Territories, Environments, Politics: Explorations in Territoriology

This collection seeks to illustrate the state of the art in territoriological research, both empirical and theoretical. The volume gathers together a series of original, previously unpublished essays exploring the newly emerging territorial formations in culture, politics and society.

While the globalisation debate of the 1990s largely pivoted around a ’general deterritorialisation’ hypothesis, since the 2000s it has become apparent that, rather than effacing territories, global connections are added to them, and represent a further factor in the increase of territorial complexity. Key questions follow, such as: How can we further the knowledge around territorial complexities and the ways in which different processes of territorialisation co-exist and interact, integrating scientific advances from a plurality of disciplines? Where and what forms does territorial complexity assume, and how do complex territories operate in specific instances? Which technological, political and cultural facets of territories should be tackled to make sense of the life of territories? How and by what different or combined methods can we describe territories, and do justice to their articulations and meanings? How can the territoriological vocabulary relate to contemporary social theory advancements such as ANT, the ontological turn, the mobilities paradigm, sensory urbanism, and atmospheres research? How can territorial phenomena be studied across disciplinary boundaries? Territories, Environments, Politics casts a fresh perspective onto a number of key contemporary socio-spatial phenomena. Refraining from the attempt to ossify territoriology into some disciplinary straightjacket, the collection aims to illustrate the scope of current territoriological research, its domain, its promises, its theoretical advancements, and its methodological reflection in the making.

Scholars interested in social research will find in this collection a rich and imaginative theoretical-methodological toolkit. Students in human geography, anthropology and sociology, socio-legal studies, architecture and urban planning will find Territories, Environments, Politics of interest.

Andrea Mubi Brighenti is Professor of Social Theory and Space & Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. Research topics cover broadly space-power-and-society. His most recent book is The Crowd’s Common. Towards Canettian epistemology (forthcoming 2022). His research website is www.capacitedaffect.net

Mattias Kärrholm is Professor of Architectural Theory at the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, Lund University. His research areas include: architecture, social sciences, territoriality, public space, urban design, architectural theory, space & culture. Monographs include Animated Lands. Studies in Territoriology, co-authored with Andrea Mubi Brighenti, and Retailising Space (Ashgate 2012, second ed. Routledge 2016).