More-Than-State Ontologies of Territory: Commoning, Assembling, Peopling

AbstractThe idea of territory as a bounded, state-centric enclosure has been recently confronted with the help of decolonial insights. This article attempts to overcome the resultant dichotomies between the statist and organic readings of territory by demonstrating how the making of the Russian state has been contingent on decolonial narratives and territorial imaginaries that have far exceeded the notions of the state as such. The Russian political geographic traditions have historically allowed for the coexistence of multiple and heterogeneous conceptions of territory, which were varyingly assembled to fit specific geopolitical intentions. This article delineates three ontological origins of the Russian territory that have consequently played a key part in shaping the Russian territorial politics: (1) the ontology of commoning, deriving inspiration from communal land use and the collective autonomy of the peasant society; (2) the ontology of assembling, grounded in the anthropogeographical imaginary of the “borderless” Eurasian landmass and its nomadic livelihoods; and (3) the ontology of peopling, grounded in the taxonomies of modernization and rational distribution of human subjects. Scrutinizing the interplay of these ontologies extends the understanding of the porosity and plurality of the concept of territory and offers insights into the roots of Russia’s own geopolitical worldviews and their coloniality.领土是有边界的、以国家为中心的土地圈占。近来, 这一理念受益于去殖民化思想。通过展示俄罗斯国家的建立如何取决于远超国家本身的去殖民化叙事和领土想象, 本文试图克服关于领土的国家主义和内在解读之间的割裂。在历史上, 俄罗斯的政治地理传统允许多样而异质的领土观念的共存, 这些观念的不同组合服务于各种特定的地缘政治意图。本文描述了在塑造俄罗斯领土政治中发挥关键作用的三个俄罗斯领土本体论起源：(1)来源于公有土地利用和农民社会集体自治的共有本体论, (2)基于“无边界”欧亚大陆及其游牧生活的人类地理学想象的集合本体论, (3)建立在人类现代化及其合理分布的分类学基础上的居住本体论。本文仔细研究了这些本体论的相互作用, 扩展了对领土观念的缺陷和多样性的理解, 理解了俄罗斯地缘政治世界观及其殖民主义的根源。La idea que identifica al territorio como como un recinto delimitado y centrado en el Estado ha sido confrontada recientemente con apoyo en concepciones sobre lo decolonial. Este artículo intenta remontar las dicotomías resultantes entre las lecturas estatista y orgánica del concepto de territorio demostrando cómo la construcción del estado ruso ha sido contingente a las narrativas coloniales y los imaginarios del territorio que han sobrepasado en mucho las nociones sobre el Estado en sí mismo. Las tradiciones geográficas políticas rusas históricamente han tolerado la coexistencia de múltiples y heterogéneas concepciones del territorio, que se ensamblaron de forma variable para ajustarse a intenciones geopolíticas específicas. Este artículo delinea tres orígenes ontológicos del territorio ruso que, consecuentemente, han jugado una parte crucial en configurar la política territorial rusa: (1) la ontología de la comunalidad, que se inspira en el uso comunal del suelo y la autonomía colectiva de la sociedad campesina; (2) la ontología del proceso del ensamblaje, basada en el imaginario antropogeográfico de la masa continental euroasiática “sin fronteras” y sus medios de subsistencia nómadas; y (3) la ontología del poblar, basada en las taxonomías de la modernización y la distribución racional de los sujetos humanos. Al escrutar la interacción entre estas ontologías, se extiende la comprensión de la porosidad y la pluralidad del concepto de territorio, y se ofrece una nueva perspectiva alrededor de las raíces de las propias concepciones geopolíticas globales de Rusia y su colonialidad.Key Words: history of geographic thoughtpolitical geographyRussiastateterritory关键词：: 地理思想史政治地理学俄罗斯国家领土。Palabras clave:: Estadogeografía políticahistoria del pensamiento geográficoRusiaterritorio AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful for the insightful comments on the draft of the article and productive discussions held at the Conjunctural Geographies of Postsocialist and Postcolonial Conditions: Theory Thirty Years after 1989 workshop supported by Leibniz ScienceCampus. Vera Smirnova would also like to thank the Institute of Regional Studies and Urban Planning of the HSE University, Moscow, for supporting the development of this research through a postdoctoral fellowship. Erasmus Plus International Credit Mobility program helped initiate research exchange between the coauthors. Acknowledgments are also due to the journal managing editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.Additional informationNotes on contributorsVera SmirnovaVERA SMIRNOVA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences and Department of Political Science at Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66502. E-mail: verasmirnova@ksu.edu. Her research explores the relations between land and power and their various manifestations in pre- and post-Soviet Russia, including the institute of private property and the question of territory at large.Oleg GolubchikovOLEG GOLUBCHIKOV is a Reader at the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3WA, UK. E-mail: golubchikovo@cardiff.ac.uk. His research interests are concerned with the politics (and geopolitics) of urban and regional development, uneven geographies of large societal transitions, and sustainable and smart cities.