Cultural Geography

‘nation-states’. This nation-state model of the

interstate system was exported by Europe to the

rest of the world through colonization and then

decolonization (see M. Anderson, 1996; Giddens,

1987; MacLaughlin, 2001; Smith, 1991). A well-

known analyst of nationalism, Ernest Gellner,

has depicted the power of the modern state as

follows:

[C]onsider the history of the national principle; or

consider two ethnographic maps, one drawn up before

the age of nationalism, and the other after the principle

of nationalism had done much of its work. The first

map resembles a painting by Kokoschka. The riot of

diverse points of colour is such that no clear pattern

can be discerned in any detail, though the picture as a

whole does have one. A great diversity and plurality

and complexity characterizes all distinct parts of the

whole ... Look now instead at the ethnographic and

political map of an area of the modern world. It resem-

bles not Kokoschka, but, say, Modigliani. There is

very little shading; neat flat surfaces are clearly sepa-

rated from each other, it is generally plain where

one begins and another ends, and there is little if any

ambiguity or overlap. Shifting from a map to the reality

mapped, we see that an overwhelming part of political

authority has been concentrated in the hands of one

kind of institution, a reasonably large and well-

centralized state. In general, each such state presides

over, maintains, and is identified with, one kind of

culture, one style of communication, which prevails

within its borders. (1983: 139–140)

The pure world of Westphalian exclusive nation-

state actors has never existed, since states have

always shared their power with other states and

organizations (Agnew and Corbridge, 1995).

The territorial system created by the interstate

system is always in perpetual transformation.

Hence the number of states and boundaries has

increased continually following the processes of

secession, unification and decolonization. While

some 50 states existed in 1900, currently almost

200 states are linked together with more than 300

land boundaries that have a unique, often violent

history. Similarly the number of international

non-governmental organizations has increased

enormously since World War II. Also the roles

and relative power of states in the global system

of states and the ideas of sovereignty have

changed perpetually (Murphy, 1996). Some

‘micro-states’, such as Singapore, Monaco or the

Bahamas, are significant nodes in the globalizing

network economy even if they may lack the

institutional and ideological infrastructure of

the modern state (Nairn, 1998). Simultaneously

only a few states are capable of monitoring the

territories of all other states with their satellite

systems. States are, in sum, not equal in their

sovereignty and their boundaries have very

different meanings and functions.

Geo-power: national socialization and the

attribution of meaning to boundaries

The modern state has a monopoly over power

and violence, which it uses in the construction

and maintenance of the territorial trap. The state

has not only the negative power to repress

those that challenge its power within its borders,

but also the ‘positive power’ to ‘civilize’ and

socialize its inhabitants through its educational

structures and communication systems. The

‘territorial trap’ gets reproduced as a deep cul-

tural geography of everyday life, for it is hidden

in numerous state-based institutions and prac-

tices that produce and reproduce the symbolic

boundaries of a territory. Through education, the

media and the cultural institutions of civil society,

national socialization takes place, the process

by which people internalize collective cultural

geographies of identity and division. Recent

geographic research has focused on the process

through which reified and naturalized national

representations are constructed and reproduced by

elites across the institutions of states. In Finland,

for instance, the border with Russia has been used

in school geography textbooks since the nineteenth

century as a medium to represent Russia as the

national other, a threat from the east that must be

resisted. Changes of these representations have

followed the transformations of broader geopoliti-

cal spaces and conditions (Paasi, 1996). The

importance of boundaries in building national

identity becomes clear also in a study on the

Ecuadorian nation-building process (Radcliffe

and Westwood, 1996).

The production of knowledge has been parti-

cularly important in the governance of the state

system and in the creation of the significance of

territory. Many academic disciplines have their

origin in the practical interests of the state to

inscribe territories with a content, a history and a

meaning (Krishna, 1994; Walker, 1993). The

institutionalization of geography at the end of the

nineteenth century was a manifestation of the rise

of the modernist ideology and all-encompassing

nation-state. Major motives behind its institu-

tionalization were nationalism and colonialism,

showing that geography is a form of power/

knowledge itself (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Murphy

(1996) labels the view of sovereignty that domi-

nated the end of the nineteenth century anarchic.

This view emerged from a convergence of rising

positivism, nationalism and Darwinian political

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