Territory is an important part of contemporary political debates but there is an odd silence about the concept of territory in contemporary political theory. The unraveling of colonization and concerns over global justice should make territory a central aspect of political theory, yet it is not. This silence has the curious feature of recalling the original justifications for territorial acquisition. Because territory is neglected by contemporary thinkers, it is important to return to theorists such as Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendof and Kant for a critical engagement with the concept of territory. Understanding the arguments of these thinkers illuminate the presuppositions of present day theorists and contributes to the understanding of contemporary theoretical problems. The thesis is organized into eight chapters. The first two chapters consider the neglect of territory in political theory the role of territory in international law. This sets up the three middle chapters which are critical engagements with historical thinkers organized around three conceptions of territory: territory as possession, as property and as jurisdiction. Contemporary cosmopolitanism is inspired, in part, by unraveling of colonization and a concern for global justice. Chapter 6 considers the relationship between contemporary cosmopolitanism and the legacy of the historical conceptions of territory. The next chapter investigates the communitarian critique of cosmopolitanism and the role of identity in territorial claims. At first glance there seems to be good reasons for contemporary theory to presuppose or ignore territory. However, the answer, though skeptical, is more subtle. Following Rawls and others, contemporary theory is right to remain silent about territory and about property in territory. The main skepticism is about arguments for colonial restitution or global redistribution of resources. This is because many take a crude territory as property view - which when abandoned seems to leave the world un-owned and therefore subject to equal distribution or claims. Yet skepticism is not the only alternative. Jurisdiction entails some elements of the territory as property view. This is a more sophisticated claim than the straight territory as property argument. Here ownership is a secondary but important claim states make in the absence of a binding universal norm. As a result there is a prima facie but not indefeasible right to particular territory. Identity plays a role in linking peoples to places. It also raises the bar to colonial restitution and global resource redistribution. This legitimates the current view of territory in political theory and international law where territory is pre-supposed but not theorized.

In this thesis I contribute to the sociological discussion on the impact of geopolitical constellations on the class and cleavage structure of societies. The main concern is to analyse how the capacity of collective social actors to pursue their interests against other antagonistic collective actors can be impeded, or increased, by relations of violence between the state in which they operate and foreign states. This problem is developed in a first step by a review of the sociological literature on the formation of the modern state in Western Europe. A close scrutiny of the explanatory strengths and weaknesses of both the 'society-centred' and the 'state-centred' approaches leads to the conclusion that an adequate analysis of political structural change in Western Europe has to emphasize the dynamic interplay of political, cultural, economic and geopolitical structures of social action. In the two case studies on Austria and Ireland in the 18th century, I discuss the interaction between class, political, regional/colonial, and ideological power groupings and economic, ideological, political and geopolitical interests. I show how the conflict structures of both Austria and Ireland gained momentum due to geopolitical constellations. I analyse how the attempts of the Austrian and the Irish state to establish police forces under their own exclusive control and to maintain public order were related to geopolitics. In order to explain the power capacity of these two states I analyse the effect of geopolitics on the distribution of power within the respective society.

More than 3,000 protected areas adjoin international boundaries (PAAIB). PAAIB may be particularly vulnerable to habitat change, invasive species activity, pollution and overharvesting of resources. Because of their geographical position they may have limited means of preventing threats which originate outs ide the PAAIB perimeter in a different country and legal jurisdiction . Remote sensors may provide some monitoring capability to aid threat detection and prevention. However, while such technologies are developing fast, they can be costly and may have technical and methodological constraints

