How is the meaning of the hyphen in “nation-state” changing in the context of globalization and proliferating political struggles? How can we investigate the transformation of the nation-state by marking the normally unmarked hyphen in “geo-graphy”? Debunking deterritorialization both as a discourse and as an antiessentialist abstraction, Matthew Sparke offers answers to these questions by examining the contemporary geographies of the United States and Canada. 

In the Space of Theory details the territorial implications of the Iraq war, NAFTA, welfare reform, constitutional reform, cross-border regional development, and the legal battles of First Nations. In using antiessentialist arguments to elucidate the complexity of these developments, Sparke seeks to ground and critique postfoundational theory itself. He shows how the postfoundational arguments of Homi Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai, Timothy Mitchell, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri obscure politically important processes of reterritorialization at the same time they deterritorialize diverse theoretical assumptions about the nation-state. Engaged with theory and grounded in close study of cultural, political, and economic change, In the Space of Theory explores the geographies of struggle that at once underlie and undermine the hyphen in contemporary nation-states. 

Matthew Sparke is associate professor of geography and international studies at the University of Washington.

Challenging the Westphalian view of international relations, which focuses on the sovereignty of states and the inevitable potential for conflict, the authors from the Borderlands Study Group reconceive borders as capillaries enabling the flow of material, cultural, and social benefits through local communities, nation-states, and entire regions. By emphasizing local agency and regional interdependencies, this metaphor reconfigures current narratives about the China India border and opens a new perspective on the long history of the Silk Roads, the modern BCIM Initiative, and dam construction along the Nu River in China and the Teesta River in India.

Together, the authors show that positive interaction among people on both sides of a border generates larger, cross-border communities, which can pressure for cooperation and development. India China offers the hope that people divided by arbitrary geo-political boundaries can circumvent race, gender, class, religion, and other social barriers, to form more inclusive institutions and forms of governance.