‘nationalism seems the strongest force in the world’ (p. 349). However, he also anticipated the potential link between civic nationalism and the emancipatory role of cities (and city-regions) through the claims of the right to decide, stating that ‘nationalism springs, as often as not, from a wounded or outraged sense of human dignity, the desire for recognition’ (1996, p. 252). This echoes Guibernau’s (2013, p. 411) definition of the right to decide: ‘the right by citizens of the nation to defend and exercise, through referenda and consultation, their right to be recognized as a demos able to decide upon their political destiny triggered by their desire to share a common fate’. Thus, the question arises whether the nineteenth-century analogic categories of nation-building processes and the freedom of citizens (however contradictory) are still valid and applicable in the twenty-first century, which is characterized by certain claims on devolution through stateless citizenship. Regardless, it remains to be seen whether the transitional, city-regional, and techno-political phases require fulfilment of their own independent states (Wydra 2018) or whether there is room for another type of experimental pathway in Europe, as long as citizens’ geodemocratic rights are ensured. This raises further research questions: How can the nation-state accommodate devolution and self-determination claims and ensure stateless citizens’ rights to decide their own futures? What are the implications and challenges for future research on state spatial restructuring in terms of the feasibility of democratic secessionism in the EU (Keating 2019)?

34.4

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Despite the literature on the role of the state in urban development placing great significance on territory as a political technology of governance in the contemporary urbanized world, conceptual assemblages and empirical evidence remain scarce and inconclusive with regard to how different (ideal) types of citizenship can affect the nation-state rescaling phenomena. This trend poses methodological and ontological challenges for contemporary political geography, critical data science, social innovation, and regional studies. The aim of this chapter has been to suggest that new citizenship regimes are emerging, at least in Europe, while assuming (though not as a consequence) that the political authority of the nation-state is being undermined. To offer a reinterpretation and a new perspective on these intertwined phenomena of rescaling, it has provided a conceptual assemblage to interpret these alterations through four city-regional and techno-political dynamics, each fuelled by a driver of change: geotechnologics (blockchain), geopolitics (dataism), geoeconomics (populism), and geodemocratics (devolution). As a result, four ideal types of citizenship have been briefly presented, examined, and discussed in the context of several European city regional-specific case studies: algorithmic (Tallinn), liquid (Barcelona and Amsterdam), metropolitan (London), and stateless (Glasgow, Barcelona, and Bilbao). Table 34.2 summarizes the formulation of the four intertwined ideal types of citizenship through an illustrative and non-exhaustive list of European nation-states’ rescaling phenomena. In conclusion, nation-states are being qualitatively transformed – not eroded or dismantled – by triggering wider debates regarding the spatial organization and legitimation of nation-state power, institutionally and territorially, as well as politically and democratically. Paradoxically,

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  379 Table 34.2

An illustrative and non-exhaustive list of European nation-states’ rescaling phenomena Formulating the four intertwined ideal types of citizenship

European nation-states’ rescaling phenomena (1) Newly emerged global geopolitics known as AI

Algorithmic

Liquid

ü

ü

Metropolitan

Stateless

nationalism (Hogarth 2018) (2) New version of the e-state, such as Estonia (Heller 2017)

ü

ü

(3) Impact of the disruptive algorithmic technology called

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

ü

blockchain on state governance schemes (Atzori 2017; Jun 2018) (4) Liquefying influence of dataism and the techno-politics of data on the citizens’ digital and data rights (Bauman 2000; Harari 2015) (5) Rise of far-right populism (Bieber 2018; Jenne 2018; Kauffmann 2018) (6) Confrontation among diverse manifestations and patterns of nationalism (ethnic versus civic) within the same nation-state (Koch and Paasi 2016; Calzada 2018b) (7) The UK’s continued membership in the EU (Brexit) (Johnston et al. 2018; Rodríguez-Pose 2018) (8) Aftermath of the referendum on Scottish independence (Calzada 2014; Sanghera et al. 2018) (9) Political struggle in Catalonia and the resulting secession crisis in Spain (Rodon and Guinjoan 2018) City-regional case studies

Tallinn

Amsterdam Barcelona

London

Glasgow Barcelona Bilbao

although the old European nation-state is apparently dying, new states seem unable to be born under the established Westphalian order. Therefore, how will the urban age reconfigure the techno-political and city-regional European realm, given that the nation-states will be shifted while facing structural tensions that conflict with a wide range of citizenship manifestations and claims for rights? Moreover, the rescaling of nation-states is often used to counterbalance devolutionary tendencies within state territories by limiting structural shifts claimed through democratic means. Could the EU still resist without altering the nation-state’s ethnic narrative while (1) algorithmic disruption signals, (2) dataism-driven surveillance capitalism alienation, (3) far-right populistic pervasive re-emergence, and (4) stateless citizens’ claims for the right to decide are knocking on the door of the twenty-first-century nation-state? Will the EU evolve towards a post-national polity, shifting from a platform of established nation-states to a city-regionalized federal network of nations determined voluntarily and democratically? These and similar questions should be at the forefront of discussions of future state spatial transformations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Igor Calzada’s work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under Grant Urban Transformations Award ref. ES/M010996/1; the Regional Studies Association

380  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state under Grant ‘Smart City-Regional Governance for Sustainability’ Research Network; and the European Commission under the Grant H2020-SCC-691735-REPLICATE. He is grateful to Professors Michael Keith and Andy Jonas.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. (2017), ‘The tragedy of the nation-state’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5 (4), 347–50. Allen, J. and A. Cochrane (2010), ‘Assemblages of state power: Topological shifts in the organization of government and politics’, Antipode, 42 (5), 1071–89. Allesie, D., M. Sobolewksi, L. Vaccari, and F. Pignatelli (2019), Blockchain for Digital Government, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the EU. Archer, K. (2012), ‘Rescaling global governance: Imagining the demise of the nation-state’, Globalizations, 9 (2), 241–56. Arendt, H. (1949), ‘The rights of man: What are they?’, Modern Review, 3, 4–37. Arrighi, J.T. (2019), ‘“The people, year zero”: Secessionism and citizenship in Scotland and Catalonia’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (3), 278–97. Arrighi, J.T. and D. Stjepanović (2019), ‘Introduction: The rescaling of territory and citizenship in Europe’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (3), 219–26. Atzori, M. (2017), ‘Blockchain technology and decentralized governance: Is the state still necessary?’, Journal of Governance and Regulation, 6 (1), 45–62. Barcelona City Council (2019), Barcelona Digital City: Putting Technology at the Service of People, Barcelona: Barcelona City Council. Bauböck, R. (2019), ’A multilevel theory of democratic secession’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (3), 227–46. Bauman, Z. (2000), Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity. Berlin, I. (1979), Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, London: Pimlico. Berlin, I. (1996), The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, London: Pimlico. Bernstein, R.J. (2018), Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bianchini, S. (2017), Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Bieber, F. (2018), ‘Ethnopopulism and the global dynamics of nationalist mobilization’, Ethnopolitics, 17 (5), 558–62. Bigo, D., E. Isin, and E. Ruppert (2019), Data Politics, London: Routledge. Blings, S. and A. Gattig (2019), ‘Exploring the potential for common European politics: Cross-national commonalities and differences in the European constitutional referendums’, Journal of European Integration, 41 (6), 711–28. Bollens, S.A. (2007), Cities, Nationalism, and Democratization, London: Routledge. Brenner, N. (2003), ‘Metropolitan institutional reform and the rescaling of state space in contemporary Western Europe’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 10 (4), 297–324. Bridle, J. (2016), ‘Algorithmic citizenship, digital statelessness’, GeoHumanities, 2 (2), 377–81. Calzada, I. (2014), ‘The right to decide in democracy between recentralisation and independence: Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country’, Regions Magazine, 296 (1), 7–8. Calzada, I. (2015), ‘Benchmarking future city-regions beyond nation-states’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2 (1), 351–62. Calzada, I. (2017), ‘Metropolitan and city-regional politics in the urban age: Why does “(smart) devolution” matter?’, Palgrave Communications, 3 (17094), 1–17. Calzada, I. (2018a), ‘“Algorithmic nations”: Seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 5 (1), 267–89. Calzada, I. (2018b), ‘Metropolitanising small European stateless city-regionalised nations’, Space and Polity, 22 (3), 342–61. Calzada, I. (2018c), ‘(Smart) citizens from data providers to decision-makers? The case study of Barcelona’, Sustainability, 10 (9), 3252–77. Available at https://​doi​.org/​10​.3390/​su10093252 Calzada, I. (2018d), ’Deciphering smart city citizenship: The techno-politics of data and urban co-operative platforms’, RIEV, International Journal on Basque Studies, 63 (1–2), 42–81.

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  381 Calzada, I. (2019a), ’Technological sovereignty: Protecting citizens’ digital rights in the AI-driven and post-GDPR algorithmic and city-regional European realm’, Regions eZine, 4. Published open access at: DOI: 10.1080/13673882.2018.00001038. Calzada, I. (2019b), ’Catalonia rescaling Spain: Is it feasible to accommodate its “stateless citizenship”?’, Regional Science Policy and Practice, 11 (5), 805–20. Calzada, I. (2020), ‘Will Covid-19 be the end of the global citizen?’, accessed 1 July 2020 at https://​ apolitical​.co/​en/​solution​_article/​will​-covid​-19​-be​-the​-end​-of​-the​-global​-citizen. Apolitical, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11942.27208/1. Calzada, I. and E. Almirall (2020), ‘Data ecosystems for protecting European citizens’ digital rights’, Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy (TGPPP), 14 (2), 133–47, DOI:​10​.1108/​TG​ -03​-2020​-0047. Carey, B. (2018), ‘Against the right to revoke citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 22 (8), 897–911. Castells, M. (2017), Ruptura: La crisis de la democracia liberal, Madrid: Alianza ensayo. Cetrà, D. and M. Harvey (2018), ‘Explaining accommodation and resistance to demands for independence referendums in the UK and Spain’, Nations and Nationalism, 25 (2), 607–29. Cheney-Lippold, J. (2011), ‘A new algorithmic identity: Soft biopolitics and the modulation of control’, Theory, Culture and Society, 28 (6), 164–81. Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (2019), ‘Declaration of cities coalition for digital rights’, accessed 1 March 2019 at https://​citiesfordigitalrights​.org/​ Coletta, C. and R. Kitchin (2017), ‘Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the “heartbeat” of a city using the Internet of Things’, Big Data and Society, 4 (2), 1–16. Craglia, M. (2018), Artificial Intelligence: A European Perspective, Luxembourg: European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Dasgupta, R. (2018), ‘The demise of the nation state’, accessed 1 March 2019 at www​.theguardian​.com/​ news/​2018/​apr/​05/​demise​-of​-the​-nation​-state​-rana​-dasgupta DECODE (2018), ‘D1.10 policy requirements and models of implementation’, accessed 1 March 2019 at www​.decodeproject​.eu Desai, V. (2017), ‘Counting the uncounted: 1.1 billion people without IDs’, accessed 1 March 2019 at https://​blogs​.worldbank​.org/​ic4d/​counting​-invisible​-11​-billion​-people​-without​-proof​-legal​-id Dijkstra, L., H. Poelman, and A. Rodríguez-Pose (2018), ‘The geography of EU discontent’, accessed 1 March 2019 at https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​regional​_policy/​en/​information/​publications/​working​-papers/​ 2018/​the​-geography​-of​-eu​-discontent e-Estonia (2016), ‘Country as a service: Estonia’s new model’, accessed 1 March 2019 at https://​e​ -estonia​.com/​country​-as​-a​-service​-estonias​-new​-model/​ European Democracy Lab (2019), ‘The European Democracy Lab is a think tank generating innovative ideas for Europe that go beyond the nation-state’, accessed 1 March 2019 at https://​ europeandemocracylab​.org/​en/​ Faludi, A. (2018), ‘A historical institutionalist account of European spatial planning’, Planning Perspectives, 33 (4), 507–22. Finn, E. (2017), What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fricke, C. and E. Gualini (2017), ‘Metropolitan regions as contested spaces: The discursive construction of metropolitan space in comparative perspective’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 6 (1), 1–23. Fukuyama, F. (2018), Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition, London: Profile Books. Goodwin, M., M. Jones, and R. Jones (2012), Rescaling the State: Devolution and the Geographies of Economic Governance, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Guibernau, M. (2013), ‘Secessionism in Catalonia: A response to Goikoetxea, Blas, Roeder, and Serrano’, Ethnopolitics, 12 (4), 410–14. Harari, Y.N. (2015), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, London: Harvill-Secker. Harrison, J. (2015), ‘Cities and rescaling’, in R Paddison and T. Hutton (eds), Cities and Economic Change: Restructuring and Dislocation in the Global Metropolis, London: Sage, pp. 38–56. Heller, N. (2017), ‘Estonia the digital republic’, accessed 1 March 2019 at www​.newyorker​.com/​ magazine/​2017/​12/​18/​estonia​-the​-digital​-republic

382  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Hennebry-Leung, M. and F. Bonacina-Pugh (2019), ‘The emergence of “citizenship” in popular discourse: The case of Scotland’, Citizenship Studies, 23 (8), 831–52. Herrschel, T. (2002), Governance of Europe’s City Regions: Planning, Policy, and Politics, Abingdon: Routledge. Hindman, M. (2018), The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hogarth, I. (2018), ‘AI nationalism’, accessed 1 March 2019 at www​.ianhogarth​.com/​blog/​2018/​6/​13/​ ai​-nationalism Jenne, E.K. (2018), ‘Is nationalism or ethnopopulism on the rise today?’, Ethnopolitics, 17 (5), 546–52. Jessop, B. (1990), State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place, Cambridge: Polity Press. Johnston, R., D. Manley, C. Pattie, and K. Jones (2018), ‘Geographies of Brexit and its aftermath: Voting in England at the 2016 referendum and the 2017 general election’, Space and Polity, 22 (2), 162–87. Jordana, J. (2019), Barcelona, Madrid y el Estado, Madrid: Catarata. Jordana, J., M. Keating, A. Marx, and J. Wouters (2019), Changing Borders in Europe: Exploring the Dynamics of Integration, Differentiation and Self-Determination in the European Union, London: Routledge. Jun, M. (2018), ‘Blockchain government: A next form of infrastructure for the twenty-first century’, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 4 (7), 1–12. Katz, B. and J. Bradley (2013), The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Kauffmann, E. (2018), Whiteshift, London: Penguin. Keating, M. (2013), Rescaling the European State: The Making of Territory and the Rise of the Meso, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. (2018), ‘Rescaling the European state: A constructivist and political perspective’, in K. Detterbeck and E. Hepburn (eds), Handbook of Territorial Politics, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 17–29. Keating, M. (2019), ‘Is a theory of self-determination possible?’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (3), 315–23. Khanna, P. (2016), Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Kim, Y.M., J. Hsu, D. Neiman, C. Kou, L. Bankston, S.Y. Kim, R. Heinrich, R. Baragwanath, and G. Raskutti (2018), ‘The stealth media? Groups and targets behind divisive issue campaings on Facebook’, Political Communication, 35, 515–41. Kitchin, R. and M. Dodge (2017), ‘The (in)security of smart cities: Vulnerabilities, risks, mitigation, and prevention’, Journal of Urban Technology, 26 (2), 47–65. Koch, N. and A. Paasi (2016), ‘Banal nationalism 20 years on: Re-thinking, re-formulating and re-contextualizing the concept’, Political Geography, 54, 1–6. Kostakopoulou, D. (2019), ‘Imagine: European Union social citizenship and post-Marshallian rights and duties’, in R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, Cham: Springer International, pp. 279–85. Loughlin, J. and S. Antunes (2019), ‘State rescaling and a “Europe of the regions” in small unitary states: A damp squib?’, Regional and Federal Studies, 30 (2), 303–21. Luger, J. (2019), ‘Planetary illiberalism and the cybercity-state: In and beyond territory’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 8 (1), 77–94. Magnusson, W. (2011), Politics of Urbanism: Seeing Like a City, New York: Routledge. Marsili, L. and N. Milanese (2018), Citizens of Nowhere: How Europe Can Be Saved from Itself, London: Zed Books. Micheli, M., M. Blakemore, M. Ponti, and M. Craglia (2018), The Governance of Data in a Digitally Transformed European Society, Ispra: European Commission. Moffitt, B. (2016), The Global Riese of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation, Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press. Moisio, S. (2015), ‘Towards transnational spatial policies in Finland’, Nordia Geographical Publications, 44 (4), 87–93. Moisio, S. (2018), ‘Urbanizing the nation-state? Notes on the geopolitical growth of cities and city-regions’, Urban Geography, 39 (9), 1421–4.

Emerging citizenship regimes and rescaling nation-states  383 Moisio, S. and A.E.G. Jonas (2018), ‘City-regions and city-regionalism’, in A. Paasi, J. Harrison, and M. Jones (eds), Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 285–97. Moisio, S. and A. Paasi (2013), ‘Beyond state-centricity: Geopolitics of changing state spaces’, Geopolitics, 18 (2), 255–66. Morozov, E. (2014), ‘The rise of data and the death of politics’, accessed 1 March 2019 at www​ .theguardian​.com/​technology/​2014/​jul/​20/​rise​-of​-data​-death​-of​-politics​-evgeny​-morozov​-algorithmic​ -regulation Mulle, E.D. and I. Serrano (2018), ‘Between a principled and a consequentialist logic: Theory and practice of secession in Catalonia and Scotland’, Nations and Nationalism, 25 (2), 1–22. Müller, J.W. (2016), What is Populism?, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mulligan, G.F. (2013), ‘The future of non-metropolitan areas’, Regional Science Policy and Practice, 5 (2), 219–24. Mykhnenko, V. and M. Wolff (2018), ‘State rescaling and economic convergence’, Regional Studies, 53 (4), 462–77. OECD (2019), Making Decentralisation Work: A Handbook for Policy-Makers, Multi-Level Governance Studies, Paris: OECD Publishing. Ohmae, K. (1995), The End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies, New York: Simon and Schuster. Painter, J. (2010), ‘Rethinking territory’, Antipode, 42 (5), 1090–118. Piccoli, L. (2019), ‘The regional battleground: Partisanship as a key driver of the subnational contestation of citizenship’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (4), 340–61. Qvortrup, M. (2014), ‘Referendums on Independence, 1860–2011’, Political Quarterly, 85 (1), 57–64. Rodon, T. and M. Guinjoan (2018), ‘When the context matters: Identity, secession and the spatial dimension in Catalonia’, Political Geography, 63, 75–87. Rodríguez, E., J.-B.P. Harguindéguy, and A. Sánchez (2019), ‘The perfect storm? How to explain the rise of intergovernmental conflicts in Spain (1984–2014)?’, Innovation: European Journal of Social Science Research, 32 (2), 211–30. Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2018), ‘The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it)’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11 (1), 189–209. Sadowski, J. (2019), ‘When data is capital: Datafication, accumulation, and extraction’, Big Data and Society, 6 (1), 1–12. Sanghera, G., K. Botterill, P. Hopkins, and R. Arshad (2018), ‘“Living rights”, rights claims, performative citizenship and young people: The right to vote in the Scottish independence referendum’, Citizenship Studies, 22 (5), 540–55. Sassen, S. (2008), ‘Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights’, Ethics and Global Politics, 1 (1–2), 61–79. Schou, J. and M. Hjelholt (2018), ‘Digital state spaces: State rescaling and advanced digitalization’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 7 (4), 438–54. Scott, A.J. (2019), ‘City-regions reconsidered’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51 (3), 554–80. Scott, J.C. (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Smith, B. (2019), ’Citizenship without states: Rehabilitating citizenship discourse among the anarchist left’, Citizenship Studies, 23 (5), 424–41. Somerville, P. (2004), ‘State rescaling and democratic transformation’, Space and Polity, 8 (2), 137–56. Stjepanović, D. and S. Tierney (2019), ‘The right to vote: Constitutive referendums and regional citizenship’, Ethnopolitics, 18 (3), 264–77. Storper, M. (1997), The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, New York: Guilford Press. Stucke, M.E. (2018), ‘Should we be concerned about data-opolies?’, Georgetown Law Technology Review, 2 (2), 275–324. Susskind, J. (2018), Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

384  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Swedberg, R. (2018), ‘How to use Max Weber’s ideal type in sociological analysis’, Journal of Classical Sociology, 18 (3), 181–96. Tammpuu, P. and A. Masso (2018), ‘“Welcome to the virtual state”: Estonian e-residency and the digitalised state as a commodity’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21 (5), 543–60. Tammpuu, P. and A. Masso (2019), ‘Transnational digital identity as an instrument for global digital citizenship: The case of Estonia’s e-residency’, Information Systems Frontiers, 21 (3), 621–34. Turner, B.S. (2017), ‘Contemporary citizenship: Four types’, Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies, 1 (1), 10–23. Wilson-Daily, A.E. and M. Kemmelmeier (2019), ‘Youth perception of voting participation in the midst of Catalonia’s active struggle for independence’, Youth and Society, 1–28. Online first at: doi/10.1177/0044118X19840965 Wydra, D. (2020), ‘Between normative visions and pragmatic possibilities: The European politics of state recognition’, Geopolitics, 25 (2), 315–45. Zuboff, S. (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, London: Profile.

35. Post-crash cities: the Great Recession, state restructuring and urban governance Mark Davidson

35.1 INTRODUCTION Since 2007, the United States’ (US) economy has charted new territory. Between December 2007 and June 2009, US real gross domestic product fell from $13.3 trillion to $12.7 trillion.1 This 5 per cent fall in economic activity would only be restored in late 2011. In the intervening period, the US witnessed unemployment peaking at around 10 per cent, the re-regulation of financial markets under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and over $787 billion of federal government stimulus spending. This combination of revenue decline and expenditure growth has been linked to a subsequent period of austerity (Blyth 2013), the most notable spending cuts being associated with the federal government’s Budget Control Act of 2011 (so-called ‘budget sequestration’). This Act reduced federal government spending by $85.4 billion in 2013 and is expected to have cut scheduled expenditures by $1.1 trillion in 2021.2 Yet, by 2017, deficit spending had paralleled economic growth for an unprecedented period, culminating in President Donald Trump signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and a further projected $448 billion3 to the deficit over a ten-year period. The US economy has therefore forged a new normal, combining a deep recession, economic reform, unprecedented stimulus spending, sequestration cuts, indefinite deficit spending, an unprecedented stretch of economic growth and sizable tax cuts (Williams 2019). Understanding how this combination of events and reforms has impacted state–society configurations remains a work in progress. However, some trends are starting to emerge especially in terms of state–society relations. Polling shows public trust in the federal government is at historic lows, despite the ongoing post-recession economic expansion.4 American politics appears to have mirrored and foreshadowed polarizing forms of populism now witnessed across the globe (De Witte 2018; Fukuyama 2018). This is resulting in growing fears about the loss of any moderate centre ground in Washington, DC as the 2020 presidential election begins (Bump 2018) and a period of heightening awareness about how these state transformations have, and continue to, change methods of urban governance. In many countries, the local state has been on the receiving end of post-crash austerity measures. Nonetheless, existing research in the US shows that state and local governments have remained more cautious about their fiscal health than the federal government (CSG 2016; NLC 2016). At the same time, state and local government in the US are more trusted than the federal government (Pew 2013). Whereas the federal government has deepened deficits via stimulus spending and tax cuts, most state and local governments seem to have taken the opposite approach (GAO 2018). Yet, the extent to which this reflects limits imposed by federal regulations (CBPP 2018) or the conservative fiscal strategies of state and local governments (Kim and Warner 2016) is unclear. In light of this, the literature on post-recession urban 385

386  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state restructuring is deeply divided on how to best understand the past decade of local government reform. Drawing on the US experience, this chapter will examine how urban scholars have come to different conclusions about the impact of post-recession state restructuring on urban governance and politics. For some, new ground has been broken in the post-recession period, furthering the frontiers of neoliberalism (Davidson and Ward 2018; Peck 2014; Peck and Whiteside 2016) and creating more austere forms of municipal governance. Others have characterized urban politics as pragmatic, with tried and tested reforms most commonly applied by cities eager to avoid cuts (Aldag et al. 2019; Kim and Warner 2016). Just how austerity cuts (see Blyth 2013) have restructured state–society relations at the urban scale in the post-recession era therefore remains an open question. The chapter is organized as follows. First, I foreground a discussion of the trajectory of urban governance transformation with some wider insights into how economic crisis relates to political change. In particular, I draw upon Habermas’ concept of legitimation crisis to shed light on transformations in state–society relations. Second, I examine the impact of crisis on the fiscal condition of US cities, highlighting some divergent spatial trajectories of urban governance. Urban scholars have tended to agree that national-level post-recession restructuring has created new fiscal pressures at the local government level (Davidson and Ward 2014, 2018; Kim and Warner 2016; Peck 2014), but the political factors behind this ‘downloading’ process often go unexamined. The third section therefore briefly examines competing explanations for the restructuring of municipal government as a prelude to some concluding reflections on how the study of post-crash US cities offers a unique entry point for investigating wider processes of state spatial restructuring.

35.2

A CRISIS OF THE URBAN STATE? CONNECTING POLITICO-ECONOMIC CRISIS TO THE CITY

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 necessitated the biggest bailout in US history. In order to stop the collapse of Lehman Bros. from bringing down the global financial system, the US federal government passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This created $700 billion for the US government to purchase toxic assets from Wall Street banks, thus ensuring the continued operation of the banking system. Both at the time and subsequently, this remedial action has been subject to extensive criticism. What unites much of this criticism, whether it comes from the political right or left, is the notion that the 2008 Stabilization Act constituted a transference of the economic crisis to the political sphere. This phenomenon of crisis transference (from economic to political) was theorized by Habermas in his book Legitimation Crisis. Habermas (1973) speculated that capitalist economies tend to produce different types of crises. These differences are produced by the various ways in which political, economic and socio-cultural systems relate to one another. If an economic crisis continues to be contained within the economic sphere, then it remains simply an economic event. Yet, when economic crisis extends to other spheres, different forms of crisis emerge. Habermas speculated that three different types of crises can occur, depending on their origins. A crisis might emerge from the politico-economic system itself, resulting in a ‘rationality crisis’ where the state fails to meet the demands of the economy (i.e. the government simply cannot manage the economic problem). Or, alternatively, the crisis might emerge

Post-crash cities  387 with a society’s identity. Here Habermas envisions two further types of crisis: legitimation or motivation. The latter relates to a loss of association and commitment from the socio-cultural system; people lose their work ethic and do not believe in their society. The former, which usually flows because of the latter, involves a loss of public support for the state, which is increasingly seen as illegitimate. A legitimacy crisis is a particularly pressing problem in a world where nation-states are charged with regulating and maintaining their economies whilst securing a mandate to govern through the electoral system (see Held 1982): Re-coupling the economic system to the political – which in a way repoliticizes the relations of production – creates an increased need for legitimation. The state apparatus no longer, as in liberal capitalism, merely secures the general conditions of production (in the sense of the prerequisites for the continued existence of the reproduction process), but is now actively engaged in it. It must, therefore – like the pre-capitalist state – be legitimated, although it can no longer rely on residues of tradition that have been undermined and worn out during the development of capitalism. (Habermas 1973, p. 36)

Habermas’ theory of legitimation highlights how by maintaining economic production, state intervention makes the nation-state much more responsible for the economic system it is trying to salvage. If the state fails to produce economic stability or uses its political powers in a way that produced distinctly undemocratic outcomes (i.e. socialism for the wealthy), it will likely face a legitimation crisis (Fraser 2018; Plant 1982). As the post-recession era has unfolded, Habermas’ theory of legitimation has been used to understand contemporary state restructuring especially in advanced capitalist economies including the US. For example, Nancy Fraser (2015, 2018) has attempted to develop Habermas’ theory to make it more applicable to the contemporary context of financialized capitalism (see Pike and Pollard 2010). Fraser argues that ‘financialized capitalism has sharply altered the previous relation of economy to polity’ (2015, p. 178) and that this has resulted in depoliticized forms of political interventions in economy. For instance, central banks are now key state economic actors (Bernhard 2002; Elgie and Thompson 1998). These have much less democratic oversight and responsibility than central governments, and thus change the crises dynamics that Habermas tried to illustrate in Legitimation Crisis. Financialized capitalism is also defined by the size and number of transnational corporations, which have the power to influence and avoid nation-state authority. In sum, when the state intervenes in an economic crisis now, the mechanisms it uses are less overtly political and are less effective than those of the Keynesian state that preceded it. Fraser (2015) therefore argues that the relationship between the economic and political spheres is fundamentally different to when Habermas first developed this thesis. The result has been that post-recession economic inventions have served primarily the interests of global finance capital: For a while, at least, the 2008 financial crisis put a crimp in privatized Keynesianism. But far from loosening the grip of finance, its effect was to solidify the hold of debt over capital’s background conditions, especially public power and social reproduction. Staring in the face of impending meltdown, central banks and global financial institutions pressed states to bail out investors at citizens’ expense. (Fraser 2015, p. 179)

388  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Under neoliberal conditions, this ‘privatized’ state action is fundamentally limited by the delimited regulatory authority of central banks (see Harvey 2007). The result, Fraser claims, is a heightened chance of legitimation crisis: ‘At the very least, such arrangements are primed to produce an administrative crisis, as public powers become increasingly unable to deliver the results that capital – and the rest of us – need. And that in turn could spark a legitimation crisis, in which public opinion turns against a dysfunctional system and clamors for social transformation’ (Fraser 2015, p. 181). Today’s volatile stock markets give credence to Fraser’s worries. Concerns about whether central banks have enough ammunition to fend off another financial crisis have been circulating for a decade (The Economist 2019). The widespread rise of populist politics, with demands to ‘drain the swamp’ and ‘regain control’ from national political elites, gives further weight to the idea that public opinion has turned, and continues to turn, against existing governments (Fukuyama 2018). Social theorists such as Fraser (2015) have therefore attempted to understand the fall-out of the Great Recession as more than just an act of budget balancing. As national governments have engaged in economic management, they have had to deal with a set of consequences that extend well beyond fiscal health. Habermas’ (1973) theory of legitimation crisis reminds us that the transference of crisis from the economic to the political sphere brings forth questions of social and moral legitimacy. But how does this macro-level theory of state–society relations inform our understandings of state spatial restructuring? In particular, how do legitimation crises translate into transformations in urban governance? The next section considers these questions in the context of urban politics and governance in the US.

35.3

CITIES AFTER THE CRASH: SPATIAL TRAJECTORIES OF US URBAN POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE

Critical urban scholars have suggested that, if crisis management at the federal level in the US has been transformed into the downloading of fiscal responsibilities to the local state (see Peck 2014), we might expect to find an increasingly crisis-ridden municipal political landscape. However, others have argued that local government remains autonomous from federal government (see Wood 2011a, 2011b) and as such is not a passive victim of the global economic and political crisis (Aldag et al. 2019; Kim and Warner 2016, 2018). If austerity indeed became a global geopolitical norm in the post-recession era (see Blyth 2013), the literature nonetheless diverges on whether this norm has fundamentally reshaped US urban governance and politics. Indeed, based on the empirical evidence there is no consensus about the general impact of the Great Recession on US urban governance. If, for example, we examine the fiscal health of cities across the US, there are clear indications that things have improved (NLC 2016, 2017). Most property markets have slowly recovered to somewhere near pre-recession levels (Lightner 2017), helping to restore growth of property-related tax revenues.5 Moreover, consumption is once more driving US economic growth, filling city coffers with sales tax revenues (NLC 2016, 2017). However, the landscape of urban revitalization is still littered with cases of budget cutting and fiscal crisis. Detroit is the most notable example of municipal fiscal crisis (Bomey 2016; Peck and Whiteside 2016), but it is not alone. Atlantic City, New Jersey, confronts seemingly insurmountable budget troubles (Farmer 2015). Likewise, Bridgeport, Connecticut, has made headlines for the dramatic property tax increases municipal government has imposed in order to balance its budget (Hussey and Foderaro 2016). Viewed from

Post-crash cities  389 the vantage point of such cases, the fiscal situation of cities can therefore look very different when compared to the recovery at the aggregate level. The literature on state restructuring at the urban scale captures a distinction sometimes made between a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ reading of post-recession municipal restructuring. On the one hand, the emerging literature on ‘austerity urbanism’ (Davidson and Ward 2018; Peck 2012, 2014) has identified the heightened significance of neoliberal doctrine in contemporary urban governance. Studies of cities like Detroit (Peck and Whiteside 2016) and Atlantic City (Farmer 2015; Peck 2017) demonstrate how fiscal crises and political opportunism have pushed city government further towards a small-state model. On the other hand, Kim and Warner (2016, 2018) have suggested that post-recession city governance can be characterized by ‘pragmatic municipalism’. Drawing on nationwide survey data, they argue that cities have generally not attempted budget cutting and state shrinkage. Such findings point to diverging spatial trajectories of state restructuring and urban governance in the US. 35.3.1 Austerity Urbanism Mark Blyth (2013, p. 2) defines austerity as ‘a form of voluntary deflation in which the economy adjusts through the reduction of wages, prices, and public spending to restore competitiveness, which is (supposedly) best achieved by cutting the state’s budget, debts, and deficits’. Blyth’s (2013) commentary prioritizes the analysis of national and international state restructuring. His work has sought to demonstrate the contradictory illogical economics of public budget cuts; if private and state actors cut their spending simultaneously, then further economic contraction is assured. Extending this analysis to the local level, Peck (2012, 2014) has persuasively argued that municipal governments have been party to spendthrift austerity governance. Notably, Peck (2012) identifies the ‘downloading’ of austerity by state and federal governments as a key driver of municipal fiscal problems. With higher levels of government cutting funding and pushing service responsibilities to the municipal level, it becomes inevitable that the uneven fiscal capacities of cities become more apparent in the post-recession era: Under conditions of systemic austerity, this phenomenon of ‘scalar dumping’ is taking on new dimensions, as cities are confronted with a succession of budgetary Hobson’s choices. Some cities will be able to muddle through by cutting corners (and maybe the odd department), while keeping the streetlights burning; for many others, ongoing fiscal restraint, service retrenchment and public–private workarounds seem set to reshape the operating environment over the medium term. It is in the nature of downscaled austerity politics that these pressures are neither manifest nor managed uniformly, even as they are felt widely. (Peck 2012, p. 647)

Austerity urbanism is a general condition with common governance strategies that ‘are not experienced uniformly, but remain politically and institutionally mediated’ (Peck 2012, p. 633). The effect, Peck (2012, p. 633) claims, is that austerity has increased the differences between fiscally sound and distressed cities, with those in the latter category being left with few options but to slash public services and reduce the size of city government. In its application of a neoliberal playbook onto an already neoliberalized urban system, austerity urbanism has the following emergent features (Peck 2012, pp. 648–9): (1) leaner local states (e.g. downsizing the public workforce), (2) rollback redux (e.g. reducing the welfare state and enforcing fiscal scrutiny), (3) fire-sale privatization, (4) placebo dependency (e.g. local governance activities aimed at countering downloaded responsibilities with heightened

390  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state economic growth strategies), (5) risk-shifting rationalities (e.g. offload of fiscal and service responsibilities), (6) tournament financing (e.g. competition-based fund allocations) and (7) austerity planning (e.g. audit and accountancy-driven government). Austerity is not therefore a substantive deviation in governance norms. Instead, neoliberal austerity has facilitated an inequitable distribution of the burdens of recession-related restructuring, where the costs of failure in financial markets have been displaced into some of the most marginalized urban communities. This doubling-down on well-established political strategies requires two elements: one economic, the other ideological (Peck 2014, p. 20). If neoliberal austerity is so explicitly regressive in burdening the already dispossessed with the costs of the financial crisis (Blyth 2013; Callinicos 2012), then it must be narrated as being something else. That is to say, the contradiction cannot be so evidently apparent if the acquiescence of the public is to be elicited (Žižek 2009). In austerity urbanism, the perceived – and loudly proclaimed – largesse of the state serves to make a multitude of contradictions into a simple state-shrinkage problem. Just how this ‘problem’ has been addressed varies from city to city. In the US, most published works suggest that austere remedies have involved the continuing financialization of urban governance (Peck and Whiteside 2016), renewed and invigorated ‘belt tightening’ (Davidson and Kutz 2015; Hackworth 2015) and further marketization of city assets (Akers 2015). The concept of austerity urbanism therefore focuses attention on the continuing hegemony of neoliberal doctrine (Pollio 2016). It does not identify a specific state reform agenda, but rather indicates general urban governance tendencies and ideological renarration. 35.3.2 Pragmatic Municipalism For Kim and Warner (2016; also see Aldag et al. 2019) historic and contemporary forms of US urban governance stand in contrast to the idea of an ideologically driven austerity agenda. Rather than austerity being a default strategy for recession-hit cities, they claim that a host of pragmatic and, ultimately, localized reforms underpin contemporary urban governance trends: ‘Our results show that austerity urbanism, which predicts service cuts, privatization, and increased user fees, is too narrow to describe local government behaviour. Instead, we find support for our theory of pragmatic municipalism, which emphasizes the role of public managers. Local governments are doing much more than simply hollowing out – cutting services or privatizing’ (Kim and Warner 2016, p. 791). This conclusion arises from a survey of 1,580 municipalities, which asked city managers to report their public service functions and the delivery mechanisms they chose to use (i.e. direct public, private or public–private cooperation). By creating additional variables for fiscal stress, capacity, need and place characteristics, Kim and Warner’s (2016) study identified the relationship that existed between municipal fiscal stress and governance reform in 2012. They found no clear relationship and thus argue that rather than cities adopting a generic neoliberal model (e.g. staffing and service cuts, privatization), most cities have innovated with service delivery and been reluctant to reduce public services. This is, according to Kim and Warner (2016), not a new phenomenon. They draw upon a number of previous studies to claim that (a) service cutting is historically a last resort, and not preferred option, for US municipalities (Wolman 1983), that (b) innovations in municipal budgeting tend to be focused on service retention (Scorsone and Plerhoples 2010) and that (c) privatization is not an ideologically driven agenda in American urban governance (Lobao et

Post-crash cities  391 al. 2014; Joassart-Marcelli and Musso 2005). In contrast to the image of urban governance as being tightly confined by neoliberal norms (Peck 2014), this argument sees municipalities as active agents seeking out their own solutions. The pragmatic municipalism explanation therefore stands in sharp contrast to austerity urbanism (Peck 2012, 2014). In the latter framing, the Great Recession has brought on another wave of neoliberal state restructuring. Although this is far from an even process, its proponents claim that general types of sub-national state reforms can be observed and that a particularly powerful ideological renarration of economic crisis is playing out via a demonization of the (local) state (Peck 2014). Pragmatic municipalism certainly recognizes elements of this reinvigorated neoliberal reform agenda but claims that it operates along with a host of other independent and contextual factors. This echoes Lobao et al.’s (2014) claim that state capacity and path dependency are critical variables in explaining urban governance changes, thereby challenging ‘assumptions that acquiescence to neoliberal policies is widespread’ (p. 644).

