Territory, Authority, Rights: from Medieval to Global Assemblages

Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In Territory, Authority, Rights, one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as "denationalization," it continues to be shaped, channeled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age--territory, authority, and rights--have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical "assemblages": the medieval, the national, and the global.

The book consists of three parts. The first, "Assembling the National," traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, "Disassembling the National," analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, "Assemblages of a Global Digital Age," examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights. Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, Territory, Authority, Rights is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonate throughout the social sciences.

CONTENTS

List of Tables
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
Historicizing Assemblages of Territory, Authority, and Rights
Foundational Transformations in and of Complex Systems
Capabilities
Tipping Points
Organizing Logics
Using History to Develop an Analytics of Change
Outline of the Book

PART ONE - Assembling the National

2. Territory, Authority, and Rights in the Framing of the National
Deciphering Medieval Territory, Authority, and Rights
Territorializing Authority and Rights
The Political Economy of Urban Territoriality
The Legal Order
Political Cultures of Towns
Conclusion: Medieval Capabilities and Their Consequences

3. Assembling National Political Economies Centered on Imperial Geographies
The State as the Critical Actor
Constructing a World Scale
Constructing National Economies Centered on Imperial Geographies
Constructing the Legal Persona of a National Bourgeoisie
Constructing the Legality of a Disadvantaged Subject
The American State: Making a National Sovereign Out of a Confederation
Hypernationalism and Imperialism

PART TWO: Disassembling the National

4. The Tipping Point: Toward New Organizing Logics
Varieties of Internationalism
The Tipping Point
Why Was Bretton Woods Not the Tipping Point?
The United States: Shaping Systemic Capabilities for the Tipping Point
Redistributing Power inside the State
The Executive's Privatizing of Its Own Power
Reconstructing the Public-Private Divide
The Variable Articulations of Private and Public Authority
The Rise of Markets and the Law in Reshaping the "Public Interest"
Appendix
Executive Secrecy and Discretionary Abuses-Bush Administration, 2001-2005

5. Denationalized State Agendas and Privatized Norm-Making
Variable Interpretations of State Power in the Global Economy
Denationalized State Agendas
Antitrust Policy: From Extraterritoriality to a Global System?
International Economic Law: Autonomous from But Inserted in National Law
A New Institutional Zone of Privatized Agents
The Global Capital Market: Power and Norm-Making
Distinguishing Today's Market for Capital
Governments and the Global Market for Capital
The Partial Disembedding of Specialized State Operations and Nonstate Actors
Toward Global Law Systems: Disembedding Law from Its National Encasement
Conclusion
Appendix
Vulture Funds and Sovereign Debt: Examples from Latin America (2004)

6. Foundational Subjects for Political Membership:
Today's Changed Relation to the National State
Citizenship and Nationality
Debordering and Relocalizing Citizenship
Deconstructing Citizenship: A Lens into the Question of Rights
The Multiple Interactions between Legality and Recognition
Unauthorized Yet Recognized
Authorized Yet Unrecognized
New Global Classes: Implications for Politics
Toward Postnational and Denationalized Citizenship
Distinguishing Postnational and Denationalized
Toward a Partial Repositioning of Nationality
Citizenship in the Global City
Conclusion

PART THREE: Assemblages of a Global Digital Age

7. Digital Networks, State Authority, and Politics
State Authority Confronts Digital Networks
Distinguishing Private and Public-Access Digital Space
A Politics of Places on Cross-Border Circuits
Embedding the Digital
Digital/Nondigital Imbrications
The Destabilization of Older Hierarchies of Scale
Mediating Cultures of Use
New Interactions between Capital Fixity and Hypermobility
A New Generation of Markets and Instruments
Managing Risk in Global Financial Markets
The Need for Technical Cultures of Interpretation
A Politics of Places on Global Circuits: The Local as Multiscalar
Conclusion

8. Assembling Mixed Spatial and Temporal Orders:
Elements for a Theorization
Analytic Borderlands: Specificity and Complexity
Mixed Spatio-Temporal Assemblages as Types of Territoriality
Juxtaposed Temporalities and New Economies
Excavating the Temporality of the National
Conclusion
In Conclusion

9: Conclusion
On Method and Interpretation
Territory, Authority, and Rights: National and Global Assemblages
From National Borders to Embedded Borderings: Implications for Territorial Authority
Toward a Multiplication of Specialized Orders: Assemblages of TAR

Bibliography
Index