Contemporary articles citing Soja E (1989) Postmodern Geographi

processes, world, power, studies, history, globalization, capitalism, framework, thus, cultural

Shamir, R. 2005. "Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime." Sociological Theory. 23:2 197-217. Link

While globalization is largely theorized in terms of trans-border flows, this article suggests an exploratory sociological framework for analyzing globalization as consisting of systemic processes of closure and containment. The suggested framework points at the emergence of a global mobility regime that actively seeks to contain social movement both within and across borders. The mobility regime is theorized as premised upon a pervasive ``paradigm of suspicion'' that conflates the perceived threats of crime, immigration, and terrorism, thus constituting a conceptual blueprint for the organization of global risk-management strategies. The article draws on multiple examples, singling out some elementary forms of the mobility regime, emphasizing the sociological affinity between guarded borders on the one hand and gated communities on the other. In particular, the article aims at theorizing the translation of the paradigm of suspicion into actual technologies of social screening designed to police the mobility of those social elements that are deemed to belong to suspect social categories. Specifically, the article points at biosocial profiling as an increasingly dominant technology of intervention. Biosocial profiling, in turn, is theorized in juxtaposition to other modalities of power, namely, legal and disciplinary measures.

Kellner, D. 2002. "Theorizing Globalization." Sociological Theory. 20:3 285-305. Link

I sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that-will discuss the fundamental transformations in the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory features and oppressilie and negative attributes. This requires articulations of the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization and the ways that globalization both is imposed from above and yet can be, contested and reconfigured from below. I argue that the key to understanding globalization is theorizing it as at once a product of technological revolution and the global restructuring of capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural features are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both technological and economic determinism and all one-sided optics of globalization in favor of a view that theorizes globalization as a highly complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations, as well as one involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies, cultural forms, and people.

VANDERGEEST, P & NL PELUSO. 1995. "Territorialization and State Power in Thailand." Theory and Society. 24:3 385-426. Link

Palat, RA. 1996. "Pacific Century: Myth or Reality?." Theory and Society. 25:3 303-347. Link

Brenner, N. 1999. "Beyond State-centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies." Theory and Society. 28:1 39-78. Link

Davis, DE. 1999. "The Power of Distance: Re-theorizing Social Movements in Latin America." Theory and Society. 28:4 585-638. Link

Moore, JW. 2003. "The Modern World-system as Environmental History? Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism." Theory and Society. 32:3 307-377. Link

This article considers the emergence of world environmental history as a rapidly growing but undertheorized research field. Taking as its central problematic the gap between the fertile theorizations of environmentally-oriented social scientists and the empirically rich studies of world environmental historians, the article argues for a synthesis of theory and history in the study of longue duree socio-ecological change. This argument proceeds in three steps. First, I offer an ecological reading of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System. Wallerstein's handling of the ecological dimensions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is suggestive of a new approach to world environmental history. Second, I contend that Wallerstein's theoretical insights may be effectively complemented by drawing on Marxist notions of value and above all the concept of ``metabolic rift,'' which emphasize the importance of productive processes and regional divisions of labor within the modern world-system. Finally, I develop these theoretical discussions in a short environmental history of the two great ``commodity frontiers'' of early capitalism - the sugar plantation and the silver mining complex.

Kittikhoun, Anoulak. 2009. "Small State, Big Revolution: Geography and the Revolution in Laos." Theory and Society. 38:1 25-55. Link

Extant theoretical insights-mostly derived from studies of prominent revolutions in large countries-are less useful when applied to the unfolding of revolutions in small states. To understand why revolutions happened in the latter, a framework is needed that takes into account geography. For small states, geography is more than dotted lines on maps. It is the source of intervention and vulnerability. Deeply mired in history and memory, states' geographies shape their distinctive identities and have great impacts on national political trajectories, including revolutions. Thus, to provide understanding of revolutions in these countries, no analysis could be complete without taking into account their places, understood in physical, ideational, and historical terms, within their regions and the world. The case of Laos is used to suggest a geographical analysis of revolutions that provides overlooked insights into the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutions in small, vulnerable states.

Kidder, Jeffrey. 2009. "Appropriating the City: Space, Theory, and Bike Messengers." Theory and Society. 38:3 307-328. Link

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers-individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities-cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

Soja, Edward. 2010. "Cities and States in Geohistory." Theory and Society. 39:3-4, SI 361-376. Link

In his last major work, Charles Tilly presents a schematic history of the development of cities, states, and trust networks over the past five millennia. I reconfigure his ``look across history'' from a more assertively spatial perspective, pushing back the starting point of the geohistory of cities another 5,000 years to what is presented as the first of three ``urban revolutions.'' From this geohistorical viewpoint, cities and states do not emerge together de novo in Sumeria but the state is seen as being generated from earlier urbanization processes or what can be described as the stimulus of urban agglomeration. The generative power of cities or urban spatial causality, rarely addressed in the social science literature, is being re-discovered today as a primary source of societal development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity. In my schematic geohistory, the stimulus of urban agglomeration is traced over 10,000 years from its early role in the development of full-scale agriculture and the remarkable artistic creativity emanating from Catalhoyuk, the largest of the earliest urban settlements; through the formation of politically charged city-states and city-based empires; to the city-generated Industrial Revolution and the origins of urban industrial capitalism; ending in a look at the contemporary reconfiguration of cities and states and the shift from metropolitan to regional urbanization.