I cannot complain about ‘The Poverty of Territorialism’ (Faludi 2018) not receiving enough attention. More than two years after its publication, there is another review in the French Journal Annales de Géographie. (https://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=AG_739_0178&download=1) It is by Yann Richard who has been instrumental also in getting an extended version of my paper given at Rennes in 2018 ‘Au delà du territorialism’ being published in `Les Dossiers des Annales de Droit’. (Faludi 2019)
After a crisp and accurate summary of my book, Richard points out that the hybridisation of territorial governance which my diagnoses imply mean a break with conventional notions of ordering space and spatial development. See below for what Richard himself says in his concluding paragraph about what my signalling this break means to him:
“[It] is painful because it challenges classic representations of political space. [Faludi’s] book highlights several challenges, the difficulties of which he does not seek to deny. To begin with, in order to be able to act in and on a world that is fluid, there is the need for preserving flexible planning methods and tools . Secondly, one must ensure planning to be legitimate, meaning accepted by the target populations. The efficacy of planning thus needs to draw a fine line between democratic requirements and demagogic and populist passions. Thirdly, a non-territorial representation of the EU poses two problems: How to ensure that such a fluid and complex construct impossible to catch in one simple spatial representation is perceived and appropriated by European citizens themselves? How to lay the foundations of a political community and a joint spatial project without invoking a hierarchical and narrow territorial order? This stimulating and disconcerting book derives from combining geographical research concerning notions of territory and territoriality, those of political scientists concerning multi-level governance and of legal theorists concerning soft law. Perceiving and accepting this break will be no easy thing. As far as this is concerned, Andreas Faludi predicts the need to cross a valley of tears. Ad augusta per angusta. Never having had Latin, I had to look it up myself. For my own rendering of this saying see the title of this blog.
References:
Faludi, A. (2018) The Poverty of Territorialism, Edgar Elgar, Cheltenham.
Faludi, A. (2019) ‘Au-delá du territorialism: la métaphore de l’archipel’, in: S. Brunet, L. Levon, Yann, R. (eds.) Les dossiers des Annales de Droit, Prolifération des territoires et représentations territoriales de l’Union européenne, Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, Mont-Saint-Aignan,161-174
The illustration shows the cover of the Annales de Géographie