35.4

COMPETING EXPLANATIONS OF VARIED MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Pragmatic municipalism’s principal charge against austerity urbanism (Peck 2014) is that the framework is too narrow to characterize contemporary US urban governance (Kim and Warner, 2016). US local government is said to feature many strategies and types of reform that do not fit within such a characterization of neoliberal governance. In order to make a distinction between pragmatic municipalism and austerity urbanism, it is therefore necessary to have a common understanding of neoliberalism. This is particularly important when assessing whether the austere reforms of national governments (Blyth 2013) have moved down to state and local government. However, the two explanations of post-recession urban restructuring have conceptualized neoliberalism differently. Austerity urbanism is characterized by Peck (2012, 2014) as the (re)application of neoliberal agendas onto an already neoliberalized governance landscape: Austerity measures, selectively applied, have long been part of the neoliberal repertoire. Fiscal purges of the state (especially the social state) derive from the most elemental of neoliberal motives – to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’. Neoliberalism’s idealized world(view) constructs governmental downsizing as the sine qua non for the reinvigoration of private enterprise, free markets and individual liberty. (Peck 2012, p. 629)

Yet, as many neoliberal theorists have argued (Brenner et al. 2010), the neoliberal repertoire is not a prefabricated set of policy reforms. Rather, neoliberalism is a doctrine that travels, gets adapted in place and becomes variegated. It is therefore the very variation in market-orientated governance that is used to define neoliberalism: Thus construed, the problematic of variegated neoliberalization encompasses two foundational aspects of contemporary regulatory transformation: (a) the uneven development of neoliberalization – the differentiation and continual redifferentiation of market-oriented regulatory forms; and (b) the neoliberalization of regulatory uneven development – the constitution and continual reconstitution of marketized macro-spatial institutional frameworks, or rule regimes, which govern processes of regulatory experimentation and cross-jurisdictional policy transfer. (Brenner et al. 2010, p. 207)

392  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state An observation of differential urban governance in the post-recession context (e.g. Kim and Warner 2016) might not necessarily be viewed as an absence of neoliberalism. Rather, the goal of critical urban theorists has been to decipher how neoliberal doctrine conditions the various reforms which are enacted at the local level. They tend to ask (1) if and how those various reform agendas become market-orientated and (2) whether the institutional frameworks of urban governance have become more pro-market (i.e. neoliberalized). Austerity is therefore not thought to involve a preset suite of reforms, but instead describes an evolving set of tendencies. Of course, this presents a difficult empirical problem. If you are to avoid the glaring issue of producing ad hoc hypotheses (Popper 2002) to explain variations in local government reform, some method of identifying neoliberal reforms and measuring their influence on local government restructuring must be developed. In terms of this empirical problem, the available data are mixed. Evidence of growing state government budget deficits, the rapid post-1980s growth of the municipal bond market and the localization of government employment (Peck 2014; Peck and Whiteside 2016) have been used to support the argument that the operating context for municipal governments has become more austere and, thus, neoliberal. Yet, in purely budgetary terms, there is little evidence to suggest that the Great Recession has stimulated a further withdrawal of the federal government from state and local government. Despite a dip in intergovernmental transfers between 2010 and 2012, they have since climbed to all-time highs (see Figure 35.1). Any regulatory changes also seem to have had little or no effect on the fiscal recovery of cities. From 2012 onwards, cities across the US have reported strong growth in sales tax revenues and moderate growth in income and property taxes (see Figure 35.2). If macro-scale institutional and regulatory reform is indeed pro-market and anti-state under neoliberalism, the general financial recovery of cities does not seem particularly neoliberal. Indeed, traditional sources of transferred and direct tax revenues have been critical to the restoring of municipal fiscal health. At the aggregate level, municipal revenue data from the last five years supports Storper’s (2016, p. 241) recent claim that ‘there is little evidence of the massive withdrawal of the state, de-regulation of city life, reduction in urban public goods, or decline in the role of inter-regional transfers in regional development’. Storper (2016; also see Le Galès 2016; Weller and O’Neill 2014) uses this absence of empirical data in support of the neoliberal thesis to argue that the concept of neoliberalism is all too often used to characterize reforms which are pragmatic or simply liberal. For Storper (2016), the state might want to adopt seemingly ‘neoliberal’ policies for quite different reasons to those ascribed to politicians and government officials by proponents of neoliberal explanatory frames: ‘liberal economics favors privatization because it makes garbage collection cheaper to the inhabitants of the city in question, in a pragmatic rather than ideologically constructed policy change. Privatization might also improve service quality if a firm specializing in urban services can do better than a public administration that has many and varied tasks’ (Storper, 2016, p. 246). Such disagreements regarding if and how neoliberal doctrine is manifest signals to the need for further detailed case studies of post-recession urban restructuring. If neoliberalism is necessarily manifest in differentiation, there is a need to interrogate representative cases in order to establish how and why particular reforms are implemented. Only then can we avoid the problem of ascription that Storper (2016) highlights. A key difference between the two existing explanations of post-recession urban restructuring is the way in which they understand and test whether the austerity – as neoliberalism – we have seen at the international scale has devolved to the local state. This in turn strikes at

Post-crash cities  393

Source: https://​fred​.stlouisfed​.org/​series/​B087RC1Q027SBEA.

Figure 35.1

US federal government current transfer payments (grants-in-aid to state and local governments, seasonally adjusted annual rate); data in constant 2016 dollars

the heart of how to approach state restructuring as a set of spatially contingent political processes. Austerity urbanism has identified neoliberalism as a set of general tendencies within state restructuring and local government reform. Often using case studies, such as Detroit (Hackworth 2016; Peck and Whiteside 2016) and Atlantic City (Peck 2017), they strive to abstract such general tendencies from the messy complexity of local government reform (see Stone 1989, 2015). By way of contrast, the public policy scholarship of pragmatic municipalism is less focused on the process of state restructuring and instead has looked for austere neoliberalism within the limits of secondary empirical data, such as personnel numbers, social spending and borrowing. Such data are not always amenable to the identification of general ‘tendencies’ and associated theoretical constructs. Such scholarship has, consequently, developed a different narration of post-recession state restructuring and urban governance. The result is two very different interpretations of the downloading of fiscal responsibilities inside the state, a process that has been emblematic of research on urban governance and politics since the 1980s and, in particular, the austerity urbanism thesis (Peck 2012, 2014).

35.5 CONCLUSIONS At the start of this chapter, I asked how austerity cuts (see Blyth 2013) have shaped the form of the state and local state in the post-recession era. I have focused my attention on US local gov-

394  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Source: www​.nlc​.org/​Documents/​Find​%20City​%20Solutions/​City​-Solutions​-and​-Applied​-Research/​City​%20Fiscal​ %20Conditions​%202016​.pdf.

Figure 35.2

Year-to-year change in municipal general fund revenue and expenditures in the US (change in constant dollar revenue (General Fund))

ernment, where two competing explanations of post-recession state restructuring and urban governance have emerged. These two explanations offer us different understandings of how global economic crisis and subsequent state restructuring have played out within and through the local state. For those who have developed the theory of ‘austerity urbanism’, state and local state restructuring have operated in tandem. The same neoliberal, elite-privileging tendencies of global reform (e.g. bank bailouts, quantitative easing) are also read as having defined much local government reform. Neoliberal ideology, either in zombie form or otherwise (see Peck 2010), has served to push local governments to a ‘small state’ model. Proponents of the competing explanation of ‘pragmatic municipalism’ (see Kim and Warner 2016) suggest local governments are somewhat protected from national government determinations (also see Wood 2011a, 2011b). Under the US system of fiscal federalism (Oates 1999), they have argued that austerity plays a relatively minor part in the generally more pragmatic programme of post-recession local government reform. Fundamental empirical and conceptual differences underpinning these two explanations therefore make it difficult to say if post-crash cities have experienced a common set of restructurings. Whether extreme reform in cities like Detroit (see Peck and Whiteside 2016) have set in motion new, more neoliberal, reform processes is an open question. Furthermore, just how urban scholars should go about the empirical work necessary to trace out the linkages between geopolitical shifts and local government reform is still undecided and, markedly, not widely

Post-crash cities  395 discussed (see Davidson 2019). Since the 2007–2008 financial crisis began to create a new economic and political normal in advanced capitalist economies such as the US, we have yet to come to any agreement on how these new post-recession governance norms have, or have not, changed local government. Further research is required to construct comprehensive and robust data on city budgeting and emergent models of policy transfer. Only with this data will future research be able to identify how cities are, on a nationwide basis, seeking out new solutions for emerging budget problems and how state government might be mediating the relations between federal and local government in new ways. The longer-term significance of the recessionary period to the trajectory of state restructuring in the US is perhaps best illustrated by the major fiscal issue facing American local government. In 2018, the credit rating agency Moody’s estimated that American local governments are facing a $4 trillion shortfall in pension funding. This shortfall is around the size of Germany’s entire economy. Up until the early 2000s, most local governments had fully – or at least adequately – funded pension schemes. But, a combination of new fiscal strategies (i.e. diverting or differing pension payments) and the 2007–2008 Great Recession has left many state and local governments with seemingly unsurmountable pension obligations. As baby-boomers increasingly come to retirement age, such obligations weigh heavily on many local governments. In cities with the largest funding shortfalls like Chicago, where there is a $28 billion pension funding deficit, extremely difficult choices about budget expenditures will have to be made in the coming years. Finally, this chapter has sought to link the recent trajectory of US urban governance to Habermas’ ideas of legitimacy crisis. If the 2007–2008 financial crisis set the conditions for a legitimacy crisis (see Fraser 2015, 2018), disagreements over how to understand post-recession urban restructuring indicate that the impact of this at the local level is much less clear than at the national level. On the economic side, many cities have recovered from the worst of the recession. There are, of course, more than a handful of cities that have not (Davidson and Ward 2018) and it remains to be seen whether these represent outliers or harbingers. But, in general, the data suggest most cities have not radically transformed their economic management in the past decade. This has likely meant that the continued public trust we see in local government (Pew 2013) reflects the absence of controversial state restructuring and related politics. In fact, we may be moving into a period where spatial trajectories of the local and national state are diverging. As the national (federal) state in Washington, DC continues to lurch from crisis to crisis, the situation at the local level seems in comparison remarkably stable. And yet, the question troubling many local governments is whether this stability will prove momentary. Will the downloading of responsibilities from the national to the local intensify in pace over coming years as national government faces growing budget problems? And, is there any way to resolve the fiscal problems associated with pension deficits? For now, the answers to these questions are pending.

NOTES 1. www​.gao​.gov/​fiscal​_outlook/​federal​_fiscal​_outlook/​overview 2. Although the sequestration reduced government spending in 2013, total government spending was still projected to grow by over $238 billion per year up to 2023 (Congressional Budget Office 2003). 3. Estimate from Tax Foundation. See: https://​taxfoundation​.org/​final​-tax​-cuts​-and​-jobs​-act​-details​ -analysis.

396  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state 4. The Pew Research Center (2013) reported that public trust in government was at historically low levels, with only 19 per cent of Americans responding that they ‘can trust the government in Washington to do what is right’ ‘just about always’ (3 per cent) or ‘most of the time’ (16 per cent). 5. www​.taxpolicycenter​.org/​statistics/​property​-tax​-revenue

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398  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state US Government Accountability Office (GAO) (2018), State and Local Governments’ Fiscal Outlook: 2018 Update (GAO-19-208SP), accessed 30 May 2019 at www​.gao​.gov/​products/​GAO​-19​-208SP Weller, S. and P. O’Neill (2014), ‘An argument with neoliberalism: Australia’s place in a global imaginary’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 4 (2), 105–30. Williams, J. (2019), ‘The economic outlook: The “new normal” is now’, accessed 19 June 2019 at www​ .newyorkfed​.org/​newsevents/​speeches/​2019/​wil190306 Wolman, H. (1983), ‘Understanding local government responses to fiscal pressure: A cross national analysis’, Journal of Public Policy, 3 (3), 245–63. Wood, C. (2011a), ‘Exploring the determinants of the empowered US municipality’, State and Local Government Review, 43 (2), 123–39. Wood, C. (2011b), ‘Understanding the consequences of municipal discretion’, American Review of Public Administration, 41 (4), 411–27. Žižek, S. (2009), The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso.

36. ‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics: new state spaces in global unsustainability Yonn Dierwechter

36.1 INTRODUCTION An emerging theme in comparative urban studies over the past several years is what several researchers see as the rising geopolitical influence of cities. The idea here is that cities, whether understood as large core municipalities or, more accurately, institutions and agents constitutive of city-regional territorial complexes, are challenging the long-standing Westphalian system of international relations (Engelke 2013). In that system, global geopolitics – i.e. the political effects of geography and the geographical effects of politics operating beyond national borders – are conducted first and foremost between countries and their supra-national institutions rather than by cities and other actors. But this system is changing as cities become more influential economic and political actors (Barber 2013). Indeed, scholars now suggest that cities have become inter alia: ‘international actors’ (Herrschel and Newman 2017); ‘global political actors’ (Attwell 2014); ‘sites for international relations’ (Amen et al. 2012); and/ or strategic ‘nodes’ in evolving ‘networks of global environmental governance’ (Bouteligier 2012). Mayors not only should run the world but, as Barber asserted in his imaginative attempt to occasion a ‘global parliament of mayors’ (2013, pp. 336–59), ‘they already do’ (p. 3). Such assertions support the thesis that a world order based around global city networks represents a transformation of the Westphalian system of geopolitics (Taylor 2005). This system refers to the legal and diplomatic world that emerged in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as imperial powers like Spain, Holland, Portugal, Britain and France – using proto-corporate entities like the British and Dutch East India Companies – secured colonial, economic and cultural hegemony across world-space (Frankopan 2016). Western Europe steadily imposed a planetary-wide power grid that in theory emphasized state sovereignty, legal equality between states and the equally idealized concept of non-intervention in each other’s internal affairs (with actual sovereignty gained in practice much later for most of the Americas, Africa and Asia). The signature international institutions subsequently built by leading Westphalian powers in the twentieth century, from the agencies of the United Nations to the World Trade Organization, represent the key spaces through which questions of war and peace, trade policy, scientific and technological protocols and concerns with human rights operate. Put differently, common references to the ‘international community’ remain shorthand for a political geography of states whose nations fly symbolic flags and sing shared anthems – and who monopolize the use of lethal armaments (Croxton 1999; Kayaoglu 2010; Sarkar 2015). Contemporary approaches to the state still presume an international state system based largely on Westphalian geopolitical practices, rights and symbols – even by those who acknowledge that its national territorial structures are now considerably hollowed out by economic globalization. Yet the hypothesized rise of cities like London, Barcelona, New York, 399

400  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Rio, Paris and Tokyo – whose economic sizes are now substantial – arguably threatens the extent to which this long-standing Westphalian world-space exists in the taken-for-granted ways it once putatively did (Bodoni 2013).1 At a minimum, the international political work of leading cities, especially around climate change (Bulkeley 2005), demands a fundamental shift in empirical and theoretical readings of the presumed cartography of global politics. Cities are now important participants in United Nations-sponsored meetings, particularly through organized networks like C40. Talk about ‘city diplomacy’ is therefore less fanciful and more an accepted feature of how cities – especially but not exclusively ‘global’ cities – operate today. For example, in 2017 the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, established an Office of International Affairs, appointing staff with experience in the Departments of State, Commerce, and Defense; the Office of the United States (US) Trade Representative; the East Wing of the White House; and the National Security Council. For observers like Nina Hachigian (2019), developments in cities as economically important as Los Angeles imply that, in the coming decades, such cities ‘will determine the future of diplomacy’. Perhaps so, but care must be taken with these claims. Within the context of the above themes, this chapter argues that the existential crisis of global unsustainability is indeed producing novel but also contending forms of state space. New spaces collectively elevate the geopolitical agency of select cities as they interface with other territorial forms of power, regulation and policymaking. That seems increasingly evident. Conceptualized in what follows below as the urbanization of green geopolitics, however, we should not overemphasize the ‘rise of cities’ thesis per se. By this I mean that the relatively recent greening of global geopolitics signals important new developments both within and for cities. Cities, states and global environmental politics are ‘co-shaping’ each other, producing a global variety of green (and other kinds of) geopolitics. In fact, efforts to understand these geopolitical changes will likely represent a major new research agenda in comparative urban studies during the 2020s – and far beyond (Jonas and Moisio 2018). To elaborate upon this argument, the chapter next reflects upon the new global political agency of cities in an era of green geopolitics. The discussion highlights new debates around how to reconceptualize urban politics in global space. This is followed by a brief presentation of how studies of state space increasingly reflect the variegated ‘urbanizations’ of green geopolitics in diverse cultural settings. The core of the chapter then elaborates empirically upon such ‘urbanizations’, using examples from different societies in different contexts (the US, Canada, Germany, etc.) to illustrate some of its many new forms and geographical expressions. Finally, the conclusions recapitulate the chapter’s main ideas and call for new maps for new kinds of global urban political agency.

36.2

DEBATING THE GLOBAL POLITICAL AGENCY OF CITIES IN AN ERA OF GREEN GEOPOLITICS

Emerging work on global urban political agency lies between two intellectual worlds: the political science of international relations and interdisciplinary urban studies (Bassens et al. 2019). The research question that bridges these two worlds is a variation of how, why and which cities act politically on a global scale. This is a crucial issue for wider discussions of changing state spaces and geopolitics. We need novel ways of thinking about cities and their

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  401 representatives as geopolitical actors who operate in tandem with, or at times circumnavigate, those acting globally at the behest of the national state. Such thinking might productively develop extant work on ‘city diplomacy’ (Chan 2016) as well as what Tavares (2016) and Setzer (2015) call the ‘paradiplomacy’ of sub-national actors, including cities like Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and states like California in the US. New thinking might also pick up and further tease out how the politics and spatialities of cities and city-regions are increasingly shaped by ‘global-scale’ sustainable development challenges – including long-range comprehensive planning for climate change (Bulkeley 2005; Bulkeley et al. 2018; Dierwechter 2010). Bassens et al. (2019) constructively critique both areas of scholarship in ways that advance this debate. Research on ‘city diplomacy’, they argue, does not sufficiently ‘contextualize’ and ‘pluralize’ urban agency; work on global climate action in turn pays too little attention to how urban agency is shaped by globalizing nation-states. Scholars like Curtis (2016) and Clark and Moonen (2017) pay considerably more attention to the reorganization of key relationships between cities and globalized nation-states, but Bassens et al. (2019) additionally argue that they still focus too heavily on so-called ‘world’ rather than ordinary or smaller cities. The risk here is that we might inadvertently ‘universalize’ insights in ways that skim over or simply ignore the growing geographical variety of urban political experiences and policy experimentations around the world. In using concepts like ‘positionality’ to reframe knowledge of contemporary urbanization processes, researchers are indebted to post-colonial urban scholars and their efforts not just to contextualize and pluralize comparative urban studies (Robinson 2006) but also to provide fresh readings of global urban political agency itself. Here comparative urban studies as a field of inquiry can provide more nuanced ways to merge understandings of local dynamics, especially unique path-dependencies, with greater attention than is typically found in most international relations scholarship to the plurality of political forces moving inside, through and beyond socially complex and functionally extended cities. Rather than focusing only on formal institutions and political agents like mayors, Bassens et al.’s call for positionality, plurality and context rejects cities as unitary actors – ‘things’ that behave as single objects in space. Relatedly, I have argued previously for a theoretical recovery and empirical updating of ‘internationalism’ as another possible way to capture the diverse spaces of global urban political agency (Dierwechter 2018a). Concepts like positionality and internationalism ultimately seek to adapt extant theories of urban politics to a nascent world of interconnected city-regions shaped increasingly by global urban political agency especially on issues pertaining to green forms and processes of urban (re)development. But many other concepts and philosophical approaches are surely needed (Moisio 2018a). Long influential theories of urban politics exported intellectually from the post-Second World War American experience have emphasized how the local (American) state is either the handmaiden of capital (Logan and Molotch 1987) or fiscally dependent on local business support (Peterson 1981). Yet these theories may not even explain the global trajectory of American capitalist urban development all that well, much less other socio-spatial processes (e.g. climate change, sustainable development, green urbanism, etc.) or the global political and policy work of cities in respect of such processes. For example, Rudel (1989) has shown how growth politics and land-use policies in US municipalities evolve over time, while neo-Weberians like Lewis and Neiman (2009) see (sub) urban politics in the US as highly variegated forms of ‘contingent trusteeship’: differently

402  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state positioned municipalities, as described in their work on California, resist or support specific policy packages depending on their location within metropolitan space economies as well as (following Rudel’s insights) their long-term, evolutionary ‘life-cycles’ (i.e. specific places change). Sometimes local policy packages are pro-growth (Lawless 2002); sometimes they are not (Downs 1988). Sometimes they are neoliberal and business-oriented (Hackworth 2007); sometimes they are more progressive and activist-based (Clavel 2010). Sometimes, too, otherwise fragmented city-regions that have strongly territorialized a tenacious and deeply sedimented set of class and race cleavages still work surprisingly hard to develop, maintain and even expand what Benner and Pastor (2012) persuasively call ‘epistemic communities’ at the city-regional scale of politics – as seen in recent decades across greater Kansas City, Jacksonville and Nashville. By shifting to new scalar questions of often soft rather than hard forms of city-regionalism, Benner and Pastor’s claim that some US metropolitan areas can at least occasionally create sustainable forms of just growth rather than just growth challenge views which tend to see ‘property capital as the prime mover in the process of city-making’ (Walker 2019). By shifting to institutional questions of city-regionalism as a collective territorial project, Benner and Pastor’s work flows into a more cosmopolitan body of comparative urban scholarship that increasingly sees ‘global city-regions’ (Scott 2001) as part of the new ‘spatial grammar’ of global urban political agency, in general (Jonas 2012), and the diverse urbanizations of green geopolitics, in particular (Dierwechter 2018a; Herrschel and Dierwechter 2018). One apt example is the Local Agenda (LA21) experience of Spain, notably in Barcelona and the Basque Country/Autonomous Region. Like Benner and Pastor, Barrutia and Echebarria (2011) suggest that ‘successful’ LA21 experiences in green policymaking – about which more below – are city-regional achievments. Interacting muncipalities build something effective above the local level stricto sensu. ‘Diverse empirical evidence [in Spain] regarding LA21,’ they write without actually theorizing a new epistemic community or a similar relational space, ‘seems to indicate that LA21 dissemination tends to be higher in territories where networks have emerged … Municipal governments participating in [such] networks appear to obtain important benefits from the transmission of experiences and intermunicipal collaboration’ (p. 455). This local activity hardly goes unnoticed by central states. Clark and Moonen (2017) demonstrate that select world cities – London, Mumbai, Sao Paulo – depend on national governments ‘to manage the effects of their global integration’ even as they also help to build the ‘brands’ of their respective countries (p. 4). In their judgement, a diversity of values, systems and institutions increasingly populate the global political system as urban-based decision makers and activists work in new ways with one another and with higher-tier government officials and urban-focused departments (see pp. 18–20). The so-called rise of cities, then, is not about the untrammelled rescaling of late neoliberalism. It is not about the romanticized renaissance of post-ideological mayors who get us beyond Westphalian dysfunction by building bike lanes. It is about how cities, states and state-built international institutions adapt geopolitically to economic, social and especially ecological challenges ‘up, down, and sideways’ (Dierwechter 2018a, p. v). This in turn generates legitimately new kinds of state space – much of it still unexplored.

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  403

36.3

STATE SPACE IN AN ERA OF GREEN GEOPOLITICS

State space is shorthand for the political geographies of the modern state apparatus. Such geographies are associated with the incremental centralization and societal penetration of bureaucratic-authoritative-regulatory power by complex congeries of legal institutions, as in Western Europe, but elsewhere too (often through militarized-hegemonic imposition). These patterns of power crystallize in different spatial patterns in different societies. State space is further associated with deliberate efforts to co-create ‘nations’ and ‘states’. Territorialized state and nation building early on meant that militarily weak societies were absorbed by those that were militarily stronger. Europe had roughly 500 different territorial-political units in 1500; by 1900 that figure was reduced to only 25 (many pre-colonial African states, such as the Songhai and Sokoto Empires, formed this way, too). ‘The strong devoured the weak,’ as Frankopan (2016, p. 252) puts it – a process with a global-imperial analogue. Uneven penetration by centralized institutions into societies gradually produces state capacity, which Fukuyama (2013) sees as a crucial aspect of how different cultures create a durable ‘political order’. The Chinese built one of the first such orders some 3,000 years ago to project specific kinds of centralized power projects across space (roadbuilding, tax collecting, etc.). More recent state building – and associated statecraft – reflects mounting concerns with different kinds of security beyond conquest, such as policing, defence and arbitration services, which were absorbed into modern administrative capacity (Skowronek 1982). The family of Keynesian/ social democratic/welfare states in the twentieth century, for example, originally reflected (then new) concerns with national employment, national health and old age poverty – social security – as well as with large-scale material recovery and macro-economic stability after two cataclysmic world wars and the Great Depression. The much-discussed Keynesian state project, though, seems to have finally run its geohistorical course, perhaps strangled for good by austerity politics after the Great Recession of 2009. Accordingly, the more recent transformation of Keynesian welfare states into neo-Schumpeterian forms to confront a new set of emerging socio-economic problems constitutes a key jumping off point for many critical-geographical debates about contemporary state space (Park 2017). In particular, the border-shattering advances made by huge corporate agents of neoliberal globalization since the early 1990s have accelerated views which reject (either partially or mostly) the imagined spatialities of state power as ‘a nested hierarchy of geographical arenas contained within each other like so many Russian Dolls’ (Brenner et al. 2008, p. 1). Global green issues are also impacting upon, and transforming, state spatialities. As concerns with ecological security have grown more intense – even apocalyptic – researchers, activists and many democratic voters, especially in Europe, increasingly call for the more rapid deployment of so-called ‘ecological states’ or ‘green statecraft’ (Backstrand and Kronsell 2015; Eckersley 2004; Paterson 2006). This means tracing how (or if) ‘relational geographies of state space are [increasingly] imbued with causal power capable of producing socio-economic change’ (Macleavy and Harrison 2010, p. 1037). How do ‘greener’ states, for instance, influence ‘place building, governing flows and networks within and across its territorial boundary, and organizing and reorganizing the scalar division of labour’ (Park 2017, p. 2)? How is the hypothesized transition ‘from sustainable development to carbon control’, as While et al. (2010) put it, shaping spatial processes of eco-state restructuring at the urban and regional scales? Relatedly, how do the emerging geopolitics of (un)sustainability in global

404  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state affairs reshape the spatial construction and transformation of the traditional state apparatus? Answers to these kinds of questions arguably now revolve around novel efforts to understand comparatively the variegated ‘urbanizations’ of green geopolitics in diverse cultural settings.

36.4

‘URBANIZATIONS’ OF GREEN GEOPOLITICS

A growing appreciation of multi-systemic global ecological decay is generating increasingly hand-wringing calls – unvarnished warnings, even – for a fundamental reorganization of global political space and development policy as presently understood.2 One interesting example is Bookchin’s (2014) radical manifesto for ‘a global confederation of rebel cities’. Bookchin rejects tout court the bureaucratic practices of nation-state and international power – whether capitalist, socialist or mixed – as ‘a hopeless pursuit, a dead end’. Such a strongly neo-anarchist, post-Westphalian confederation is geopolitically far removed from the actually existing world we live in today, of course, even as the ‘rise of cities’ discussed earlier does suggest important changes in the increasingly crowded playground of international green geopolitics (Amen et al. 2012). One change is that urban officials are now global politicians. Large megaphones are in the hands of celebrities like Michael Bloomberg, the former billionaire mayor of New York City, who in June 2019 pledged to work with the Sierra Club, a hallowed American environmental organization, to help fund the eventual shutdown of all 600 coal-fired power plants in the US. Bloomberg argued that ‘We’re in a race against time with climate change, and yet there is virtually no hope of bold federal action on this issue’ (cited in Visser 2019). In 2017, Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh, and Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, jointly announced their renewed commitments to carbon reduction in direct response to US president Donald Trump’s catastrophic rejection of the Paris Agreement (Hidalgo and Peduto 2017). Bloomberg, Peduto and Hidalgo are just three urban actors of many that today populate dozens upon dozens of ‘transnational city-networks’ (Acuto and Rayner 2016; Busch 2018; Keiner and Kim 2007; Lee 2013). Leading exemplars of these new spaces of global green political action include C40 cities, City Protocol, the Global Covenant of Mayors, ICLEI-CCP and United Cities and Local Governments (Lee and Jung 2018). The seminal issue, then, is whether we should consider these urban spaces of global green action as new state spaces in and of themselves. As (some) cities engage (a few other) cities in more policy-oriented discourses of ‘teaching and learning’ through relational forms of agency (Lee and van de Meene 2012), scholars are indeed increasingly inclined to map these spaces as ‘entangled’ (Busch 2018) or ‘interwoven’ (Magee 2016). Both metaphors suggest an effective new kind of political fabric – ‘new silk roads’ that are already reshaping world-developmental dynamics and will continue to do so in the future (Frankopan 2019). For scholars such as Bouteligier (2012), these developments logically reflect new millennium extensions of the global macro-sociology famously advanced by Castells (1998) in his influential work on the global network society. Like any society, however, networked societies generate their own inequalities, which Bouteligier (2013) has separately explored through more traditional cartographies of development and underdevelopment. Her work on transnational urban action shows the persistence of a long-familiar North–South divide in global affairs (see also Acuto and Rayner 2016). City networks have not flattened the world; they have actually created ‘new mountains’

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  405 (Rodríguez-Pose and Crescenzi 2008). Van Hamme and Pion further show that ‘core countries [like France] are still characterized by the intensity of their reciprocal relations while peripheral countries [like Cameroon] have few economic relations with a limited number of core countries’ (2012, p. 65). Van Hamme and Pion’s critique analyses that ‘abstract’ nodes and links from what they call the ‘old structures’ associated with territorialized forms of uneven accumulation and extant geopolitical grids of power and control. Further empirical evidence substantiates this last point. Bansard et al. (2017) show that only a very small group of cities and regions are typically part of more than one transnational city network. They call exceptional cities like Barcelona and relatively influential sub-national regions like California the ‘super-conductors’ of transnational environmental politics and advocacy work (Dierwechter 2018a). What does a ‘super-conducting’ really mean? Since Trump’s election, prominent journalists and other political observers argue that the state of California has emerged as America’s most important ‘global force’ in climate politics (Davenport and Nagourney 2017). New state-level legislation in California, for instance, has sought to mitigate automobile-based emissions through density around transit stops. Yet this legislation has exposed tensions between global-scale concerns like carbon reduction and urban-scale prerogatives. Though in favour of shutting down coal plants, the Sierra Club in California sees preemptive infill and density awards as a potential threat to local democracy. In addition, they are concerned with class and race extrusion from politically favoured nodes and corridors through inadvertent displacement, gentrification and elitism (Dougherty and Plumber 2018). Similarly, Los Angeles has emerged as a strategic ‘node’ in the transnational urbanism of the C40 cities global network. Still, uneven local efforts to enrol the city’s many suburban municipalities in carbon politics are also painfully evident. Municipalities like Glendora, Pasadena, Long Beach and Santa Ana have voluntarily signed on to carbon initiatives like the Mayor Climate Protection Agreement. But most suburban authorities across the Los Angeles city-region remain either politically indifferent or administratively ill-equipped to match ‘C40’ Los Angeles (Dierwechter 2018a). This provides additional and ongoing empirical evidence for what I have elsewhere called a ‘local divide’ in global carbon action within most metropolitan areas of the US (Dierwechter 2010). These realities complicate analyses of the spaces that transnational city networks make in loco when modified by traditional state-level institutions. ‘Disadvantaged Los Angeles communities,’ Sustainable City pLAn asserts, ‘will receive $35 million in cap-and-trade revenues to spend on greenhouse gas reduction and other climate-related projects at the neighbourhood level, thanks to the state’s Transformative Climate Communities Program’ (City of Los Angeles 2016, p. 81). On the one hand, ‘cap-and-trade’ strategies inform many green projects (Davidson and Gleeson 2015). On the other hand, the Transformative Climate Communities Program usefully illustrates how ostensibly ‘market-based’ approaches are reshaped by state-level initiatives that consider other political goals and pressures. This includes the daunting needs of disadvantaged communities who can and do mobilize politically to place demands on state agents in a position to redistribute public resources. At the heart of these themes is thus a paradox. Globalization has forced comparatively well-resourced but institutionally distant national governments to give cities and other sub-national entities new powers and responsibilities, changing the overall geography of the state (Rodríguez-Pose and Gill 2003). Cities must now address economic competitiveness concerns, but they must also concoct and carry out new strategies for ‘inclusive growth’

406  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state that are (somehow) ecologically sustainable. So, while they fiercely compete, they also gamely cooperate. Plastrik and Cleveland show that a growing number of cities all around the world recognize that, perhaps for the first time in their history, ‘the success of any individual city depends, to a large degree, on the success of cities collectively’ (2018, p. 59). Westphalian-based states governing ‘down’ seek competitive economic advantages from ‘their’ cities or city-regions (Moisio 2018a). Yet such advantages often accrue locally through novel, dynamic forms of collaborative problem solving, data sharing, policy exchange and learning partnerships – i.e. they accrue through a ‘sideways’ geopolitics of urban and global governance (Dierwechter 2018a, p. v). Transnational city-networks that help communities find solutions are new relational political geographies, even as they are also spaces of growing interest to hierarchical states and the interstate system (Moisio 2018a). Such dualities and frictions are very hard to map through inherited spatial imaginaries of world politics. In addition, competitive city-regions, particularly those working in transnational spaces of policy experimentation, are further widening local electoral cleavages within nation-state democracies as the ‘places that don’t matter’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018) look anxiously to the old structures of the state apparatus for cultural protection (from immigrants) and economic security (from capital). That is true not only in the US, with Trump, and the United Kingdom (UK), with Brexit, but also in different ways in Canada, France, Italy, South Africa, Australia, Poland and many other countries too numerous to mention (Taylor 2019). In short, global geopolitics are changing as the horizontal flows of economic globalization clash with the hierarchical rigidities of the national state, creating what appears to be new spaces of urban political agency. Canada – a country that suffers from what Mackenzie King famously called in the late 1940s ‘too much geography’ (quoted in Kasoff and James 2013, p. 143) – is especially instructive in this respect. Like other national states, Canada is engaging global discourses of ‘smartness’ and smart cities to confront persistent problems of uneven regional development and the structural legacies of a ‘staples economy’ and its social correlates.3 As Western provinces like Alberta – and cosmopolitan cities like Calgary – boom loudly with the wealth of oil and gas extraction to meet global energy demands, Atlantic provinces like New Brunswick – and small regional cities like St John – quietly confront the slow decay of demographic depopulation, economic stasis, elderly isolation, homelessness and ecological unsustainability. These are persistent problems not immediately associated with the solutions proffered by corporate-driven, information and communications technology-focused smart city brochures. Smart cities in Canada are thus emerging through state-led initiatives – creating, in my view, brand new kinds of ‘smart state’ developments (see Dierwechter 2018b). The most high-profile evidence within federal development policy, for example, has been the ‘Smart Cities Challenge’, launched in 2017. Canada’s interest in this type of policy approach echoes similar experiences with such competitions in other countries – including several annual rounds across India under Prime Minister Modi (Datta 2015), the explosion of smart city initiatives in China under Premier Xie Jinping (Yu and Xu 2018) and various smart city challenges and federal–local partnerships in the US, largely started during the Obama administration (Ebi 2018). Canada’s own smart turn also reflects in broad terms the policy influence of major green political projects like Triangulum, Remourban and GrowSmarter in the European Union’s Smart Cities and Communities programme. Administered by Infrastructure Canada – a department of the federal government of Canada – the first round attracted over 130 applications across all Canadian provinces and territories.

