Modern states were built based on a set of political technologies. Central to these technologies are a specific imagination of territory and the space of political power. Thus territorialization, that is the disciplinary practices which divide and define political spaces, became an effective strategy for the expansion of the state. New Infrastructure helped knitting fragmented and fractured territories, thereby making an imaginary even and extended space for political power. Departing from this point of view, environment is seen as a historical product in which various political forces are inscribed.
This course problematizes the relationship between the state building, infrastructure and territorialization of political power. In the course of this exploration, we also examine the role of indigenous people in mediating this relationship. We will explore how the pre-modern and indigenous forms of political powers were disintegrated and brought under the logic of modern governmentality by state buildings strategies, and how these processes were informed, interrupted and mediated by indigenous people. Also, we discuss how the modern states’ interventions in in newly occupied and annexed dominions have produced and reproduced gender, racial and ethnic inequalities. Reading materials from different disciplines, such as environmental history, global history, historical geography, but also from interdisciplinary approaches are provided for the weekly discussions. And students are expected to participate, actively, in the theoretical and historical debates on the interconnection of the state, society and environment. Students will take a midterm and a final exam, and they will write a critical review on one of the assigned books for the course.
