3. Architectures

Abstract

The term ‘geopolitical architecture’ is used to describe the ways in which states and non-state organizations access, manage, and regulate the intersection of territories and flows, and in so doing establish borders between inside/outside, citizen/alien, and domestic/international. Historically, there has been a series of such geopolitical architectures that rejig the relationship between spaces and flows. In order to understand the shifts and the implications for geopolitical theorizing, ‘Architectures’ considers two fundamental subjects: first, sovereignty and how it informs the activities of the territorial state/border; and second, the geopolitical architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries, which highlights how states in particular attempt to control and regulate spaces judged to be disorderly and ungoverned.