The Birth of Territory

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.

History

Elden, Stuart

Historical Study & Educational Resources

University of Chicago Press

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.

Americas

Shakespearean Territories

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

Shakespeare was an astute observer of contemporary life, culture, and politics. The emerging practice of territory as a political concept and technology did not elude his attention. In Shakespearean Territories, Stuart Elden reveals just how much Shakespeare’s unique historical position and political understanding can teach us about territory. Shakespeare dramatized a world of technological advances in measuring, navigation, cartography, and surveying, and his plays open up important ways of thinking about strategy, economy, the law, and colonialism, providing critical insight into a significant juncture in history. Shakespeare’s plays explore many territorial themes: from the division of the kingdom in King Lear, to the relations among Denmark, Norway, and Poland in Hamlet,  to questions of disputed land and the politics of banishment in Richard II. Elden traces how Shakespeare developed a nuanced understanding of the complicated concept and practice of territory and, more broadly, the political-geographical relations between people, power, and place. A meticulously researched study of over a dozen classic plays, Shakespearean Territories will provide new insights for geographers, political theorists, and Shakespearean scholars alike.

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most challenging and contentious thinkers currently working within the European tradition. This is the first collection devoted to his work for English-language audiences and will act as an introduction to his work, set an agenda for engagement with his ideas, and relate his writings to a range of political, theoretical and practical contexts. Since his philosophical bestseller Critique of Cynical Reason (1983), Sloterdijk has exercised an important influence over German and other European thought and recently interest in his diverse oeuvre has grown considerably. The past few years have seen a number of his books translated into English, with many more to come. The book seeks to do justice to the breadth of Sloterdijk’s work throughout his career, orientated around the central topics of cynicism, ressentiment, the posthuman, space and world, art and literature, language, social science and his role as a public intellectual. Contributors include Babette Babich, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Eduardo Mendieta, Marie-Eve Morin, Efrain Kristol, Wieland Hoban, Nigel Thrift, Jean-Pierre Couture, and Sloterdijk himself. An explicitly interdisciplinary project, Sloterdijk Now is a crucial introduction to the work of this central thinker, in its complexity, variety and notoriety. It is set to spark debate amongst students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

Sloterdijk Now (Theory Now)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Polity

Foucault's Last Decade

On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead. This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity. This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.

On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead. This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity. This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.

Numbers and politics are inter-related at almost every level--be it the abstract geometry of understandings of territory, the explosion of population statistics and measures of economic standards, the popularity of Utilitarianism, Rawlsian notions of justice, the notion of value, or simply the very idea of political science. Time and space are reduced to co-ordinates, illustrating a very real take on the political: a way of measuring and controlling it. This book engages with the relation between politics and number through a reading, exegesis and critique of the work of Martin Heidegger. The importance of mathematics and the role played by the understandings of calculation is a recurrent concern in his writing and is regularly contrasted with understandings of speech and language. This book provides the most detailed analysis of the relation between language, politics and mathematics in Heidegger's work. It insists that questions of language and calculation in Heidegger are inherently political, and that a far broader range of his work is concerned with politics than is usually admitted.

Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation (Taking on the Political)

Science & Math

Mathematics

Edinburgh University Press

Space, Knowledge and Power

Michel Foucault’s work is rich with implications and insights concerning spatiality, and has inspired many geographers and social scientists to develop these ideas in their own research. This book, the first to engage Foucault’s geographies in detail from a wide range of perspectives, is framed around his discussions with the French geography journal Hérodote in the mid 1970s. The opening third of the book comprises some of Foucault’s previously untranslated work on questions of space, a range of responses from French and English language commentators, and a newly translated essay by Claude Raffestin, a leading Swiss geographer. The rest of the book presents specially commissioned essays which examine the remarkable reception of Foucault’s work in English and French language geography; situate Foucault’s project historically; and provide a series of developments of his work in the contemporary contexts of power, biopolitics, governmentality and war. Contributors include a number of key figures in social/spatial theory such as David Harvey, Chris Philo, Sara Mills, Nigel Thrift, John Agnew, Thomas Flynn and Matthew Hannah. Written in an open and engaging tone, the contributors discuss just what they find valuable - and frustrating - about Foucault’s geographies. This is a book which will both surprise and challenge.

Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography

Travel

Routledge

Michel Foucault’s work is rich with implications and insights concerning spatiality, and has inspired many geographers and social scientists to develop these ideas in their own research. This book, the first to engage Foucault’s geographies in detail from a wide range of perspectives, is framed around his discussions with the French geography journal Hérodote in the mid 1970s. The opening third of the book comprises some of Foucault’s previously untranslated work on questions of space, a range of responses from French and English language commentators, and a newly translated essay by Claude Raffestin, a leading Swiss geographer. The rest of the book presents specially commissioned essays which examine the remarkable reception of Foucault’s work in English and French language geography; situate Foucault’s project historically; and provide a series of developments of his work in the contemporary contexts of power, biopolitics, governmentality and war. Contributors include a number of key figures in social/spatial theory such as David Harvey, Chris Philo, Sara Mills, Nigel Thrift, John Agnew, Thomas Flynn and Matthew Hannah. Written in an open and engaging tone, the contributors discuss just what they find valuable - and frustrating - about Foucault’s geographies. This is a book which will both surprise and challenge.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elden, Stuart. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Elden, Stuart

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elden, Stuart. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Birth of Territory

The Birth of Territory

Shakespearean Territories

Shakespearean Territories

Sloterdijk Now (Theory Now)

Foucault's Last Decade

Foucault's Last Decade

Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation (Taking on the Political)

Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography

Space, Knowledge and Power