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as the naturalized geo-historical foundation
for nationalcommunity.Suchfoundational
thinking often usesgeography,andinparticular
imaginative geographiesofplaceandland-
scape, to create and consolidate conceptions
of primordial nationhood. Sometimes such
imaginative geographies of the nation space
can also be violently exclusionary, based on
racist,ethnicistand/ormasculinistphobias
about keeping the nation pure by hardening
borders (Gilroy, 1987; Theweleit, 1987;
Parker, Russo, Sommer and Yaeger, 1992;
Radcliffe, 1998; Gallaher, 2003; Flint and
Fallah, 2004; Mayer, 2004). At other times,
formal spatial depictions of the nation operate
more subtly to encode and normalize the
political geography of the nation-state as
it relates to international and subnational
governmental practices (Schulten, 2001; Ander-
son, 2006a; Flint and Taylor, 2007 [1985]). And
in yet other anti-colonial cases of nations
withoutstates, or with states that have been
repeatedly undermined bycolonialismand
neo-colonialism, imaginative geographies of
the nation serve to keep alive hopes of a future
national state free from occupation and exter-
nal control (Gregory, 1994; Guibernau, 1999).
In all these cases, innumerable geographical
representations from officialmapstolandscape
depictions to monumental architecture can be
drawn upon to affirm and/or question notions of
nationalidentity.
In theoretical work that is less attuned to
geography, the division of the world map into
a series of parcels defined by a standardized
nation form tends to be ascribed to more
generalized social dynamics. Conservative the-
orists have tended to fall back on essentializing
ideas about ethno-linguistichomelands(e.g.
Huntington, 2004; see also Kedourie, 1960).
By contrast,liberaltheorists have tended to
explain the abstract nation form in terms
of either the global march of modernity
(Gellner, 1983) or the formation of the mod-
ern nation-state as a monopolist of adminis-
trative information and, in Weberian terms,
the so-called legitimate use of violence
(Giddens, 1985). Subsequently, post-colonial
reflections on global struggles against illegit-
imate imperial violence have displaced the
eurocentrismof the liberal accounts, all the
while arguing – as in one famous case – that
the assumption of a coherent nation form
in the former colonies remains a ‘derivative
discourse’ shaped as much by the performance
of European nationalist norms as by the cul-
tural complexities of the colonies themselves
(Chatterjee, 1986; see also Amin, 1987).Chatterjee advances his arguments by noting
thehybridityof the historical record, but
by focusing on the past, his derivative dis-
course thesis fails to explain how the nation
form may be challenged and hybridized by
extra-national flowsin present and future
historical moments. By contrast, marxist
accounts, with their attention to the changing
scale of capitalism’s organization (e.g.
Harvey, 1999 [1984]), and Foucauldian ac-
counts, with their interest in the epistemic
enframing of the nation as a container for ‘the
economy’ amidst twentieth-centuryfordism
(e.g. Mitchell, 1998), seem better placed to
theorize the historical contingency of the na-
tion form alongside its discursiveperform-
ance. This does not mean explaining the
nation in economic terms alone. As Marxist
philosopher Etienne Balibar emphasizes: ‘It is
quiteimpossibleto‘deduce’ the nation form
from capitalist relations of production’ (1991,
p. 89). But it does mean coming to terms
with the overdetermination of the nation
as part of modern twentieth-century nation-
states that were once territorialized but
which now seem increasingly re-territorialized
amidst the political geographical tensions of
global capitalism (Sparke, 2005). To ignore
such changes and to continue to examine
global politics with a methodological national-
ism that treats the nation as a universal norm is
to fall into what Agnew calls the ‘territorial
trap’ (Agnew, 2003a) – a trap that exists in
the first place because of ignorance of the geo-
graphical processes and representations
through which nations are constructed. msnational parks The first national park was
created at Yellowstone in Wyoming, USA, in
1872, although the Yosemite Valley in
California (made a national park in 1890),
had been a state park since 1864, and the
idea of a national park was first expressed in
the USA by George Catlin in 1832. The first
US national parks were proposed as a way to
protect the sublime and monumentalland-
scapesof the American West, and as a reaction
to the threat of the closing ‘frontier’ and the
pioneering spirit as a formative element in the
American character (Nash, 1982 [1967]).
The US model of national parks was built
on a conception ofnature aswilderness,
pristine, separate and separable from human-
transformed lands (Cronon, 1995). Yet in
national parks, wilderness was created by
the deliberate actions of thestate, often in-
volving military action: the US Army managed
Yellowstone until 1918. The presence ofGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_N Final Proof page 487 31.3.2009 3:13pm Compositor Name: ARajuNATIONAL PARKS