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  407 Just over 15 per cent of the applicants – 20 proposals – were selected in June 2018 for further support with federal capacity building grants. In May 2019, Infrastructure Canada announced the final winners of the national competition. Montreal won the $50 million prize for its proposal to improve access to food; all ten communities in the northern Nunavut Territory, concerned with suicide prevention, received a $10 million grant, as did the joint proposal by the City of Guelph and Wellington County, Ontario to create a circular food economy; finally, the town of Guelph in Nova Scotia received the sole $5 million grant for its concerns with energy poverty. Many of the ‘failed’ applications are equally interesting for how they defined smartness and smart city spaces in both social justice and ecological terms (see e.g. City of Moncton 2018). The Canadian state has thus championed smarter urbanism across the country that ostensibly deepens social justice and ecological responsibility along with economic growth by supporting often creative partnerships across institutionally siloed communities. This claim should be not be taken too far. Emphasizing competition and spatial selectively, the Smart City Challenge is far removed from neo-Keynesian statehood. At the same time, we cannot easily fit these stories into the totalizing narrative of globalized neoliberalism either, notwithstanding better-known controversies like Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google-Alphabet, which now aims to transform parts of Toronto into a ‘data-driven’ city. Theoretically, Canada’s empirical diversity supports Bassens et al.’s (2019) call to explore positionality, context-sensitivity and plurality in mapping global urban political agency. Moreover, such environmental efforts have hardly emerged out of thin air, as if the world started with smartphones. Global environmental issues have been prominent features of the Westphalian system since at least the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya in 1972 (Broadhead 2002). Over the past several decades, Amory Lovins, Paul Erlich, Max Strong, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Wangari Maathai and Al Gore – to name only a few notable advocates – repeatedly highlighted the growing threats to civilization associated with extensive pesticide use, overconsumption, desertification, deforestation, ocean acidification, species extinction and especially global warming (Dierwechter 2018a). One consequence of all this activity has been that environmental problems are now routinely seen as state security and human development challenges that require constant diplomatic engagement (Brundtland 1991). A global policy focus on the management of cities also emerged in the 1970s. Along with UNEP, the United Nations established UN-Habitat in 1978 – just two years after the world’s first conference on urban settlements, now popularly known as ‘Habitat-I’, was held in Vancouver, Canada. With the benefit of hindsight, it now appears that a new kind of geopolitical discourse had now arrived on the scene – urban environmentalism (Brand 2005). For example, urban environmentalism informed the early policy development and practical implementation of LA21, particularly in countries like Spain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK (Barrutia and Echebarria 2011; Kern et al. 2007). Technically voluntary, LA21 nonetheless signalled the diplomatic acceptance of urban environmentalism as a global challenge, even as it meant different things in different contexts, not only between but even within countries. In their helpful study, as one example, Kern et al. (2007) note that by the mid-2000s about two-thirds of local authorities in Germany had adopted LA21 programmes in central-western Hesse. But the figure was less than 2 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, located in the former East Germany.

408  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state The uneven ‘uptake’ of LA21 policies signalled, in my judgement, two problems of scholarly importance for understanding the diverse urbanizations of green international politics (Dierwechter 2018a). The first problem was – and remains – what it all means for the spatialities of the state, whether understood as the ‘urbanization of the nation-state’ as a whole (Moisio 2018b) or, relatedly, how the ‘spatial selectivity of the state’ (Jones 1997) differentially impacts various urban systems and socio-economic development patterns. The second problem involves what ‘the rise of cities’ implies long term for the actual conduct and meaning of global geopolitics, particularly regarding more progressive aspirations (Moisio 2018a). Barber’s (2013) effort to elevate the political role of cities in global affairs has implied long-term progressive possibilities, not least for a revitalized democratic life. But as Bassens et al. (2019, p. 4) critically argue, ‘a social scientific engagement with the idea of global political agency demands a more nuanced consideration of the spatio-temporal context from which global urban political agency emerges and the plurality of actors involved in constructing this agency’. This includes changing relationships between states and cities in global policy space (Jonas 2012).

36.5 CONCLUSIONS Cities, states and global environmental politics are co-shaping each other, producing many different forms of green geopolitics (Dierwechter 2018a). As citizens and institutions of various kinds increasingly absorb the dark reality of global unsustainability – including the in loco socio-ecological effects of climate change – long familiar forms of state space are changing as well. But how? How far? And by whom? For many observers, one of the most significant recent developments in world politics has been the rise of cities, and particularly the growing importance of ‘global mayors’ who are seeking each other out in international settings to build new networked spaces of transnational collaboration. Such efforts might help to delocalize how citizens now think about urban policies and strategic investments. In consequence, (some) cities are in fact already behaving like ‘global political actors’ (Attwell 2014), complicating the cartographies of contemporary geopolitics in ways that we are likely just beginning to grasp. Cities, though, remain shaped by extant state structures and/or the uneven economic and political geographies of the interstate system. We see this in places like ‘super-conductor’ California, for instance, and across Canada, as smart city discourses in that country reflect multi-scalar political concerns, including not only mounting anxieties with ecological resiliency and energy systems, but older apprehensions with inter-generational poverty, uneven regional development, social isolation, eldercare, suicide prevention, local social services and public transport provision. Students of transitional municipal networks are furthermore drawing fresh attention to the steady persistence of ‘North–South’ divides more typically associated with the uneven developmental tensions of the 1970s. New ideas on the competitive greening up of states concomitantly emphasize the spatial selectivity of governments as they bolster key (but not all) city-regions as part of the Westphalian state’s changing geopolitical strategies (Jonas and Moisio 2018). Novel calls for greater attention to the positionality and internationalism of cities in global environmental politics asks researchers to explore the relational geographies of contextual path-dependences and to highlight the stories of less-studied cities. This includes regional

‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  409 cities like Fredericton, the political capital of (poorer) New Brunswick, Canada. Through the European Union’s International Urban Cooperation program, Fredericton is working with Parma, Italy to explore ‘city-to-city strategies’ for reimagining and deepening ‘sustainable urban development’ (City of Fredericton 2017). This joint work focuses notably on social justice questions of gender equality and ‘the participation and inclusion of marginalized groups’, including Indigenous residents of Canada’s First Nations (for further details, see www​.iuc​.eu/​). Fredericton provides an excellent final example of how, in fact, new concerns with context and position might actually lead us to theorize the many new state spaces of green internationalism differently. Such theorizations should reflect the fact that global urban (geo)political agency focused on sustainability is not only what cities do with one another – as important as that theme has become in recent years. It is also what cities do with their states. Likewise, it is what states do with their cities. And, not least, it is what both do with the ‘old structures’ of a fast-changing but still relevant Westphalian system of rules, institutions, mores, norms and modes of conduct. Verily, we need new political maps.

NOTES 1. International institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have developed measures of national economic growth based on the performance of major cities and metropolitan areas. See, for example, OECD figures for the percentage share of gross domestic product (GDP) produced by select metropolitan areas over the total national value at the following: https://​stats​.oecd​.org/​Index​.aspx​?DataSetCode​=​CITIES. The 2016 share of GDP figures for London, Paris, Copenhagen and Seoul were 28.9 per cent, 30.1 per cent, 42.8 per cent and 47.1 per cent, respectively. In aggregate terms, Tokyo’s economy, valued at $1.6 trillion in 2016, was roughly comparable to the entire Canadian economy. 2. For a much lengthier discussion of these processes see my book, The Urbanization of Green Internationalism (Dierwechter 2018a). 3. The ideas reported here on Canada are based on empirical fieldwork conducted in 2019 in Alberta and New Brunswick as a visiting US Fulbright scholar at the University of Calgary. Fulbright funding from the US State Department is gratefully acknowledged.

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‘Urbanizations’ of green geopolitics  411 Dierwechter, Y. (2010), ‘Metropolitan geographies of US climate action: Cities, suburbs and the local divide in global responsibilities’, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 12 (1), 59–82. Dierwechter, Y. (2018a), The Urbanization of Green Internationalism, New York: Palgrave. Dierwechter, Y. (2018b), ‘The smart state as utopian space for urban politics’, in K. Ward, A. Jonas, B. Miller and D. Wilson (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics, New York: Routledge, pp. 47–58. Dougherty, C. and B. Plumber (2018), ‘A bold, divisive plan to wean Californians from their cars’, New York Times, accessed 18 March 2018 from www​.nytimes​.com/​2018/​03/​16/​business/​energy​ -environment/​climate​-density​.html Downs, A. (1988), ‘The real problem with suburban anti-growth policies’, Brookings Review, 6, 23–9. Ebi, K. (2018), ‘Challenge grant update: How Orlando’s planning for smart growth’, accessed 12 May 2019 from https://​smartcitiescouncil​.com/​article/​challenge​-grant​-update​-how​-orlandos​-planning​ -smart​-growth Eckersley, R. (ed.) (2004), The Green State, Boston, MA: MIT Press. Engelke, P. (2013), Foreign Policy for an Urban World: Global Governance and the Rise of Cities, Washington, DC: Atlantic Council. Frankopan, P. (2016), The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Frankopan, P. (2019), The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Fukuyama, F. (2013), Political Order and Political Decay, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hachigian, N. (2019), ‘Cities will determine the future of diplomacy’, Foreign Policy, accessed 16 April 2019 from https://​foreignpolicy​.com/​2019/​04/​16/​cities​-will​-determine​-the​-future​-of​-diplomacy/​ Hackworth, J. (2007), The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Herrschel, T. and Y. Dierwechter (2018), Smart Transitions in City Regionalism: Territory, Politics and the Quest for Competitiveness and Sustainability, New York: Routledge. Herrschel, T. and P. Newman (2017), Cities as International Actors: Urban and Regional Governance beyond the Nation State, London: Palgrave. Hidalgo, A. and W. Peduto (2017), ‘The mayors of Pittsburgh and Paris: We have our own climate deal’, New York Times, accessed 7 June 2017 from www​.nytimes​.com/​2017/​06/​07/​opinion/​the​-mayors​-of​ -pittsburgh​-and​-paris​-we​-have​-our​-own​-climate​-deal​.html Jonas, A. (2012), ‘City-regionalism as a contingent “geopolitics of capitalism”’, Geopolitics, 18 (2), 284–98. Jonas, A. and S. Moisio (2018), ‘City regionalism as geopolitical processes: A new framework for analysis’, Progress in Human Geography, 42 (3), 350–70. Jones, M. (1997), ‘Spatial selectivity of the state? The regulationist enigma and local struggles over economic governance’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 29 (5), 831–64. Kasoff, M. and P. James (2013), Canadian Studies in the New Millinium, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kayaoglu, T. (2010), ‘Westphalian Eurocentrism in international relations theory’, International Studies Review, 12 (2), 193–217. Keiner, M. and A. Kim (2007), ‘Transnational city networks for sustainability’, European Planning Studies, 15 (10), 1369–95. Kern, K., C. Koll and M. Schophaus (2007), ‘The diffusion of local agenda 21 in Germany: Comparing the German federal states’, Environmental Politics, 16 (4), 604–24. Lawless, P. (2002), ‘Power and conflict in pro-growth regimes: Tensions in economic development in Jersey City and Detroit’, Urban Studies, 39 (8), 1329–46. Lee, T. (2013), ‘Global cities and transnational climate change networks’, Global Environmental Politics, 13 (1), 108–28. Lee, T. and H.-Y. Jung (2018), ‘Mapping city-to-city networks for climate change action: Geographic bases, link modalities, functions, and activity’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 182, 96–104. Lee, T. and S. van de Meene (2012), ‘Who teaches and who learns? Policy learning through the C40 cities climate network’, Policy Sciences, 45 (3), 199–220. Lewis, P. and M. Neiman (2009), Custodians of Place: Governing the Growth and Development of Cities, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

412  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Logan, J. and H. Molotch (1987), Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Macleavy, J. and J. Harrison (2010), ‘New state spatialities: Perspectives on state, space, and scalar geographies’, Antipode, 42 (5), 1037–46. Magee, L. (2016), Interwoven Cities, New York: Palgrave. Moisio, S. (2018a), Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy, London: Routledge. Moisio, S. (2018b), ‘Urbanizing the nation-state? Notes on the geopolitical growth of cities and city-regions’, Urban Geography, 39 (9), 1421–24. Park, B.-G. (2017), ‘New spatial readings of the state’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5 (1), 1–4. Paterson, M. (2006). ‘Green theory’, in C. Hay, M. Lister and D. Marsh (eds), The State: Theories and Issues, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 135–154. Peterson, P. (1981), City Limits, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Plastrik, P. and J. Cleveland (2018), Life after Carbon: The Next Global Transformation of Cities, Washington, DC: Island Press. Robinson, J. (2006), Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development, London: Routledge. Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2018), ‘Commentary: The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it)’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11 (1), 189–209. Rodríguez-Pose, A. and R. Crescenzi (2008), ‘Research and development, spillovers, innovation systems, and the genesis of regional growth in Europe’, Regional Studies, 42 (1), 51–67. Rodríguez-Pose, A. and N. Gill (2003), ‘The global trend towards devolution and its implications’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 21 (3), 333–51. Rudel, T. (1989), Situations and Strategies in American Land-Use Planning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, J. (2015), ‘Debating a post-Westphalian international order’, Mainstream Weekly, 53 (15), accessed 21 August 2016 from www​.mainstreamweekly​.net/​article5577​.html Scott, A. (2001), ‘Globalization and the rise of city regions’, European Planning Studies, 9 (7), 813–26. Setzer, J. (2015), ‘Testing the boundaries of subnational diplomacy: The international climate action of local and regional governments’, Transnational Environmental Law, 4 (2), 319–37. Skowronek, S. (1982), Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tavares, R. (2016), Paradiplomacy: Cities and States as Global Players, New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, P. (2005), ‘New political geographies: Global civil society and global governance through world city networks’, Political Geography, 24 (6), 703–30. Taylor, Z. (2019), ‘Ontario’s “places that don’t matter” send a message: The fault lines dividing the province are getting deeper’, Inroads: Journal of Opinion, 44, accessed 12 May 2019 from http://​ inroadsjournal​.ca/​ontarios​-places​-dont​-matter​-send​-message/​ Van Hamme, F. and G. Pion (2012), ‘The relevance of the world-system approach in the era of globalization of economic flows and networks’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 94 (1), 65–82. Visser, N. (2019), ‘Michael Bloomberg will donate $500 million to help close all remaining US coal plants’, accessed 18 June 2019 from www​.huffpost​.com/​entry/​michael​-bloomberg​-coal Walker, R. (2019), ‘Wrestling with capital and class in US cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1111/​1468​-2427​.12784 While, A., A. Jonas and D. Gibbs (2010), ‘From sustainable development to carbon control: Eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35 (1), 76–93. Yu, W. and C. Xu (2018), ‘Developing smart cities in China: An empirical analysis’, International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age, 5 (3), 76–91.

PART VII SPATIAL PLANNING AND THE STATE

37. Introduction: spatial planning and the state Juho Luukkonen

Spatial planning has been studied extensively in the field of political geography. However, the studies have often taken a rather narrow and nominalist view on how the state apparatuses operate in particular political geographical settings and how they expand their territorial reach through large-scale planning projects (e.g. Murton and Lord 2020; Ruwanpura et al. 2020). In these instrumentalist studies, planning is approached as a tool in the hands of the state apparatus, while leaving to the margins thorough analyses of the planning–state nexuses in the wider context of the politics of rescaling and restructuring of states (for an exception, see e.g. Brenner 1997). Due to its capacity to fuse populations and geographical areas into governable territorial entities, spatial planning is among the key governmental technologies through which the state operates geographically and through which the state is brought into being as a spatio-political object (Painter 2010; Luukkonen 2015). Yet, seen in the context of broader conceptualizations of the state as an ensemble of manifold institutional and social relations, such as Jessop’s (1990) strategic-relational approach or Gramsci’s (2007) ‘integral state’ approach, spatial planning appears as something much more than merely a monopolist asset of the state government. As a governmental technology, spatial planning is strongly tied to the transformation of state spaces. First, it contributes concretely to the drawing of the state’s territorial contours by modifying existing state spaces and producing new ones, such as city-regions, mega-regions and development zones. Planning deploys and enacts spatial imaginaries, policy practices and calculative techniques, such as mapping, statistics and land zoning, which seek to interlace the different parts of the country into an internally coherent territorial entity (cf. De Carvalho 2016). Planning actualizes and materializes the state’s economic, social and political strategies in concrete terms at the level of citizens through, for instance, the building of new residential or business districts, the location of service centres or schools or the construction of transport infrastructures. Second, spatial planning opens new spaces of governance that enable the transformation of existing political and governmental relations and the formation of the new ones. Maritime spatial planning, which has gained international political interest in recent years, is an illustrative example of how the widening of the scope of spatial planning has allowed European states to extend their powers beyond their jurisdictional and territorial limits. The opening of new spaces of governance not only helps to increase the states’ external influence, but also works the other way around: in many contexts, spatial planning has opened new avenues for external actors to intervene in domestic political systems and jurisdictions (e.g. Luukkonen 2015). A key feature of spatial planning is that it does not form a tightly defined policy sector with a clear policy object. Instead, it is a kind of meta-governance of spaces and spatial relations involving a wide range of topics and clienteles (cf. Healey et al. 1997). It opens the state territory for complex internal and external power relations, as well as for unorthodox power coalitions. It covers significant geopolitical interests underneath the seemingly ‘neutral’, expert-driven policy practices. Accordingly, planning constitutes an extensive, transbound414

Introduction: spatial planning and the state  415 ary field of interaction in which various actors with different professional and disciplinary backgrounds and with different political interests, administrative techniques, ideologies and institutional commitments meet, conduct policies and share policy ideas. In this way, planning provides possibilities for a diverse set of actors, from national to international organizations and interest groups, to intervene in national policy processes and to promote their ideas about the development of state spaces. Indeed, the complexity of the field makes it difficult to trace who – and with what kind of capacities and interests – are involved in the politics of the transformation of state spaces. Altogether, though, spatial planning has a central role in the political geographies of the state and the chapters in this part tackle this diversity in innovative ways. Examining such topics as the transnational circulation of planning knowledges and policy ideas, the underlying economic, (geo)political and social rationalities of planning policies, discourses and imaginaries that frame and give content to planning practices, as well as the material conditions and effects of planning policies in different geographical contexts, the authors in this part seek to contemplate the role of planning in the constitution and reproduction of state territories. More specifically, the chapters ask: How does planning contribute to the state spatial transformation both by opening new spaces of governance and by producing new governable spaces? How does planning contribute to the (re)production of state spaces under global capitalism? What is the role of planning in state-orchestrated territorial strategies? What is the role of planning in attempts to manage geopolitical and geo-economic crises in different geographical contexts? And, what kind of inclusive and/or exclusive elements are involved in territorially selective planning strategies and practices? In Chapter 38, Matthew Wargent, Gavin Parker and Emma Street explore the growing influence of the private sector in spatial planning in England. They argue that governance reforms leaning on neoliberalist efficiency demands and the persistent perceptions about the superiority of the private sector over the public have increased the power of ‘consultocracy’ in national and local planning. They conclude that the interdependencies between planning authorities and external expertise are becoming more and more intricate and opaque – a shift that raises broader questions about democratic legitimacy, accountability and transparency of planning state spaces. In Chapter 39, Carola Fricke and Enrico Gualini explore the connections between metropolitanization and state spatial transformation. By reviewing academic debates in the fields of policy research, political science, planning and geography, they illustrate the recent emergence of more nuanced and spatially sensitive understandings of the ‘metropolitan’ as a peculiar site, outcome and object of transnational and national scalar politics. This evolution, they suggest, reflects recent developments of metropolitan policies in the multi-scalar geographies of the state. However, they also point to the double hermeneutic role of academic scholars in the construction of the ‘metropolitan’ through policy advice and advocacy. In Chapter 40, Kristian Olesen explores the role of strategic spatial planning in promoting state spatial restructuring, rescaling and production of new state spaces in the context of global economic restructuring. Through the case study of strategic spatial planning in Denmark in 1990–2018, he illustrates how the neoliberalization of planning has contributed to the fragmentation of the imaginary of a unified state space and to the reworking of the political geographies of a Nordic welfare state. In Chapter 41, Agatino Rizzo examines urban planning in Qatar’s capital city Doha. He argues that despite the state’s absolute monopoly on financing and implementing planning, urban megaprojects have failed to improve the quality of the city. His study shows how the

416  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state excessive concentration of planning power on the central government on the one hand, and the devolution of power beyond the statal political bodies on the other, may lead to unwanted results – for both governments and residents. In Chapter 42, Miles Kenney-Lazar studies ‘global land grabbing’ through a case study of state land concessions in Laos, tracing the complex network of global capital and international, national and local political interests in planning processes. He argues that the problems of state land concessions – and planning in general – become understandable (and solvable) only if we understand their temporally stratified and spatially extended dynamics. The chapters in this part highlight the essential role that planning plays in the changing geographies of the state. This is not only because it contributes to the changes in the physical appearance of the state territory at different scales but above all because it opens manifold opportunities for different kind of actors to enter in strategic relations in the name of the state. Methodologically, the chapters clearly show that in order to understand the complex planning–state nexuses, research must be both context-sensitive – in the sense that it takes into account the specific histories and cultures of political regimes – and extensive, in the sense that it scrutinizes planning in relation to wider geopolitics of the state.

REFERENCES Brenner, N. (1997), ‘State territorial restructuring and the production of spatial scale: Urban and regional planning in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1960–1990’, Political Geography, 16 (4), 273–306. De Carvalho, B. (2016), ‘The making of the political subject: Subjects and territory in the formation of the state’, Theory and Society, 45 (1), 57–88. Gramsci, A. (2007), Prison Notebooks, Vol. 3, edited and translated by J.A. Buttigieg, New York: Columbia University Press. Healey, P., A. Khakee, A. Motte and B. Needham (eds) (1997), Making Strategic Spatial Plans: Innovation in Europe, London: University College London Press. Jessop, B. (1990), State Theory, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Luukkonen, J. (2015), ‘Planning in Europe for “EU” rope: Spatial planning as a political technology of territory’, Planning Theory, 14 (2), 174–94. Murton, G. and A. Lord (2020), ‘Trans-Himalayan power corridors: Infrastructural politics and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal’, Political Geography, 77, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​.polgeo​.2019​ .102100 Painter, J. (2010), ‘Rethinking Territory’, Antipode, 42 (5), 1090–1118. Ruwanpura, K.N., L. Chan, B. Brown and V. Kajotha (2020), ‘Unsettled peace? The territorial politics of roadbuilding in post-war Sri Lanka’, Political Geography, 76, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​.polgeo​.2019​ .102092

38. Private expertise and the reorganization of spatial planning in England Matthew Wargent, Gavin Parker and Emma Street

38.1 INTRODUCTION The influence of private-sector consultants in most, if not all, fields of public policy is now widely recognized. Since the concept of the ‘consultocracy’ (Hood and Jackson 1991, p. 24) was coined nearly 30 years ago, a heterogeneous field of research has emerged as consultants have become increasingly central to the operational logics of public administration and governance (Ylönen and Kuusela 2019). Spatial planning is no exception, with scholars increasingly recognizing the role of private-sector actors in shaping professional practice and the places they seek to create (Linovski 2016, 2019; Parker et al. 2018, 2019; Wargent et al. 2019). Indeed spatial planning is perhaps unique in terms of the scope and nature of private-sector influence, given the high level of interaction between public- and private-sector actors (Linovski 2019), and the historical role of consultants in the formation and operation of the profession in the United Kingdom (UK) (Inch et al. forthcoming). Yet little remains known concerning the role of consultants in everyday planning practice and how this contributes to the changing geography of the state. In recent years, the continual attempts to ‘modernize’, reform and deregulate planning have unfolded alongside an expanding consultancy sector, establishing a powerful dynamic which is increasingly difficult to disentangle (see Parker et al. 2018; Raco 2018). This chapter reflects on the role of the consultocracy in the transformation of the planning profession, to do so the chapter draws on the Strategic-Relational Approach (SRA) (Jessop 1990, 2001) to shed light on how shifting state structures affect political strategies and action, and vice versa (that is, the interrelation of structure and agency). This takes a lead from Valler et al. (2013) in emphasizing the ‘ideational realm’ which frames the motivations of actors and mediates the interplay between context and action, allowing particular ideas and practices to take hold. We therefore reflect on how the reform and reorganization of spatial planning in England has opened up significant market opportunities for private consultancies within the (local) state, and the ideational consistencies regarding public and private realms that have underpinned the privileged role afforded to private-sector actors.

38.2

NEOLIBERALISM, SPATIAL REORGANIZATION AND PLANNING REFORM IN ENGLAND

Planning is the policy area par excellence to consider the optimum degree of state intervention in private property rights and personal freedoms in the interests of local communities and wider society (Shepherd 2018). Unsurprisingly therefore it has been the subject of sustained government inquiry and reform, this has habitually concerned the procedural aspects of the 417

418  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state planning system, seeking to increase efficiency, review issues of public participation and accountability, but also to alter the spatial scale at which planning takes place. This section reflects on the ongoing problematizations of both the planning system in England and its operators through the lens of neoliberalism. In so doing, we will establish the contemporary context in which the private sector has been able to exercise greater influence within an ostensibly public planning system. Planning policy is established at the national level by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government via the National Planning Policy Framework. This sets out central government’s planning policies for England, how these should be applied and provides a framework within which locally prepared plans for housing and other development should be produced. The English planning system enjoys a wide range of discretion (unlike countries such as the United States where land use regulations are subject to constitutional challenge); development requires permission, as adjudicated by Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) who must take consideration of national policies, the local development plan (produced by the same authority, again in contrast to other countries such as the United States) and other ‘material considerations’. The shifting relationship between the central and local state, in particular the restraints and directions placed on the latter by the former, has been a central feature of planning practice since the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) effectively nationalized the right to develop land. Whilst the planning system has long been subject to periodic upheavals, it has been argued that recent reforms are more frequent and have taken on neoliberal and even postpolitical characteristics (Allmendinger 2016). Intrinsic to many reforms in the post-war period have been attempts to achieve universally accepted institutional and spatial ‘fixes’ for sub-national governance (McGuinness and Mawson 2017). Regional governance has been subject to endless tinkering with repeated failures creating a cycle of churn at the organizational, legislative and programmatic levels, in what Norris and Adam (2017, p. 11) term ‘redisorganisation’. Such processes have been mirrored within spatial planning: the revocation of Regional Spatial Strategies (2004–10) – themselves introduced when Structure Plans (1968–2004) were abolished – left England as the only major north-west European country without effective sub-national governance structures (outside London) for spatial planning (McGuinness and Mawson 2017). The removal of the planning’s regional tier was heavily condemned at the time by the responsible government committee for its far-reaching negative social, economic and environmental consequences (CLG Committee 2011). A broad coalition of interests, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England to the British Property Federation, called for greater consideration by government of ‘larger-than-local’ planning (Valler et al. 2013). Nonetheless, a new localist approach was ushered in to replace the regional one, including the introduction of a range of governance experiments such as Local Enterprise Partnerships, City and Devolution Deals and Neighbourhood Planning. In addition, a legal Duty to Cooperate with neighbouring authorities was placed on LPAs in order to address strategic planning matters beyond their immediate Local Plan.1 However, instead of creating a ‘simpler, quicker, cheaper and less bureaucratic planning system’ (Conservative Party 2010, p. 5), the reforms post-2010 have left local planning in England in a state of fragmentation and contrast (TCPA 2013; Parker et al. 2018), the Duty to Cooperate has not evolved to fill the strategic planning void (McGuinness and Mawson 2017), whilst the suite of localist reforms have precipitated a rise

Expertise and reorganization of spatial planning in England  419 in inter-urban competition to attract capital and increased reliance on market-led development (Raco 2018). Norris and Adam (2017) argue that constant spatial reorganization may be the result of disagreement about the appropriate spatial level to which to devolve powers, or about the purpose of regional governance more generally. They also highlight central government’s longstanding unwillingness to place trust in existing local institutions, as well as intransigence from local politicians, and conflicting messages from local citizens as problematic factors. As Lord and Tewdwr-Jones (2014, p. 357) have argued, the preoccupation with a ‘perpetual whirl of spatial configurations’ and their assembled logics masks more fundamental concerns regarding their wider (neoliberal) direction; indeed, processes of redisorganization can also be attributed to the neoliberal impulse for experimentation (Peck 2010). Although an increasingly problematic (or at least problematized) concept within planning scholarship, neoliberalism continues to serve as a provisional, if rather unsatisfactory, shorthand for trajectories of political change since the 1970s and the uneven development of a particular culture of governance in which the private realm is variously prioritized over the public one (Inch 2018). The variegated nature of neoliberalism can be explained in part by the contradictory field of political forces specific to spheres of local governance (see Newman 2014), but also propensity of neoliberal governance experiments ‘fail forward’ whilst reshaping the impure and contradictory yet ‘whole’ of actually existing neoliberalism: It is both an indictment of neoliberalism and testament to [neoliberalism’s] dogged dynamism, of course, that the laboratory experiments do not ‘work’. They have nevertheless tended to ‘fail forward’, in that their manifest inadequacies have – so far anyway – repeatedly animated further rounds of neoliberal invention. Devolved governance, public–private partnership, management by audit, neopaternalism … all can be seen as examples of institutional reinvention spawned as much by the limits of earlier forms of neoliberalization as by some advancing ‘logic’. (Peck 2010, p. 6)

Reforms to planning – notably the expansion of Permitted Development Rights2 and Enterprise Zones,3 the primacy afforded to Viability Assessments,4 legal obligations and increased pressure concerning Local Plan completion – can be seen to be driven by a neoliberal ideology that appears antipathetic to planning as a state activity, with system efficiency increasingly regarded as sine qua non and prioritized at the expense of alternative rationales or governance goals (Clifford 2016, p. 384). Many of these reforms have opened up market opportunities for consultants, well placed to service the growing exigencies of the planning system. These reforms have come at a time of significant government retrenchment in the UK, particularly keenly felt at the local level. Between 2010­­–11 and 2017–18, the total spend on local planning services by LPAs fell 14.6 per cent in real terms from £1.125 billion to £961 million between 2010–11 and 2017–18 (NAO 2019, p. 39). During this time local capacity and expertise have been undermined with a 15 per cent overall decrease in numbers of local planning staff between 2006 and 2016 (NAO 2019, p. 11). Deep cuts in central government grants have been offset by increased commercial activity within LPAs, using planning fees, pre-application discussions5 and Planning Performance Agreements6 to raise income. Austerity, coupled with a virulent strain of anti-statist rhetoric promulgated by central government over the same period (Featherstone et al. 2012), has placed huge pressure on LPAs to find efficiencies. This has resulted in LPAs adopting increasingly commercialized models and taking on new financial risks, meaning they are increasingly tying the solvency of LAs to market fluctuations (Raco 2018).

420  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Reductions in capacity have not coincided with a reduction in planning’s statutory responsibilities however. Prior to the Conservative administrations (2010–present), New Labour’s (1997–2010) rhetoric of ‘modernization’ brought with it a broader conceptualization planning’s role under the guise of spatial planning. Definitions of what spatial planning actually constitutes were, and continue to be, diverse and not always illuminating, beyond a focus upon the qualities and management of space and place (see, RTPI 2001). The renewed interest in planning, however, brought with it a strong emphasis on evidence-based policy and a significant expansion in statutory regulations (e.g. Lord and Hincks 2010). Indeed by the 1990s, planners had already become increasingly embroiled in technical exercises such as environmental and retail impact assessments, and these new demands had the effect of funnelling planners into new specialist and technical roles, with the remainder left to interpret these inputs into new political processes through a process of ‘residualization’ (Higgins and Allmendinger 1999, p. 44). This duality of functions was reinforced as planners also became involved in other non-traditional areas of work such as town centre management and nature conservation. Consultants began to be frequently employed to complete such tasks, or else interpret them for the relevant authority (Davoudi and Healey 1990; Higgins and Allmendinger 1999). Throughout this period, planning’s raison d’être has continued to be facilitating growth – a focus that dates back to the Thatcher administrations (1979–90). More recently however the framing of planning has become ‘more rational, technocratic, and planned through the formal scales of planning’ (Haughton et al. 2013, p. 225). The primacy of rationality and evidence within planning practice was consolidated by the Planning and Compensation Act (1991) that explicitly established a plan-led system. Further emphasis was placed on evidence in 2004, when the notion of ‘soundness’ entered legislation: whether a plan can be considered to be ‘sound’ relates to its conformity with higher-tier plans and policies but also whether or not it is based on evidence (Davoudi 2006). More recently, renewed political emphasis on Local Plans has further pressurized LPAs to produce more robust plans and in a shorter timeframe. A Local Plan’s evidence base comprises a significant number of ostensibly discrete studies and assessments that can be completed in isolation (i.e. without reference to the rest of the plan) by any qualified expert – before these inputs are then used to assemble the plan itself. At a time of a constricted public sector, the consultancy market has been well placed to service such tasks within an increasingly task-based, compartmentalized planning system (Parker et al. 2018). This expansion of planning regulations and evidentiary requirements can be seen as symptomatic of the rise of regulatory capitalism, where the (smaller and streamlined) state commissions the activities of non-state providers to deliver services traditionally provided by the former (Braithwaite 2008). In line with the New Public Management (NPM) thesis, one facet of a more ‘businesslike’ approach to public administration has been the ‘reconceptualization of analytical inputs as commodities, rather than integral parts of government’s pursuit of the public interest’ (Perl and White 2002, p. 66). This increased regulatory burden (i.e. rollout neoliberalism) has not been entirely one directional. The introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012 and the passing of the Deregulation Act (2015) have sought to deregulate planning (i.e. rollback neoliberalism) regulation, alongside moves to allow ‘alternative providers’ to process development proposals. Some attempts to roll back regulation have acted to create new burdens or else shift the burdens to different parties, as is the case with Permitted Development Rights (Clifford et al. 2018). Nonetheless demands on planners remain formidable: notably the negotiation of

Expertise and reorganization of spatial planning in England  421 planning agreements, the production of binding Local Plans and managing ambiguities around the Duty to Cooperate. This cycle of deregulation and reregulation reveals the incomplete nature of neoliberalism, as the planning system is pulled in different directions by both ideological conceptions of its role by myriad actors. The effect of such back-and-forth of regulatory change (what might be termed rock-and-roll neoliberalism) creates another form of burden, with local planners having to get up to speed with regulatory changes with increasing frequency. This provides further market opportunities for consultancies to advise both public and private clients on the effect of new regulations, and to shape new initiatives through lobbying and practice (Parker et al. 2019). One example of this has been Neighbourhood Planning, a voluntary initiative that allows communities to author statutory development plans for their (ostensibly self-defined) neighbourhood. By officially recognizing the smaller-than-local scale in England for the first time, Neighbourhood Planning is a further example of spatial reorganization that has placed greater demands on LPAs to support participating communities and master a new set of regulations (Parker et al. 2015). The majority of participating communities have enlisted the help of consultants, typically paid for through state grants awarded to communities, where they have become integral to all parts of the process (Wargent and Parker 2018), mediating between communities and professionals, shaping the structures that govern their own and others’ conduct (Wargent et al. 2019). This section has sought to explicate how substantive changes to UK planning (resource constraints in the public sector, the increase in technical demands and new forms of knowledge and the frequency of top-down reform) have opened up market opportunities to private sector actors. The following section explores the rationales deployed within the planning context that have facilitated the increasing influence of the private sector.

38.3

IDEATIONAL CONTINUITIES AND THE INCREASING INFLUENCE OF PRIVATE EXPERTISE

The history of planning in the UK is one of shifting roles, responsibilities and claims to knowledge between public and private sectors. The majority of planning scholarship however continues to focus on the work of public-sector employees – yet before 1947, planning was an almost exclusively private pursuit of a group of architect-planners. In the post-war period consultants continued to play various roles and lay claim to particular forms of knowledge, with both private and public sectors as clients. Although difficult to trace precisely, throughout this period the proportion of planners working in the private sector has proved relatively consistent – around a fifth of the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) membership – with notably lower points in the late 1950s and early 1980s. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, however, the number of consultants has increased significantly, approaching half of the RTPI’s membership. The result is a substantial and adaptive planning consultancy market in the UK, with larger firms consolidating their position by retaining sizeable contracts and client bases and absorbing other consultancies, alongside a parallel process of diversification through the mushrooming of smaller firms both responding to changing needs and markets in planning and development services (Raco 2018, pp. 128–32). Within the UK at least, the increasing role of private actors within the (local) state has been largely overlooked. Recent research has shown for example that Local Plans cannot be

422  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state produced without private-sector input (Wargent et al. 2019), and yet detailed investigations into the creation and purpose of such plans neglects to recognize their influence (LPEG 2016). The shifting political, economic and institutional context within which planning is performed therefore is one that appears ambivalent to the increased influence of the private sector. Recognizing the contrast between the constrained agency of local public planners and the growing ambit of consultants reveals the trajectory of reforms within a strategically selective context that privileges particular interests and activities. Private actors not only service the demands of the planning system, but in the case of larger consultancies have significant access to the central machinery of government and central planning functions. This is achieved through traditional lobbying activities (see Linovski 2019), conducting research for central government departments, responding to policy consultations and advising departments directly. For instance, in 2018, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government employed two consultancies, AECOM and Intelligent Plans and Examinations, to assess the abilities of a number of English LPAs to write their own Local Plan, with a view to the same specialists undertaking work on plan production should the LPAs not comply in the time required. Such examples reveal the significant capacity of private-sector agents to adjust regulatory structures, and in this case secure their market position, due to the ‘strategically selective’ nature of structures, which operate to reinforce particular actions whilst discouraging alternatives (Jessop 1990, pp. 9–10). The ‘take-off’ point for private-sector planning around the millennium also saw a subtle change in the perennial debates about the distinctive knowledge base of planning. Despite the view that there is not, and cannot, be a distinctive intellectual base or competence for planning (Reade 1987), planners have frequently laid claim to a distinctive form of knowledge derived from the connections between the physical environment or design base and social science elements (Brown et al. 2003). However, in 2001, planning’s professional institute began to argue that the profession should see ‘planning as an activity which professional planners facilitate, but do not own or monopolise’ (RTPI 2001, p. 2), thereby recognizing the profession’s permeable boundaries, the different kinds of expertise required in planning and to some extent that claims to professional authority have become increasingly open to challenge (Campbell and Marshall 2005, pp. 208–9). This rhetorical shift coincided with both the expansion of technical inputs required to service the planning system, and a near continuous reorganization of planning and spatial governance recounted above (Parker et al. 2018). Despite these shifting sands, the definitional boundaries of who can be formally labelled as a chartered town planner remain little changed. A further consistency, dating back to the Schuster Committee on the Qualifications of Planners (1950), has been the need to attract the ‘best and brightest’ into planning (Inch et al. forthcoming) – reflecting persistent fears about the calibre of public planning professionals and their ability to operate the planning system effectively and creatively. Attacks on the ability of planners recur throughout the post-war period, perhaps most notably during the early Thatcher administrations of the 1980s when ‘planner bashing’ became a national pastime (Hague 1984, p. 96). Indeed recent attacks on planners as a ‘burden on business’ (alongside attempts to create ‘market-orientated’ planners) and doubts about the ability of planners themselves are a direct imitation of earlier Conservative governments (e.g. Lifting the Burden White Paper in 1985). Questions over the ability of public planners is one example of a remarkably durable set of beliefs about the characteristics of both public and private realms. These relate to the skills, expertise and dispositions of the actors within each sector, as well as the opportunities that

Expertise and reorganization of spatial planning in England  423 exist within each. Such ‘myths’ are not limited to planning and are widely shared in other industries and professions and indeed in society more generally (e.g. Mazzucato 2014). One persistent example is the belief that private-sector careers offer more scope to graduating students to utilize their creative skills in planning and urban design, whereas the public sector is marked by bureaucracy (Ferm 2018, p. 47). The creativity/bureaucratic distinction can again be traced back to the inception of the planning system: a report authored by senior civil servants in the then Ministry of Town and Country Planning in 1950 claimed that public planners are typically: immersed in statutory responsibilities and day to day ‘cases’ can seldom have the time even if they have the experience to tackle these constructive jobs. If it were recognised that this sort of work is often best done by consultants the officers of the public authorities can become more purely administrative (which may be dull for them but is inevitable).7

The corresponding view that consultants embody innovation, autonomy and visionary expertise (Cherry 1974) continues today, as Linovski (2016, p. 461) has found in the North American context: ‘The belief that consultants were more creative, had a better understanding of market forces, and were less bound by the existing political and bureaucratic framework than city employees, was used to reinforce both their expertise and autonomy. In contrast, public sector professionals were posited as having administrative or regulatory expertise.’ Such myths have survived the increasing fluidity between public and private sectors within contemporary planning practice. Recent years have seen increasing mobility across roles (such as regeneration, policy making and development control) and between public and private sectors (Brown et al. 2003). Work by Linovski (2019) suggests that the fluidity of professionals between projects, sectors and firms has had the effect of reinforcing the perceived ‘value and neutrality’ of consultant expertise, with the effect of aligning public- and private-sector planning processes and resulting in a high degree of influence for development interests. Indeed, much of the logic of consultancy continues to be based on a modernist view of disembedded knowledge that can be dispassionately and legitimately applied regardless of context. In this spirit, Zanotto (2019) has recently described various forms of ‘detachment’ that planners can deploy in practice – principally, denying the link between the ‘technical service’ they provide and the social structures that both shape and are sustained by their actions. This understanding of technical inputs as divorced from socio-political outcomes they seek to effect is well established, as indeed is a normative ideal of public/private partnership working, as this comment by Sir Patrick Abercrombie to the Schuster Committee in 1949 attests: a Planning Consultant is really no different in essence from a consultant in any other technical capacity e.g. Engineering, Drainage and Water Supply or Architectural. The object of calling-in an outside consultant is to have someone to collaborate with the Local Officer: the first brings experience gained from a wide and varied practice, the second brings profound local information. Each technician, the outsider and the local man [sic] should be of equal calibre for the best results to be obtained.8

Such caricatures appear to have been reinforced by the residualization effects of increasingly technocratic planning described by Higgins and Allmendinger (1999). Indeed, the fragmentation of planning described by Parker et al. (2018) mirrors that of private-sector work into deliverable ‘packages’ that can be commodified. Zanotto (2019, p. 49) argues that such

424  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state fragmentation is a necessary process that allows planners to ‘narrow the lens through which they reflect upon their work and establish a sense of distance between their practices, planning values, and the politics of their work’ and allow for ‘chameleon-like’ (see Hillier 2002) behaviours in seeking to service the interests of different parties. Zanotto’s (2019, p. 47) description of planning consultants working for private developers in Brazil reveals how the former can come to sympathize with the concerns of the latter, adopt their language and echo their criticisms of the public sector: Planners’ acknowledgement of market forces is part of a broader understanding of their practice – an understanding shaped by interactions with developers, their own experience dealing with regulatory agencies, and their perception of urban problems … Planners express a critical view of regulatory agencies and echo their clients’ [i.e. developers] complaints that agencies have excessive requirements and do not communicate with one another, the approval process is too long, public employees are too slow and not helpful, and information is often unclear. They share with their clients the belief that the public sector is unable to perform its duties and the private market must step in. Thus, planners express favorable views of market influence in planning and regulating the city.

Both Linovski’s (2019) and Zanotto’s (2019) findings indicate how the habitus of planning and the elision of public and private working practices might presage or reinforce the marketization of planning (see, Raco 2018). In other words, this raises interesting questions about ‘relations of co-production’ (Parker et al. 2019, p. 167) that exist between public and private planners – as well as myriad other stakeholders involved in the front line of planning practice, not least local politicians. Invoking Hillier’s (2002, pp. 193–217) analogy, Zanotto (2019, p. 48) argues that private-sector professionals act as chameleons in emphasizing the technical aspects of their work, but also deploy particular strategies as ‘market missionaries’, with use of detachment again central to this process: Rather than concerning itself with planning’s grand narratives, detachment is about utilizing one’s professional expertise to perform the task at hand, to think about ‘that one parcel and that one developer’; to please ‘whoever hired us’ … It concerns specific, small, and temporally and spatially localized actions. Although the outcomes of these actions may have broad implications, detached planners believe that it is not their job to think about those.

Employing detachment allows planners to engage in a form of mimesis, supposedly channelling the motivations, dispositions and perspectives of their client. This may mean embracing the views of developers as above, but it also allows consultants acting for public clients to embrace values typically associated with the ‘public interest’ such as environmental concerns, inclusion and sustainability. Such a reading presents a contradiction between consultants’ supposed impartiality and an ability to adopt their client’s motivations. In this light, Linovski (2019, pp. 1693–94) shows how flexible beliefs concerning consultants allow a mediation between public and private interests: the influence lies in shaping the focus – or realm of possibilities – for municipal policies, rather than the day-to-day negotiations around projects and policies … These processes could not occur without the presence of a shadow agency of consultant planners – seen as ‘friendly’ firms and often headed by former city staff – moving fluidly between public- and private-sector contracts. This close network between public- and private-sector professionals obscured the differing interests that they represented

Expertise and reorganization of spatial planning in England  425 and limited the realm of possibilities considered. The end result is a seeming convergence of development and public interests, mobilized through the work of professional consultants.

As such, despite consultants often being perceived as politically independent, their involvement may help facilitate the integration of neoliberal ideologies and reconceptualize public values (Diefenbach 2009). Such a view recognizes policy actors as ‘sociologically complex’, with individuals’ ‘identities and professional trajectories … bound up with the policy positions and fixes that they espouse’ (Peck and Theodore 2010, p. 170). This opposes sections of the wider consultocracy literature that seeks to reify ‘turbulent’ policy fields whilst bracketing out consultants, treating them as a response to the turbulence, rather than as integral to its reproduction as turbulent (Prince 2012, p. 196). A further characteristic typically applied to consultants is that of efficiency (see Wargent et al. 2019). A central trope of planning discourse, efficiency – usually interpreted as ‘speeding up’ the planning system, either ‘getting out of the way’ of, or actively facilitating, the market, whilst achieving reduced costs – has preoccupied central government in the UK since at least the 1960s (Parker et al. 2018). Informed by Public Choice Theory, the pursuit of greater efficiency has gone hand in hand with the shift to consultocracy and managerialism, underpinned by ‘a belief that consultants provide knowledge that the public sector cannot produce’ – as one consultant relayed to Ylönen and Kuusela (2019, p. 252): an ‘efficiency perspective is pretty much a built-in characteristic of consultants, and for a consultant, it is difficult to see it as politics’. Although originally a preoccupation of the public planning system, efficiency is now firmly the preserve of the private sector, particularly larger firms that can highlight wide ranging experience and economies of scale. Such perceptions make the commissioning of private expertise uncontroversial – and may in fact be driven more by faith than by rationality. The value of the SRA approach here is the emphasis placed on the ideational realm, the discursive construction of perceptions that legitimize the strategizing of specific actors. The persistence of certain understandings around public and private realms helps explain the unproblematized rise of private actors in an ostensibly public planning system, just as much as substantive policy shifts. Indeed, the two are symbiotic, as can be seen by the UK localist agenda pursued since 2010, that is rooted in a powerful spatial imaginary through which an anti-state agenda has been mobilized (Featherstone et al. 2012). This has furthered the belief that the local state should adopt more businesslike approaches (i.e. NPM) and align itself with the private sector’s working practices, creating a context in which consultant use is all but inevitable.

38.4 CONCLUSIONS Changes to planning in England over the past two decades have opened up significant market opportunities for private-sector actors who are becoming increasingly central to planning systems and the places they seek to govern. This chapter has sought to show how the confluence of substantial policy shifts (increased technical demands and new forms of knowledge required from planners to service the planning system, the frequency of reform and spatial reorganization of planning and resource constraints in the public sector) and ideational consistencies (persistent beliefs about public and private attributes, dominance of NPM and anti-statist rhetoric) have created and maintained the conditions for the rise of the so-called

426  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ‘consultocracy’. Private actors increasingly contribute to the production and transformation of state territory as a spatial entity through privileged, or at the very least, increased access to spaces of governance both within and without the planning system. The changing geography of planning in the UK since 2010, and the continued whirl of spatial ‘redisorganization’, continues to create market opportunities for external experts to service an emaciated local state. We have briefly drawn on the SRA approach here, and suggest it may prove to be a useful way through which to consider the rise of the consultocracy, given its emphasis on the ideational and discursive levels which underscore processes of perception and strategizing on the part of specific actors (Valler et al. 2013), as well as the substantive effect of reforms. Although the influence of private professionals on the operation of the public planning system is increasingly well recognized, much less is known about the agency of consultants and the reworking of local planning cultures and the wider professional ethos. The profession itself appears to have been slow on the uptake regarding the scale and significance of the privatization of planning, despite the potential for fundamental alterations to its structures and purpose. The relationship between planning departments and external capacity and expertise may not be a new phenomenon, but such entanglements are becoming both more intricate and more opaque, creating an interdependence that may leave LPAs – and public authorities more generally – vulnerable. The increasingly co-dependent relationship between public and private planners makes it progressively more difficult to pull apart the ideological rationalities that drive governmental reform and frame everyday practice; and just as problematically, such processes of privatization also raise attendant questions concerning democratic legitimacy, accountability and transparency.

NOTES 1. Local Plans are statutory planning documents that set out a framework of strategic priorities for future development within an LPA’s jurisdiction. They cover a range of issues including: housing; commercial development (such as retail and leisure); infrastructure (including transport, minerals, waste, energy and water supply) and education, health, police and community facilities; and the protection of the natural and historic environment. Since 2010 greater salience has been placed on Local Plans, and significant political pressure has been exerted by central government to keep plans up to date. The duty to develop Local Plans lies with the LPA although the assembly of a plan involves significant input from the private sector in various and increasing capacities yet little remains known about the nature and extent of their input. 2. Permitted Development Rights are a form of deregulation that allow certain changes to buildings without the need to apply for planning permission. 3. Enterprise Zones are geographical areas in which commercial and industrial businesses receive incentives to set up or expand (for example business rate discounts and capital allowances to purchase machinery and equipment). 4. Viability Assessments involve the process of assessing whether a site is financially feasible, through considering whether the value generated by a development is more than the cost of developing it. This can include looking at variables such as gross development value, costs, land value, landowner premium and developer return. 5. Pre-application discussions are a collaborative process between a prospective applicant for planning permission and LPAs (as well as local politicians, local people and other consultees). As a discretionary service, LPAs can charge prospective applicants for the service. 6. Planning Performance Agreements are a project management tool entered into by the prospective applicant for planning permission and the LPA in order to agree timescales, actions and resources

Expertise and reorganization of spatial planning in England  427 for handling particular applications. As with pre-application discussions, LPAs can charge prospective applicants for the service. 7. The National Archives HLG/87/2: Schuster Committee Agenda and Minutes and Committee Papers, Sketch for Report, QP15, p. 16. 8. Ibid.

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39. Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation Carola Fricke and Enrico Gualini

39.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter addresses the connection between metropolitanization and state spatial transformation. It discusses this connection by tracing the way in which understandings of the nature of metropolitanization processes and of the functional performance of metropolitan regions have influenced state policies over time, contributing to defining ‘the metropolitan’ as an object of state policy. This allows by the same token tracing the way in which metropolitanization and its scholarly understanding are related to the broader phenomenon of state spatial transformation under specific conditions – with a focus in particular on contemporary processes of state change. This perspective is pertinent in as far as, on the one hand, metropolitan regions are a long-term and recurrent topic of concern for policy makers as well as for urban and regional scholars. On the other hand, both scholarly and policy understandings recently mark significant shifts. Academics from various fields – particularly urban-regional geography, economy, public administration and spatial planning – have repeatedly promoted a critical reflection on the metropolitan as a socio-spatial and political reality – often in connection with a perceived urgency for institutional or policy reform. In a traditional understanding, metropolitan policies have thus engaged with the ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ territorial structure of the state in facing socio-spatial developments – an issue particularly apparent in the highly dynamic and ‘fuzzy’ socio-spatial reality represented by metropolitanization. More recently, however, a decided shift has emerged towards focusing on the positioning and development of larger urban areas as instances of spatial development strategies. Accordingly, implications of the ‘metropolitan question’ for the political geographies of the state have significantly changed. This shift in understandings of metropolitan regions in state policies mirrors a variety of policy experiments. Since the inception of debates on the rescaling of metropolitan regions, new forms of metropolitan governance such as in Stuttgart or Lyon, political initiatives on the metropolitan such as the network of large cities ‘metropolis’ since 2004 or the forum of the European Metropolitan Authorities since 2015 have emerged particularly in Europe next to more traditional attempts at introducing metropolitan authorities as a territorial level by national laws (in France, Italy and Poland). Protagonists of this ‘new wave’ of metropolitan policies in Europe have diversified, playing in multiple political arenas with varying territorial and scalar references. The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical overview of the shift in debates and key concepts of metropolitanization as they have been presented in political science, geography and urban studies. The chapter focuses on the academic debate that reflects and influences policies on metropolitan regions and metropolitanization. A historical overview on institutional, geo429

430  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state graphical and planning perspectives on metropolitan regions as a particular type of subnational space contributes to contextualizing more recent approaches towards metropolitan regions as arenas and issues of rescaling processes. Thereby, the chapter inquires into the research on metropolitan policies in the emerging multi-scalar geographies of the state. In this respect, it ties in with scholarly debates over the changing role of cities, city-regions and urban politics in defining the meaning of statehood within national states as well as in international and transnational perspectives (see, for example, Crouch and Le Galès 2012; Le Galès 2002; Moisio 2018; Oosterlynck et al. 2019). However, our emphasis is different, and involves a broader consideration of shifts in the nature of state modes and scales of socio-spatial regulation, of which metropolitan regions are a specific expression (see Gross et al. 2018; Gualini and Gross 2018). In exploring the shifting (academic) understandings of metropolitan regions, this chapter reviews the changing spatial and scalar arguments mobilized for dealing with metropolitan regions as specific analytical and/or policy objects. Section 39.2 reviews state-centric and institutionalist approaches rooted in political science on metropolitan regions as issues of governance and territorial reform. Section 39.3 confronts these institutionalist accounts with spatially sensitive approaches by tracing the shifting focus from multi-level governance to multi-spatial meta-governance and to metropolitan regions as instances of rescaling. Section 39.4 then refers to the framework of socio-spatial configurations or spatial dimensions of policies (Jessop 2016, pp. 21ff.) for discussing selected examples of the way in which recent research analyses metropolitan regions as sites, objects and means of policies.

39.2

UNDERSTANDING THE FORMATION AND GOVERNANCE OF METROPOLITAN REGIONS IN PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Scholars on public policy and local governance focus on the political dimension of metropolitan regions and particularly on their institutional and organizational characteristics. This state-centric strand of research has repeatedly framed metropolitan regions as objects of governance and as issues of territorial reform. Thereby, scholars’ suggestions on how to govern metropolitan regions have shifted over time, namely, from integrated reform models and intergovernmental, public choice models, towards new forms of metropolitan governance and, more recently, the renaissance of metropolitan government. In this state-centric tradition, the ‘metropolitan question’ has been long framed by approaches which share a ‘realist’ attitude in that they understand metropolitan issues primarily in relation to the territorial articulation of subnational spaces, and assume the ontological possibility of a matching or ‘goodness of fit’ between their regulatory capacity and the observed socio-spatial phenomena. Their different epistemological and normative orientations, however, result in competing and shifting understandings of the issue. 39.2.1 Metropolitanization as ‘Realist’ Challenge: State Modernization and Territorial Reform Understanding metropolitan regions as spaces of state politics has traditionally faced a double paradox. In a modernist tradition of territorial articulation of statehood, the metropolitan dimension does not only reveal an absence, an institutional void, often difficult to fill within

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  431 a delicate and contested balance of political-administrative powers. The metropolitan also reveals its plasticity, as the dynamics of socio-spatial development on the verge of post-Fordist capitalism makes apprehending metropolitan phenomena and attempting their institutional fixing increasingly elusive. The metropolitan reform approach stands in a tradition of state modernization, according to which metropolitanization processes require consolidating the territorial articulation of the state, typically by providing politically and functionally viable meso-level jurisdictions. Numerous independent local authorities within a metropolitan area are seen as hampering efficient and equitable delivery of public services. Accordingly, metropolitan consolidation is advocated in order to bring institutional boundaries to match the spatial scale of socio-economic phenomena, through either annexations or the formation of metropolitan governments extended to cover the whole of the urbanized area. Metropolitan government entails therefore not only the geographical challenge of realizing an elusive matching between metropolitan dynamics and territory. It also entails the political challenge of establishing institutional arrangements endowed with the requisite features of political legitimacy (e.g. direct election of representatives), meaningful autonomy from both central governments and local authorities (e.g. political, financial and human resources) and wide-ranging competences with relevant territorial coverage (e.g. matching functional areas) (see Lefèvre 1998). The metropolitan reform tradition has thus originated a variety of models and experiments in establishing meso-level authorities facing common functional-administrative challenges at varying degrees of intergovernmental complexity (see Barlow 1991, p. 282). Accordingly, ‘for effective metropolitan government to exist there needs to be jurisdiction over an appropriate space and control of an appropriate span of governmental functions and responsibilities’ (Barlow 1991, p. xi). Apparently ‘an elusive, if not illusory, goal’ (ibid., p. 1), as shown by ‘a long series of disappointing experiments’ (Lefèvre 1998, p. 13) in implementing the metropolitan model proved unable to establish durable institutional arrangements. Examples for these (failed) attempts at metropolitan reform include communiteès urbaines in France, British metropolitan authorities, stadsprovincies in the Netherlands, first-generation città metropolitane in Italy, but also eminent cases such as the Metropolitan Corporation in Barcelona or the Greater Copenhagen Council. 39.2.2 Metropolitanization as the Formation of Governance Spaces Alternatives to integrated approaches to metropolitan government range from pragmatic adjustment to competitive laissez-faire. The polycentric model combines unitary jurisdiction and decentralized service provision ‘by means of ad hoc bodies and by intermunicipal cooperation arrangements’ (Barlow 2000, p. 250). With its ‘many centres of political and administrative control’ (ibid.), the model extends beyond statutory jurisdictional tasks to include negotiated, contractualized intergovernmental relations (e.g. transfer of functions where services adversely affected by fragmentation are lifted to higher levels of government, or transfer of revenues for purposes of equalization), intergovernmental cooperation (e.g. intermunicipal cooperation through voluntary pooling or upscaling of service provision), as well as a role for special purpose authorities dedicated to functional tasks. A distinctive performance orientation also characterizes the two main competing approaches developed as alternatives to metropolitan reform. The ‘public choice approach’ – deeply

432  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state rooted in an American (neo)liberal tradition (see Ostrom et al. 1961, 1978, 1988) – gained new salience with the rise of the ‘New Urban Politics’ agenda (see Peterson 1981; see also MacLeod 2011). The public choice perspective radically challenges the principle of jurisdictional consolidation, favouring a competition-based understanding of effective and efficient metropolitan service delivery. Competition among autonomous local governments is seen as more effective in matching demands for urban services and more efficient in allocating public resources than any metropolitan authority. This is in line with Tiebout’s (1956) ‘foot-voting’ model of locational choice, as expressed by citizens’ and firms’ free pursuit of the best-fitting tax-service package across jurisdictions. Translating public choice into the jargon of European governance, Frey and Eichenberger (2001) have popularized the model of ‘functional, overlapping, competing jurisdictions’ as a solution to the dilemma of fiscal (in)equivalence in jurisdictionally fragmented metropolitan areas. Due to metropolitan fragmentation, central cities either produce the optimal amount of public services for a metropolitan scale – getting into fiscal crisis – or restrict the supply of services – jeopardizing the overall competitiveness of the metropolitan area. As governmental reform approaches are seen as not effective, the alternative is flexible, taskand function-oriented governance. The model appears as a normative rationalization of the extended governance arrangements developing – particularly in Europe – since the 1990s, characterized by a variety of functional, task-specific, ad hoc jurisdictions, overlapping and non-mutually exclusive to existing territorial jurisdictions (see Hooghe and Marks 2003). ‘New metropolitan governance’, on the other hand, rejects public choice assumptions of disjointed competition, while embracing the ideal of a lean state. It shares with new regionalism a shift towards a cooperative, synergetic understanding of governance arrangements and networks. The state’s task in providing effective metropolitan governance goes beyond institutional consolidation as metropolitan problems require purpose-oriented and task-specific forms of coordination and cooperation, involving local governments, governmental agencies and private actors. The focus is on task-specific relationships among actors rather than institutional structures and jurisdictional boundaries. Area-wide governance outcomes can be achieved through cooperative arrangements that stabilize networks of policy-relevant actors. Authors such as Savitch and Vogel (2000) understand this as a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ by which local authorities are enabled and enabling to provide services without necessarily producing them, through a variety of arrangements with actors including other governments, non-profits or private corporations. As it emphasizes horizontal over vertical relations and negative over positive coordination, new metropolitan governance has been viewed as a redefinition of the reform tradition – even a neo-progressive one (see Lowery 2001) as allowing for reconciliation of issues of local democracy and citizen satisfaction (or, in other terms, of input and output legitimacy) in dealing with metropolitan challenges (for critical perspectives, see Gordon 2001; MacLeod 2001; Ward and Jonas 2004). 39.2.3 Metropolitanization and State Change in a Critical Social-Constructivist Perspective The reasons for failure of metropolitan reforms and for shifts in practices and discourses since the late 1980s and 1990s are multiple (Jouve and Lefèvre 2002; Lefèvre 1998, 2001). Spatial development patterns of post-Fordist urban areas involved phenomena of sub- and counter-urbanization (Berry 1976; Fielding 1982; Hall and Hay 1980) which reversed the

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  433 vector of metropolitan development. The development of complex ‘urban fields’, of diffuse ‘postmetropolitan’ urbanization patterns and of new regional geographies of economic production and capitalist accumulation (see Scott 2001; Scott et al. 2001; Soja 2000) challenged the adequacy of the metropolitan growth paradigm for understanding the geography of metropolitanization processes. Moreover, the crisis of the welfare state – ‘financial certainly, but also intellectual in its inability to produce relevant policies with which to tackle the problems which have arisen’ (Lefèvre 1998, p. 9) – emphasizes the salience of power struggles of the national state as it addresses decentralization or introduces devolution, which alter a delicate balance of political powers. And finally, the above-mentioned relative shifts from government to governance imply a loss of centrality in policy-making (steering and representation) for traditional state actors. The ‘renaissance’ of metropolitan governments in the 1990s is therefore linked to new forms of public action (Le Galès 2002; Lefèvre 1998, 2001). More complex systems of actors and different forms of action support a paradigm shift towards governance. Metropolitan authorities are increasingly conceived as a new form of institution, bringing into play the ingredients of ‘good governance’ in order to achieve consensus among actors on common, shared objectives. Accordingly, scholarly attention is devoted to its requisite but problematic conditions. First and foremost, scholars focus on conflict-avoiding strategies under conditions of interdependence, capable of providing soft norms for consultation and consensus building, pragmatism and effective negative coordination, incentive structures provided by higher-level institutions and political leadership. Metropolitan governance is hence conceived increasingly as an issue of collective action and strategic planning (see Albrechts et al. 2003), as the institutional capacity to create integrative frames, to mobilize images of the future, to frame and vision (see Section 39.4 for recent examples of how to analyse the spatial dimension of metropolitan politics). For instance, Van den Berg et al. (1997a) define metropolitan organizing capacity as ‘the capacity to develop and implement strategies needed to respond to fundamental changes in society and to create conditions for a sustainable metropolitan development’. Another crucial aspect is the need for ‘a vision of metropolitan development, producing strategies and concrete objectives’, as a means for directing organizing capacity as ‘the overall metropolitan development vision is translated into related, consistent strategies for separate aspects’ (Van den Berg et al. 1997b). Or, again, metropolitan governance is defined as ‘organizing connectivity’ (Salet et al. 2003), tackling not only the fragmentation of actors and institutions, but also the ‘disconnectedness of learning practices and policies’ (ibid., p. 377). In a multi-level environment, this calls for strategies of local cooperation, for involvement in supra-regional coalitions and for linkages to global economic and cultural networks.

39.3

METROPOLITAN REGIONS AS INSTANCES OF RESCALING IN MULTI-SCALAR CONTEXTS

As governance practices and discourses largely constitute their own objects (Jessop 2000), in metropolitan governance, too, ‘the production of the actor and the action are concomitant’ (Lefèvre 1998, p. 9). Accordingly, critical research has developed more complex accounts connecting state, space and scalar geographies in order to understand the social and political construction of metropolitan policy spaces. Critique is directed against the quasi-naturalization

434  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state of issues and problems as well as the reification of socio-spatial entities as units of analysis and action. This applies in particular to ‘methodological territorialism’ in combination with objectivized conceptions of the state as an entity (Jessop 2002; Brenner et al. 2003; Brenner 2004). Spatially sensitive research on metropolitanization as state spatial transformation thus attempts to overcome the state-centric view of institutionalist approaches. 39.3.1 Metropolitan Scales: From Multi-Level Governance to Multi-Spatial Meta-Governance Our previous review of approaches to metropolitan regions emphasizes that the creation of metropolitan governance spaces often intends to solve cooperation and coordination problems in between jurisdictions or governmental tiers of a given urbanized area. Attempts at metropolitan reform in a traditional understanding thus regularly intend to foster cooperation between or to merge multiple levels of government (vertical governance) or adjacent municipalities (horizontal governance). This understanding of metropolitan regions corresponds with a static understanding of scales as ‘levels of state spatial organization – for example the global, national, regional and local scales of the modern interstate system’ (Brenner 2009, p. 127). The concept of multi-level governance – first introduced to describe the rise of subnational actors and new forms of coordination in the context of the European Union’s (EU) regional policies (Hooghe 1996; Marks et al. 1996) – however is inadequate to capture the phenomena involved in rescaling. Multi-level governance refers to shifts from territorially organized hierarchies to negotiated decision making in the public sphere beyond the dominance of the national state. The concept highlights the redistribution of state power and the rise of subnational actors in the supra-national policy-making. Accordingly, new opportunities emerge for subnational actors to be involved in governance practices, as European integration opened a new playing field for cities and regions (Flinders and Bache 2004; Le Galès 2002). Metropolitan policies and particularly state-led initiatives of territorial reform creating metropolitan regions often take place in a multi-level system such as federal or decentralized states. Thereby, metropolitan regions become objects of vertical governance processes, which correspond to a processual understanding of ‘state scalar selectivity … as an expression, a medium and an outcome of political strategies’ (Brenner 2009, p. 127). From a rescaling perspective, however, the emergence of urban and regional actors can be interpreted as an expression of multi-scalar processes developing in a context of globalization and transnationalization (e.g. European integration) (Brenner 1999, p. 443). This entails understanding the emergence of metropolitan regions as new scales of governance not only with regard to their relationship with local, regional and national scales, but also in the context of transnational, supra-national and global processes. Analysing metropolitan regions as instances of state rescaling requires therefore considering their embeddedness in multi-scalar contexts beyond the notion of multi-level governance and the vagueness of its reference to ‘levels’ (Jessop 2016; Gualini 2016). The rescaling literature offers a nuanced and sophisticated perspective on the variegated governance spaces constituted in metropolitan areas and on metropolitan policies as the outcome of the interplay of multiple scalar practices.

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  435 39.3.2 Metropolitan Policy and the Political Economy of Rescaling Developing a critical perspective on the configuration of socio-spatial relations has been fostered by neo-Marxian analyses of the political economy of space under changing conditions of capitalist accumulation, as well as by a critical-interpretive attention to the policy-driven construction of spatial concepts and understandings. Geographers thereby critiqued the naturalizing conception of competitiveness’ spatial conditions and of its instrumentalization as politics of territorial competition (Cox 1993; Harvey 1985). This critique has sensitized to the risks involved in the reification of geographical entities in policy discourses and in disguising underlying power relations. Since the early 1990s, the extension of urban entrepreneurialism to the scale of metropolitan agglomerations contributes to a shift in state-led spatial policy away from rationales of administrative modernization, territorial equalization and welfare-oriented service provision. State policies increasingly prioritize economic objectives, in particular enhancing territorial competitiveness through supporting entrepreneurial networks, attracting capital investments and facilitating locational politics (Brenner 2003, 2004). Neoliberal policies for metropolitan areas put emphasis on performative issues of intra-territorial competitiveness and inter-territorial competition. They define governance practices that reflect the re-articulation of actors and institutions around interests framed by such performative issues, and they confer by this a new constructivist and strategic-oriented meaning to neo-regionalist governance approaches. Metropolitan regions are increasingly explored as products of rescaling processes enacted by policies at the interplay of multiple scales, resulting in diverse, contingent and possibly incoherent policy constructs. Since the early 2000s, metropolitan regions have been framed by critical urban scholars as dynamic objects of rescaling processes, as outcomes of a ‘new politics of scale’ involving a variety of policy practices and state and non-state actors at multiple governmental levels (see, most prominently: Brenner 2002, 2004; and also Salet et al. 2003, p. 337). In this perspective, metropolitan regions are seen as outcomes of socio-political processes emerging often, but not always or exclusively, in the context of explicit ‘metropolitan’ policies, plans or territorial reforms. In post-Fordist capitalism, metropolitan areas emerge as ‘natural economic zones’, as local-regional units of competitiveness embedded in processes of globalized competition (Brenner 2003). The changing spatiality of post-Fordism economies leads to ‘[r]egional and local economies [being] increasingly recognized to have their own specific problems that could not be resolved either through national macroeconomic policies or through uniformly imposed meso- or microeconomic policies’ (Jessop 2002, p. 176). Accordingly, rescaling processes express the imperative and the struggle of the state to define new modes and new spaces of regulation for capital accumulation processes. As these accumulation regimes require new modes of regulation, new regionalism intends to match (global) ‘spaces of competition’ with the construction of (regional/local) ‘spaces of competitiveness’ (Brenner 2000, p. 321). This however occurs in the framework of changing patterns of spatiality, developing from monocentric to polynucleated urban structures, from urban regions to urban fields and to network cities which defy bounded territoriality. Metropolitan rescaling faces open, networked patterns of regionalization (Scott and Soja 1996; Storper 1997), variegated economic dynamics, as well as widespread political constraints and ‘deep resistance to wider metropolitan integration’ (Scott 2008, p. 560). Consequently, dealing with metropolitan scale becomes a struggle for ‘fragmented, overlap-

436  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ping, and competing governmental actors … to achieve limited, but significant, policy steering capability as they confront essentially similar issues of global city development’ (Kantor et al. 2012, p. 274). Moreover, research on rescaling invites reinterpreting the constitutive relationship between space and politics in constructivist terms, viewing cities and regions as political objects and as policy constructs, as ‘policy spaces’ (Brenner 2004). Rescaling research thereby underlines the changing nature of relationships between space and politics as a crucial feature of the restructuring of the state. This fits a notion of state restructuring which sees national states being redefined as ‘policy states’ (King and Le Galés 2017, p. 8). In this perspective, the relativization of territorialism as a principle of state regulation leads to deterritorialization as well as to a variety of governance experiments – possibly but not necessarily involving reterritorialization – as attempts at reconstructing the locus of regulation through spatial policies. The policy-driven ‘dynamics of changing scales of organization and regulation of societies’ becomes thus a major process-dimension of state reconfiguration, ‘as states economies and societies are themselves being re-organized at different scales’ (King and Le Galés 2017, p. 15). As Jessop underlines, understanding state rescaling involves exploring ‘other issues of governing social relations marked by complex reciprocal interdependence across several spatio-temporal social fields’ (Jessop 2016, p. 23). With his notion of ‘multispatial metagovernance’, Jessop (ibid.) implies that policy-making in the EU does not take place in consensual and non-hierarchical forms, but rather under conditions of ‘governance in the shadow of hierarchy’. Transnationalization, globalization and multi-level governance limit the effective capacity of the state to act according to a logic of command-and-control and territorial sovereignty. Accordingly, the state still remains crucial in the making of supra- as well as subnational spaces. The state – as a national as well as supra-national instance of regulation – acts increasingly as a promoter of forms of ‘multi-spatial meta-governance’: ‘state spatial strategies … seek to reorder territories, places, scales, and networks to secure the reproduction of the state in its narrow sense, to reconfigure the sociospatial dimensions of the state in its integral sense, and to promote specific accumulation strategies, state projects, hegemonic visions, or other social imaginaries and projects’ (Jessop 2016, pp. 23–4). Metropolitan regions are thus far from constituting coherent and unitary governmental levels. The multi-scalar processes involved in the construction of metropolitan regions emphasize the experimental nature of related spatial governance practices, including the emergent and potentially contested nature of metropolitan constructs. No single rational model appears available while policy mobilities enable innumerable experimentations. As a result, the redefinition of spatial scales of state action subtly enters the domain of political strategy building and legitimizing discourses, often disguised by language of economic necessity or marketing. Nevertheless, the spatiality of power (see Allen 2003; Cox 2013) remains at stake in the definition of new metropolitan action rationales and action spaces: the power geometries of metropolitan space. Recent research increasingly addresses the formation of metropolitan space as a multi-scalar process of political construction, embedded in broader processes of state restructuring. According to Brenner, metropolitan regions present a particular formation of state space ‘as an arena, medium, and outcome of spatially selective political strategies’ (Brenner 2004, p. 72). This perspective on the social and political construction of the metropolitan in multi-scalar contexts moreover builds on lines of research which highlight the need for historically sen-

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  437 sitive and contextually situated accounts of metropolitan policy, connecting state, space and scalar geographies (see Allen and Cochrane 2007; Brenner 2004; Buser 2012; Gross et al. 2018; Harrison 2010; Ward and Jonas 2004).

