Chapter title | Re-territorialising and re-centering empires: the connivance of law and geography |
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Authors | D'Souza, R. |
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Editors | Gao, J., Le Heron, R. and Logie, J. |
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Abstract | 'Empire is materialising before our very eyes'. Indeed the opening line of Hardt and Negri's book Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000) does not appear melodramatic in the present times. However, far from being 'decentred and deterritorialised apparatus of rule' (p. xii), this paper argues that the Empire that is materiaising before our eyes does that by borrowing conceptual, theoretical and ideological resources that were deployed in the construction of earlier Empires and adapting them to the conditions of a new phase of capitalism that has emerged since the end of the Cold War. The disciplines of geography and the law generate the knowledge required for construction of Empires. The geo-historical moment that Hardt and Negri (2000) refer to is an opportune one to examine the ways in which law and geography connived, historically to create Empires and to ask if the same processes are at work in contemporary geopolitics. In this paper the geo-history of India is used as a vehicle to explore the disciplinary connivances in Empire building. |
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Book title | Windows on a changing world: proceedings of the 22nd New Zealand Geographical Society Conference, University of Auckland, 6-11 July |
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Year | 2003 |
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Publisher | New Zealand Geographical Society |
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Place of publication | Auckland |
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Series | New Zealand Geographical Society conference series |
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Journal citation | (22), pp. 324-327 |
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