This review article has been available as an advance online publication for a while, but it’s now published. “Thinking Territory Politically”, Political Geography, Vol 29 No 4, 2010, pp. 238-41. It can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2010.02.013

The three books reviewed are 

Stacie E. Goddard, Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2010).

Avery Kolers, Land, Conflict and Justice: A Political Theory of Territory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009).

Jeremy Larkins, From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and Politics before Westphalia, Palgrave, London (2010).

Here is the beginning and end of the piece:

For a long time territory was the dead, the fixed, the immobile, the under-examined. At least, so the books under review here argue in different ways, within political science, political philosophy and international relations. Political geography has, of course, long seen territory as one of its key concepts. Yet if political geographers have offered a range of excellent, detailed accounts of territories there has been less examination of ‘territory’. As I and others have suggested, territory is all too often seen by geographers as a relatively straight-forward concept, something that can be understood as a bounded space under the control of a group, perhaps a state, or an outcome of territoriality. The complications come, so it is assumed, from particular instances of territorial configurations or disputes, not from the notion itself. These three books appear to be instances of a small but noticeable shift. Attention is being paid to the notion of territory in a way that had become unusual…

In broader terms though geographers might want to ask why it is that their works have apparently proved so little use to political scientists, theorists and philosophers who are today grappling with these issues. While institutional and disciplinary politics may play a role, the reason is surely more than this. One possibility is that it is down, in part, to the difference between work on territories and work on ‘territory’. A more properly historical and conceptual approach to territory might have helped these works through some of their geographical difficulties.

If you can’t get the piece through your library, please feel free to drop me a line.