This thesis is concerned with illuminating a deeper agenda of place, meaning and resistance in territorial struggles, focusing on the geopolitically-contested Palestinian West Bank landscape. The premise of its argument is that insufficient · attention has been given to the interpretative power of 'place' in such areas ' where resistance struggles are centred on contested territory. Its aim is to redress this relatively under-theorized area in the existing literature through an 'emplaced' empirical exploration of place experience and resistance. John Agnew's typology of place (as 'location', 'locale', and 'sense of place') is utilized as an 'emplaced' lens to explore the extent and ways that 'place' mediates, shapes, and sustains resistance struggles. It is applied to a case study of a spatially reconfigured Palestinian village (Bil'in), which also serves as a contemporary context for examining this typology's applicability to settings of territorial contestation. A mixed repertoire of methods - mental mapping, narrated walk-alongs, and semi-structured interviews - have been used to attain an indepth understanding of how this village was lived, experienced, resisted, and interpreted by Bil'in's inhabitants in their everyday lives. This thesis brings to the fore 'emplaced' insights which contribute conceptual clarity to an expanded notion of resistance. It argues that resistance in geopolitically-contested societies must be viewed as deeply 'emplaced', embedded within and enacted through, the fabric of the contested landscape, and proposes that resistances are multiple and lie along a spectrum which is rooted in a historical, political, and symbolic interpretation of 'place'. It also raises theoretical considerations pertaining to the study of political agency within contested landscapes.

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This thesis examines the political potential of production of subjectivity by analysing the work of Giorgio Agamben as influenced by Michel Foucault and the micropolitical theories developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Agamben turns micropolitics into a politics of “bare life”, a politics of “de-subjectivation”, of a dispossession of the human subject – a dispossession understood as the contemporary form of life. To theorize a politics of bare life Agamben makes use of the work of Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Robert Walser: the thesis re-examines these authors in order to rethink de- subjectivation in relation to a transformative political action. Through this re- examination de-subjectivation affirms itself not as an ontological human condition, but as an artistic and political practice of emancipation. Debord, Bataille and Walser develop artistic practices where their own bodies, subjectivity, lives, become sites of political transformation. This is an art that takes subjectivity as a material to work with, and an art which is political inasmuch as it struggles from within, rather than in opposition to, against the dominant system of capitalism and its control of bodies. The thesis shows how these self-reflective practices have an impact that goes beyond the self, how de-subjectivation is also a process of reconnection of the individual subject with a context, how a micropolitics is always correlated with a politics of instituting and organizing. The methodology here was developed in response to the material used: this is not just a thesis on de-subjectivation but also, rather practically, an experiment on desubjectivation, where the texts discussed are not just elements to be analyzed but also materials that generate affects, that have an impact on subjectivity. Something like a “subjectivation” of the material used takes place: in the encounter between us and them, new contexts are constructed for Debord, Bataille and Walser, through a contemporary reactivation of the tools they offer. What is to be learned from Debord, Bataille and Walser today, from their ways of organizing micropolitical struggles? How could forms of subjectivation different from the dominant one be created by analysing Debord, Bataille and Walser, but also by exposing ourselves to them?

Forgiveness and politics are often assumed, both ordinarily and academically, to be unrelated and un-relatable. There is, however, an increasing body of literature from various disciplines challenging that assumption, and arguing for the role and rationale of forgiveness in politics. This thesis also argues that forgiveness and politics can be related, and that forgiveness has political import and purchase. It, however, argues that the standard approaches and proposals for relating forgiveness and politics are themselves conceptually inadequate and methodologically flawed, and offers an alternative proposal for the relationship between forgiveness and politics. In offering the proposal, the research revisits not only the biblical foundations of forgiveness, but also the concepts and practices of politics, justice, and reconciliation, arguing that these concepts and practices are themselves undergirded and sustained by forgiveness. With regard to politics, it argues that the understanding of politics as the activity of dialogue and compromise, grounded in realism and with a view to reconciliation, necessarily requires forgiveness as an operative principle and practice. It also argues that the concept and purpose of justice, both primary and rectifying justice, is not necessarily in conflict with forgiveness, and that justice can in fact be authentically conceived and practised in a manner that tends towards forgiveness. With respect to the search for reconciliation in conflict societies, it argues that forgiveness is indispensable to the realisation of the standard elements necessary for reconciliation. The research also studies two cases of forgiveness in the context of political conflict, namely Northern Ireland and Nagaland. With respect to Northern Ireland, it argues that a good case of forgiveness in politics is the peace process that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. With regard to the Naga conflict, it assesses the current Forum for Naga Reconciliation process, and also argues that forgiveness in politics will essentially involve a move from war to politics and political activity.