39.4

METROPOLITAN REGIONS AS CONSTRUCTED AND CONTESTED SCALAR PROJECTS AND SPATIAL STRATEGIES

This section gives examples from the more recent academic debate which illustrate and reify fruitful analytical categories for understanding the political and spatial dimensions of metropolitan regions. While these studies draw on previously developed theoretical approaches and conceptualizations (described in Sections 39.2 and 39.3), their empirical research profits from enhanced typologies and conceptualizations. In order to capture the spatiality of political projects and state strategies, Jessop et al. (2008) suggested analysing the polymorphic character and the socio-spatial dimensions of territory, place, scale and networks. Jessop (2016, pp. 21ff.) develops these analytical categories further, differentiating spatial dimensions of politics. The following are selected examples of ways in which metropolitan regions – as socio-spatial configurations – can be analysed accordingly as sites, objects and means of policies. A first perspective analyses metropolitan regions as sites of spatial strategies and fixes. Such a perspective can draw on traditional understandings of metropolitan governance for focusing on the political dimension of the metropolitan region, including a variety of political-administrative organizations, political networks or stakeholders which deal with city-regional problems or intermunicipal cooperation (see also Nelles 2013, pp. 1356ff.). However, this understanding of metropolitan regions as political sites goes beyond institutionalist accounts of metropolitan regions as static governments (as described in Section 39.2). Instead, the focus is on cities and metropolitan regions as actors, on their capacity to express autonomous political action and on related factors concerning strategy building, decision-making processes and democratic representation (see for example the contributions in Cole and Payre 2016). Furthermore, such analysis reflects on the emergence and implementation of policies at a metropolitan scale, such as economic strategies, planning visions or other programmes referring to a particular metropolitan region (see for an in-depth case study on strategic planning in Milan: Balducci et al. 2010; see for a comparative study of selected metropolitan plans: Elinbaum and Galland 2015). A second approach analyses metropolitan regions as objects of policies in the interplay of scales. This perspective focuses on metropolitan regions as issues of territorial reform, for example, led by national governments or supra-national organizations. Thereby, metropolitan regions are at stake in rescaling processes, for example, in the ‘third wave’ of metropolitan reform as incidences of restructuring of the national state (Jouve 2005). Other authors study metropolitan policies as incidences of rescaling by comparing national approaches and programmes to the metropolitan (see Lackowska and Zimmermann 2011; Zimmermann and Getimis 2017). Moreover, recent studies emphasize the increased attention to metropolitan regions by supra-national, international and transnational organizations, including the United Nations Habitat programme, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the EU and others such as Eurocities (see Fricke 2020).

438  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Pemberton and Searle (2016) offer an instructive example of how to empirically analyse the temporal trajectories of state rescaling in particular metropolitan contexts. Their analysis of the creation of urban governance spaces builds on a complementary understanding of the concepts of ‘statecraft’ (e.g. exercising political power) and ‘scalecraft’ (e.g. meta-governance of geographic scale). Moreover, this differentiation of statecraft and scalecraft proves useful for analysing the driving forces and trajectories of metropolitan projects occurring at multiple governmental scales inside one metropolitan arrangement over time (Henderson 2019). For the case of France, Geppert (2017) shows how introducing metropolitan authorities in the mid-2010s can be seen as a solution to inter-scalar stalemate. This underlines that the inter-scalar negotiations preparing metropolitan reform are strongly connected to the interests and political leverage of actors from the metropolitan scale itself. Third, metropolitan regions can be analysed as political means which contribute to a differentiation of in/out, demarcation, the (re)bordering of particular spatial configurations. In the case of Germany, for example, the introduction of metropolitan regions contributed to a reorientation of the national spatial planning principles from balancing territorial development towards a growth-oriented paradigm. Some criticized the introduction of metropolitan regions as a new spatial category in Germany in the mid-1990s as a territorial reform in disguise (Diller 2014); others saw it as a new spatial category or branding label for larger city-regions which potentially could become relevant for marketing or eligible for funding (Petrin and Knieling 2009). To some extent, metropolitan regions serve as a new frame for a shift in the discourse on spatial planning in Germany. In line with this, metropolitan regions are increasingly analysed in light of discourses (Fricke and Gualini 2017) and spatial imaginaries (see Zimmermann et al. 2020) mobilized in their policies. Social constructivist approaches analyse the emergence of metropolitan identities as being linked to political discourse and conflicts (Terlouw 2019). In a cross-time comparison, moreover, Cardoso and Meijers (2017) exemplify how various factors beyond locational branding determine the emergence of metropolitan toponyms. Other examples of socio-constructivist perspectives analyse the emergence of metropolitan regions as policy issues in the ‘EU’ropean context (see Wiechmann 2009; Fricke 2020). Thereby, they reveal the concept’s potential for initiating a momentum for political innovation due to its openness and travelling qualities, being translatable between various contexts, scales, sectors and disciplines. At the same time, practices and discourses involved in the making of metropolitan regions as spaces of governance invoke critical scrutiny both for their ideological dimension and for their potential for contradiction and conflict.

39.5 CONCLUSIONS In reviewing recent developments in academic debate on the rescaling of metropolitan regions, we have traced a variety of ways in which metropolitan regions are conceptualized in political science, planning and geography, as well as significant shifts in their understanding as policy objects. Institutional, geographical and planning perspectives on metropolitan regions as ‘realist’ objects to be governed have been first complemented and increasingly superseded by social-constructivist perspectives on the metropolitan as action space and as governance construct. Based on an analytical differentiation between socio-spatial configurations as political sites and as objects of spatial strategies and policies, recent approaches propose more nuanced

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  439 understandings of metropolitan regions as policy spaces being shaped by a variety of emergent practices in an interplay of rescaling processes. Particularly research on metropolitan regions and policies in the European context underline the multi-scalar nature of metropolitan spaces. These shifts in academic understanding reflect recent developments of metropolitan policies in the multi-scalar geographies of the state – as well as supporting them through policy advice and advocacy. As a result, academic research contributes to a better understanding of metropolitan space as an instance of negotiation between actors and interests at competing scales, as processes and outcomes of multi-scalar political dynamics. After a century of concern with defining metropolitan regions as geographical units and governmental models, and with achieving an effective and durable matching between them, the relevance of metropolitan regions in a globalized context has been redefined as a strategic policy challenge. As such, however, new interpretations of the metropolitan question are unlikely to serve as solutions to scalar contradictions and conflicts, rather to the contrary: they are likely to be new sources for inter-scalar competition, and therefore of new contradictions and potential conflicts. Accordingly, the role and involvement of the national state in defining metropolitan policies remains challenging in terms of institutional integrity, democratic accountability and governance effectiveness, but also in terms of intrinsic limits to a national scale of policy-making. In all this, the possibility of ‘scalar governance failure’ (see Jessop 2016) looms large. This underlines a crucial, if not a new paradigmatic significance of metropolitan policy spaces in understanding current trends in state spatial transformation. It does so in a dual and in part contradictory way. On the one hand, the ruling over territory remains a defining task of the state and a marker of significant elements of sovereign state power. This might explain the ongoing struggle for reform of territorial jurisdictions of the state as a response to institutional-administrative and functional-economic socio-spatial challenges and as a terrain of political competition. On the other hand, the strategies and capabilities of the state to act and to exert an effective role as an instance of socio-spatial regulation are increasingly less defined in terms of bounded territoriality. The tendential shift in focus of state action from a logic of territorial sovereignty to a logic of spatial regulation, as it has been experienced in the last decades in many metropolitan contexts – and exemplarily in the EU – is a major expression of the changing nature of the state as a political and territorial entity. What do metropolitan policies mean, and what do they tell us, then, in terms of the changing geographies of the state? Ultimately, they signalize a struggle between a regime of governmental practices which persists despite its institutional rigidity and an emergent regime of governance practices which hardly consolidates because of its institutional volatility. The result of this struggle is a multi-scalar geography of (meta-)governance spaces which breaks up the confines of the national state. The role of contemporary policies for metropolitan regions in the emerging multi-scalar geographies of the state resides not only in challenging a conception of state premised on the jurisdictional integrity of its territorial subdivisions, but also in constituting a highly diverse and experimental environment of largely policy-driven state practices intersecting different governance modes at variable spatial scales.

440  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

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Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  441 Fricke, C. and E. Gualini (2017), ‘Metropolitan regions as contested spaces: The discursive construction of metropolitan space in comparative perspective’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 6 (2), 199–221, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2017.1351888 Geppert, A. (2017), ‘Vae victis! Spatial planning in the rescaled metropolitan governance in France’, Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 75 (3), 225–41, DOI: 10.1007/s13147-017-0492-1 Gordon, M. (2001), ‘New regionalism reconsidered: Globalization and the remaking of political economic space’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25 (4), 804–29. Gross, J.S., E. Gualini and L. Ye (eds) (2018), Constructing Metropolitan Space: Actors, Policies and Processes of Rescaling in World Metropolises, London: Routledge. Gualini, E. (2016), ‘Multilevel governance and multiscalar forms of territorialization’, in S. Piattoni and L. Polverari (eds), Handbook on Cohesion Policy in the EU, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 506–23. Gualini, E. and J.S. Gross (2018), ‘Actors, policies and processes in the construction of metropolitan space: Conceptual and analytical issues’, in J.S. Gross, E. Gualini and L. Ye (eds), Constructing Metropolitan Space: Actors, Policies and Processes of Rescaling in World Metropolises, London/ New York: Routledge, pp. 3–27. Hall, P. and D. Hay (1980), Growth Centres in the European Urban System, London: Heinemann. Harrison, J. (2010), ‘Networks of connectivity, territorial fragmentation, uneven development: The new politics of city regionalism’, Political Geography, 29 (1), 17–27. Harvey, D. (1985), ‘The geopolitics of capitalism’, in D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds), Social Relations and Spatial Structures, London: MacMillan, pp. 128–63. Henderson, S.R. (2019), ‘Framing regional scalecraft: Insights into local government advocacy’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 7 (3), 365–85. Hooghe, L. (ed.) (1996), Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-Level Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hooghe, L. and G. Marks (2003), ‘Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multilevel governance’, American Political Science Review, 97 (2), 233–43. Jessop, B. (2000), ‘The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the tendential ecological dominance of globalizing capitalism’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24 (2), 323–60. Jessop, B. (2002), The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity Press. Jessop, B. (2016), ‘Territory, politics, governance and multispatial metagovernance’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 4 (1), 8–32. Jessop, B., N. Brenner and M. Jones (2008), ‘Theorizing sociospatial relations’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26 (3), 389–401, DOI: 10.1068/d9107 Jouve, B. (2005), ‘From government to urban governance in Western Europe: A critical perspective’, Public Administration and Development, 25 (2), 285–94. Jouve, B. and C. Lefèvre (eds) (2002), Métropoles ingouvernables. Les Villes européennes entre globalisation et decentralisation, Paris: Elsevier. Kantor, P., C. Lefèvre, A. Saito, H.V. Savitch and A. Thornley (2012), ‘Conclusions: Are global city-regions governable?’, in P. Kantor, C. Lefèvre, A. Saito, H.V. Savitch and A. Thornley (eds), Struggling Giants: City-Region Governance in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 269–78. King, D. and P. Le Galés (2017), ‘Introduction: A reconfigured state? European policy states in a globalizing world’, in D. King and P. Le Galés (eds), Reconfiguring European States in Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–42. Lackowska, M. and K. Zimmermann (2011), ‘New forms of territorial governance in metropolitan regions? A Polish-German comparison’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 18 (2), 156–69. Le Galès, P. (2002), European Cities: Social Conflicts and Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lefèvre, C. (1998), ‘Metropolitan government and governance in Western countries: A critical review’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 22 (1), 9–25. Lefèvre, C. (2001), ‘Metropolitan government reform in Europe: Current trends and challenges’, Swiss Political Science Review, 7 (3), 136–41. Lowery, D. (2001), ‘Metropolitan governance structures from a neoprogressive perspective’, Swiss Political Science Review, 7 (3), 130–6.

442  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state MacLeod, G. (2001), ‘New regionalism reconsidered: Globalization and the remaking of political economic space’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25 (4), 804–29. MacLeod, G. (2011), ‘Urban politics reconsidered: Growth machine to post-democratic city?’, Urban Studies, 48 (12), 2629–60. Marks, G., L. Hooghe and K. Blank (1996), ’European integration from the 1980s: State-centric v. multi-level governance’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 34 (3), 341–78. Moisio, S. (2018), ‘Urbanizing the nation-state? Notes on the geopolitical growth of cities and city-regions’, Urban Geography, 39 (9), 1421–4. Nelles, J. (2013), ‘Cooperation and capacity? Exploring the sources and limits of city-region governance partnerships’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (4), 1349–67. Oosterlynck, S., L. Beeckmans, D. Bassens, B. Derudder, B. Segaert and L. Braeckmans (eds) (2019), The City as Global Political Actor, London: Routledge. Ostrom, E., R.B. Parks and G.P. Whitaker (1978), Patterns of Metropolitan Policing, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Ostrom, V., C. Tiebout and C. Warren (1961), ‘The organization of government in metropolitan areas’, American Political Science Review, 55, 831–42. Ostrom, V., R.L. Bish and E. Ostrom (1988), Local Government in the United States, Oakland, CA: ICS Press. Pemberton, S. and G. Searle (2016), ‘Statecraft, scalecraft and urban planning: A comparative study of Birmingham, UK and Brisbane, Australia’, European Planning Studies, 24 (1), 76–95. Peterson, P. (1981), City Limits, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Petrin, J. and J. Knieling (2009), ‘Das Bildversprechen der Metropolregion: Potenziale und Risiken einer bildmächtigen Raumkategorie’, in J. Knieling (ed.), Metropolregionen: Innovation, Wettbewerb, Handlungsfähigkeit, Metropolregionen und Raumentwicklung, Hannover: Verlag der ARL, pp. 300–22. Salet, W.G.M., A. Thornley and A. Kreukels (2003), ‘Practices of metropolitan governance in Europe: Experiences and lessons’, in W.G.M. Salet, A. Thornley and A. Kreukels (eds), Metropolitan Governance and Spatial Planning, London: Spon, pp. 377–90. Savitch, H. and R.K. Vogel (2000), ‘Paths to new regionalism’, State and Local Government Review, 32 (3), 158–68. Scott, A.J. (2001), ‘Globalization and the rise of city-regions’, European Planning Studies, 9 (7), 813–24. Scott, A.J. (2008), ‘Resurgent metropolis: Economy, society and urbanization in an interconnected world’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32 (3), 548–64. Scott, A.J. and E. Soja (eds) (1996), The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scott, A.J., J. Agnew, E. Soja and M. Storper (2001), ‘Global city-regions’, in A.J. Scott (ed.), Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–32. Soja, E. (2000), Postmetropolis, London: Wiley. Storper, M. (1997), The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, New York: Guilford Press. Terlouw, K. (2019), ‘Legitimising identity discourses and metropolitan networks: Urban competitiveness versus territorial protection’, GeoJournal, 102 (3), 629–45. Tiebout, C. (1956), ‘A pure theory of local expenditures’, Journal of Political Economy, 64 (5), 416–24. Van den Berg, L., E. Braun and J. van der Meer (1997a), ‘The organizing capacity of metropolitan regions’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 15 (3), 253–72. Van den Berg, L., E. Braun and J. van der Meer (1997b), Metropolitan Organising Capacity: Experiences with Organising Major Projects in European Cities, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Ward, K. and A.E.G. Jonas (2004), ‘Competitive city-regionalism as a politics of space: A critical reinterpretation of the new regionalism’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 36 (12), 2119–39. Wiechmann, T. (2009), ‘Raumpolitische Diskurse um Metropolregionen in Europa - Eine Spurensuche’, in J. Knieling (ed.), Metropolregionen: Innovation, Wettbewerb, Handlungsfähigkeit, Metropolregionen und Raumentwicklung, Hannover: Verlag der ARL, pp. 101–32.

Metropolitanization as state spatial transformation  443 Zimmermann, K. and P. Getimis (2017), ‘Metropolitan governance in Europe’, Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 75 (3), 201. Zimmermann, K., D. Galland and J. Harrison (eds) (2020), Metropolitan Regions, Planning and Governance, Cham: Springer.

40. Transforming the geography of the welfare state through neoliberal spatial strategies: the case of Denmark Kristian Olesen

40.1 INTRODUCTION Strategic spatial planning has played an important role in shaping the political geographies of the state since the mid-twentieth century in many European countries.1 In the Nordic countries, spatial planning became an integral part of developing the modern welfare state. Here, spatial strategies, visions and plans were prepared in order to ‘tame’ urbanization and economic growth, and canalize development into prioritized (often ‘underdeveloped’) areas (Carter et al. 2015; Moisio and Leppänen 2007). As part of this project, planning and spatial politics were upscaled to the entire state territory, and ‘planning became a territory-wide spatialisation of the welfare state objective of material growth and social equalization’ (Carter et al. 2015, p. 9). This project was often guided by the spatial imaginary of the welfare state as a geographical whole and spatial policies of strengthening the spatial cohesion and unity of the state. In this era of spatial Keynesianism, state investments in transport infrastructure, healthcare, education, culture, etc. were spread across the state’s geography. Under this paradigm, strategic spatial planning developed largely as a technocratic discipline, a statecraft (Scott 1998) designed to construct the ‘optimal’ geography of the welfare state, inspired by studies such as Christaller’s (1966) Central Place Theory. In the beginning of the 1980s, it became apparent that the state’s imaginary of a welfare geography was unfeasible against the backdrop of the oil crises of the 1970s and the following economic recession. The politics of the state became increasingly conservative (with a focus on crisis management), and responsibility for developing the welfare state was largely decentralized to regional and local scales (Brenner 2004a). At the same time, the political-economic ideology of neoliberalism gained a stronghold in the United Kingdom, from where ideas of rolling back the state (and spatial planning) were spreading throughout northwestern Europe. Against this backdrop, strategic spatial planning re-emerged in the 1990s in northwestern Europe as an attempt to revitalize spatial planning and to rethink the geography of the state in the context of global economic restructuring (Albrechts et al. 2003; Healey et al. 1997). As Brenner (2004b, pp. 227–8) argues, ‘spatial planning is arguably one of the politico-institutional arenas in western Europe in which the interplay between state rescaling and urban locational policy has been most dramatically evident’. The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of strategic spatial planning in promoting state restructuring, rescaling and the production of new state spaces in this context. This is done through a case study of strategic spatial planning in Denmark from 1990 to 2018. Denmark represents an illustrative case for exploring the role of strategic spatial planning in changing the geography of the state,

444

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  445 as Brenner (2004b, p. 227) himself uses Denmark as an example of what he refers to as the ‘metropolitisation of national spatial planning’. The chapter is structured as follows. First, a theoretical framework for understanding strategic spatial planning’s role in promoting state spatial restructuring is built up. Inspired by Brenner’s (2004a, 2004b) seminal work on new state spaces, Section 40.2 argues that state spatial restructuring has evolved in successive rounds, and that spatial strategies in each round have played an important role in constructing new state spaces as important sites for capital accumulation and the promotion of economic competitiveness. Second, the chapter introduces the case of strategic spatial planning in Denmark and illustrates how state spatial restructuring in Denmark since the 1990s has evolved in three successive rounds of neoliberal spatial strategies. Each round of state restructuring is characterized by a further neoliberalization of strategic spatial planning and the increasing fragmentation of state space, breaking effectively with the neatly organized compartmentalization of the welfare state’s geography. In this way, the chapter seeks to demonstrate how strategic spatial planning constitutes a helpful analytical lens for analysing contemporary transformations of state spatiality.

40.2

NEOLIBERALIZATION, STATE SPATIAL RESTRUCTURING AND STRATEGIC SPATIAL PLANNING

The aim of this section is to build a framework for understanding strategic spatial planning’s role in transforming state spatiality. The section draws on Brenner’s (2004a, 2004b) understanding of state spatiality as evolving in successive rounds of glocalization strategies. These strategies are then interpreted as neoliberal spatial strategies, and an expression of what Olesen (2014) refers to as the neoliberalization of strategic spatial planning. Furthermore, Brenner’s concept of ‘new state spaces’ are put in the context of the academic debate on ‘soft spaces’, which here is interpreted as both an expression of new spaces of governance and as a particular form of neoliberal spatial governance. 40.2.1 State Spatial Restructuring and New State Spaces In his seminal work on state spatial restructuring and new state spaces, Brenner (2004a, 2004b) argues that nation-states in Western Europe since the mid-twentieth century have experienced multiple rounds of spatial restructuring as a response to processes of global economic restructuring under capitalism. During the second half of the twentieth century the nation-state’s governance style in Western Europe has evolved from managerial-welfarism rooted in spatial Keynesianism to urban entrepreneurialism rooted in neoliberal glocalization strategies (Brenner 2004a). Brenner (2004a) illustrates how each round of state spatial restructuring is characterized by reterritorializations and rescalings of statehood, in which new scales and new spaces are targeted for the accumulation of capital and for experiments with new forms of urban governance. A key element in Brenner’s theorization of state spatial restructuring is the understanding of globalization as ‘reterritorialisation of both socioeconomic and political-institutional spaces that unfolds simultaneously upon multiple, superimposed geographical scales’ (Brenner 1999, p. 432). In particular, Brenner is interested in understanding the construction of new socioeconomic and political-institutional spaces at subnational scales,

446  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state as these in his perspective represents the key ‘institutional arenas in which far-reaching transformations of state spatiality are unfolding’ (2004a, p. 447). Inherent in this interest is an understanding of state spatiality as a process, rather than something pre-given or fixed. State spatiality is thus constantly being produced and reproduced, evolving in rounds of ‘spatiotemporal fixes’ (Jessop 2000). At the same time, the production and evolution of state spatiality is strongly path-dependent, shaped by political geographies established through time, producing a complex patchwork of former and contemporary geo-historical structures and sociopolitical struggles (Brenner 2004a, 2004b). Processes of state reterritorialization and rescaling do not entail simple redistributions of powers from one scale to another, or the total disappearance of some scales as they are superseded by others. Instead, a continuously more complex picture of state spatiality is emerging in which different scales and spaces co-exist rather than being organized in nested hierarchies. In the most recent rounds of spatial restructuring, what Brenner (2004a) identifies as rounds of ‘glocalisation strategies’, experimentation with new forms of urban governance have been limited to a few privileged ‘new state spaces’, which Brenner (2004b) argues now constitutes the new key scales on which nation-states compete. 40.2.2 Neoliberalization of Urban Governance and Strategic Spatial Planning As part of these processes of state restructuring, the form of urban governance has changed from urban managerialism rooted in spatial Keynesianism to urban entrepreneurialism rooted in neoliberal ideology (Brenner 2004a, 2004b; Harvey 1989). Neoliberalism has had a significant influence on state restructuring across the Western world since the 1980s, including the Nordic welfare states. How neoliberalism has manifested itself in policies, practices and materialities varies across time and space. However, despite these differences, theorists argue that a number of generic features characterize processes of neoliberalization (Peck and Tickell 2002). In general, neoliberalization can be understood as a new mode of socioeconomic regulation, which entails ‘a gradual shift away from distributive policies, welfare considerations, and direct service provision towards more market-oriented and market-dependent approaches aimed at pursuing economic promotion and competitive restructuring’ (Swyngedouw et al. 2002, pp. 547–8). The process of installing neoliberalism as a hegemonic discourse has evolved in several phases since the 1980s. The first phase of neoliberalization is usually referred to as ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 41) or laissez-faire (let-do) neoliberalism (Purcell 2009, p. 142). This period relates to the elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States (US) in the 1980s, where neoliberal state policies were introduced in a period of economic recession and increasing globalization in order to promote market logics and competition in the public sector, whilst reducing the role of the state to a minimum. The second phase of neoliberalization, also referred to as ‘roll-out neoliberalism’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 41) or aides-faire (help-do) neoliberalism (Purcell 2009, p. 142), emerged during the 1990s. In this phase, the state played a more active role in facilitating the accumulation of capital by intervening in the market, for example through, amongst other things, generating public investments in infrastructure and urban development projects in order to support market logics and competition. This softer form of neoliberalism has also been associated with centre-left governments (Haughton et al. 2010; Peck and Tickell 2002).

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  447 Olesen (2014) has explored the relationship between neoliberalism and reorientations in strategic spatial planning since the beginning of the 1990s. He argues that the phase of roll-out neoliberalism in the 1990s coincided with a revived interest in strategic spatial planning in northwestern Europe. In this phase, strategic spatial planning was increasingly seen as an activity for positioning cities and city-regions in the European competitive landscape of a single market and a global economy (Albrechts et al. 2003; Healey et al. 1997). The role of strategic spatial planning was reoriented towards urban entrepreneurialism focusing on facilitating economic growth and competitiveness by, among other things, canalizing state investments into major cities and urban regions. In the language of Brenner (2004a), we can also think of these spatial strategies as glocalization strategies round I. This period thus represents what can be labelled the first round of neoliberal spatial strategies. More recently, it has been argued that a third phase of neoliberalization of urban governance emerged in the 2000s, which Keil (2009, p. 232) terms ‘roll-with-it neoliberalisation’. This period is characterized by an increasing normalization of neoliberal practices and concepts in urban policy-making, in which political and economic actors have lost a sense of alternatives and ‘have mostly accepted the “governmentality” of the neoliberal formation as the basis for their action’ (Keil 2009, p. 232). Keil’s (2009) discussion of roll-with-it neoliberalization is strongly linked to the emerging discussion on post-politics and the depoliticization of urban governance. Post-politics refers to the emerging condition of urban governance, in which ‘the political’ understood as ideology and discussion about alternatives ways of structuring society, has ‘disappeared’ from formal governance arenas (Mouffe 2005). In this context, depoliticization represents an analytical lens for understanding the processes by which ‘the political’ is displaced to other (often informal) arenas of decision making, leaving little up for ‘real’ discussion in formalized governance arenas. Neoliberal spatial strategies round II relates to this normalization of neoliberal practices and concepts, which results in increasing pressure on existing planning frameworks and practices. Whilst roll-out neoliberalism was important in supporting a new role for strategic spatial planning in the 1990s, the continued process of neoliberalization, now entering the phase of roll-with-it neoliberalization, seems in many northwestern European countries to have resulted in a decentralization of planning tasks and a reduced role for the state. As strategic spatial planning was mainly brought forward by centre-left governments in northwestern Europe in the 1990s (Albrechts et al. 2003), these ideas have struggled to find political legitimacy in the increasingly neoliberal political climate in the 2000s and onwards. 40.2.3 Soft Space of Territorial Governance Whilst more institutionalized forms of strategic spatial planning have come under pressure in the phase of roll-with-it neoliberalism, a wave of experiments with new forms of territorial governance has emerged at the scale of urban regions in northwestern Europe. These new spaces of governance have been conceptualized as ‘soft spaces’ with ‘fuzzy boundaries’, as they are often located in between formal levels of governance, and are not necessarily univocally bounded (Haughton et al. 2010). These new spaces of territorial governance do not so much replace formal levels of governance, as they seek to supplement existing governance structures in strategic ways, e.g. around specific policy agendas, thus adding extra layers to an increasingly complex and fragmented governance landscape (Allmendinger and Haughton 2009). The new soft spaces of territorial governance can be understood as new state spaces

448  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state emerging from processes of state restructuring in the context of roll-with-it neoliberalism and post-politics (Haughton et al. 2013; Olesen 2012). Even though the new soft spaces emerging across Europe vary in size, scope, function, etc., they all seem to be governed by a similar ‘politics’ (Haughton et al. 2013). Haughton et al. (2013, p. 231) argue that experiments with soft spaces represent a particular form of neoliberal governmentality and displacement of political disagreement, involving a roiling entanglement of direct interventions by selectively empowered quasi-state apparatuses and indirect techniques for self-management, which together have normalised and instituted the rationalities of neoliberal thinking and its postpolitical form into everyday planning and regeneration practices.

The new soft spaces of governance should, however, not only be understood as products of or responses to continuous processes of neoliberalization. They also represent key spaces for ‘destabilising existing governance practices and planning cultures’ (Olesen 2012, p. 911), as well as promoting new planning cultures (Olesen and Hansen 2020). Haughton et al. (2013, pp. 231–2) argue that whilst the boundaries of the field of planning seem to have become increasingly blurred, the ‘intellectual horizons’ of planning appear at the same time to be narrowing, as neoliberal governmentalities are reworking the nature of planning itself towards promoting what are considered ‘sensible’ and ‘necessary’ policy agendas centred around the promotion of economic growth and other market-based forms of policy rationality. It can thus be argued that the ‘explosion’ in the number of soft spaces represents neoliberal spatial strategies round III in the context of roll-with-it neoliberalism and post-politics. 40.2.4 Towards a Framework Table 40.1 presents a framework for understanding transformations of the state’s geography from the perspective of neoliberalization and strategic spatial planning. Inspired by Brenner’s (2004b) conceptualization of state spatiality being transformed in successive rounds of glocalization strategies, this section has developed the understanding of state spatiality being transformed in successive rounds of neoliberal spatial strategies producing new soft spaces of territorial governance. The next section will illustrate these transformations of state spatiality through the case of Danish strategic spatial planning. Table 40.1

Successive rounds of state spatial restructuring in the context of neoliberalization and strategic spatial planning

Round of state spatial restructuring Phase of neoliberalization

Type of strategic spatial planning

Crisis management (1980s)

Phase I: Roll-back neoliberalism

Downsizing strategic spatial planning

Glocalization strategies round I

Phase II: Roll-out neoliberalism

Neoliberal spatial strategies round I

Phase III: Roll-with-it neoliberalism

Neoliberal spatial strategies round II

Glocalization strategies round III

Phase IV: Roll-with-it neoliberalism (and

Neoliberal spatial strategies round III

(2010s)

post-politics)

(planning scepticism) (1990s) Glocalization strategies round II (2000s)

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  449

40.3

NEOLIBERAL SPATIAL STRATEGIES AND STATE RESTRUCTURING IN DENMARK

This section traces the evolution and transformation of state spatiality in Denmark through three successive rounds of neoliberal spatial strategies, in accordance with the framework outlined above. 40.3.1 Neoliberal Spatial Strategies Round I At the beginning of the 1990s, Danish spatial planning took a more neoliberal turn. In Denmark, the shift from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism is often associated with the implementation of the Danish Planning Act in 1992, in which the aim of spatial planning was changed from promoting ‘equal’ development to ‘appropriate’ development. Jørgensen et al. (1997, p. 43) note that this ‘is a more flexible principle, which is more readily open to interpretation’.2 As part of the shift, the state began to promote the capital city of Copenhagen and the Danish/Swedish cross-border region of Øresund as the new privileged spaces for urban development, investments in infrastructure and the concentration of economic activities. This reorientation of spatial planning was partly a response to a series of globalization pressures, including the European Single Market, and partly a strategy to bring Copenhagen out of its economic decline (Jørgensen et al. 1997; Olesen and Metzger 2017). The development of Copenhagen and the Øresund Region was supported by a series of state and municipal investments, including a fixed link across the Øresund Strait, the expansion of Copenhagen Airport, a new metro system connecting the city centre with the airport, development of the new town district of Ørestad on the island of Amager and regeneration of the Copenhagen harbourfront (Carter et al. 2015; Jørgensen et al. 1997; Olesen and Metzger 2017). The strategy of developing Copenhagen and the Øresund Region was promoted as the centrepiece in promoting development in the entire country in the national planning report from 1992, entitled Denmark Towards 2018 (Danish Ministry of the Environment 1992). The 1992 national planning report constructs a spatial imaginary of Denmark in the European Union, in which Copenhagen holds the potential to become ‘the North’s only Euro-pole’ (Danish Ministry of the Environment 1992, p. 70). In this imaginary, Copenhagen is envisioned as the growth engine of Denmark (and southern Sweden), see Figure 40.1. The imaginary is governed by the rationality that development in Copenhagen (and the Øresund Region) ‘would lead to development throughout Denmark as a whole’ (Carter et al. 2015, p. 13). The state restructuring associated with the promotion of Copenhagen and the Øresund Region can be argued to constitute the first round of neoliberal spatial strategies in Denmark. 40.3.2 Neoliberal Spatial Strategies Round II The second round of spatial restructuring in Denmark rooted in neoliberal spatial strategies, can be associated with the implementation of the Governance Reform in 2007, and the wide range of spatial strategies that emerged as a consequence of the reform. The reform was implemented to introduce a more efficient governance structure, in particular within the public healthcare sector. However, the reform also led to significant reterritorializations in terms of spatial planning, as the middle tier of the planning system was abolished and statutory regional planning decentralized to municipalities. As part of the reform, new larger regions

450  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Source: Danish Ministry of the Environment 1992, p. 15.

Figure 40.1

The spatial imaginary of Denmark anno 1992

were created with limited planning powers, but with the responsibility to prepare regional development strategies in alignment with the contemporary neoliberal discourse of promoting regional economic development (Næss 2009). As the boundaries of the new administrative regions were not considered appropriate geographies for strategic spatial planning, the state initiated a process of promoting functional urban regions for strategic spatial planning, in an attempt to ‘fill in’ the gap in the Danish governance landscape (Olesen 2011, 2012). The state was particularly keen to promote eastern Jutland as Denmark’s second metropolitan area, as a response to the rather one-sided focus of promoting growth in Copenhagen for more than a decade. The spatial imaginary of Denmark consisting of two metropolitan functional urban regions was presented under the framing of ‘The New Map of Denmark’ in the national planning report 2006 (Danish Ministry of the Environment

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  451

Source: Danish Ministry of the Environment, 2006, p. 15.

Figure 40.2

The New Map of Denmark

2006), see Figure 40.2. The 2006 national planning report discusses, under the heading of ‘the world is opening up’, how ‘globalization influences and changes the prerequisites for strategic spatial planning in Denmark’ (Danish Ministry of the Environment 2006, pp. 8–9). With a point of departure in the national planning report and The New Map of Denmark, the state initiated a process with the aim of developing a spatial strategy for the eastern Jutland urban region in collaboration with the municipalities in the region (Olesen 2011). This process developed into a contested affair, as the state and the municipalities had very different ideas about the kind of strategic spatial planning needed in the region. Olesen and Richardson (2012) illustrate how the strategy-making process in eastern Jutland was played out between conflicting planning rationalities rooted in regulation and growth promotion, respectively. At the time, it was already evident that the municipalities were driven by a strong entrepreneurial agenda, seeking to contest the state’s role in strategic spatial planning, whilst actively seeking to redefine what it meant to prepare spatial strategies at the regional scale (Olesen 2012). 40.3.3 Neoliberal Spatial Strategies Round III Since around 2010, Danish spatial planning has entered a third round of neoliberal spatial strategies, which primarily is characterized by a weakening of the state as the central actor in devising neoliberal spatial strategies. From 2010 onwards, national planning reports have been reduced to thin documents without a coherent spatial imaginary of the state’s geography.3 This has led commentators to suggest that spatial planning in Denmark has lost its spatial conscious-

452  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ness (Galland and Enemark 2013). This era of state hibernation in terms of strategic spatial planning has opened things up for other actors to promote new non-state-led spatial imaginaries (Olesen 2011, 2017). The current round of reterritorialization is therefore characterized by great experimentation across scales of governance and seems to represent a manifestation of a wider growth-oriented planning culture, in which the promotion of growth, competitiveness and economic development have developed into taken-for-granted (if in practice not the only) goals of spatial planning in Denmark. One prominent example of state restructuring in this phase is the development of the so-called ‘business regions’ around the second, third and fourth biggest cities in Denmark (Olesen and Hansen 2020). Contrary to earlier rounds of spatial restructuring, the promotion of business regions is primarily a municipal project, with limited state interference. In fact, Olesen and Hansen (2020) understand the emergence of the business regions as an expression of scalar struggles between the state and the municipalities about who gets to define regional development agendas. In general, the business regions can be understood as a new form of regional entrepreneurialism (or city-regionalism) centred around the promotion of economic growth and competitiveness, with a particular focus on generating good conditions for business development. This development reflects a further neoliberalization of Danish spatial planning, in which the intellectual horizons of spatial planning have narrowed to a few policy issues centred around the creation of jobs and business development. As part of this trend, Copenhagen has followed suit and rebranded the Øresund Region as ‘Greater Copenhagen’, as the brand of ‘Øresund’ had proven inefficient in attracting international investments (Olesen and Metzger 2017). This reorientation of spatial planning has been institutionalized further, as the aim of spatial planning in the revised Planning Act from 2016 has been expanded to also include the aim of ‘creating good conditions for business development and growth’ (Danish Planning Act 2016, §1; see also Olesen and Carter 2018). Olesen and Carter (2018) have illustrated how the public discourse on the revision of the Planning Act was governed by the strong discourse of ‘planning as a barrier for growth’, which led to significant deregulation of planning legislation in particular in the most rural areas of Denmark. Table 40.2 Decade

Spatial restructurings in Denmark, 1990–2018

Round of state spatial

State spatial imaginary

Rationality of strategic spatial planning

Neoliberal spatial

Copenhagen (and the

Promoting the competitiveness of

strategies round I

Øresund Region) as

Copenhagen and the Øresund Region in the

the growth engine of

context of increasing European competition

Denmark.

