I argue that, when empires arise, they are the bearers of (and are legitimized by) certain values, certain religious orthodoxies, certain technologies, certain norms of inter-sovereign politics, and certain cultural forms. Rather like supernovas in the present-day cosmos, their traces and effects can be seen in any later geopolitics. As obvious a feature of the contemporary world as the distribution of languages is an outcome of long-gone imperial expansion, producing an affinity between, for example, Arabic-speaking nations or Spanish-speaking ones.

The articles in the present issue update, exemplify and deepen the ideas on Europe's margins that I and fellow researchers developed in the context of the 1990s enlargement. There are two broad categories of pressure from the margins of Europe upon its centre: attempts to reinterpret and/or relocate Europe's central identity; and attempts to challenge it, by claiming alternative identities for Europe. Articles examining the latter are particularly fruitful in terms of modifying our theorizations of the margins. The article goes on to sketch out a notion of 'seeing like a margin' (with obvious forebears!). There is frequently more insight in seeing like a margins than seeing from the centre. On the other hand, especially at present, a number of 'pathologies of the margin' are arising, where misleading claims about being marginalized are made, especially by populist politicians who push bogus solutions.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsBorder Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities, and Globalization. Edited by Nancy A. Naples and Jennifer Bickham Mendez. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Pp. xii+405. $79.00 (cloth); $28.00 (paper).Noel ParkerNoel ParkerUniversity of Copenhagen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 121, Number 5March 2016 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/684505 Views: 219Total views on this site For permission to reuse a book review printed in the American Journal of Sociology, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

We argue that the continued persistence of borders is an effect of their constitutive role for the many dimensions of a social particular. States cannot choose to have a border; but they can and do make choices amongst the materials available on the various planes of inscription for bordering. For contemporary states the planes have become increasingly disaggregated, in the sense that they do not fall into place at one and the same border. Thus, states have to pick and choose different articulations (often inconsistently) on different planes. We illustrate these ideas with instances, present-day and historical, of bordering. A corollary of there being more need to pick and choose is that articulations of sovereignty change. So, sovereignty is increasingly the material of ‘sovereignty games’, where sovereignty is used as a political instrument. In sum, our theory directs attention to state bordering on different planes of inscription.

The ambition of this special section is to formalise Critical Border Studies (CBS) as a distinctive approach within the interdisciplinary border studies literature. We say ‘formalise’ rather than ‘introduce’ because we recognise that there is of course already a strong tradition of applying critical-theoretical insights within that literature. What the field continues to lack, however, is a substantive reference point for scholars working with such approaches to refer to and develop further, and so our hope is to provide such a marker and reinvigorate ongoing debates.

This article tries to understand the deeply ambivalent role in modern global world history of imperialism originating from Europe. It follows a long, genealogical narrative, beginning in the inherent structure and tensions of empire per se on the European mainland. Nonetheless, there was a partially successful attempt at empire in the primarily spiritual 'imperial' power emanating from Rome, which in due course evoked a matching response in religious-ideological opposition of the Reformation. The subsequent weakening of the prospects of mainland empire encouraged maritime empires in the form of sovereign states, while the profound opposition to top-down power per se survived in the derivatives of Protestantism, primarily in North America. A compromise with that opposition was sketched in Protestant-inspired Lockean Liberalism, which saw virtue in territorial expansion in so far as a key motif from the start was a sense of autonomous liberation achievable through expansion into open territory as the pursuit of God's purpose. That grew sharper in North America, as Europeans seeking progress in European society envisioned their own freedom from the state in the 'empty' space granted by the colonializing state itself for colonization and enclosure. Colonists' and migrants' aspirations for liberation thus found expression in a modern vision of territorial expansion as freedom. US's continental expansion in the nineteenth, and more sharply global expansion in the twentieth century, reiterated that vision in extending an intrusive liberal imperialism. There emerged a US-centered, Western oppressive dynamic of liberation, which is still present in the dissemination of values individual liberty and into the integration in global open space.

