Network Nation

Abstract

Academics have increasingly begun to question the significance of bounded understandings of space and place, preferring instead to approach places as open, dynamic, relational entities that arc in-formation, and the ways in which different places are connected by flows of people, ideas, and material things. The aim of this paper is to focus on the implications of networked and relational ways of thinking for how we understand the notion of 'territory', the archetypal example of bounded space. We discuss the need to develop a greater dialogue between relational and territorial understandings of space by exploring recent work on national territories. We contend that (1) the discourses and embodied practices of actors and (2) a whole scries of objects are actively involved in producing a national territory that is open, contingent, and contested. The paper focuses on empirical material relating to Welsh roads and road signs-in particular the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales during the late 1960s and 1970s-as a way of highlighting the significance of these two themes. We conclude by arguing that territories arc not relics of a static world of nation-states but, rather, the contingent products of an ongoing series of connections between people, discourses, and objects.

The ‘everyday’ of banal nationalism – Ordinary people’s views on Italy and Italian

“…A more geographical account of people's engagement with nationhood has been offered by Jones and colleagues (Jones and Desforges, 2003;Jones and Fowler, 2007;Jones and Merriman, 2009;Jones and Merriman, 2012), who have also reflected on the importance of place in shaping a sense of nationhood.…”

Parents' reflections on choice of neighbourhood and their transformative potential for future conceptualisations of the nation

“…The domain of the everyday allows for an exploration of when, where, how, and why the nation—as much as diversity—emerges as meaningful. And consequently, there is a potential to explore (re)productions of both nation and diversity not only as imagined and abstract features but also as lived and experienced ones (Antonsich, , ; Brubaker et al, ; Jones & Desforges, ; Jones & Merriman, ).…”

“…Hence, through the nonbreaching strategy proposed in this article, the hypothetical disruption of the everyday frame in the interview helped make explicit the otherwise implicit thoughts on the nation. In other words, they revealed the participants' underlying perceptions of the relationship between territorial and relational space, at any scale (Jones & Merriman, )—such as in the following quote from Andreas, a father of two adopted children (age bracket 6–16) When we were expecting our second child, we started to look for a bigger house.…”

Mediterranean regionalism from territory to trains: spatial politics and planning of macro-regions and transport networks in Spain

“…Regionalism exemplifies this challenge, for if it is "almost axiomatic" that regions are social constructs (Paasi, 2010), we confront unresolved questions about who or what "'constructs' a region or what this means in practice" (p. 2296). Recent scholarship expands understanding of regional territoriality through more relational perspectives (Amin, 2004;Jones & Merriman, 2012;Leitner, 2004), while reminding us of the ongoing relevance of fixity and boundedness (Antonsich, 2010). Yet the seeming "incommensurability" between distinct spatial vocabularies (Painter, 2009), and natural desire to corral complexity (what Painter, 2008 calls "cartographic anxiety"), can still colour this conceptual challenge.…”