Progressive Geographies

At Open Geography, Jeremy Crampton reports a conversation:

A colleague recently asked me if geographers have written anything on the history of distance as a concept, especially since the Medieval period and the early modern. (He had in mind Elden’s history of territory.) I must admit I was stumped.

Have we?

So far the only comment is to point to Barnett, Robinson and Rose’s Geographies of Globalisation which “explores the geographies of proximity and distance that shape globalization, and considers the politics of responsibility that it brings”.

In my history of territory, I do discuss distance a bit, particularly in terms of the changing meanings of the notion of spatium. In classical Latin this tends to mean a distance, a stretch or extent, rather than a container. It could relate to a span of time; the spacing between stones in building; or the distance between parts of an army – all those senses are found in Julius Caesar. A lap of a chariot race was sometimes described as a spatium – as it is in Virgil and Juvenal. All of those are instances of distance. In late Scholasticism this term became associated with particular notions of locus, and Descartes transformed the way we understood spatium by relating it to the the notion of extenso – itself related to distance as extension in length, breadth and depth – which makes spatium, space into more of a container. So the relation between space and distance would be one way to look into this question – and I suspect there were be some useful pointers in, for example, Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and Casey’s The Fate of Place.

But the question of distance itself would be a rather different project, even though it would intersect with those other issues. It would need to take into account notions of measure, proximity, etc. Heidegger talks in a few places about how distance and proximity can be understood in relation to concern, and also how distance can be related to time – it’s about five minutes walk, or as long as it takes to smoke a pipe. Technologies are important too – distances could change depending on terrain to be crossed, or the season. I wonder if historians of science have said much about this question – it would be important to all sorts of contemporary questions. I suppose literature on relational spaces would have a lot to say to this too.

It’s a good question, and there might be a worthwhile project in this. Any other thoughts or reading suggestions?

The Birth of Territory is inching its way towards publication. The proofs are due within a month, and the index needs to be compiled. I’ve just sent in the ‘author questionnaire’, which marketing will use as a basis for their work. One of the elements is to draft something that they will edit for publicity and the book’s jacket. Here’s what I sent them – may be interesting to see how they edit and manipulate this.

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. And yet, territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter today politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected. What are states administering, and what do self-determination movements want? 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 straight-forward definition?

The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. It examines the complicated relation between the history of a word, a concept and a practice. It is a broad historical study, ranging from Ancient Greece to the seventeenth century, with a particularly detailed analysis of Medieval Europe. With each of those periods, the study interrogates a range of historical, political and literary texts and practices in terms of the relation between power and place. Out of these different ways of ordering the idea of territory emerged. Historical in its execution, philosophical in its interrogation of texts, and political and geographical in its significance, The Birth of Territory shows how Greek, Roman, medieval and early modern thought together produced the modern concept and practice of territory. In doing so it sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered, how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled and administered.