Empires seem never to disappear. When the last self-proclaimed empires dissolved in the wake of decolonization, the USSR seemed to be the last remaining empire. But when it dissolved in the early 1...

This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopolitics lay not in the nation but in empire. That in turn has been driven by a view of the world as disorderly and open to the ordering will of empires (emanating, at the time of geopolitics' inception, from Europe). One implication is that empires are likely to figure in the geopolitical ordering of the globe at all times, in particular after all that has happened in the late twentieth century to undermine nationalism and the national state. Empire is indeed a probable, even for some an attractive form of regime for extending order over the disorder produced by globalisation. Geopolitics articulated in imperial expansion is likely to be found in the present and in the future - the EU, and still more obviously the USA exhibiting the form in contemporary guise. This does not mean that empires figure in geopolitics simply by extending their own order, however; they are at least as much purveyors of other dynamics and orders, which possess their own discrete effects. The article ends with stipulations regarding the variety of forms that empires may take: neither fully bounded nor centred; neither straightforwardly self-serving nor easily made legitimate.

The starting point of the 'Lines in the Sand?' programme is expressed in our title, the idea of lines in a shifting medium.The most common use of the expression today is to reject further concessions.The expression is intoned in political debate to argue that the other side has already been given too much ground, and that, as the speaker will then demand, 'It is time to draw a line in the sand.'There are puzzles about the origins of this expressionnot least that the original biblical text (John 8:6) refers not to 'sand', but to 'ground'.Those w ho use it seem, nonetheless, to lean on the majestic fixity in God himself drawing a line which no one dares to cross.Yet perhaps it is not by chance that the line in the expression has been relocated from the more solid medium of 'ground' to the shifting one of 'sand'.For it is precisely that which must haunt our discussion of borders: the pathos of merely hum an acts to draw fixed and tangible territorial lines and to expect that no one will dare to cross them.What follows is a polemical memoran dum that seeks to capture the open and wide-ranging discussions arising from workshops oriented around this core thematic.O ur aim is to outline what we consider to be some of the most pressing questions and problems facing those engaged in the multi-disciplinary study of borders in contem porary political life.

While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist in a common field in the first place. This article draws upon Deleuze's philosophy to set out an ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in “postinternational” society can be grasped. This entails a strategic shift from speaking about the “borders” between sovereign states to referring instead to the “margins” between a plethora of entities that are ever open to modifications of identity. The concept of the margin possesses a much wider reach than borders, and focuses continual attention on the meetings and interactions between a range of indeterminate entities whose interactions may determine both themselves and the types of entity that are in play.

Europe's identity exhibits a dynamic with that considerable part of the world where its colonial expansion impinged. This has been read back into Europe's relationship to its more recent colonial and semi-colonial territories via the concept of "orientalism" (Said 1978), and in the wealth of post-colonialism studies emerging with it. By showing America and Europe functioning as each other's "other," I will argue that an analogous complex is present in the interplay between Europe's identity and that of North America.KeywordsWide WorldForeign PolicyWorld OrderSoft PowerGlobal OrderThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

It was argued in Chapter 1 that a political entity—Europe or any other—possesses a certain geometry deploying its components in a certain “space.” Hence, the relations of margins and centers can be used to understand the natures, roles, and mutual impacts of both Europe and its margins. The different political orders’ distinct geometries bear witness to the interactions between centers and margins. A further theoretical question therefore arises: does the impact of the margins on the center vary systematically over time. This is the focus of this chapter. What accords more or less standing to marginality? What are the broader conditions for the margin to be thought of as a significant position? How do different discourses for the international system entail different possibilities for how margins may address, or impact upon, their respective center(s)? We probe what significance is assigned to the margins, as embedded in broader socio-political and discursive structures; capture general trends to account for changes in their meaning; and shed light on why marginality has recently resurfaced.