(roll-out neoliberalization)

Neoliberal spatial

The New Map of

Promoting a second growth area in

Øresund Region

strategies round II

Denmark. Denmark

Denmark and functional urban region

and Eastern

is consisting of two

for strategic spatial planning (roll-with-it

Jutland

restructuring 1990s

2000s

2010s

New state space Øresund Region

Neoliberal spatial

functional urban regions. neoliberalization) Promoting competitiveness and economic No unifying spatial

strategies round III

imaginary. Competing

growth in and around the four biggest

regions

‘local’ spatial

Danish cities, and reframing the Øresund

Loop City

imaginaries emerging

Region (roll-with-it neoliberalization and

(city-regionalism).

post-politics)

Business

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  453 An alternative spatial imaginary of the Øresund Region (or Greater Copenhagen) has been promoted by Bjarke Ingels Group and a number of municipalities along the outer ring road in Copenhagen (see Olesen 2017). The spatial vision of the Loop City envisions the Øresund Region in the year 2047 as a coherent urban area united by a range of infrastructures, most prominently a light rail loop. Whilst the spatial vision is rather utopian in many respects, the spatial vision bears witness to the institutionalization of economic growth and competitiveness as the most relevant (if not the only) policy agendas of strategic spatial planning, and the importance of new (transport) infrastructures in achieving these objectives (Olesen 2017). Table 40.2 presents an overview of the three rounds of spatial restructurings in Denmark.

40.4

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

The geography of the Nordic welfare state has been reworked significantly since the 1990s as a response to economic restructurings and globalization pressures. In this context, strategic spatial planning has played an important role in promoting new spatial imaginaries of the state’s geography, rationalizing and legitimizing a series of glocalization strategies as state responses to globalization. These responses involve among other things a turn towards urban entrepreneurialism and promotion of neoliberal spatial strategies centred around economic growth and competitiveness as the key policy goals. The transformations of the state’s geography have evolved in successive rounds of restructuring, in which neoliberal spatial strategies promote new soft spaces as key sites for economic growth. Danish strategic spatial planning represents an illustrative case of the important role spatial strategies play in promoting reterritorializations of the state. The chapter has illustrated how the geography of the Danish state has been reworked through three rounds of state spatial restructuring since the 1990s. Each round is characterized by the promotion of new state spaces as prioritized spaces for economic development, adding yet another layer of complexity to the geography of the state. In this continuous process of restructuring, increasingly smaller city-regions are emerging as the need to respond to globalization pressures (and national competition) ‘trickles down’. This process can be understood as a further neoliberalization and depoliticization of strategic spatial planning, as economic growth and competitiveness are installed as taken-for-granted (and at times this only) policy objectives in strategic spatial planning. The most recent round of neoliberal spatial strategies is also illustrative of an increasing scalar struggle between the state and municipalities about who gets to dictate regional development agendas. Luukkonen and Sirviö (2019) have observed the same phenomenon in their recent study of city-regionalism discourse in Finland, arguing that city-regions do not only lead to the reassessment of city/state relationships, but also to a more fundamental questioning of ‘the legitimacy of the state both as a territorial entity and as a political actor’ (Luukkonen and Sirviö 2019, p. 26). As part of this struggle, the Danish state has abandoned the ‘tradition’ of presenting a unifying spatial imaginary of its territory in its spatial strategies. Whilst this trend can be interpreted as a loss of faith in strategic spatial planning, it can also be interpreted as there simply not being perceived a need to organize the geography of the neoliberal welfare state. In fact, the contradictions between and the lack of coordination between the multitude of bottom-up governance experiments seems to be a favourable condition for the neoliberal welfare state, as it provides a convenient vacuum for the state to insert its own (often con-

454  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state tradictory) state spatial strategies on an ad hoc basis. In this way, the illusion of the state in control is maintained, despite the (re)emergence of city-regionalism as a strong policy agenda. 40.4.1 The Future Development of State Spatiality in Denmark In many ways the most recent national planning report from 2019 represents a continuation of the hibernation state of the 2010s. As the previous reports, the 2019 report does not offer a coherent spatial imaginary of the state territory (Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs 2019). The strategy does not even reflect on the recent years’ emergence of business regions. Instead, the state outlines what it sees as its new (limited) role in spatial planning, in accordance with the recent deregulation of the Planning Act. This could perhaps be interpreted as a turn towards more roll-back-oriented policies. Notwithstanding this trend, the state is playing (and will continue to play) a significant role in reworking its geography. At the beginning of 2019, the Danish government published the report Denmark’s Capital City: Initiatives to Strengthen the Capital Area (Danish Government 2019). In the report, the Danish government lists a number of initiatives to promote economic growth and development in the Greater Copenhagen Area towards 2030. Besides a deregulation of the overall planning framework for the Greater Copenhagen Area, the so-called Finger Plan, the report presents the idea of constructing new artificial islands in Øresund, in order to accommodate the expected growth of the capital city. The construction of the biggest island, Lynetteholmen, is planned to start in 2035 close to central Copenhagen, and will, when finished in 2070, house 35,000 residents and 35,000 workspaces (see www​.lynetteholmen​.com). The other nine islands have been labelled ‘Green Tech Islands’ and are inspired by Silicon Valley. The islands are to be constructed at Avedøre Holme in Hvidovre Municipality south of Copenhagen. These islands will, when finished in 2040, be home to 12,000 workspaces cementing Copenhagen’s leading role within green tech development. In many ways the discourses framing these two new mega-projects in Copenhagen are remarkably similar to those framing the visions of developing the Øresund Region 30 years ago. In this sense, the state seems yet again to rely on spatial strategies as a powerful tool for reworking its geography as a response to globalization pressures.

NOTES 1. Originally rooted in a military context, strategic planning is often argued to have emerged in the private sector in the US in the 1950s. However, others trace the origins of strategic spatial planning to ideas about building the modern nation-state in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s (see Albrechts 2004). 2. Notwithstanding this significant change in the ideology of planning, the policy aim of balanced development across Danish territory continues to influence national spatial planning in Denmark today (see Carter et al. 2015; Galland 2012). This is, for example, evident in Olesen and Carter’s (2018) discourse analysis of the public debate on the latest revision of the Planning Act. 3. One exception is the National Planning Report 2013, which is the only planning report in this decade to present a spatial imaginary of what the map of Denmark is conceived to look like.

Transforming the geography of the welfare state  455

REFERENCES Albrechts, L. (2004), ‘Strategic (spatial) planning re-examined’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 31 (5), 743–58. Albrechts, L., P. Healey and K.R. Kunzmann (2003), ‘Strategic spatial planning and regional governance in Europe’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 69 (2), 113–29. Allmendinger, P. and G. Haughton (2009), ‘Soft spaces, fuzzy boundaries, and metagovernance: The new spatial planning in the Thames Gateway’, Environment and Planning A, 41 (3), 617–33. Brenner, N. (1999), ‘Globalisation as reterritorialisation: The re-scaling of urban governance in the European Union’, Urban Studies, 36 (3), 431–51. Brenner, N. (2004a), ‘Urban governance and the production of new state spaces in Western Europe 1960–2000’, Review or International Political Economy, 11 (3), 447–88. Brenner, N. (2004b), New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carter, H., H.G. Larsen and K. Olesen (2015), ‘A planning palimpsest: Neoliberal planning in a welfare state tradition’, European Journal of Spatial Development, 58, 1–20. Christaller, W. (1966), Central Places in Southern Germany, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Danish Government (2019), Danmark’s Hovedstad: Initiativer til Styrkelse af Hovedstaden [Denmark’s Capital City: Initiatives to Strengthen the Capital Area], Copenhagen: Danish Government. Danish Ministry of the Environment (1992), Denmark towards the Year 2018, English summary, Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of the Environment. Danish Ministry of the Environment (2006), The New Map of Denmark: Spatial Planning under New Conditions, English summary, Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of the Environment. Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs (2019), Vækst og Udvikling gennem Fysisk Planlægning [Growth and Development through Spatial Planning], Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs. Danish Planning Act (2016), Forslag til Lov om Ændring af Lov om Planlægning [Proposal for Changes in Act of Planning], Copenhagen: Danish Government. Galland, D. (2012), ‘Understanding the reorientations and roles of spatial planning: The case of national planning policy in Denmark’, European Planning Studies, 20 (8), 1359–92. Galland, D. and S. Enemark (2013), ‘Impact of structural reforms on planning systems and policies: Loss of spatial consciousness?’, European Journal of Spatial Development, 52, 1–23. Harvey, D. (1989), ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transition in urban governance in late capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler B, 71 (1), 3–17. Haughton, G., P. Allmendinger, D. Counsell and G. Vigar (2010), The New Spatial Planning: Territorial Management with Soft Spaces and Fuzzy Boundaries, Abingdon: Routledge. Haughton, G., P. Allmendinger and S. Oosterlynck (2013), ‘Spaces of neoliberal experimentation: Soft spaces, postpolitics, and neoliberal governmentality’, Environment and Planning A, 45 (1), 217–34. Healey, P., A. Khakee, A. Motte and B. Needham (eds) (1997), Making Strategic Spatial Plans: Innovation in Europe, London: University College London Press. Jessop, B. (2000), ‘The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the ecological dominance of globalizing’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24 (2), 323–60. Jørgensen, I., F. Kjærsdam and J. Nielsen (1997), ‘A plan of hope and glory: An example of development planning in Denmark after Maastricht’, in P. Healey, A. Khakee, A. Motte and B. Needham (eds), Making Strategic Spatial Plans: Innovation in Europe, London: University College London Press, pp. 39–58. Keil, R. (2009), ‘The urban politics of roll-with-it neoliberalization’, City, 13 (2–3), 230–45. Luukkonen, J. and H. Sirviö (2019), ‘The politics of depoliticization and the constitution of city-regionalism as a dominant spatial-political imaginary in Finland’, Political Geography, 73, 17–27. Moisio, S. and L. Leppänen (2007), ‘Towards a Nordic competition state? Politico-economic transformation of statehood in Finland, 1965–2005’, Fennia, 185 (2), 63–87. Mouffe, C. (2005), On the Political, Abingdon: Routledge. Næss, P. (2009), ’Nyliberalisme i byplanlægningen’ [Neoliberalism in urban planning], in A. Lundkvist (ed.), Dansk Nyliberalisme, trans. Danish Neoliberalism, Copenhagen: Frydenlund, pp. 213–42.

456  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Olesen, K. (2011), Strategic Spatial Planning in Transition: A Case Study of Denmark, PhD thesis, Aalborg: Aalborg University. Olesen, K. (2012), ‘Soft spaces as vehicles for neoliberal transformations of strategic spatial planning?’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 30 (5), 910–23. Olesen, K. (2014), ‘The neoliberalisation of strategic spatial planning’, Planning Theory, 13 (3), 288–303. Olesen, K. (2017), ‘Talk to the hand: Strategic spatial planning as persuasive storytelling of the Loop City’, European Planning Studies, 25 (6), 978–93. Olesen, K. and H. Carter (2018), ‘Planning as a barrier for growth: Analysing storylines on the reform of the Danish Planning Act’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 36 (4), 689–707. Olesen, K. and C.J. Hansen (2020), ‘Introducing business regions in Denmark: The “businessification” of strategic spatial planning?’ Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38 (2), pp. 366–83. Olesen, K. and J. Metzger (2017), ‘The region is dead, long live the region’, in L. Albrechts, A. Balducci and J. Hillier (eds), Situated Practices of Strategic Planning, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 67–83. Olesen, K. and T. Richardson (2012), ‘Strategic planning in transition: Contested rationalities and spatial logics in twenty-first century Danish planning experiments’, European Planning Studies, 20 (10), 1689–706. Peck, J. and A. Tickell (2002), ‘Neoliberalizing space’, in N. Brenner and N. Theodore (eds), Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 33–57. Purcell, M. (2009), ‘Resisting neoliberalization: Communicative planning or counter-hegemonic movements?’, Planning Theory, 8 (2), 140–65. Scott, J.C. (1998), Seeing Like a State, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Swyngedouw, E., F. Moulaert and A. Rodriguez (2002), ‘Neoliberal urbanisation in Europe: Large-scale urban development projects and the new urban policy’, Antipode, 34 (3), 542–75.

41. The absolutist city developer: predatory megaprojects and the state–planning nexus in Qatar Agatino Rizzo

41.1

STATE INVESTMENTS AND GEOPOLITICAL AMBITIONS

Doha, the capital of Qatar, has recently come to the attention of the media and the international community for its rising geo-economic importance. Although in Taylor et al.’s Global Urban Analysis (2011) Doha ranks 12 among 17 cities of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for global network connectivity – outdone respectively by Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Dubai – there are shreds of evidence that Qatar has become an important actor in the international community. Blessed with generous oil and gas reserves, Qatar has boldly snatched stakes in United States (US) and European Union companies, particularly after the 2008 global credit crisis. With assets under management for US$300 billion (in 2017), the Qatar Investment Authority owns and has owned stakes in companies such as the London Stock Exchange, Barclays Bank, Lagardere, Credit Suisse, Volkswagen, Miramax Films, Merdiana and the International Aviation Group, and the French football club Paris Saint Germain. Also, the country is leveraging the Al Jazeera satellite news channel, which Qatar owns through the Qatar Media Corporation, to extend its geopolitical grip into other MENA countries. In addition, Qatar is the recipient of several global sports events such as the 2022 FIFA World Cup that are an important tool used by the state to brand Qatar abroad. This impressive state activism abroad has bought Doha a spot onto the world map. Although Qatar is now affected by a land, sea and air embargo from its Arab neighbours (United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Arab countries), on the grounds that the country is a major sponsor for Iranian propaganda and supporter of Islamist groups, the ambitions of this tiny peninsula are undiminished.1 The starting point of this chapter is that Qatar’s activism abroad has corresponded to an equal if not higher level of activism at home in the form of state-funded urban megaprojects in Doha (Figure 41.1). In the last 20 years or so, Doha’s cityscape has been transformed by futuristic complexes such as the Hamad International Airport, Mshereib Downtown, the Olympic area of Aspire Zone, Education City, Lusail City, a brand-new metro and sports constructions for the upcoming football World Cup and several other events. Elsewhere, I have argued (Rizzo 2019) that while the state uses urban megaprojects to fuel the rhetoric of economic diversification from oil revenue towards sustainable development, mega developments in fact predate large volumes of the local and foreign resources in order to realize such visions. Megaprojects require large quantities of, among others, sand, cement, water, stone and human labour that are acquired at the lowest possible price, chiefly by exploiting poor countries (Rizzo 2019). Similarly to other Gulf states (Ponzini 2011), while the megaprojects agenda has brought new useful infrastructure to cater to the country’s ambitious goals, at the 457

458  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Figure 41.1

Metro Doha’s major urban areas and megaprojects

same time it has not contributed to an increase in the quality of the overall built environment. Doha’s fragmented urbanism is the product of massive public megaprojects that are poorly connected to their surroundings (Gardner 2014; Nagy 2000; Rizzo 2013). In this chapter, I will try to explore why despite the Qatar state’s absolutist, i.e. total control, approach in megaprojects investments and planning, the quality of its built environment has not lived up to expectations. To do so, I focus on the concept of the state–planning nexus that is the socio-technical assemblage of Molotoch’s (1976) classic ‘growth machine’ (elites, capital, etc.) and the state machinery (e.g. ministers, ministries, policies, etc.). I will first review some of the most popular urban megaprojects in Doha (Section 41.2), and in the following section (41.3), based on my previous research, I will analyse the planning and institutional systems in Qatar. In the conclusions (Section 41.4), I discuss the disappointing urban results in light of shortcomings in the planning system and argue for the importance of locally trained planners to tackle Doha’s pressing urban issues.

The absolutist city developer  459

41.2

DOHA AS A STATE MANIFESTO

Several terms have been used to label the recent extraordinary urban growth of Arab capitals in the Persian Gulf. For instance, Bagaeen (2007) has described Gulf cities in terms of their ‘Instant Urbanism’ to differentiate it from Western, long-term urban evolution. Twenty decades earlier Riad (1981, p. 7) theorized a ‘Petro-Urbanism’ which ‘undermined, with unparalleled suddenness, the roots of an ecosystem [the Gulf’s one] which reflected a perfect adaptation to an environment many generations old’. At the same time, Qatar is a location for a very diverse population made up of temporary workers who outnumber Qataris 5 to 1. According to some unofficial estimates, Qataris account for 20 per cent of the total population while South Asians and Southeast Asians account for 55 per cent; another 20 per cent are Arabs from other MENA countries and 5 per cent are ‘Others’ (see Rizzo 2017). Also, due to foreign immigration, between 2004 and 2015 Doha’s population increased from nearly 340,000 to more than half a million inhabitants while the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning (MMUP) forecasts that by 2032 Metro Doha (i.e. Doha and its satellite towns) will contain 1.8 million inhabitants (Rizzo 2013; Statistics Authority Qatar). After independence from British protectorate rules in 1971, the state of Qatar embarked on a rapid phase of modernization on the strength of its rising oil revenues (Adham 2008). During the 1970s, the American firm Pereira Architects shaped the new waterfront of Doha with the characteristic convex-like profile it maintains today. While during the 1980s the drop in oil prices slowed the pace of urban development, since the end of the 1990s, inspired by the success of Dubai in diversifying its economy, the state of Qatar has embarked on a vast state-funded megaprojects campaign to globalize Doha (Rizzo 2013). The American-style branch campus of Education City, the Qatar Science and Technology Park, the new Doha Financial Centre in West Bay, ‘The Pearl’ (an off-shore development modelled after Dubai’s Palms), Lusail City, Hamad International Airport and the stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup are but a sampling of the large undertaking Qatar has embarked upon over the last 20 years. To establish a planning framework that would be compatible with these efforts and the Qatar National Vision 2030, the Ministry of Planning has worked on a National Development Framework (QNDF) for ‘managing growth, change, land use and development in Qatar to 2032’ (MMUP 2011, p. 10). In the remainder of this section, I shed light on some of the most known megadevelopments in Doha, while an analysis of the QNDF is presented in Section 41.3. 41.2.1 The Pearl Construction on the man-made island ‘The Pearl’ started in October 2004 with the aim to deliver ‘unique, true freehold investment opportunities in a safe, relaxed, friendly and exclusive environment’.2 Located to the north of Doha, this 400-hectare megaproject, with an estimated cost of US$20 billion, was owned by a consortium of local private investors (the United Development Company). However, in 2011 this was de facto bailed out by the government following disappointing sales and the prolonged global credit crunch. Two big artificial bays, five five-star hotels, 18,000 luxury villas with private beaches and apartments can house up to approximately 41,000 residents. The rich residents are served with some of the best international retail chains such as Cavalli, Yves Saint Laurent and Rolls Royce and five-star restaurants.

460  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state A mix of different stylistic references, the Arab Maghreb and the Mediterranean Riviera (including ample citations of Venice; El Samahy and Hutzell 2010), have been deployed to compete with similar off-shore projects mushrooming across the Gulf: from the seminal Palm developments in Dubai to the Green Island in Kuwait. While doubts about the legitimacy of these off-shore developments in the hot area of the Persian Gulf Region have already been raised by Tehran, on the grounds that a modification of a nation’s shoreline may give reasons for future territorial disputes,3 the economic slowdown in the Gulf countries is the major factor of the delay of such developments. Beside the questionable economic viability of such an investment for a small country like Qatar, other issues related to The Pearl are accessibility to the island, environmental impact and non-Islamic behaviours. The accessibility of the island is limited by its very shape as there is one gate only for visitors and residents to get in/out of the development. Already today, with only 3,000 residents, during rush hour lines of cars queue to exit the artificial island. The environmental cost of closing part of the shallow waters surrounding the shell-like island for the reclamation process, with the consequent destruction of the sea bottom and heavy impact on the marine fauna, is unquestionably high (Burt 2014). Finally, concerns about the free consumption of alcohol in open spaces within the perimeter of The Pearl have been raised by conservative Qataris, leading to an alcohol ban imposed by the authorities from December 2011 on the whole island. As a result of this, some well-known restaurant chains, such as Gordon Ramsay’s Maze, left the site along with many affluent expat residents whom the project attempted to attract in the first place. 41.2.2 Qatar Foundation: Mshereib Redevelopment and Education City Overseen by Qatar Foundation’s real estate arm ‘Mshereib Properties’, the Mshereib redevelopment is a US$5.5 billion state-planned (and -owned) redevelopment project located in the heart of Doha. While formerly the area was occupied by a number of affordable shops run by South Asians, the aim of this megaproject is to attract Qataris and affluent expats to the city centre within a redesigned built environment that captures the rich and distinctive qualities of the country’s cultural heritage and traditions. The plan replaces the former humble shops with street malls, luxury shops and high-end hotels. Of the former area, only a handful of houses have been kept while the rest has been razed. Finally, although this megaproject has several merits such as increasing density in the urban centre, implementing mixed-use land use and providing for pedestrian-oriented mobility, virtually no efforts have been made to assess its impact on the social tissue (e.g. gentrification and displacement impacts). At the same time, Qatar Foundation, which is a state(-funded) foundation, has been investing billions of dollars in the futuristic Education City campus to attract top Western universities, renowned researchers and knowledge-sector companies to Qatar. The masterplan for Education City accommodates 15 major world-renowned branch colleges, a major specialized teaching hospital, a central library, a convention centre, an equestrian academy, a golf club, large-scale on-campus housing and a science and technology park. Inspired by educational and research and development campuses in the US, Education City provides for a self-contained habitat with residential areas (for both students and staff), hotels, restaurants, offices, sports facilities, etc. The campus is a gigantic gated community with very few, heavily guarded access gates (Rizzo 2013). Moreover, the campus’s buildings, most of them designed by international star architects such as Arata Isozaki and Rem Koolhaas, sharply contrast with the

The absolutist city developer  461 surrounding repetitive cheap urban landscape: in the campus fountains, greenery and parade routes celebrate the high objectives of Qatar Foundation; outside, no comparable features can be found.

41.3

STATE(-LED) CITY PLANNING AND PREDATORY URBANISM

The Qatari planning system is largely similar to the planning systems found in other Gulf countries.4 Municipalities in Qatar enjoy very little power. Urban development is on paper steered by the MMUP. However, private actors with access to land and to ministers or the royal family itself enjoy a large degree of freedom concerning the land use programme, density and architecture of the intended development (similar to the case of the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; see Boodrookas and Keshavarzian 2019). Aside from the land to which major state projects have been allocated, land can be turned into urban areas at will provided that the developer obtains political and financial backing. If the developer is a quasi-state agency (for example, Qatari Diar in Lusail or Qatar Foundation in Mshereib), which as shown by Elsheshtawy (2019) for the case of Dubai is the most frequent case, or an actor directly linked to the elite (say, the United Development Company) political backing is almost automatically granted. While Qatar’s state-planned developments have been useful for introducing the notion of urban design in a relatively young country (Lockerbie 2010), they have failed to create an integrated environment for pedestrians who are forced to use their private car to access most of the sites. I argue that the inability to deliver higher urban quality in Doha is the result of a disconnect between the master planning phase and the implementation of urban megaprojects. Among the main factors hindering the implementation of sound urban planning in Qatar are: little understanding of Gulf dynamics by international consultants during the master planning phase; poor government capacity and lack of coordination between government agencies in the implementation phase; and a predatory understanding, by planners and authorities, of city development. 41.3.1 Poor Government Capacity and Lack of Coordination between Government Agencies In the first decades after independence, one of the main factors that hindered sound urban planning in Doha was the government’s lack of capacity for implementing complex master plans developed by Western consultants (Al Buainain 1999; Lockerbie 2010). A similar problem still persists today in modern Qatar whereby the main state- and government-linked actors are mainly staffed with nationals with very little training or motivation (but of crucial political importance for the survival of the absolute monarchy; a phenomenon also known as the ‘rentier state’ see Mahdavy 1970; Rizzo 2020). This makes the state dependent on international consultants in the daily implementation and management of projects. Olds (2002) calls them the ‘global intelligence corps’ (GICs) and, as shown also by Rapoport and Hult (2017) in their study of Swedish urban consultants in China, they are a major vector for policy mobility across countries (McCann 2011). In the post-colonial countries of the Global South, the GICs phenomenon is very well established as planners from the centre of the empire used to advise

462  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state local rulers in matters of infrastructure. This practice became ingrained in the newly independent states (Boodrookas and Keshavarzian 2019). While municipalities in Qatar have very little power, the lack of coordination between central government agencies has further contributed to the failure to adopt the master plans. Until the 1990s, in fact, planning affairs in Qatar fell under the jurisdictions of the Ministry of Finance and Petroleum Affairs (which promotes projects that increase or support oil and gas revenues); the Ministry of Public Works (roads, utilities, public buildings), the Ministry of Municipal Affairs (planning and building regulations), the Ministry of Justice (land registration), the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (public housing for nationals), the Emiri Diwan (sponsors and developers of many prestigious urban projects); and the military (development of some transportation infrastructures and several development projects) (Lockerbie 2010). The opacity of this fragmented institutional frame to the GICs further contributes to the inability to implement master plans. More recently, a major streamlining of ministries has been implemented to improve coordination, assigning to MMUP and its sub-agencies most of the planning (e.g. the powerful Public Work Department ‘Ashgal’ and the Urban Planning Department), while the Emiri Diwan retains its powers over special projects (e.g. Mshereib; Rizzo 2013). This streamlining, however, has not stopped the duplication of efforts or the lack of coordination. 41.3.2 Lack of Understanding of Gulf Dynamics by International Consultants In her analysis of planning agencies in Qatar, Sharon Nagy (2000, p. 133) reported that the ‘failure to accurately estimate population growth, planners’ unfamiliarity and insensitivity to local social patterns, and budgetary constraints are the reasons most commonly offered to explain’ the failure of previous plans. As we shall see below, similar issues have also affected the current QNDF. First, the lack of economic understanding of oil-dominated economies makes both state and international consultant planners unable to deliver plans. When I was working in Qatar, the average crude oil price was between US$80 and 110 per barrel. At that time, public spending was at its apex and in 2010 Qatar secured its bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Today the price of crude oil is below US$60 per barrel while the Qatari rial is still pegged to the US dollar (US$1 = 3.64 QAR). This has huge consequences in public spending as 70 per cent of total government revenue originates from petroleum and natural gas exports. Second, the QNDF does very little to counter Doha’s urban primacy. Al Buainain (1999, p. 406) notes that Qatar’s poor polycentric development is responsible for chronic affordable housing shortages, land value inflation and localized environmental impacts. Currently, the bulk of future urban developments in Qatar are assumed to take place within the capital metropolitan boundaries. Lusail City and the stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup are all to be located within metropolitan Doha. However, the environmental impacts of allocating such developments to a small part of the country are currently unknown. By concentrating its efforts on the capital region, the government and the planners they have hired are once again confirming the primacy of Doha over other cities in the country, thus reinforcing urban primacy. Third, despite Gulf countries’ dependence on oil revenues as their primary economic resource, the fluctuation of oil prices in response to either regional conflicts (e.g. the Iraq Wars and most recently the Syrian Civil War and the reinstatement of US sanctions on Iran) or to oversupply (e.g. recent development in shale gas technology in the US) or to reduced

The absolutist city developer  463 demand (e.g. the effects of the climate crisis discourse in some European countries) is never taken into consideration in the master planning phase, possibly undermining the ability of the government to finance future urban spending (see the ‘urbanity of stagnation’ phase in Qatar – Adham 2008). 41.3.3 Predatory Urbanism While planning and implementation are sub-contracted to foreign companies and consultants, Doha’s intense urban development phase could have contributed better to build local planning capacity. Instead, megaprojects in Qatar continue to follow the lines of ‘predatory urbanism’ (Rizzo 2019) in that they exploit intangible resources, such as imagery and architecture models, and tangible resources, such as materials and energy, that are most often drawn from poor countries. To be sure, the term predatory urbanism refers to the production and materiality of new master-planned cities as much as to the process of ‘cheap resource exploitation’ (Patel and Moore 2017). The resource extraction economic model on which capitalism sits (Malm 2016) is a waste-generating, primitive (although pervasive) model that evolves at the planetary scale – with several levels of inter-connections between centres and peripheries worldwide. For example, in resource-rich regions, the cycles of urban growth and shrinking can be related to the volatile regime of commodity pricing that is set by both the market law of demand–supply and the strategic goals of the extractive industry (Mitchell 2011). While the term ‘resource’, particularly in the geographic context of the Middle East, is typically associated with oil and gas, here I enlarge its meaning to include any tangible and intangible factor of production that is aimed at capital accumulation i.e. labour, technology, natural resources and branding through the cheap appropriation of images. For example, The Pearl reconnects with Qatar’s past on a symbolic level: the reference to the pearling industry can be found both in the name of the development and in the very shape of the island. The relationship between The Pearl and the sea is characterized by an urban programme that attempts to reproduce Euro-Mediterranean cities such as those on France’s Côte d’Azur or in the western part of the Mediterranean region (Morocco and Spain). However, urban developments in Qatar require a set of resources that the country does not have, such as limestone, cement and sand. The stone used in the building industry is instead bought from Asia (with China (37 per cent) and India (27 per cent) as the top countries of origin; The Growth Lab at Harvard University 2019) while 70 per cent of the imported cement comes from Iran (AEC 2017). The current embargo of Qatar (from June 2017), the result of a political crisis within the Gulf, damages the ability of the country to access building materials. The water is sourced from the Gulf basin that is shared by eight countries with energy extracted from the underground riches of the country. Workers from a wide range of ethnicities, possibly borrowed from the traditional, racialized organization of operations in the oil industry (Mitchell 2011), are, just like any other resource, extracted mainly from poor countries worldwide (e.g. India, Pakistan, the Philippines, East Europe, etc.). In general, around 60 per cent of the construction workers are sourced from countries such as India by predatory employment agencies that promise good salaries but deliver harsh working hours and restriction on travel (Mohammad and Sidaway 2012).

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41.4

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The starting point of this chapter was that despite the state’s absolute monopoly on the planning and financing of large urban megaprojects, or if you like, Qatar’s state–planning nexus in urban development, these latter haven’t contributed to improving the overall urban quality of Doha. Fragmented public space, car-based urbanism and socio-spatial segregation are some of the aspects (discussed in Section 41.2) of Doha’s urban environment. To look for answers to my question, I analysed recent urban planning efforts produced by state agencies but drafted mostly by foreign consultants. The results of my qualitative analysis of such documents show that the state’s inability to deliver better urban standards is due to a detachment between (1) the master planning phase – usually sub-contracted to external consultants who are insensitive to Gulf dynamics – and (2) the implementation phase – usually carried out by incapable and redundant local government agencies. The dominance of a predatory (i.e. competitive plus exploitative) understanding of city development is further exacerbated by the lack of a free discussion of ongoing megaprojects. A public discussion beyond a mere presentation of projects is not encouraged in the current socio-political climate of the Gulf (Colombo 2012). I believe that the current state–planning nexus has and will continue to have a direct impact on the implementation of spatial plans in the Gulf capitals. First, if the lack of understanding of Gulf dynamics by international consultants will not be addressed and opportunities to build capacity amongst local planners will be missed, more spatial segregation will occur, gentrification will persist in the regenerated areas of the city centre and unreferenced architecture and urban space will further erode opportunities to implement sustainable development. Moreover, poor government capacity and lack of coordination between government agencies will generate redundant developments: some large luxury residential and shopping complexes in The Pearl areas (e.g. the shopping carousel in Port Arabia) and West Bay (e.g. the Gate Mall) are already underutilized and financially unsustainable. In the remainder of this chapter, we will acknowledge its limitations, which are to be addressed in future studies, and propose brief suggestions to address the problematique just discussed. Van Loon and Aalbers (2017) are among those who have most convincingly pointed to the importance of the financialization of housing as a lens to understand contemporary, neoliberal urbanism. Our chapter did not consider this aspect but a future thorough investigation of rapid urbanization in the Gulf should look at the broader state–planning–financial nexus. However, unlike the Dutch case discussed in van Loon and Aalbers (2017), and to be sure in most literature on the financialization of the city, our case study does not have the characteristics of a mature, liberal democracy/economy with a strong emphasis on the rule of law (like those in the Global North). The state of Qatar (and Bahrain, the UAE and so forth) is an absolute monarchy with no clear separation between the state and ruling economic elite. Most members of the government are appointed, with no democratic consultation, by the Emir from his own family or closest allies. These figures are most often and at the same time political figures and businessmen who control vast amounts of private and public capital (Ponzini 2011). Therefore, a future study of the state–planning–financial nexus should be constructed from the standpoint of the histories and dynamics that are proper to the post-colonial South (Turok 2014). Finally, a change of priorities in state-funded development is badly needed. The government’s efforts should be directed to locally trained planners for the challenges the country needs to address in the near future (above all, reduce its dependence on CO2-generating

The absolutist city developer  465 processes). The education and training of local planners are crucial aspects for bridging the gap between master planning and implementation phases in the Gulf region. This does not exclude the contingent need to hire global consultants, but the rules of engagement should favour addressing long-standing issues such as urban fragmentation, socio-spatial segregation, affordable housing and public transport. This, of course, will require local authorities to tap the needs, desires and ideas of the local residents (rather than the elites) and to take a bold step towards a more open society.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

In 2019, Qatar won its first Asian Football Cup which was hosted in the UAE. www​.thepearlqatar​.com. www​.mehrnews​.com/​en/​newsdetail​.aspx​?NewsID​=​1263907. This section is adapted from part of an article published as Rizzo 2014.

REFERENCES Adham, K. (2008), ‘Rediscovering the island: Doha’s urbanity from pearls to spectacle’, in Y. Elsheshtawy (ed.), The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development, London: Routledge, pp. 218–56. AEC (2017), The Atlas of Economic Complexity. Accessed at http://​atlas​.cid​.harvard​.edu on 11 June 2020. Al Buainain, F. (1999), Urbanisation in Qatar: A Study of the Residential and Commercial Land Development in Doha City, 1970–1997, PhD thesis, University of Salford. Bagaeen, S. (2007), ‘Brand Dubai: The instant city; or the instantly recognizable city’, International Planning Studies, 12 (2), 173–97. Boodrookas, A. and A. Keshavarzian (2019), ‘Giving the transnational a history: Gulf cities across time and space’, in H. Moltoch and D. Ponzini (eds), The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress, New York: New York University Press, pp. 35–57. Burt, J.A. (2014), ‘The environmental costs of coastal urbanization in the Arabian Gulf’, City, 18 (6), 760–70. Colombo, S. (2012), ‘The GCC countries and the Arab Spring: Between outreach, patronage and repression’, IAI working papers, 12 (9), March. El Samahy, R. and K. Hutzell (2010), ‘Closing the gap’, in R. Koolhaas, T. Reisz, M. Gergawi, B. Mendis and T. Decker (eds), Al Manakh Gulf Continued, Vol. 23, Amsterdam: Archis, pp. 184–90. Elsheshtawy, Y. (2019), ‘Real estate speculation and transnational development in Dubai’, in H. Moltoch and D. Ponzini (eds), The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress, New York: New York University Press, pp. 235–55. Gardner, A.M. (2014), ‘How the city grows: Urban growth and challenges to sustainable development in Doha, Qatar’, in P. Sillitoe (ed.), Sustainable Development: an appraisal from the Gulf Region, New York: Berghahn, pp. 343–66. Lockerbie, J. (2010), Planning in Qatar. Accessed at http://​catnaps​.org/​islamic/​planning​.html on 11 June 2020. Mahdavy, H. (1970), ‘The pattern and problems of economic development in rentier states: The case of Iran’, in M.A. Cook (ed.), Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 429–67. Malm, A. (2016), Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, London: Verso. McCann, E. (2011), ‘Urban policy mobilities and global circuits of knowledge: Toward a research agenda’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (1), 107–30.

