Stuart Elden - The Birth of Territory [2013][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: September 11, 2013
Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth’s surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition?
The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered.

Reviews
“Stuart Elden has written a pathbreaking book on a foundational concept in modern political and geographical thought. Drawing together deep philosophical knowledge, historical understanding, and philological expertise, Elden’s pioneering investigation compels us fundamentally to rethink some of the basic assumptions regarding state space that have long underpinned modern political theory and social research. In so doing, Elden also opens up new horizons for understanding the transformed geographies of political life that are being produced under early twenty-first century conditions. A brilliant, provocative intervention.”—Neil Brenner, Harvard University

“This is a brilliant intellectual exegesis of the concept of territory that will be of wide interest in a range of academic fields, from international relations to historical sociology and the history of political thought.”(John Agnew, University of California, Los Angeles)

“Stuart Elden’s The Birth of Territory is a wonderful achievement unmatched in previous writing on place, power, and politics. For it does nothing less than elucidate in remarkable detail a two-thousand-year history of the conditions for the very possibility of its own subject—the idea of territory itself. That is what makes it transcendental history of the first order.”(David N. Livingstone, Queen's University Belfast)

About the Author
Stuart Elden is professor of political theory and geography at the University of Warwick. He is the author of four books, including, most recently, Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty.