The Dictionary of Human Geography (200 page)

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terms of trade
A name in economics for the ratio between a price index of a country?s exports and a price index of its imports. Amongst advocates of export led deveLop ment, ?improving the terms of trade? tradition ally meant increasing the ratio of profits from exports vis a vis the costs of imports. As such, it was part of the Washington consensus amongst development economists that export surpluses were better than import substitution for developing countries. But now, in the con text of increasing dissensus over such axioms, a second, more literal, meaning of ?terms of trade? has come to the fore as critics of neo LiberaLism have sought to decode the ways in which the terminology of recent global and regional trade agreements obscures how they entrench neo liberal norms of government across wide swathes of social, political and even ecological as well as economic life (Peet, Borne, Davis et al., 2003; McCarthy, 2004). Terms of trade legalese such as TRIPs (which in the worLd trade organization (wto) stands for agreements on Trade Related Intellectual Property) and TRIMs (Trade (NEW PARAGRAPH) Related Investment Measures) have thereby been debunked as elements of a narrow neo liberal, free market fundamentalist agenda that sets constraints on democratic govern ance over everything from food safety to deveLopment policy by giving private corpor ations quasi constitutional rights to sue gov ernments (Sparke, 2005). ?Because its terms are so broad,? argue two critics of the WTO?s terms of trade, ?the WTO has managed to intervene in domestic policies all over the planet? (Wallach and Woodall, 2004, p. 2). Countering this takeover, Wallach and Woodall point out that the neo liberal project therefore involves repeatedly expanding what were originally meant to be simple agreements on free trade into neo liberal legal rules gov erning practically everything. This terms of trade overreach, they note, is ironically marked in the terms themselves such that ?you can identify which WTO agreements have least connection to trade by which have the ??Trade Related?? label slapped on them? (ibid., p. 2). It remains a credit to the critical wisdom of Marx and Engels that they foresaw precisely this terms of trade takeover in the Communist manifesto, when they described the wholesale transformation of medieval life through the free trade fetish of the capitalist business cLass. ?The bourgeoisie,? they thereby argued, ?has drowned the most heav enly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom Free Trade? (Marx and Engels, 2002 [1848]). ms (NEW PARAGRAPH) terra nullius A legal doctrine enshrined in eighteenth century European Law that legitim ized the annexation of ?uninhabited lands? by settlement as an acknowledged means, alongside conquest and secession, for the proper conduct of colonization by ?civilized? nations. Such lands were not literally uninhabited; rather, the colon izers cast their existing inhabitants as too ?primitive? to merit political recognition (cf. primi tivism). Terra nullius was instrumental in the European dispossession of indigenous peoples in so called settler colonies, such as Australia, which has been the subject of political coLoniaLism; struggle and legal redress ever since. (See also colonialism; settler society.) sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Simpson (1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
territorial integrity
A term in international Law and, increasingly, criticaL geopoLitics, that has two main meanings: territorial preser vation and territorial sovereignty. Its meaning of territorial preservation establishes a right to the preservation of a state?s existing bound aries, and prevents secession or territorial conquest by other states. Territorial sover eignty or inviolability allows a state to exercise its power within those boundaries, without intervention or prohibition from external act ors (see Akweenda, 1989). Both senses of the term are enshrined and protected by key clauses of Article 2 of the founding Charter of the United Nations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) While there is an element of necessary fic tion in the idea that states are in control of, and therefore exercise sovereignty over, their entire territory, this has provided a frame work within which international law has oper ated. The norm of territorial preservation conditioned decoLonization in africa, and helped to frame the international context of the break up of the Soviet Union. Territorial sovereignty has been held as a guiding prin ciple of the international system where, for actions that do not have an effect beyond its borders, a state has been held to be sovereign. This is what the European Union calls internal competence. Thus international law is built around three core principles: sovereign equal ity of all states; internal competence for do mestic jurisdiction; and territorial preservation of existing boundaries. What this means is that any challenge to the ?monopoly of legitimate physical violence? that states are held to have within their territory is necessarily a challenge to territorial integrity by infringing on the spa tial extent of their sovereignty. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Territorial integrity in the sense of territorial sovereignty has come under increased pressure in recent years, with humanitarian intervention or the ?responsibility to protect? civilian popu lations legitimating external intervention in in ternal jurisdiction. The doctrine of ?contingent sovereignty? promoted by the Bush administra tion in the ?war on terror? (Elden, 2006: see also terrorism; war) held that state sovereignty is dependent on adherence to codes of behav iour notably not harbouring terrorists or pursuing ?weapons of mass destruction? and violation of these norms legitimates pre emptive action (Elden, 2005, 2007a,c). Yet at the same time territorial preservation has been held as a dominant organizing prin ciple, with a widespread reluctance to support independence secession movements or rethink the boundaries of existing states. se (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Elden (2005); Zacher (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
territorial justice
The territorialization of the principles of sociaL justice. This involves examining the conditions under which wealth and sociaL weLL being are produced, distrib uted and consumed (Perrons, 2004). Hence, social justice can only be giving meaning in the context of a particular set of social relations. Using territorial justice to make judgements over the justness or otherwise of societies is complicated in three ways: first, there are the difficulties posed by the ecoLogicaL faLLacy; second, there are issues over the appropriate ness of the spatial definition of the territorial units; and, third, the achievement of territorial justice has to be set against what this might mean for other forms of justice (Smith and Lee, 2004). Kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Smith and Lee (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
territorial sea
A jurisdictional zone of the ocean, extending a maximum of 12 nautical miles from the baseline (United Nations, 1983, Article 3) and including air space, sea bed and subsoil. The territorial sea is the ocean zone most exposed to human pres sure and resource use. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) extends the sovereigNTy of coastal states to include the territorial sea. Within the zone, other nations have few prerogatives be yond the right of ?innocent passage?, which rec ognizes the transit right of foreign flag merchant vessels provided that it is peaceful and not prejudicial to the good order or security of the coastal state concerned. sch (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Valega (1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