466  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning (MMUP) (2011), Qatar National Development Framework, Qatar. Mitchell, T. (2011), Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, London: Verso. Mohammad, R., and J.D. Sidaway (2012), ‘Spectacular urbanization amidst variegated geographies of globalization: Learning from Abu Dhabi’s trajectory through the lives of South Asian men’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36 (3), 606–27. Molotch, H. (1976), ‘The city as a growth machine: Toward a political economy of place’, American Journal of Sociology, 82 (2), 309–32. Nagy, S. (2000), ‘Dressing up downtown: Urban development and government public image in Qatar’, City & Society, 12 (1), 125–47. Olds, K. (2002), Globalization and urban change: Capital, culture, and Pacific Rim mega-projects, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Patel, R. and J.W. Moore (2017), A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Ponzini, D. (2011), ‘Large scale development projects and star architecture in the absence of democratic politics: The case of Abu Dhabi, UAE’, Cities, 28, 251–9. Rapoport, E. and A. Hult (2017), ‘The travelling business of sustainable urbanism: International consultants as norm-setters’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49 (8), 1779–96. Riad, M. (1981), ‘Some aspects of petro-urbanism in the Arab Gulf States’, Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Qatar University, 4, 7–24. Rizzo, A. (2013), ‘Metro Doha’, Cities, 31, 533–43. Rizzo, A. (2014), ‘Rapid urban development and national master planning in Arab Gulf countries: Qatar as a case study’, Cities, 39, 50–7. Rizzo, A. (2017), ‘Sustainable urban development and green megaprojects in the Arab states of the Gulf Region: Limitations, covert aims, and unintended outcomes in Doha, Qatar’, International Planning Studies, 22 (2), 85–98. Rizzo, A. (2019), ‘Predatory cities: Unravelling the consequences of resource-predatory projects in the Global South’, Urban Geography, 40 (1), 1–15. Rizzo, A. (2020), ‘Megaprojects and the limits of “green resilience” in the Global South: Two cases from Malaysia and Qatar’, Urban Studies, 57 (7), 1520–1535. Statistics Authority Qatar (2015), Annual Statistical Abstract. Doha. Accessed at https://​www​.psa​.gov​.qa Taylor P.J., P. Ni, B. Derudder, M. Hoyler, J. Huang and F. Witlox (eds) (2011), Global Urban Analysis: A Survey of Cities in Globalization, London: Earthscan. The Growth Lab at Harvard University (2019), ‘Growth Projections and Complexity Rankings, V2’ [Data set]. Accessed at https://​doi​.org/​10​.7910/​dvn/​xtaqmc Turok, I. (2014), ‘The urbanization–development nexus in the BRICS’, in S. Parnell and S. Oldfield (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Cities in the Global South, London: Routledge, pp. 122–38. van Loon, J. and M.B. Aalbers (2017), ‘How real estate became “just another asset class”: The financialization of the investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors’, European Planning Studies, 25 (2), 221–40.

42. State land concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning Miles Kenney-Lazar

42.1 INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, there has been much international attention given to the phenomenon of ‘global land grabbing’, the acquisition of lands across the Global South and other reforming economies of Eastern Europe by domestic and international investors for resource extraction, agro-industrial expansion, special economic zones (SEZs), infrastructure development, or various forms of land speculation (Borras et al. 2011; von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009; Rulli et al. 2013). The term ‘grab’ has been used to denote the swift, opaque, and unjust dynamics of the land acquisitions as well as the highly unequal power dynamics that define them. It also captures their dramatic social and environmental impacts in rural areas, particularly when they dispossess rural people of their land and displace ecosystems with high conservation value. Yet, the considerable amount of research that has been conducted on land grabbing during this time has shown that many land investments have not turned out as planned. An analysis of a database compiled by the Land Matrix initiative, which monitors land investments over 200 hectares (ha) in size in low- and middle-income countries, shows that investors have only been able to sign contracts for half of the 85.5 million ha that they sought globally (Nolte et al. 2016). Furthermore, only 70 per cent of contracted projects had at least entered the start-up phase, and only 24 per cent of the land area allocated for agricultural investment projects was under production. These patterns can be explained by a variety of factors – more land was granted to companies than they were capable of using, projects were commercially unviable or the investing company had gone bankrupt, the land allocated was not suitable for its intended purpose, or the project was mired in land disputes with local users and governments (Baird 2014; Bräutigam and Zhang 2013; Schang 2019; Schönweger and Messerli 2015). The land that is leased or sold to companies has often been committed to other prior uses, such as investments by other companies, national environmental conservation, or rural agricultural production. Many countries, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Myanmar, Laos, and Indonesia, are beginning to revoke land use rights from companies that have not developed the allocated land for the purpose of returning it to prior land owners or allocating it for other uses (Collins et al. 2019; Pongkhao 2019; Resosudarmo et al. 2019; Suhardiman et al. 2019). In many ways, the failures of land investments across the Global South is a positive development for peasant communities as it has hindered the destructive impacts of land grabbing that were initially feared, reflecting the strength of rural land holders to prevent the wholesale dispossession of their lands through various forms of resistance, conflict, and action (Hall et al. 2015). However, it is also characteristic of a deeper problem in that these projects were originally approved and planned, despite their potential destructive impacts, their lack of commercial viability, and their overlap with other land uses that restricted their viability. Such failures have often been interpreted as examples of weak or poor governance and planning 467

468  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state (Deininger and Byerlee 2010; Nolte 2014). As a result, the solutions proposed to address them have often been highly technocratic or “rendered technical” in the words of Tania Li (2007), in that the framing of problems and solutions leads to technical fixes that do not address their root problems. Development donors have thus called for a range of fixes, including master land use planning, land registration systems, improved evaluations of investment proposals, environmental and social impact assessments, and enhanced coordination across government ministries (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009; Cotula et al. 2009; Deininger and Byerlee 2010). Pinning the problem of land grabbing on a lack of planning is woefully inadequate for understanding why failures of investment occur as they are based on an apolitical understanding of how planning operates. Rather than being an unbiased rational and technocratic exercise, planning is a highly political process shaped by layers of political relations among a wide range of actors at multiple scales. When land concessions are granted that overlap with the zoned agricultural lands of a peasant community or a gazetted national conservation forest, it is curious to place blame on the poor spatial planning of the government. It would be more productive to investigate the political relationships and interactions among those involved in planning processes: political priorities of powerful actors, the relationships between state investment versus environmental ministries, and the interactions between investors and various state actors. A deeper understanding of these dynamics will demonstrate that such problems cannot be ‘solved’ through technical solutions that do not address the larger political dynamics that are behind planning in practice. Furthermore, critical analyses of planning offer a window for understanding the practices and relations of the state. Spatial planning is an indispensable way in which the abstract characteristics of the state ‘touch down’ and territorialize both urban and rural spaces. The land concession, for example, is one of the primary mechanisms by which state space is produced and contested. Thus, investigations into the relational and contested nature of planning processes show that planning is a key site for a wide range of groups within society to seek to bend state strategies and practices to their interests.

42.2

LAND CONCESSIONS AND THE RELATIONALITY OF PLANNING

The term ‘land grab’ is useful in many ways, particularly in that it captures the violence and injustice of many types of land deals. However, it also can obscure important aspects of what happens when land is actually ‘grabbed’. Much of the research on land grabbing has focused on contexts in which states have relatively strong legal authority or control over land and grant it out to foreign investors in the form of long-term leases or concessions (Wolford et al. 2013). Thus, land grabbing is not an exclusively capital-driven process; it is just as likely to be oriented towards the interests, strategies, and operations of the state. It often fits into state plans for economic development, is matched with state goals of territorializing unruly and remote areas of the nation, and the land is actually ‘grabbed’ by state actors that have the authority, legitimacy, and coercive power to dispossess rural peoples of their lands (ibid.). Thus, when land concessions fail, investigating why can offer a window into important aspects of how states operate.

Concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning  469 The concession, as a form of state-planned economic development, has its roots in the colonial era (Alden Wily 2012; Stoler 1985). Territorial concessions were reluctantly granted to European powers after devastating battles, such as coastal concessions in China granted to the British Empire after the opium wars which gave them a foothold in trade across Asia (Platt 2018). Upon establishing their own colonial territories, European powers granted land and resource concessions to international investors to set up plantations and log forests, or to extract minerals. Post-colonial states have continued to employ the concession as a useful tool for restricting foreign investment and its associated rights to land, resources, trade, and tax exemption to limited spaces. China’s development of SEZs is an example of this approach, restricting foreign investment to key sites in coastal cities (Yeung et al. 2009), not far from the concessions of the colonial era. A wide range of post-colonial states have similarly pursued SEZs and have also granted other types of land and resource concessions outside of such zones. SEZs and land concessions epitomize what Aihwa Ong (2006) has called ‘graduated sovereignty’, in which national regulations and controls are relaxed in particular territorial zones. SEZs and land concessions are a strategic form of state economic planning as they allow for liberalized investment and trade but restrict it to certain spaces. This is particularly appealing for post-socialist and post-colonial states that could seek benefits from liberal trade and investment, yet keep its risks isolated and only selectively incorporating certain elements into the broader national economy. How such projects operate in practice, however, can vastly differ from their plans. This does not mean that planning is not at work but rather that there is a need to employ a more critical, political, and relational approach to the concept of planning. Hall (1980, pp. 2–3, original emphasis) identifies two meanings to the use of the term planning. The first is ‘a set of processes whereby decision-makers engage in logical foresight before committing themselves’. The second is ‘processes that result in a physical plan showing the distribution of activities and their related structures (houses, factories, offices, schools) in geographical space’. He notes that urban and regional planning usually refers to the second meaning, which is concerned with ‘how much of what is put where’ (Hall 1980, p. 3). Such definitions capture the ways in which planning has been typically conceived of as an objective, rational, technocratic process that can generate improvement, thus an important component of what Scott (1998) has referred to as high modernism. Critical scholars of planning, however, have noted the many ways in which the ideals of planning as an exercise of rational, enlightened, intentional improvement are not often achieved. Hall (1980) and Scott (1998) argue that planning in the high modernist tradition often fails due to a lack of flexibility and ability to deal with uncertainty. Gunder and Hillier (2009) contend that the optimistic terminology of planning operates as a form of ideology, using empty signifiers like ‘sustainability’, ‘rationality’, ‘competitiveness’, and ‘growth’ that both mean everything and nothing to everybody and nobody. As Rankin (2009) has asserted, planning theory has always maintained a normative dimension in its advocacy for change but has largely not engaged in critical analysis of planning in relation to imperialism, racialization, patriarchy, and the expansion of capital. Most commonly taking the form of economic or urban planning, the plan is a tool intended to combat the chaos of that which is unplanned, anarchic, and organic. However, this distinction between planning as objective, rational, and technocratic and non-planning as organic, chaotic, and anarchic is a misleading dichotomy. Instead, planning is as much constituted by chaos, particularly in that planning processes are driven by political

470  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state struggles and the political-social relations of the actors that take part in such processes. Roy (2005) has noted that the prominence of various forms of urban informality across the globe as a generalized mode of metropolitan urbanization creates a massive challenge of dealing with informality as the ‘unplannable’, that which is an exception to the order of formal urbanization. Yet, she argues that such informality is not to be seen as outside of the state and planning but instead as produced by it. Similarly, the challenges of dealing with the failures of land concessions is not external to the state, but rather internal to planning processes. Planning is a complex political struggle and relational enterprise constituted by the interactions of the heterogeneous actors involved. In thinking through the impact of extra-state actors, interests, and processes on planning, a Marxist perspective lends important insights, in which planning can be seen as a tool of capitalist expansion and crisis resolution. Harvey (1996 [1985]) has argued that planning is instrumental to the logic of capitalist accumulation as it operates as a technology for facilitating investment in the secondary and tertiary circuits of capital, creating a spatio-temporal fix for the reproduction of capitalism in urban spaces. It can mitigate class struggles and problems of overproduction. Such a perspective, however, misses out on the roles that a wide variety of other actors play in planning processes, particularly subaltern groups. Thus, planning should not only be seen as a tool of the capitalist class, but instead should be viewed relationally as a site of contestation and struggle among various groups within society. This is in line with the strategic-relational approach in which the state is viewed as a site of contestation and struggle that can be directed in different ways and towards different ends (Gramsci 2010 [1971]; Jessop 1990; Poulantzas 2014 [1978]). As Luukkonen (2015, 2017) has shown in the context of European integration, spatial planning is a practice that brings together a wide range of regional developers from diverse backgrounds with competing visions, understandings, and desires. Analytically approaching planning as relational echoes my previous work on dispossession (Kenney-Lazar 2018), in which I have argued that dispossession is not simply a tool for the expansion of global capitalism, but instead is produced through complex and multi-scalar political relations relevant to targeted sites of resource investment. Investors must work through the political relations of the state, parastatal organizations, local elites, and land users in order to access land. When such relations are not established or do not fall into place, access to land is restricted. Similarly, planning is not an exercise solely conducted at the service of capital but is constructed through the interactions of a range of heterogeneous actors who are struggling to push plans in particular directions to suit their needs and interests.

42.3

THE POLITICS OF SPATIAL PLANNING IN LAOS

Planning is most typically associated with the city, to such a degree that the adjective ‘urban’ can seem redundant. Yet, planning is not wedded to the urban as it operates in relation to rural spaces in a variety of different ways. Rural lands are zoned into different types of use: forest conservation, agriculture, logging, grazing, and resource extraction. Plans are also made regarding different types of ownership: state, communal, private, and customary. Planning exercises concern the location of different forms of rural infrastructure: dams, irrigation canals, electric lines, roads, and markets. Thus, land grabbing via the granting of land concessions does not occur in a spatial vacuum, but is operating in relation to landscapes that are

Concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning  471 filled with other spatial activities. It is a landscape already comprised of the spatial plans of prior eras – competing land uses and ownerships that are then overlaid upon. Thus, extensive planning is required in order to grant and develop a land concession so that it might be integrated into rather than in conflict with prior rounds of spatial planning. Many of the challenges facing land grabbing globally are precisely due to the conflicts between the current plans of the project and prior plans of land use and ownership. The problems of land grabbing do not result from an absence of or weak and poor planning, but the reality of planning as a complex, layered activity that is constituted by the interactions and relations of a wide variety of actors at multiple scales, in multiple institutions and sectors, and at multiple periods of time. Furthermore, the planning of land concessions is not necessarily an intentional, ordered process in which a wide variety of economic, social, and environmental factors in space are considered. Instead, the planning process is often driven by a range of political influences. These shape how much land is granted to a particular actor, how contiguous those plots of land are, the location of such land in relation to suitable soil, labour sources, roads, and other essential forms of infrastructure, and the process that has to be pursued to survey and develop such land. 42.3.1 Contradictions of Planning and Land The case of land concessions in Laos offers a unique window into the political relationalities of planning. Laos, officially the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), is a single-party socialist republic that has transitioned towards a hybrid market economy, combining disciplined party-state authoritarianism with neoliberal economic reforms (Kenney-Lazar 2019). Planning is not a new phenomenon for the country – after the establishment of the Lao PDR in 1975, the government adopted a centrally planned economy in which major economic decisions were made by the central government with strict limitations on market activity. Since 1980, five-year economic plans were developed for major elements of the economy (Leebouapao and Sayasenh 2017), even specifying the quantities of different commodities to be produced. Although now more flexible and sophisticated, this planning exercise continues to this day. In 1986, the Lao government introduced the New Economic Mechanism (NEM), a policy that allowed for the eventual development of market forces. Following China and Vietnam, the NEM facilitated the gradual development of private business, markets and trade, and foreign investment. Rather than a replacement for planning, market elements were integrated into the planning process, leading to the formation of a hybrid market socialist political economy that the Lao government continues to ideologically construct as essential for its pursuit of socialism (Stuart-Fox 1997; Yamada 2018). The NEM was also accompanied by a process of decentralization, in which provincial governments were given greater control over revenues and budgets, although many of these powers were recentralized in 1991 with the promulgation of the national constitution (Stuart-Fox 2005). De facto power has always been decentralized in Laos due to the country’s long underdeveloped transportation and communication infrastructures across its rugged geography, the legacy of which is still in place today. Although the central government devises plans for the country, provincial and district governments have a great deal of power concerning how to implement them. Planning also plays an important role in the management of lands, forests, and other natural resources in Laos, often with support and aid from development donors. In the late 1970s, the

472  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state government granted massive, but not clearly demarcated areas of the country’s forests to state forestry enterprises for the purposes of developing a domestic logging industry (Dwyer and Ingalls 2015). In response to the deforestation pressures of such unrestricted logging, a system of protected conservation areas was established in 1993 while other categories of national forest management were established in the 2000s. In the mid-1990s, the government began a programme of land use planning in rural villages, demarcating village land into residential, agricultural, and forest areas, intended to rationalize land use and spur sustainable development (Fujita and Phanvilay 2008; Lestrelin et al. 2012). And in the late 1990s, the government began a programme of land titling, although it largely only covered urban and peri-urban areas (Hall et al. 2011; Vandergeest 2003). Not surprisingly, economic and land use planning that combines state socialism with an openness to market forces and foreign capital can generate a wide range of contradictions. Andriesse (2011) has characterized the Lao political-economic system as a state-coordinated frontier economy, which captures the contradictory elements of state control over the economy with the chaotic frontier dynamics of resource extraction in rural parts of the country. Land concessions are a perfect example of such contradictions in that they combine a state-driven plan to determine which areas of ‘state land’ can be granted to companies for foreign investment, yet the process can be captured by the interests of powerful foreign investors. Land and resource investments were legally permitted via the 1988 Law on Foreign Investment, but land concessions only accelerated as a mode of investment after the passage of the Land Law in 2003. As of 2017, over 1 million ha of land concessions for agriculture, tree plantations, and mining had been granted (Hett et al. Forthcoming). This does not include deals for mineral exploration and hydropower and other sectors like manufacturing, infrastructure, tourism, and SEZs, which would vastly increase the figure of land granted. In the early 2000s, when few land concessions had been granted, there was little concern within the government regarding the precise location of the projects, the availability of land, and the social-environmental impacts that they would generate. Unsure of how attractive Laos would be for foreign capital, investment conditions were made as appealing as possible, such as by concession fees at low rates (Schumann et al. 2006). Leasing rates for government land were set at a very low rate and some of the initial investors were granted the rights to develop large areas of state land. Two of the earliest investors in eucalyptus plantations, the Japanese company Oji Paper and the Indian conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, were each given the rights to 50,000 ha (Hunt 2011; Sommer 2013). By 2007, however, the negative impacts that such projects were having upon rural people and the environment were increasingly known through media articles, research reports by academics and development organizations, and government investigations (Dwyer 2007). Since then, the government has intermittently placed moratoriums on certain types of land concessions, has worked with development organizations to create a comprehensive spatial database on the land allocated, and has sought to improve the internal process by which land concessions are spatially planned through studies, impact assessments, consultation, and surveying. The planning-related problems of land concessions granting in Laos are immense, which is clearly demonstrated in a new national database (Hett et al. 2019). Only 62 per cent of the 1 million ha granted has actually been developed, despite a majority of the projects having been approved over a decade ago. Additionally, 27 per cent of the deals granted were abandoned, never started operations, or concluded their operations early. Although the government sought to facilitate the concession of land in the poorest and most remote areas of Laos, most of them

Concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning  473 (62 per cent) are located within two hours’ travel time of provincial capitals and 56 per cent are located near villages that are categorized as better off. Despite the government tightening the process of allocating land for projects, many still do not have the required legal documentation. Just under half of the projects lacked a project development agreement of concession contract and only 2 per cent of the projects had an environmental impact assessment. As perhaps the most serious indication of a planning problem, 240 projects (covering 137,332 ha) were developed in areas that are classified as national forest by the Lao government. There were 55 projects (11,000 ha) developed within national conservation areas, which are supposed to be strictly off limits to any form of development. 42.3.2 Planned Plantations? The problems associated with the spatial planning of land concessions are even more striking through up-close investigations of particular projects, such as in my work on rubber and pulpwood (eucalyptus and acacia) tree plantations (Kenney-Lazar 2012, 2018). First, the spatial extent of these projects often overlaps with prior forms of land use planning and zoning. Earlier rounds of village land use planning described above were intended to provide a degree of land tenure security to rural communities, but such land use plans were often ignored when allocating land concessions. This was the case when the government granted a 10,000 ha land concession to the Vietnamese conglomerate Hoàng Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) (Kenney-Lazar 2012). In Figure 42.1, I have digitized and overlaid the land use boundaries of the concession with the land use planning maps of two villages, which shows extensive overlap between these two forms of spatial planning. A variety of important categories of land that were earlier allocated to the village for agriculture, paddy rice, and foraging of forest products had later been granted to the company. This was not necessarily intentional but rather reflected the lack of importance paid to earlier forms of land use planning when the plantation land was established. A signboard with the land use map in one of the villages was blown over during a typhoon the previous year – no one had troubled themselves to pick it up until I asked to view it, demonstrating the lack of political importance placed on such village-centred forms of land use planning. My work on a subsidiary of the Vietnam Rubber Group by the name of Quasa-Geruco Joint Stock Company, or Quasa-Geruco for short, showed similar types of problems with spatial planning. Like other companies operating in Laos, after being granted an 8,650 ha concession, they developed land within national forest areas. They admitted during an interview to clearing 380 ha of land within a national production forest, which is supposed to be reserved by the government for timber harvesting. In their case, they knowingly cleared an area beyond the boundaries of the land that was allocated to them. Figure 42.2 shows an aerial imagery overlaid with polygons that demarcate the extent of the land allocated to Quasa-Geruco as part of its concession. It can be seen that the cleared land for the plantation extends far beyond the borders of the concession, a problem that district officials often complained about. They remarked that the company was compliant when district officials were present, yet when on their own they would clear land that had not been allocated to them, including villagers’ agricultural fields. Yet, this was not just a result of the district government’s inability to control the company. It was also because the precise boundaries of their concession were not always clearly established, thus creating opportunities for the company to clear land yet to be allocated. Often, a rough map was sketched out as to where the company could develop their con-

474  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state

Figure 42.1

Overlap of land granted as a rubber plantation concession to HAGL and land zoned to two villages

cession and precise surveys of the exact borders of the project were only drawn up after trees had been planted. Towards the end of my research in 2015, three years after all of the trees in 8,650 ha were planted, provincial survey teams had yet to map 1,985 ha of the land concession. In contrast to HAGL and Quasa-Geruco, other companies have been unable to access large portions of the land they were granted. Despite being granted 50,000 ha, Oji Paper and Aditya

Concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning  475

Figure 42.2

Aerial image showing areas cleared for rubber plantation beyond the boundaries of the allocated concession

Birla have only been able to physically access 22,000 ha and 17,000, respectively (Fogde and Dam 2012). Additionally, significant amounts of the land they were granted were not suitable for eucalyptus due to poor soils or lands prone to flooding. As a result, many of the trees that they planted have not grown well and Oji Paper has sold its plantations to an Australian company while Aditya Birla is looking for a buyer to purchase their plots.1 Similarly, Chinese plantation companies have been surprised to find that the government’s promise of empty lands awaiting their investment to be a myth – many have failed to acquire the amount of land granted to them due to their inability to navigate the complex politics of land at the local level (Lu and Schönweger 2019). One of these companies that I have studied in depth, Shandong Sun Paper Industry Joint Stock Company, or Sun Paper for short, has experienced difficulties accessing all of the land granted to them. Although they were granted 7,324 ha of land in 2010, by 2015 they had only been able to plant 3,228 ha with trees, or less than half of what was stipulated in their contract. Areas of land granted close to the Vietnamese border had been rescinded by the government, supposedly because of the Vietnamese government’s geopolitical concerns. Peasants had occupied other plots of their allocated land and refused to move. As I have written about elsewhere (Kenney-Lazar 2020), companies such as Sun Paper have fared quite differently than HAGL and Quasa-Geruco for several reasons. First, Sun Paper initiated its project several years after HAGL and Quasa-Geruco, at a time when the moratoriums on land concessions were already in place and the political climate had changed in such a way that required companies to follow a more restrictive set of bureaucratic steps to establish their plantations. Second, Sun Paper was hesitant to develop a quid pro quo relationship with the Lao government by establishing close relationships through gifts and other forms of cor-

476  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state ruption with local administrative levels of the government. Thus, when their project ran into obstacles on the ground, they received limited political support from the local government. In contrast, Quasa-Geruco used gifts to enhance personal relationships with powerful local officials. HAGL built strategically important infrastructure, like university dormitories and a hospital, for the national and provincial governments, which made it easier to access land (Kenney-Lazar 2010). Third, Vietnamese companies are often regarded with a unique status because of the longstanding, revolutionary alliance between Laos and Vietnam stemming from their common struggle during the First and Second Indochinese Wars. This is especially important in areas near the border with Vietnam, where the Vietnamese government views Chinese companies with heightened suspicion. What these dynamics show is how a wide variety of relational political factors, including geopolitical relations, importantly shape how planning operates in practice.

42.4 CONCLUSIONS The problems that land concessions encounter in a variety of contexts across the Global South and in Laos – inability to access land, allocation of unsuitable land, and clearance of land outside of concession borders, among others – are easily viewed as the result of poor planning. Yet, this is based on a fairly limited understanding of planning as a rational, objective, and technocratic exercise practised by government bureaucrats. If, instead, planning is seen as a relational and political process, driven by various forms of struggles and interactions among heterogeneous actors, a different picture of land concession outcomes emerges. Instead of plans being devised by central-level bureaucrats and implemented by ministry line agencies at the provincial, district, and village administrative levels, plans are produced through the process of project development by the interactions between actors at multiple administrative scales, company officials, and village authorities and land users. The plan to grant a concession to a particular company – the terms of the contract, the area allocated, or its location – is not the outcome of deliberative bureaucratic processes. It has emerged from the country’s political economic reform, coupled with the investment proposals received, the relationships and interactions with the investors, and broader geopolitical relationships between Laos and the country the investors come from. As a project is developed, the plan evolves through interactions of the interests, strategies, and priorities among local governments, the company, and village leaders and households. Along the way, the results of past planning exercises are encountered, such as land use plans and conservation areas. If these plans are not maintained and prioritized over time, then they fall by the wayside, as with the case of past land use planning practices in Laos. Thus, planning is a social and political process, dynamic and alive with the social and power relations that it comprises.

NOTE 1.

www​.mekongtimberplantations​.com/​about​.html.

Concessions and the spatial politics of rural planning  477

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478  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Kenney-Lazar, M. (2019), ‘Neoliberalizing authoritarian environmental governance in (post)socialist Laos’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (2), 338–48. Kenney-Lazar, M. (2020), ‘Relations of sovereignty: The transnational production of plantation territory in southern Laos’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45 (2), 331–44. Leebouapao, L. and A. Sayasenh. (2017), ‘Lao PDR’, in P. Intal, Jr. and L. Chen (eds), ASEAN @ 50 Volume 3: ASEAN and Member States: Transformation and Integration, Jakarta: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, pp. 141–63. Lestrelin, G., J.-C. Castella, and J. Bourgoin (2012), ‘Territorialising sustainable development: The politics of land-use planning in Laos’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42 (4), 581–602. Li, T.M. (2007), The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lu, J. and O. Schönweger (2019), ‘Great expectations: Chinese investments in Laos and the myth of empty land’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 7 (1), 61–78. Luukkonen, J. (2015), ‘Planning in Europe for “EU”rope: spatial planning as a political technology of territory’, Planning Theory, 14 (2), 174–94. Luukkonen, J. (2017), ‘A practice theoretical perspective on the Europeanization of spatial planning’, European Planning Studies, 25 (2), 259–77. Nolte, K. (2014), ‘Large-scale agricultural investments under poor land governance in Zambia’, Land Use Policy, 38, 698–706. Nolte, K., W. Chamberlain, and M. Giger (2016), International Land Deals for Agriculture: Fresh Insights from the Land Matrix: Analytical Report II, Bern, Montpellier, Hamburg, Pretoria: University of Bern, Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement; German Institute of Global and Area Studies; University of Pretoria; Bern Open Publishing. Ong, A. (2006), Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Platt, S.R. (2018), Imperial Twilight: The Opium Wars and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Pongkhao, S. (2019), ‘Govt warns it will scrap inactive land concession projects’, Vientiane Times, 28 June. Poulantzas, N. (2014 [1978]), State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso. Rankin, K.N. (2009), ‘Critical development studies and the praxis of planning’, City, 13 (2–3), 219–29. Resosudarmo, I.A.P., L. Tacconi, S. Sloan, F.A.U. Hamdani, A. Subarudi, I. Alviya, and M.Z. Muttaqin (2019), ‘Indonesia’s land reform: Implications for local livelihoods and climate change’, Forest Policy and Economics, 108, 1–14. Roy, A. (2005), ‘Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 71 (2), 147–58. Rulli, M.C., A. Saviori, and P. D’Odorico (2013), ‘Global land and water grabbing’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (3), 892–97. Schang, S. (2019), ‘Land fumbles: The hangover effects of the great land grab’, Land Portal, accessed on 31 July 2020 at https://​landportal​.org/​blog​-post/​2019/​06/​land​-fumbles​-hangover​-effects​-great​-land​-grab Schönweger, O. and P. Messerli (2015), ‘Land acquisition, investment, and development in the Lao coffee sector: Successes and failures’, Critical Asian Studies, 47 (1), 94–122. Schumann, G., P. Ngaosrivathana, B. Soulivanh, S. Kenpraseuth, K. Onmanivong, K. Vongphansipraseuth, and C. Bounkhong (2006), Study on Land Leases and Concessions in Lao PDR, Vientiane: GTZ. Scott, J.C. (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sommer, L. (2013), Deciding on Large Scale Land Acquisitions in the Lao PDR: Case Study on Land Concessions in the Agroforestry Sector from Central Laos, Master’s thesis, University of Bern. Stoler, A.L. (1985), Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870–79, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Stuart-Fox, M. (1997), A History of Laos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stuart-Fox, M. (2005), Politics and Reform in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Working Paper no. 126, Perth: Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. Suhardiman, D., M. Kenney-Lazar, and R. Meinzen-Dick (2019), ‘The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar’, Critical Asian Studies, 51 (3), 368–85.

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Index

Aalbers, M.B. 464 Abercrombie, P. 423 Abrams, P. 7, 30 accountability 55, 168, 191, 196, 245, 307, 365, 369–73, 415, 418, 426, 439 accumulation 5–7, 14, 16–18, 31, 64, 67, 82–8, 90, 113, 158–60, 162, 195, 198, 200, 204, 230–31, 249, 308, 335, 346, 405, 433, 435–6, 463, 470 actor-network theory 15 Adam, R. 418–19 affect 55, 73, 78–9 Afghanistan 66, 121, 315 Africa 114, 139, 233, 282, 403 Agamben, G. 279 agency 3, 30–31, 37–9, 77, 85, 163, 315, 319–20, 404, 417, 422, 426 of cities 342, 400–401 local 313–16, 318–21 of materials 79 political 9, 180, 341–2, 376, 400–402, 406–9 of the state 72, 74, 77, 79–80, 314 Agnew, J.A. 16, 36, 159, 176, 278, 313, 329, 368 Al Buainain, F. 462 Albert, M. 288 Albrow, M. 55 Alfred, T. 114, 252 Algeria 121 algorithmic citizenship 341, 369, 371–5, 378–9 Alibaba 330 Allan, T. 244 Allen, J. 318 Allmendinger, P. 423 al-Sadr, M. 138 Amal 138 Amiridis, M. 309 Anderson, B. 9–10, 35–7, 43, 93, 102, 132, 280 Anderson, M. 113 Andreucci, D. 231–2 Andriesse, E. 472 Anonymous 328 Anthropocene 80, 225–6, 252–4, 258–60 Appadurai, A. 280 Arab League 122 Arab Spring 102 Arendt, H. 368 Argentina 52, 96, 292–4, 299 armed forces, in Latin America 291–300 artificial intelligence 193, 335, 369, 376, 379

Aryan Brotherhood 123 Asad, T. 135 Asia 21, 66, 120–21, 145, 150–51, 233, 249, 313, 315, 318, 320, 344, 463, 469, see also individual countries assemblage theory 31, 72–80 Atambyaev, A. 320 austerity 12, 97–8, 158–60, 187, 212, 214–20, 388, 403, 419 austerity state 198–209 austerity urbanism 341, 389–94 defined 389 Australia 79, 107–12, 115–16, 218, 252, 406 Austria 96–7, 104 authoritarianism 18, 20–21, 73, 102–3, 105, 134, 149, 205, 291, 298–9, 303, 348, 471 autonomy 5, 15, 31, 46, 84, 105, 134, 136, 168, 186–7, 282, 423, 431 Axtmann, R. 114 Bagaeen, S. 459 Bahrain 457, 464 Baidu 330 bailouts 386, 394 Bakhtin, M. 74 Bakiev, K. 319 Bakker, I. 214, 231 banal nationalism 39–40, 46, 234 Bank of England 169 Bannon, S. 103–4 Bansard, J.S. 405 Barber, B. 399, 408 Barker, A.J. 115 Barker, J. 253 Barlow, J.P. 327–8 Barrutia, J. 402 Basque Country 377, 402 Bassens, D. 401, 407–8 Bauman, Z. 375 behavioural public policy 50–51 Belina, B. 159–60 Belt and Road Initiative 276, 319, 349 benchmarking 340, 355–61, 364 Benner, C. 402 Bennett, E. 146 Benson, D. 174–5, 177 Benwell, M. 52 Bergmann, L. 246 Berlin, I. 378

481

482  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Bhabha, H. 75–6 Bhuiyan, R. 123 big data 103, 185, 194–5, 341, 357, 375 Bigo, D. 288 Billig, M. 10, 39, 41, 46, 93 biopolitics 5, 65–6, 74, 225, 281 blockchain 341, 369–72, 374–5, 378–9 Bloomberg, M. 404 Blue Zones Project 188 Blyth, M. 389 body 11, 31, 40, 61, 63–4, 66, 68, 75–7, 170, 288 body politic 76–8, 234, 288 Bolivia 232–6, 299 Bonds, A. 110 Bookchin, D. 404 border security 62, 66–7, 97, 179 Borón, A. 293 Bosnia 39, 49, 75 Bou Akar, H. 139 Bourdieu, P. 39, 75 Bouteligier, S. 404 Bowman, I. 2 Bratsis, P. 48, 54 Braun, B. 241, 244 Brazil 96, 104, 147–9, 168, 248, 292, 297–8, 357, 400–402, 424 Bremmer, I. 233 Brenner, N. 13, 357, 444–8 Bretton Woods 87–8, 164 Brexit 46, 88, 93, 96, 98–103, 361, 372, 376–7, 406 Brickell, K. 41 Bridge, G. 232 Brundtland, G.H. 407 Bruyneel, K. 113, 115 Buddhism 41, 122, 145, 151 Bulgaria 20 bureaucracy 4, 8–10, 33, 49, 53, 55, 74, 200, 219, 288, 371–2, 423 Burkitt, I. 47–8 Burnham, D. 146 Bush, G.W. 294 Büthe, T. 169 Butler, J. 10, 37–8, 134–6 Butler-Ellis, E. 195 Buzan, B. 325, 331 Cairo, H. 288 Calzada, I. 341 Cambodia 41 Cambridge Analytica 103–4, 372 Cameroon 405 Campbell, D. 35 Canada 79, 111–12, 167, 252, 255, 258, 341, 400, 406–9 capital accumulation see accumulation

capitalism 4–6, 11, 14–18, 42, 68, 80, 82–7, 113, 162–4, 173, 198–9, 203–4, 206, 208, 229–31, 234, 253, 307, 349–50, 415, 431, 435, 463, 470 knowledge-intensive 7, 14, 18 surveillance 19, 190, 192, 308, 375, 379 car cultures 39–40 carbon accounting 245–7 Cardoso, F.H. 297 Cardoso, R.V. 438 Carroll, C. 253 Carter, E.D. 188 Carter, H. 452 Cartesianism 179–81 Castells, M. 404 Catalonia 93, 377 Cate, S. 208 Central Asia 66, 150–51, 233, 313–16, 319, see also individual countries central banks 165, 169–70, 387–8 Central Intelligence Agency 309 Chávez, H. 234, 299 Chile 233–4, 293, 295, 299 China 41, 145, 152, 161, 165, 167–8, 227, 247–8, 276–7, 279–84, 316, 319, 326, 328, 330–31, 334, 343–52, 369, 372, 403, 406, 461, 463, 469, 471 Christaller, W. 444 Christian, J. 40 Christianity 122, 134–8, 141 Christie, N. 206 Citizens Foundation 310 citizenship 33, 63, 112, 134, 141, 252, 368–80 algorithmic 341, 369, 371–5, 378–9 hydrocarbon 232–3 liquid 341, 369–76, 378–9 metropolitan 370–71, 373, 376–9 stateless 368–75, 377–9 City Beautiful movement 146–7, 150 city diplomacy 400–401 city-regionalism 13, 340–41, 344–51, 402, 452–4 competitive multi-city regionalism 359, 362, 365 extrospective 355–65 city-regions 7, 13, 16, 20–21, 340–41, 343–52, 356–65, 369–79, 399, 401–2, 405–6, 408, 414, 430, 437–8, 447, 453, see also mega city-regions Clark, G. 401–2 Clark, J.H. 64 Clarke-Sather, A. 226 Cleveland, J. 406 climate change 18, 73, 187, 225–7, 236, 245, 247, 251–4, 258–60, 265, 276–9, 282, 340–41, 400–401, 404–5, 408, 463

Index  483 Clinton, B. 294 Coddington, K. 94 Coffey, W. 253, 259 Cold War 36–7, 72, 96–7, 102, 105, 138, 161–3, 166–7, 256, 299, 303, 305–6, 309–10, 315–17 Colombia 292, 294–6 colonialism 17–18, 36, 107–8, 110, 133, 145, 151, 252–4, 258–9, 314–15, 469, see also settler colonialism Comblin, J. 292–3, 299 communism 164–5, 202, 292–3 competitive multi-city regionalism 359, 362, 365 competitive upscaling 340–41, 355–65 constructivism 9–11, 30, 34–8, 93, 233, 351, 432–3, 435–6, 438 consultants 174, 178, 203, 216, 417–26, 461–5 consultocracy 415, 417, 425–6 consumption-based environmental accounting 240–49 Corbridge, S. 16, 51 Cornago, N. 77–8 Corntassel, J. 114, 253, 259 Coronil, F. 231, 234 corporate social responsibility 226, 263–73 corruption 1, 48, 54, 142, 195, 232, 292, 298, 320 Costa Rica 299 Coulter, J.A. 303 Coulthard, D.G. 253 COVID-19 19, 369, 372 Cowen, D. 161 Cox, E. 116 Cox, K.R. 16, 31–2 creativity 173, 180 credit-rating agencies 168–70, 395 Cremer-Schäfer, H. 209 criminalization 206–7, 209 crisis management 388, 444, 448 critical geopolitics 9–11, 35–6, 72–3, 291–300 critical resource geography 228, 231 Crow, M. 355 Culcasi, K. 94 culture 173, 444 CumEx-scandal 203 Cuomo, D. 31 Curley, A. 20, 226 Curtis, S. 401 cyberattacks 289, 328, 330, 332, 334–5 cybercrime 328, 332 cyberspace 37, 43, 95, 289, 316, 325–36 da Silva, L. 297 Daigle, M. 18 Dalby, S. 242 dataism 341, 369–70, 372, 374–5, 378–9 Davidson, M. 341

Davis, H. 252–4 Dean, M. 241–2, 248 death penalty 299 DeBoom, M. 227 decolonization 110, 114, 232, 315 decriminalization 205 deforestation 65, 236, 243, 249, 407, 472 DeLanda, M. 76 Deloria, V. 114 Demangeon, A. 101 Denmark 56, 97, 215, 415, 444–54, see also Nordic welfare state depoliticization 212, 219, 447, 453 Derrida, J. 38, 72 deterritorialization 13, 75, 347, 436 Devadoss, C. 94 development zones 150, 414 devolution 341, 369–70, 372–4, 377–9, 416, 418, 433 Dierwechter, Y. 341–2 digital space 325, 333, see also cyberspace digital surveillance 185, 192, 194–5 digitalization 19 dignity 104, 306, 378 Diné 113, 253, 255–7 diplomacy 8, 21, 31, 74, 77–9, 293, 315, 400–401 discrimination 11, 119, 122–3, 126, 136, 215, 293, 375 Dittmer, J. 31 division of labour 1, 7, 31, 84–6, 89, 356, 403 Dolowitz, D.P. 174, 177, 181 domestic violence 66 Douzet, F. 289 Downs, R. 115 downsizing 12, 389, 391, 448 du Motier, G. 303 Dubois, V. 49, 55 dystopias 20, 251–8, 280–81, 327, 376 Dyukov, A. 267 Eatock, P. 115 Echebarria, C. 402 ecological footprints 226, 242–8 economic growth 6, 150, 164, 166, 200, 214, 218, 227, 276, 307, 340–41, 346, 348–50, 385, 388, 390, 407, 444, 447–8, 452–4 economization 7, 19, 212, 217 Ecuador 152, 295 Edensor, T. 39–40 education 52, 303, 377, 444, see also school– security nexus Eichenberger, R. 432 Eisenschitz, A. 365 El Salvador 36, 125, 299 Elden, S. 78, 179

484  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Elomäki, A. 213 Elsheshtawy, Y. 461 embodiment 5, 8, 35, 37, 40, 61 Emel, J. 232 emotion 55 endurance 94, 108–9, 114–15 energy 225–7, 229, 232, 235, 242, 246, 248, 252–6, 258, 263, 267, 273, 277, 280–83, 334, 406–8, 463 Engels, F. 208 Enloe, C. 299–300 entrepreneurialism 6, 12, 339–40, 347–8, 361, 435, 445–9, 451–3 environmental geopolitics 18, 225, 227, 284 environmental governance 225–36, 240, 248, 253, 399 Erlich, P. 407 Estonia 98, 330, 374–5 ethics 36, 133 Ethiopia 93 ethnies 34 ethno-nationalism 94, 96–7, 99, 101–5, 134 Eurocentrism 253, 314, 317–18 Eurocities 437 Europe 1, 13–14, 20, 78, 89, 137, 145, 148, 150, 153, 167, 205, 214, 218, 230, 233, 246, 288, 291, 299, 313, 315, 322, 326, 369, 371–5, 377–9, 403, 429, 432, 434, 438–9, 444–5, 447, 463, 467, 469, see also individual countries European Central Bank 169 European Commission 55 European Fiscal Compact 203 European Union 87–8, 97–8, 100–101, 168–9, 176, 203, 214–15, 218, 317–18, 320–21, 334, 341, 347, 358, 369, 372, 375–6, 378–9, 406, 409, 434, 436–9, 457 Brexit 46, 88, 93, 96, 98–103, 361, 372, 376–7, 406 Eurozone crisis 169 everyday state 8, 10, 31, 46–80 exchange rates 164–5, 169 expertise 103, 213, 219, 232, 241–2, 305, 309, 415, 417–26 Facebook 103–4, 190, 192, 330, 375 fake news 372 Falkland Islands 52 Fall, A. 255 Farage, N. 98 fascism 291 Federal Bureau of Investigation 255, 309 femininity 62–3 feminism 10–11, 31, 38, 40–43, 160, 201–2, see also gender; gender equality

approaches to security 66–7 geographies of state power 61–8 political economies 158, 160, 212–21, 226 Ferguson, J. 43 financial crisis 2007–8 166, 170, 186–7, 201, 208, 214, 216, 341, 386–7, 395, 457, see also Great Recession financialization 6, 12, 18, 390, 464 Fine, M. 308 Finland 74–5, 77, 212–13, 215–16, 218–20, see also Nordic welfare state First Nations 112, 252, 409 Fitch 169 Fleras, A. 114 Florida, R. 180, 356 Food and Agriculture Organization 230, 244, 248 footprint approach 226, 240–48, 358 Fordism 6–7, 199–202, 205–8 Forest, B. 94 fossil fuels 232, 246, 257–9, 263, 265, 271 Foucault, M. 7, 35–6, 72–3, 204, 230 France 49, 89, 96–7, 104, 135, 146–8, 198, 208, 256, 334, 360–61, 372, 399–400, 405–6, 429, 431, 438, 463 Frankopan, P. 403 Fraser, N. 387–8 free markets 12, 97, 231, 279, 391 free trade 12, 168, 318 freedom of speech 371 French, S. 192 Frey, B.S. 432 Fricke, C. 415 Friedmann, J. 356 Frynas, J.G. 271 Fukuyama, F. 133, 403 Garcetti, E. 400 Garland, D. 209 Gauchet, M. 133–4 Gazprom Neft 226, 263, 265–73 Gellner, E. 145 gender 5, 10–11, 38, 40–41, 61–3, 65, 73, 135, 212–21, see also feminism gender equality 160, 212–20, 409, see also feminism Gender Equality Index 215 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 164, 167 General Data Protection Regulation 369, 371–2, 375–6 genocide 120, 126, 254, 260 gentrification 67, 206, 308, 405, 460, 464 geoeconomics 159, 161–71, 288, 341, 370–72, 376, 378 geographic imaginary 289

Index  485 geography of the state 4, 16–17, 158, 196, 405, 417, 444, 453 geopolitical processes 4, 10, 40, 343 geopolitics environmental 18, 225, 227, 284, 342, 399–409 of responsibility 245, 249 Georgia 1, 316 Germany 96–7, 104, 135, 198–207, 248, 315, 341, 395, 400, 407, 438 Gerschenkron, A. 88 Gibraltar 74, 77 Gibson, W. 327 Gill, N. 49, 55 Gilmore, R.W. 209 Global Footprint Network 243, 247 Global Gender Gap 215 global intelligence corps 461–2 global unsustainability 400, 408 global village 327 globalization 3–4, 13–17, 20, 65, 97, 99–101, 104, 158–9, 162–8, 170, 173, 202, 206, 246, 291–2, 294, 343, 345, 350, 377, 399, 403, 405–6, 434, 436, 445–6, 449, 451, 453–4 glocalization 445–8, 453 Goffman, E. 37–8 gold standard 87–8 Goldman Sachs 218 Google 330, 375 Google Earth 192 Google Glass 192 Google Street View 192, 195 Gore, A. 327, 407 Gottmann, J. 3, 94, 99–102, 327, 344 Gough, J. 365 governmental technology 9, 414, see also spatial planning governmentality 73, 79, 192, 230, 240–49, 281, 357, 447–8 GPS 192, 194 Gramsci, A. 278, 414 Great Depression 403 Great Powers 137, 161, 265, 313–20 Great Recession 186, 201, 388, 391–2, 395, 403, see also financial crisis 2007–8 Greece 97 green geopolitics see environmental geopolitics green internationalism 409 gross domestic product 203 ground rent 229, 231–2 growth coalitions 88, 340, 355–6, 358, 360–64 growth pole theory 350 Gualini, E. 415 Guatemala 125, 299 Guibernau, M. 378

Gulf region 460, 465 Gunder, M. 469 Habermas, J. 104–5, 132, 386–8, 395 Hachigian, N. 400 Haiti 298 Hall, P. 147, 469 Hall, S. 205–6, 209 Hammett, D. 52 Hansen, C.J. 452 Haraway, D. 280 Harris, K. 307 Hartshorne, R. 3 Harvey, D. 7, 19, 86–8, 146, 228–9, 470 Hasan, W. 123 hate crimes 119–23, 126–7 hate speech 94, 119, 123 Haughton, G. 448 Haussmann, B. 146, 148 health sector 51, 306, 377, 403, 444 Herb, G. 114 Hidalgo, A. 360, 404 Higgins, M. 423 Hillier, J. 424, 469 Hinduism 122, 145, 151 Hirsch, J. 200, 205, 209 historical geographical materialism 31, 82–90 historical materialism 5, 8, 12, 82–6 Hitztaler, S. 226–7 Hizbullah 138–9, 141 Hobbes, T. 278 Hobsbawm, E. 93 Hoekstra, A.Y. 244–5 Honduras 125, 299 Hong Kong 167 honour killings 63 HoSang, D. 208 hot nationalism 39–40, 46 Howard, J. 107, 116 Hubara, K. 220 Huber, M. 229 Hult, A. 461 human geography 4, 9, 11, 14, 30, 49, 102 human rights 52, 66, 85, 115, 134, 296–7, 299, 340, 399 humanitarianism 298–9 Hung, P.Q. 244 Hungary 93, 96–7, 104, 321, 372 Hunt, D. 113 Huntington, S. 134 hydrocarbon citizenship 232–3 hydrocarbons 113, 226, 232–4, 263–73 Hyndman, J. 35, 67 hyper-masculinity 62 hyper-nudge 189–96

486  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Iceland 215, see also Nordic welfare state iconography 3, 99–102 identity politics 9, 94, 96, 98 imagined communities 9–10, 35–6, 38, 93, 128 immigration 11, 13, 43, 63, 96, 98, 105, 108, 122, 126, 179, 208, 304, 459 imperialism 166, 306, 314–15, 317, 469 India 41, 46, 93, 96, 100, 121, 147–9, 168, 402, 406, 463, 472 indigeneity 65, 109–15, 253 Indigenous geographies 17–18, 114 Indigenous Social Justice Association 107 Indigenous sovereignty 114, 253 individualism 12, 307 Indonesia 107, 151, 467 industrialization 145, 148, 153, 164–5, 201, 344, 346, 348 inequality 14, 19, 21, 36, 48, 68, 98, 111, 165, 173, 212, 214, 220, 226, 252, 258, 276, 283, 339, 404 inflation 85, 88, 164, 201, 361, 462 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 245–6 International Court of Justice 100 International Monetary Fund 12, 88, 168–9, 173, 218 international relations 1, 10, 16, 35, 75, 109, 161, 176, 204, 233, 399–401 internationalism 401 internationalization 21, 230, 343, 349 Internet of Things 191, 193 intimate settings 2, 10–11, 37, 40–41, 61–5, 68, 303 Inwood, J. 110 Iran 46, 122, 124, 134, 166, 457, 462 Iraq 121, 124, 166, 254 Islam 41, 46, 99, 101, 119–20, 122, 124–5, 134, 136, 138–9, 141, 151, 309, 457 Islamophobia 97, 122, 127, see also white nationalism Isozaki, A. 460 Israel 122, 138, 152 Italy 96, 98–101, 103, 202, 321, 372, 406–7, 409, 429, 431 Jackson, R. 107–8 Jacobs, J. 149 Jainism 122 Jameson, F. 19–20 Japan 167, 400 Jasanoff, S. 280 Jeffrey, A. 30–31, 39, 49, 75 Jessop, B. 21, 88, 201, 228, 414, 436–7 Joffé, G. 233 Jøgensen, I. 449 Johnston, R. 4, 64–5, 233 Jonas, A.E.G. 1–21, 339–42, 344–5, 370

Jones, R. 31, 109 Jordan, A. 174–5, 177 Judaism 122, 134, 136 Kaddy, G. 110 Kaiser, R. 330 Kantola, J. 213 Kaplan, D. 114 Kashmir 46, 93 Katz, C. 66 Kauanui, J.K. 113–14 Kazakhstan 21, 150, 225 Kearney, A.T. 356 Keating, M. 369 Keil, R. 447 Kennedy, P. 15 Kenney-Lazar, M. 416, 473, 475 Kenya 152, 245, 407 Kepel, G. 134 Kern, K. 407 Keynes, J.M. 88 Keynesianism 6, 11, 17, 163, 199–203, 205, 403, 407, 444–5, see also welfare state Khayrullina, M. 266 Kim, S.-H. 280 King, M. 406 Kjellén, R. 2–3 knowledge-intensive capitalism 7, 14, 18 Kobylkin, D.N. 263 Koch, N. 1–21, 93–5, 225–7 Koivunen, A. 213 Koolhaas, R. 460 Koopman, S. 67 Kristof, N. 310 Kuchibholta, S. 125 Kurdistan 93 Kuusela, H. 425 Kuwait 168, 461 Kyrgyzstan 289, 313, 319–21 Lacoste, Y. 325 land grabbing 259, 416, 467–71 Lanzing, M. 193 Laos 416, 467, 471–6 Latin America 13, 113, 139, 152, 233, 288, 291–9, 316, 360 Latvia 97–8 Le Corbusier 147–8 Le Pen, M. 104 Lebanon 20, 94, 122, 132–3, 136–43 Lee, L. 113 Lefebvre, H. 16–17, 47, 209 legitimation crisis 162, 386–8 Leontief models 246 Lewis, P. 401–2

Index  487 Li, T.M. 468 liberalism 133–4, 186, 195, 318, 350 Libicki, M. 329 Libya 124 Lichten, E. 199 life expectancy 188 Linovski, O. 423–5 Lipsky, M. 49 liquid citizenship 341, 369–76, 378–9 Lister, M. 20, 226 Lithuania 98 Lizotte, C. 1–21, 288–9 Lobao, L. 391 local economic development 348, 355, 359 Local Planning Authorities 418–22, 426 localism 96, 347, 418–19, 425, 446 Lord, A. 419 Lovins, A. 407 Lukes, S. 314 Luttwak, E. 161 Luukkonen, J. 1–21, 414–16, 453, 470 Maaka, R. 114 Maathai, W. 407 machine learning 189, 193, 369, 375 Mack, J.E. 102 Mackinder, H. 2 Madasani, A. 125 Magomedov, A. 272 Makdisi, U. 137 Malaysia 151–2, 167–8 managerialism 425, 446, 449 Manchester School 163 Mann, G. 278–9 Mann, M. 86 marketing 103, 152, 194, 218, 358–62, 364, 436, 438 marketization 217, 345, 390, 424 Marsh, D. 174, 177, 181 Martin, L. 181 Marx, K. 82–5, 132, 163, 198, 204, 208, 231, 278, 288 Marxism 15, 30, 82, 163, 435, 470 Mascarà, L. 94 masculinity 10, 40, 62, 66, 73, 204 Massaro, V. 31, 67 Massey, D. 206 Mattli, W. 169 May, T. 376 Mbembe, A. 281 McCann, E.J. 178 McCarthy, J. 229, 231 McConnell, F. 49, 74–5 McKay, M. 115 McKinsey 12, 356

McMahon, C. 305 Means, A. 307 mega city-regions 340, 343–52, 414 megaprojects 415, 457–64 Meijers, E.J. 438 Meltzer, D. 305 Méndez, C. 293 mental health crisis 187 Mercer, R. 103 Merkel, A. 199 Merriman, P. 109 methodological globalism 2, 14–17 methodological nationalism 4, 14, 109–10, 175–6 metropolitan citizenship 370–71, 373, 376–9 metropolitan governance 429–30, 432–4, 437 metropolitan policies 415, 429–30, 433–5, 437, 439 metropolitan regions 356–9, 429–30, 433–9 metropolitanization 429–39 Mexico 64, 99, 124–5, 168 micro-nudging 190 Middle East 46, 94, 114, 119–27, 166, 233, 318, 457, 463, see also individual countries militarization 10–11, 33, 66, 107, 167, 193, 232, 278, 291–2, 298, 304–6, 308–10, 325, 328, 333–5 Mill, J.S. 163 Mitchell, T. 232, 280, 317–18 mobility economic 6, 32, 344 human 11, 13–14, 43, 167 policy 159, 174–5, 177–81, 461 territorial 34, 82, 373 modernism 147–8, 153, 469 modernization 100, 132–3, 136–8, 225, 258, 295, 350, 417, 420, 430–31, 435, 459 Modi, N. 46 Moisio, S. 1–21, 30–32, 158–60, 344–5, 370 Moldova 1 Molotoch, H. 458 monumentalism 150–51 monuments 75, 77, 137, 145–6, 148–50, 153 Moody’s 169, 395 Moonen, T. 401–2 Morales, E. 234, 299 Moreton-Robinson, A. 111 Morocco 152, 463 Morozov, E. 375 Moser, S. 94 Mountz, A. 67, 304 Mozambique 467 Müller, M. 75–6 multi-level governance 374, 430, 434 multi-spatial meta-governance 430, 434, 436 municipal pragmatism see pragmatic municipalism

488  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state Murdoch, J. 241, 244, 247 Murphy, A. 314 Myanmar 21, 151, 467 Nadasdy, P. 252 Nagel, C. 94 Nagy, I. 150 Namibia 276–7, 282–3 Na’puti, T.R. 110 nation building 9–11, 30, 62, 93, 95, 145–53, 228, 265, 268, 302, 378, 403 national identity 10, 39–40, 52, 93, 96, 99–100, 102, 108–10, 112–14, 121, 138, 142, 145, 147–51, 234, 266, 280, 343, 350 national security doctrine 291–2 nationalism 8–10, 34, 39, 52, 62–3, 65, 93–6, 100, 128, 148, 228–9, 339, 378 banal 39–40, 46, 234 and communication technologies 102–4 ethno-nationalism 94, 96–7, 99, 101–5, 134 hot 39–40, 46 Indigenous 107–16 white 94, 119–27 natural resources 13, 19, 228–34, 256, 258, 277, 283, 463, 471 Nature Conservancy 248 Navajo Nation 226, 254–5, 257 necropolitics 227, 276–84 Neiman, M. 401–2 neoclassical economics 199 Neocleous, M. 204, 209 neoconservativism 201 neoliberalism 4, 12–14, 18–19, 98, 104, 158, 165, 173, 186–7, 190, 199, 201, 205–8, 213, 216, 219–21, 233, 306–10, 386, 388, 391–2, 394, 402, 415, 419, 421, 432, 435, 444–6, 449–53 neoliberalization 11–14, 213–14, 216, 225, 231, 389, 392, 446–7, 452–3 Netherlands 96, 374–6, 399 Network of Concerned Anthropologists 310 neuroliberalism 159, 185–96 new cities 95, 145–7, 150–53 New Public Management 55, 420, 425 new state spaces 341, 399–409, 415, 444–7, 452–3 New Zealand 79, 167, 252 Nguyen, N. 289 Niger 234 Nike 218 Nixon, R. 306 non-governmental organizations 216, 219–21, 356 Nora, P. 148 Nordic welfare state 160, 212–21, 415, 446, 456 Norman, E.S. 114 Norris, E. 418–19

North America 14, 20, 153, 226, 230, 233, 255, 258, 288, 291, 326, 423, see also individual countries North American Free Trade Agreement 168 North Atlantic Treaty Organization 317, 320–21 North Korea 124, 166 Norway 97–8, 168, 215, see also Nordic welfare state NotPetya 331–2 nuclear energy 227, 280–82 nuclear weapons 256, 305–6 Ó Tuathail, G. 35–6 Obama, B. 102, 256, 279, 320, 406 obesity 51, 187 oil and gas production 233–6, 254–6, 260, 263–73, 406, 457, 462–3 Olds, K. 461 Olesen, K. 415, 445, 447, 451–2 Ong, A. 469 ontology 17, 35, 75–6, 80, 186 opium wars 469 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 97, 173, 177, 218–19, 358, 372, 437 Orientalism 94, 119–27, see also postcolonialism Orr, J. 305 Ortmann, S. 289 Ospina, C. 296 Otero, V. 305 Pahlevi, R. 100 Pain, R. 40, 61 Painter, J. 30, 50, 52, 74, 77, 179–80 Pakistan 147–8, 310, 463 Palacio, G. 295 Palestine 74–5, 138 Palestine Liberation Organization 138 Pan, Y. 276 Papua New Guinea 93 paradiplomacy 401 Paraguay 234 paramilitarism 295–6 Parker, G. 415, 423 Passos, A. 298 Pastor, M. 402 Pastrana, A. 294 Patel, V. 123 patriarchy 10, 40, 42, 140, 204, 212, 469 Pearl, The 459–60, 463–4 Peck, J. 178, 389, 391 Peduto, B. 404 Pemberton, S. 438 pensions 51, 84–5, 164–5, 170, 231, 310, 395 performativity 38–9, 75

Index  489 Perreault, T. 226 Perroux, F. 350 Perthus, S. 207 Peru 234 Petzold, T. 159–60 Philippines 463 Picchio, A. 214 Pion, G. 405 place marketing 359–62, 364 planetary sovereignty 278–9 plantations 151, 469, 472–6 Plastrik, P. 406 pluto-populism 105 Pokémon Go 193 Poland 93, 96, 104, 372, 406, 429 Polanyi, K. 231 police 66–7, 77, 125–6, 152, 204, 206–8, 256, 291, 294–8, 308 policy mobilities 159, 173–5, 177–81, 436, 461 policy transfer 173–7, 181, 391, 395 popular culture 37 population 4–5, 249, 350 populism 14, 73, 80, 93–4, 96, 98–102, 104–5, 218, 257, 276, 282–3, 341, 369–70, 372, 374, 377–9, 385, 388 Porter, M.E. 356 Portugal 399 post-9/11 119–27, 294, 309 postcolonialism 10, 94, 108, 110, 120–21, 126–7, 147, 151, 289, 469, see also Orientalism post-Fordism 6–7, 431, 435 poststructuralism 61, 72–3 post-truth 372 Poulantzas, N. 5, 205, 228 poverty 126, 207, 306, 403, 407–8 power relations 10, 38, 86, 95, 153, 228, 259, 414, 433, 435, 439, 476 practice of governance 31, 47 pragmatic municipalism 341, 389–91, 393–4 Pratt, G. 64–5 Pratt, M. 111, 114 predatory urbanism 461, 463 predictive policing 207 Pressman, J.L. 52 Prince, R. 159 privacy 136, 193–4, 332, 371–3, 375–6 private property 83–5, 160, 198, 204, 206, 208, 417 privatization 12, 19, 133, 159, 164–5, 168, 205, 215, 230–31, 306–8, 339, 364, 387–90, 392, 426 property rights 12, 83, 110, 195, 232, 417 Protevi, J. 76–7 Przeworski, A. 86 psychology 50, 55, 94, 99–103, 105, 186–7, 195 Public Choice Theory 425

public housing 147, 149, 462 public sphere 37, 40, 48, 132, 134–8, 142, 173, 230, 434 public transport 408, 465 Pulido, L. 65 Purinton, A. 125–6 Pushor, S. 126 Putin, V. 267, 318, 320 Qatar 21, 225, 415, 457–65 quality of life offences 206 quantitative easing 394 race/racism 11, 40–41, 62, 65, 67, 73, 96, 110–11, 119–21, 124–7, 135, 201, 206–8, 215, 220, 235, 256, 308–9, 315, 402, 469, see also white nationalism Rai, D. 119 Ranger, T. 93 Rankin, K.N. 469 Rapoport, E. 461 Ratzel, F. 2–3 Ravines, E. 292 Reagan, R. 446 Rees, W. 242, 244 refugee crisis 97–8, 207 regulation theory 6–7, 15 relational space 9, 54, 159, 177–81, 402 religion 10, 41, 78, 102, 122–3, 132–43, 150, see also individual religions rescaling 11–15, 201, 276, 279, 339, 341, 347, 356–7, 368–79, 402, 414–15, 429–30, 433–9, 444–6 resource extraction 150, 226, 230, 236, 253, 265, 273, 463, 467, 470, 472 resource grabbing 277 resource nationalism 13, 226, 229, 233–6, 277, 282–3 reterritorialization 7, 13, 19–20, 77, 326, 347, 436, 445–6, 449, 452–3 Reynolds, J. 125 Rhodes, R.A.W. 56 Ricardo, D. 163 Richardson, T. 451 Rid, T. 329 Rizzo, A. 415–16, 457 Roberts, A. 170 Rohrer, J. 110 Rojas, F. 295 roll-with-it neoliberalism 447–8, 452 Rose, D.B. 111 Rouseff, D. 297 Roy, A. 470 Rudel, T. 401 Ruglis, J. 308

490  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state rule of law 33, 292, 295, 464 Rumsfeld, D. 309 rural planning 467–76 Rusciano, F.L. 37 Russia 98, 113, 150, 166, 233, 289, 313–22, 328, 330–31, 333–4, see also Soviet Union Russian Arctic 263–73 Rwanda 225 Sack, F. 206 Said, E. 36, 72, 121 Salvini, M. 96, 98, 100–101, 103–4 Sassen, S. 356 Saudi Arabia 46, 151, 457, 461 Savitch, H. 432 scalecraft 438 Schengen Treaty 97–8 Schmitt, C. 278 school–security nexus 302–11 Schroeder, K. 201 Scotland 56, 88, 93, 163, 377, see also United Kingdom Scott, J.C. 371, 469 Searle, G. 438 Secor, A.J. 181 sectarianism 133, 136–8, 142 secularism 94, 133–8, 142 secularization 132–4, 136–7, 142 securitization 97, 204–5, 209, 289, 302–3, 325–9, 331, 333, 335 security discourses 66, 288, 292–3, 298–9, 302 security policy 11, 31, 99, 179, 291–2, 294, 299, 310 security regimes 288, 291 security state 66, 160, 198, 204–9, 303, 305 Seigworth, G.J. 48 self-interest 185–6 Sennett, R. 149 September 11, 2001 97, 119–20, 122–3, 291, 294 settler colonialism 11, 17, 94, 108, 110–15, 119–27, 252 Setzer, J. 401 sex industry 63, 256 sexual violence 63 sexuality 40, 62–3, 65, 119 Shadian, J. 109 Sharp, J. 35 Sidewalk Labs 193, 407 Sierra, J.R. 288 Sierra Club 404–5 Sikhism 122 Simmons, K. 258–9 Simpson, A. 110, 114, 252–3 Simpson, L. 115 Singapore 167–8 Sirviö, H. 453

Slovenia 97 smart cities 193, 356–7, 375–6, 406–8 smart tech 159, 189–90, 193–5 Smith, A. 34, 163 Smith, B. 334 Smith, N. 161, 206 Smith, S. 41, 61 Snowden, E. 330 social anxiety 206 social construction 5, 9, 30, 35–6, 40–41, 43, 327 social constructivism 9, 35, 38, 432–3, 438 social control 20, 145–6 social media 37, 43, 73, 103–4, 190, 192, 375 social networks 98, 102, 190, 272, 326 social reproduction 6, 11, 63–5, 68, 200, 213–15, 308, 387 social sciences 1, 30, 48, 85, 101, 159, 177–8, 241, 339, 422 social theory 4–15, 30, 35, 39, 388 socialism for the wealthy 387 Sodhi, B.S. 119 soft spaces 445, 447–8, 453 Somalia 124 Soros, G. 375 South Africa 52, 248, 406 South America 218, 289, 297, see also individual countries South Korea 88, 167–8, 280 sovereign wealth funds 165, 168 sovereignty 5, 21, 38, 61, 100, 105, 107–11, 113, 115–16, 226, 232, 314, 316, 328–9, 333, 368–9, 371–2, 375–6, 399, 469 and climate necropolitics 276–84 planetary 278–9 tribal 226, 251–4, 259 Soviet Union 13, 36, 97, 133–4, 149–50, 162, 164–8, 268, 289, 298, 305, 315–17, 319, 328, 374, see also Russia Spain 341, 374–7, 399–400, 402, 407, 463 spatial behavioural surveillance 192–4 spatial Keynesianism 444–6 spatial planning 414–15, 417–26, 429, 438, 444–54, 468, 470–71, 473 spatial surveillance 195 spatial theory 30, 364 special economic zones 13, 150, 467, 469, 472 Spence, T. 112 spheres of influence 313–22 Staeheli, L. 40, 52 Standard and Poor’s 169 Standard Oil 255 state land concessions 416, 467–76 state rescaling see rescaling state space 403–4

Index  491 state spatial restructuring 343, 355, 363, 368, 370, 375–8, 386, 388, 415, 445–6, 448, 452–3 state spatial transformation 18, 158–9, 198, 379, 415, 429–40 state spatiality 4, 11, 173, 176–8, 445–6, 448–9, 454 state territory 4, 7, 9, 11, 16–17, 20, 200, 231–3, 414, 416, 426, 444, 454 state theory 4, 9, 15–17, 30, 73, 75, 77, 82, 206, 339, 355 statecraft 2, 12, 35–6, 40, 73–4, 162, 302–4, 321, 403, 438, 444 stateless citizenship 368–75, 377–9 state–planning nexus 457–65 statization 8, 10, 200 Steinert, H. 206, 209 Steuerle, E. 200 Stevenson, S. 113 Stoler, A. 110, 112 Storper, M. 392 strategic spatial planning 415, 444–53 Street, E. 415 Stroman, M. 123, 125–6 Strong, M. 407 Sudan 124 Sun Corridor 355, 360–61 supply chains 87, 167, 246 surveillance 112, 126, 191–2, 194–5, 308, 330–32, 370–72, 375 digital 185, 192, 194–5 spatial behavioural 192–4 surveillance capitalism 19, 190, 192, 308, 375, 379 sustainability 18, 225–6, 240, 252, 263–73, 282, 340–41, 347, 349, 356, 403, 409, 424, 469, see also unsustainability sustainable development 225, 258, 263, 270, 272, 339, 401, 403, 457, 464, 472 Sutherland, C. 228 Sweden 97, 215, 407, see also Nordic welfare state Syria 72, 97, 122, 124, 137, 462 Tanzania 467 Tavares, R. 401 tax havens 168–9, 202 taxes 5, 50, 72, 77, 84–5, 137, 142, 160, 164, 168–9, 194, 198–203, 208–9, 214–16, 341, 362, 368, 372, 385, 388, 392, 403, 432, 439 Taylor, P.J. 30, 457 Teichmann, D. 203 territorial trap 16, 36, 109, 159, 173–8, 181 territorialization 1, 4, 30, 67, 75, 180–81, 231–2, 325–9, 333, 335 terrorism 66, 97, 119–20, 122–3, 207, 291, 294, 309, 330 Tewdwr-Jones, M. 419 Thatcher, M. 206, 446

Theodore, N. 178 think tanks 174, 216, 220 Thorpe, R. 107 Thrift, N. 192 Tibet 49 Tiebout, C. 432 Toal, G. 319, 321 Todd, Z. 252–4 Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 75, 149 totalitarianism 42, 97 tourism 178, 472 transnationalization 8, 13, 434, 436 transparency 105, 191, 266, 369–73, 415, 426 Treaty of Maastricht 203 tribal sovereignty 226, 251–4, 259 trickle down 40, 350 Trotsky, L. 88 Truger, A. 203 Trump, D. 72, 93, 96, 99–101, 103–5, 119, 123–6, 161, 163, 235, 256, 313, 372, 385, 404–6 Tsosie, R. 253, 259 Tully, J. 114 Turkey 64, 72, 93, 96, 98, 104, 122, 135–6 Turner, F.J. 327 Twitter 37 Tynkkynen, V.-P. 226–7 Uber 194 Ukraine 313, 318, 320–21 unemployment 84–5, 252, 276, 283, 385 uneven development 7, 82, 86–90, 158, 165, 204, 209, 391, 408, 419 United Arab Emirates 457, 461, 464 United Kingdom 79, 89, 135, 149, 180, 195, 215, 241, 248, 293, 303, 360, 374, 376–7 green geopolitics 431, 444, 446, 459 austerity/security state 206–7 Brexit 46, 88, 93, 96, 98–103, 361, 372, 376–7, 406 cyberspace 334 everyday state 49, 51–4, 56 geoeconomics 164–7, 169 green geopolitics 399–400, 402 nationalist sovereigntism 99, 103 spatial planning in 417–26 spheres of influence 315, 321 United Nations 113, 115, 152, 225, 232, 244, 334, 399–400 FAO 230, 244, 248 UNCED 356 UNEP 230, 407 UN-Habitat 407, 437 United States 1, 20, 36, 46, 64, 72, 74, 94, 135, 188, 289, 341, 349–50, 369, 372, 375, 418, 432, 446, 457, 460, 462

492  Handbook on the changing geographies of the state austerity/security state 198–200, 204–8 climate necropolitics 279–81 and competitive upscaling 355, 357, 359–64 cyberspace 328, 330–31, 333–4 geoeconomics 161–9 governmentality 240, 248–9 green geopolitics 399–402, 404–6, 408 historical geographical materialism 85, 88–9 Indigenous nationalisms 111, 113–14 nation building 146–7, 149 nationalist sovereigntism 96, 99, 102–3, 105 post-crash cities 385–95 resources 233, 235–6 school–security nexus 302–11 spheres of influence 313, 315–17, 321–2 tribal sovereignty 251–6, 258–9 white nationalism in 119–27 unsustainability 341, 399–400, 406, 408, see also sustainability upscaling see competitive upscaling uranium 226–7, 254, 256–8, 276–7, 281–3 urban environmentalism 407 urban governance 20, 67, 340–41, 355–8, 360–61, 385–95, 438, 445–7 urban landscape 140, 145–6, 150, 358, 461 urban megaprojects 415, 457–8, 461, 464 urban planning 2, 94, 145–6, 148–50, 153, 415, 459, 461–2, 464, 469 urban question 339, 341 urban theory 339 urbanization 13, 19, 21, 145, 148, 340, 343–6, 399–409, 432–3, 444, 464, 470 Uribe, Á. 294–6 utopias 19–20 Valler, D. 417 Van den Berg, L. 433 Van Hamme, F. 405 van Loon, J. 464 Vanolo, A. 357 Venezuela 124, 168, 234–6, 295–6, 299 Ventura, J. 113–14 Vietnam 471, 473, 475–6 Vietnam Veterans Memorial 149 Villegas, O.G. 293–4 violence 11, 33, 36, 40–41, 63–6, 67, 111–12, 120, 123, 125, 127, 232, 260, 277, 307, 310 virginity tests 63 virtuosity 75 Vivoda, V. 233 Vogel, R.K. 432 Voyles, T. 257 Wackernagel, M. 242–4 Wacquant, L. 209

Wæver, O. 325 Wainwright, J. 278–9 Wales 51–4, 56, see also United Kingdom Walker, R.B.J. 298 WannaCry 331–2 war on drugs 208 War on Terror 97, 289, 291, 294, 309–10 Ward, N. 241, 244, 247 Wargent, M. 415 Warner, M.E. 389 water footprint 226, 240, 244–8 Watson, I. 115 Watts, M. 232 Weber, C. 38 Weber, M. 33, 49, 51, 54–5, 132 Wedel, J. 168 Weigel, G. 134 welfare state 1, 18, 84, 104, 164, 196, 199–206, 208–9, 339, 377, 389, 403, 433, 444–54, see also Keynesianism Nordic 160, 212–21, 415, 446, 456 Westphalian system 78, 179, 291, 368, 370, 378–9, 399, 402, 404, 406–9 WhatsApp 142 While, A. 403 white nationalism 94, 119–27 Whitehead, M. 48, 159 Whittlesey, D. 3 Whyte, K. 252, 254 Wieland, C. 77 Wildavsky, A. 52 Wildcat, D. 253–4, 259 Williams, R. 39 Wilson, W.H. 147 Wolfe, P. 111 Wolff, G. 356 World Bank 56, 168, 230, 356, 374 World Economic Forum 173, 215 World Trade Organization 167, 344, 399 xenophobia 14, 96, 102–3, 120, 125, 319 Xi, J. 276, 279–81, 349, 406 Ybarra, M. 65 Yemen 46, 124 Yeung, K. 189–90 Ylönen, M. 425 Ylöstalo, H. 160 Young, J. 125 Yugoslavia 97 Zanotto, J. 423–4 Zimmerman, E. 228 Zuboff, S. 195