Imaginaries of Connectivity
The Creation of Novel Spaces of Governance
Edited by Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Suvi Alt, Maarten Meijer
Publication date:
31 December 1999Length of book:
256 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781786616357
This edited collection addresses the problem of how the creation of novel spaces of governance relates to imaginaries of connectivity in time. While connectivity seems almost ubiquitous today, it has been imagined and practiced in various ways and to varying political effects in different historical and geographical contexts. Often the conception of new connectivities also gives birth to new spaces of governance. The political denomination of spaces – whether maritime, continental, social, or virtual – reflects the situatedness of power. Yet, such crafting of new spaces also expresses particular imaginaries and technologies of connectivity that make governance possible. Whereas the study of international relations has traditionally focused on the role of agency and structure in power relations, the affects, beliefs, attitudes, and practices that intervene in how groups of people connect in given times have not attracted much scholarly attention
Overall, the detailed and original case studies examined in the book range from the 16th century, to the 19th century, to the present, and from Spain, to the Maritime Alps, to Germany, to the Mediterranean, to China, to East Asia. The historical and geographical variety of the cases serves to highlight the diversity of the meaning and function of connectivity in the constitution of novel spaces of governance.
Overall, the detailed and original case studies examined in the book range from the 16th century, to the 19th century, to the present, and from Spain, to the Maritime Alps, to Germany, to the Mediterranean, to China, to East Asia. The historical and geographical variety of the cases serves to highlight the diversity of the meaning and function of connectivity in the constitution of novel spaces of governance.
Although new technologies have created an increasingly interconnected world, institutionalized academic disciplines, functioning within their traditional cartographic imaginaries, have had a trained incapacity to theorize the new dynamic spatiality constituting the contemporary global world. Manifesting a creative indisciplinarity, the collection of diverse well composed chapters in Imaginaries of Connectivity is an important intervention that alerts us to a world that has been under theorized.