territoriality
Either the organization and ex ercise of power, legitimate or otherwise, over blocs of space or the organization of people and things into discrete areas through the use of boundaries. In studies of animaL behav iour, spatial division into territories is seen as an evolutionary principle, a way of fostering competition so that those best matched to their territory will have more surviving off spring. With human territoriality, however, spatial division is more typically thought of as a strategy used by organizations and groups to organize social, economic and political activ ities. From this viewpoint, space is partitioned into territorial cells or units that can be relatively autonomous (as with the division of global space into territorial nation states) or arranged hierarchically from basic units in which work, administration or surveillance is carried out through intermediate levels at which managerial or supervisory functions are located to the top most level, at which central control is concentrated. Alternative spatialities of political and economic organ ization, particularly hierarchical networks (as in the world city network) or reticular net works (as with the internet), can challenge or supplement the use of territoriality. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Theoretically, territoriality can be judged as having a number of different origins including: (NEW PARAGRAPH) as a result of explicit territorial strategizing to devolve administrative functions but main tain central control (Sack, 1986); (2) as a sec ondary result of resolving the dilemmas facing social groups in delivering public goods (as in Michael Mann?s, 1984b, sociology of terri tory); (3) as an expedient facilitating coordin ation between capitalists who are otherwise in competition with one another (as in Marxist theories of the state); (4) as the focus of one strategy among several of governmentality (as in Michel Foucault?s writings); and (5) as a result of defining boundaries between social groups to identify and maintain group cohesion, as in the writings of Georg Simmel (Lechner, 1991) and Fredrik Barth (1969), and in more recent sociological theories of political identity (Agnew 2003b). Whatever its origins, territoriality is put into practice in a number of different if often complementary ways: (1) by popular acceptance of classi fications of space (e.g. ?ours? versus ?yours?); (NEW PARAGRAPH) through communication of a sense of place (where territorial markers and bound aries evoke meanings); and (3) by enforcing control over space (by surveillance, policing and legitimation). (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are important cultural and historical dimensions to territoriality. Churches and pol ities (states, empires, federations etc.) have been the most important users of territoriality. Some churches (such as the Roman Catholic Church) and some states (such as the United States) have more complex and formally hier archical territorialities than others. Today, transnational corporations and global busi nesses erect territorial hierarchies that cut across existing political ones. So, even as some users of territoriality fade away, others emerge. Though varying in precise form and complexity, therefore, territoriality seems always to be with us. ja (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Amin and Thrift (1997); Brenner, Jessop, Jones and Macleod (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
territorialization
The dynamic process whereby humans and their affairs are fixed territorially in space, by a range of actors but primarily by states. On the contrary, deterri torialization signifies a growing tendency for states, in the context of global capitalism, to encounter and often encourage an uprooting of people and things with massive social, psychological, and political consequences. Reterritorialization is the reverse of this process. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In some usage, particularly that of Deleuze and Guattari (e.g. 1972), employment of deterritorialization seems to simply refer to the breakdown of territoriality in thought and practice. epistemologically juxtaposing ?State philosophy? with ?nomad thought?, Deleuze and Guattari associate territorializa tion with the former and deterritorialization with the latter. ontologically, however, there could be quite different territorial sys tems at play over time as, for example, with pre and post colonial contact between colon izers and natives leading to the breakdown of one system, followed by a period of deterritor ialization before the imposition of a new terri toriality. Crucial to the concept of deterritorialization with Deleuze and Guattari is the claim that ?Processes are becomings, and aren?t to be judged by some final result but by the way they proceed and their power to con tinue, as with animal becomings, or nonsub jective individuations? (Deleuze, 1995, p. 146). (NEW PARAGRAPH) More typically, two other approaches tend to dominate contemporary usage. In the first case, territory is posed as a physical ?base? for human activities and deterritorialization is viewed as either the lessening importance of local constraints or the weakening of the im pact of physical distance on everyday life. The increased speed of financial and other transactions, the so called conquest of space by time (cf. time space convergence) and the advent of cyberspace are frequently invoked to explain what deterritorialization is held to describe. Such ideas are part and parcel of much discussion of economic globalization. In the second case, territory is perceived as a spatial assemblage of power relations and identity strategies. From this perspective, such ideas as the ?end of territory? and the rise of network space are linked to the recent onset of a worldwide deterritorialization (e.g. Badie, 1995; Hardt and Negri, 2000: cf. network society). Others tend to see deterritorialization in terms of the weakening of territorial identities in the face of globaliza tion (e.g. Mitchell, 2000) or the creation of ?non places? (Auge, 1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Though frequently used as a stand alone term, deterritorialization makes most sense when used in the context of territorialization. For example, the ?disappearance? of territory at one scaLe can see its recomposition at others (Brenner, Jessop, Jones and Macleod, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . At the same time, deterritorialization undoubtedly has metaphorical currency (see metaphor) when applied, for instance, to the fading of intellectual boundaries, and some descriptive utility when used as a synonym for the instability and unravelling of territorial space. Notwithstanding the ambiguities inher ent in the terms, in a world in which evidence for both territorialization (e.g. the Israel Palestine Separation Barrier) and deterritoria lization (e.g. the European Union Schengen passport zone) is not hard to come by, their usage suggests a dynamism to the forms of territories and territorialities that some writers have been all too willing to deny. jaa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Brenner, Jessop, Jones and Macleod, (2003); Doel (1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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