Jeppe Strandsbjerg

Much has been written on the relationship between the map and what it supposedly represents. In O... more Much has been written on the relationship between the map and what it supposedly represents. In On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges famously wrote about an empire where the art of cartography attained such perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of a city, and the map of the empire occupied the entirety of a province. Over time these maps were no longer satisfactory and the cartographers’ guilds created a map of the empire whose size was that of the empire and which coincided point for point with it (Borges 1998: 325). This story questions the relationship of representation and the quest for accuracy of the scientific map. Such questions further raise questions about the relationship between the map and the territory. More than 50 years ago, Alfred C. Korzybski stated that a ‘map is not the territory’ (Korzybski 1948: 58), while half a century later David Turnbull’s Maps are Territories (1993) sent the opposite message; and emphasizing the constitutive power of maps, Jacques Revel has suggested that ‘knowledge of the territory is a production of the territory itself’ (1991: 134). Suggesting a temporal diagnosis to this issue of representation, Baudrillard stated that the ‘territory no longer precedes the map […]. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory’ (1983: 2).

Reclaiming a Spatial Reality

Territory, Globalization and International Relations, 2010

I would suggest that it is only when the spatial order has appeared to be relatively stable, that... more I would suggest that it is only when the spatial order has appeared to be relatively stable, that is during the cold war years, that the political organization of space can seem insignificant. As soon as the sovereign territorial order is challenged, then the significance of space is brought to the fore in social scientific enquiry and expressed in attempts to examine what the international is inter between and how this is ordered. Assuming that space is both a universal condition of social practice, and as such plays a conditioning role, while at the same time space is a result of social production or construction, and as such plays a constitutive and a supportive role, the challenge that remains is how to theorize space in a fashion that avoids the spatial determinism of the geopolitical tradition without rendering space an overtly social phenomenon. In order to play a conditioning role for politics, space must be rendered autonomous, to a degree, of the social processes that they are supposedly framing. If not, space will become tied up in the greater narratives and rendered an outcome of, typically, capitalism or state formation. In other words, the task is to render space autonomous without making it a natural object.

The Cartographic Formation of Denmark

Territory, Globalization and International Relations, 2010

Claudius Clausson Swart1 was the first ‘geometric cartographer’ to map the Nordic countries and i... more Claudius Clausson Swart1 was the first ‘geometric cartographer’ to map the Nordic countries and introduce Greenland into the ‘Ptolemaic world map’. He was born in 1388 on the Danish island of Funen and later travelled to Italy where he was involved in the new cartographic science emerging there. His maps, which were published in the 1420s, are known as the first additions (tabulae novae) to Ptolemy’s geography, and they became widely circulated in Italy and Germany and provided a standard for the depiction of Scandinavia for a long time (see map 6.1). It is possible that the maps were made following a commission by the Danish king Erik af Pommern to produce a map of the Danish realm, when they met in Venice in 1424 (Norlund 1943: 12–16; Bjornbo and Petersen 1904). Swart would thus have been the first Nordic cartographer to produce a general map under royal command.

States do share sovereignty, don’t they?

Journal of Political Power, 2011

How can we analyse and understand the different ways in which states today, to an increasing exte... more How can we analyse and understand the different ways in which states today, to an increasing extent, share, contract or unbundle sovereign rights? Under what conditions do states sign (incomplete) contracts of sovereignty transfer and what are the implications of such contracts? These are some of the guiding questions explored by Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt in a book that investigates the notion of sovereignty transfer in International Relations (IR). By analysing governance structures between anarchy and hierarchy, the book transcends this orthodox IR binary, and opens up a new avenue for studying specific sovereignty arrangements. This is becoming ever more relevant in today’s world of boundary crossing governance arrangements and ongoing discussion concerning the future role of the state. Generally, the book represents a fascinating and innovative attempt to employ a novel theoretical framework (incomplete contract theory) in order to understand a politically pressing issue (the transfer of sovereignty). As will be clear subsequently, I find the overall purpose of the book promising and very useful. However, I also find limitations in the sense that the theoretical frame is perhaps stretched too much and made too ambitious. And seen in the context of this special issue, the question of whether it represents a useful tool to understand ‘Imperial power and the organisation of space in Europe and North America’ is one I will return to. The book primarily addresses concerns within international security and international political economy. As such, it is written against a particular theoretical framing that tends to see sovereignty in terms of a dichotomy between hierarchy and anarchy, as well as a particular theoretical landscape constituted around a division between realism and constructivism. The authors start by pointing to what they find paradoxical; namely that on the one hand sovereignty represents the key constitutive rule in IR, while on the other it appears fragile and is often undermined. Hence, sovereignty is both a fundamental institution while at the same time appearing somewhat fictitious. The central concern is that sovereignty remains crucial but that it should not be understood in either-or terms or as a zero-sum game where one state’s loss of sovereignty is another state’s gain. Often shared sovereignty agreements are to the benefit of all states involved. The core idea of the book is very strong. Rather than engaging in endless arguments about whether sovereignty as a legal norm matters, or whether sovereignty is a relative or absolute concept, the book engages in empirical analyses of contracts that serve to transfer sovereign rights between state(-like) actors. As such, the authors demonstrate forcefully how sovereignty is often negotiated, divided and voluntarily transferred by states to other entities. Cooley and Spruyt’s empirically rich Journal of Political Power Vol. 4, No. 3, December 2011, 472–476