Territory Spatio-Historical Approaches to State Formation
2 Territory Spatio-Historical Approaches to State Formation Every human society has some sort of territorial structure. … In studying political organization, we have to deal with the maintenance or establishment of social order, within a territorial framework, by the organized exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of use, of physical force. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1955 [1940]: xiv) What does the notion of territory entail for state formation? As Elden (2013) has made clear in his recent genealogy of territory, it may be seen as a spatial extension of state power. While Elden’s point is crucial, in this chapter I will entertain the idea that the colonial state form is not different in its key dynamics from later state forms, as well as cer- tain African polities, and in this way the chapter challenges the idea of the colonial state as radically different from earlier or later state forms. While basing myself on information from Manica Province, the empiri- cal material expands beyond these demarcations and involves also cru- cial elements from the greater Shona-speaking area, Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, and other areas. Manica Province is, thus, part of a much larger political fi eld. Theoretically, of course, there is a long-standing interest in a territo- rial approach to past and present formations of state. As, for example, Foucault (2007 [2004]: 96]) argues, sovereignty is exercised on a terri- Berghahn Open Access Edition- Not for Resale Territory 57 tory and, consequently, on its inhabitants. In the characteristic manner of the Foucauldian genealogy, this notion of territory is integral to a for- mative triangular order that also comprises security and population— an order crucial to his overall analysis of biopower and the state form.
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