This thesis is about the making of the European Union (EU) as a political actor through the delineation of borders and border spaces. It speaks to one of the key questions of an ongoing scholarly and policy debate, regarding the dialectic nature of the EU’s borders; internal and external, present and absent, murderous and humanitarian are only some of the binaries that have been deployed to speak of these paradoxical hybrid constructs, which, as literature has argued, have long stopped acting and looking like simple lines on maps. As such, the project lies at the intersection of EU studies, Border Studies and Political Geography, and engages themes that have been common in these fields; borders, biopolitics, and security logics of risk. The biopolitical border is found behind an ever-expanding range of border technologies that regulate global mobilities; biometric passports, databases, surveillance systems, and techniques of risk-profiling, outsourcing, and off-shoring the border.

This thesis explores the relationship between modernity and the expansion of Anglo-American empire in North America in order to provide a theoretical basis for understanding the modern treaty negotiations currently underway in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. Canada, largely because it is a successor state of empire, has been unable to free itself from colonial attitudes and assumptions which continue to inform its negotiating position. In particular, the issue of sovereignty is denied, which frustrates any attempt to build a lasting and positive peace in the international relations of post-colonial British Columbia. In order to understand and overcome this collective failure of the political imagination I have undertaken a theoretical and historical analysis of modern sovereignty and the unlimited expansion of technological civilisation under the protection of the state, which I refer to as 'New World Empire'. Modern sovereignty and the techno-politics it engenders is the product of the scientific revolution and the "culture of improvement" inaugurated by Francis Bacon in reformation England. Bacon creatively invented the experimental method and its technological applications from his own imaginative reading of the "Christian" tradition and in so doing provided the natural philosophy necessary for Hobbes' construction of modern sovereignty. Understanding the state as an instrument of power rather than a product of nature inextricably links sovereignty to empire as power accumulation and projection are necessarily interdependent Drawing on the work of Leo Strauss I have identified three strategies of colonialism which are manifested in the combined practices of liberal assimilation, historicist development and nihilist segregation. Modern empire simply "asserts" sovereignty over territory and unilaterally constructs colonial subjects as allies, wards and captives, as passive objects of administration and control, rather than active subjects in their own right. These colonial prejudices must be deconstructed and rejected in order that the historical institution of treaty, rather than sovereignty, forms the basis for ongoing power sharing arrangement which recognizes "Indians" as equal partners within the larger context of Canadian confederation and international law.

This thesis is a critical examination of the fundamental transformations that late capitalist societies have undergone in the last few decades and their impact on the modern institution of the nation-state. With the subsumption of industrial capitalism by a digital and informational capitalism; with the advent of global computerised network systems, software packages, satellite telecommunications, the internet, the website, and the simultaneous decline of national industries, 'national' societies have visibly changed in the last few decades. Their borders are more salient; their 'national' governments are less in charge of the dynamics of their 'national' economies; their sovereignties are threatened by 'the euro' and 'the global'; their cultures are exposed to the uninterrupted bombardment of adverts, images, signs and suggestive strategies of multinational companies for a higher level of disposable consumption; their distinctive 'national' commonalties are confronted by the media-led hyperreal culture of global consumerism and their distinct sense of time and place in history is blurred. These transformations are conceptualised and analysed as a paradigmatic shift from Modernity to postmodernity. Furthermore the institution of the nation-state is proposed and reasoned to be perceived as an institution of Modernity in which the primordial need for bonding and belonging is crystallised. The conjunction of the conditions of Modernity with the primordial need for belonging allowed the modern ideology of state nationalism to masterfully claim eternity for the nation-state itself. This thesis argues for the temporality of the nation-state while preserving the notion of a primordial and transverse mode of collective being based on vernacular cultures and ethnicities. The temporality of the nation-state is empirically substantiated in this thesis in reference to the twin postmodern forces of 'globalisation' and 'localisation' which work to denationalise collective identities by rendering their 'national' borders obsolete.