Territory Authority Rights

Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In "Territory, Authority, Rights", one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as 'denationalization', it continues to be shaped, channelled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age - territory, authority, and rights - have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical 'assemblages': the medieval, the national, and the global.The book consists of three parts. The first, 'Assembling the National', traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, 'Disassembling the National', analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, 'Assemblages of a Global Digital Age', examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights. Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, "Territory, Authority, Rights" is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonate throughout the social sciences. The book is a magisterial work of major theoretical importance and merits the close attention of scholars of global change in general and of globalization in particular. It illustrates the crucial role of historical analysis in making sense of contemporary socio-political phenomena. -- Richard W. Mansbach, International History Review [Sassen] take[s] a broad view of territory, authority and rights from the middle ages to the era of globalization, to argue that this denationalization is itself influenced by what happened when the nation state was built. She believes the process of globalization is shaped, channeled and enabled by institutions and networks that were originally designed to build the nation state, including the rule of law and respect for private authority. Globalization builds on these institutions and networks and gives them a new direction. -- Narendar Pani, Economic Times An erudite and spirited defense of the only approach to public policy that has brought mankind sustained economic growth, widespread alleviation of poverty, and embedded respect for the worth and dignity of the individual. -- "Economic Affairs [A] magisterial work of enormous scope and penetrating analysis... [T]his work will stand as the leading exploration of the subject for many years. -- Paul Kantor, Political Science Quarterly University of Chicago sociologist Sassen, a leading scholar of globalization, argues convincingly that while much 'denationalization' characterizes globalization, nation building and globalization are not oppositional... This work makes a significant contribution to the globalization literature. -- "Choice One of Sassen's distinctive strengths is in studying in their full complexity the local sites of globalization, including financial centers like New York and London... Sassen's work clearly reflects an understanding of the end of the globalization debate. She explains in detail how the activists often associated with 'antiglobalization' values or causes have themselves become effective global actors. -- Robert Howse, Harvard Law Review Saskia Sassen's latest book is a significant advance in globalization studies... In sum, the analytics that Sassen lays out provides away to explain and understand and explain transformation through a more complete, and complex, lens. It allows for--indeed, it demands--demands a closer look into the dynamics of change on a local scale. -- Richard Gioioso, Journal of Regional ScienceList of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Historicizing Assemblages of Territory, Authority, and Rights 3 Foundational Transformations in and of Complex Systems 6 Capabilities 7 Tipping Points 9 Organizing Logics 10 Using History to Develop an Analytics of Change 11 Outline of the Book 18 Part One: Assembling the National 25 Chapter 2: Territory, Authority, and Rights in the Framing of the National 31 Deciphering Medieval Territory, Authority, and Rights 32 Territorializing Authority and Rights 41 The Political Economy of Urban Territoriality 53 The Legal Order 61 Political Cultures of Towns 67 Conclusion: Medieval Capabilities and Their Consequences 71 Chapter 3: Assembling National Political Economies Centered on Imperial Geographies 74 The State as the Critical Actor 76 Constructing a World Scale 82 Constructing National Economies Centered on Imperial Geographies 88 Constructing the Legal Persona of a National Bourgeoisie 96 Constructing the Legality of a Disadvantaged Subject 110 The American State: Making a National Sovereign Out of a Confederation 121 Hypernationalism and Imperialism 132 Part Two: Disassembling the National 141 Chapter 4: The Tipping Point: Toward New Organizing Logics 148 Varieties of Internationalism 149 The Tipping Point 157 Why Was Bretton Woods Not the Tipping Point? 158 The United States: Shaping Systemic Capabilities for the Tipping Point 163 Redistributing Power inside the State 168 The Executive's Privatizing of Its Own Power 179 Reconstructing the Public-Private Divide 184 The Variable Articulations of Private and Public Authority 187 The Rise of Markets and the Law in Reshaping the "Public Interest" 196 Appendix 204 Executive Secrecy and Discretionary Abuses-Bush Administration, 2001-2005 204 Chapter 5: Denationalized State Agendas and Privatized Norm-Making 222 Variable Interpretations of State Power in the Global Economy 224 Denationalized State Agendas 230 Antitrust Policy: From Extraterritoriality to a Global System? 236 International Economic Law: Autonomous from But Inserted in National Law 240 A New Institutional Zone of Privatized Agents 242 The Global Capital Market: Power and Norm-Making 247 Distinguishing Today's Market for Capital 248 Governments and the Global Market for Capital 259 The Partial Disembedding of Specialized State Operations and Nonstate Actors 264 Toward Global Law Systems: Disembedding Law from Its National Encasement 265 Conclusion 269 Appendix 272 Vulture Funds and Sovereign Debt: Examples from Latin America (2004) 272 Chapter 6: Foundational Subjects for Political Membership: Today's Changed Relation to the National State 277 Citizenship and Nationality 281 Debordering and Relocalizing Citizenship 286 Deconstructing Citizenship: A Lens into the Question of Rights 290 The Multiple Interactions between Legality and Recognition 294 Unauthorized Yet Recognized 294 Authorized Yet Unrecognized 296 New Global Classes: Implications for Politics 298 Toward Postnational and Denationalized Citizenship 303 Distinguishing Postnational and Denationalized 305 Toward a Partial Repositioning of Nationality 309 Citizenship in the Global City 314 Conclusion 319 Part Three: Assemblages of a Global Digital Age 323 Chapter 7: Digital Networks, State Authority, and Politics 328 State Authority Confronts Digital Networks 330 Distinguishing Private and Public-Access Digital Space 336 A Politics of Places on Cross-Border Circuits 338 Embedding the Digital 340 Digital/Nondigital Imbrications 344 The Destabilization of Older Hierarchies of Scale 345 Mediating Cultures of Use 347 New Interactions between Capital Fixity and Hypermobility 348 A New Generation of Markets and Instruments 350 Managing Risk in Global Financial Markets 352 The Need for Technical Cultures of Interpretation 355 A Politics of Places on Global Circuits: The Local as Multiscalar 365 Conclusion 375 Chapter 8: Assembling Mixed Spatial and Temporal Orders: Elements for a Theorization 378 Analytic Borderlands: Specificity and Complexity 379 Mixed Spatio-Temporal Assemblages as Types of Territoriality 386 Juxtaposed Temporalities and New Economies 390 Excavating the Temporality of the National 395 Conclusion 397 In Conclusion 399 Chapter 9: Conclusion 401 On Method and Interpretation 404 Territory, Authority, and Rights: National and Global Assemblages 406 From National Borders to Embedded Borderings: Implications for Territorial Authority 415 Toward a Multiplication of Specialized Orders: Assemblages of TAR 420 Bibliography 425 Index 473