Territory by Nicholas Blomley

International Law and Territory - A view from Critical Geographies. Discussion of Nicholas Blomley’s new book on Territory: Trajectories in Law (2023)

Roundtable:

Panellists:

• Nicholas Blomley, Simon Fraser University
• Alexander (Sandy) Kedar, University of Haifa
• Tugba Basaran, University of Cambridge
• Alex Jeffrey, University of Cambridge

This introductory book aims to introduce readers to the concept of territory as it applies to law, particularly in relation to the work that territory does in organizing property relations. Rather than thinking of territory as given or as natural, the book argues that territory is both a socio-legal product and a specific technology that organizers legal relations. Territory, in other words, is not simply an outcome of property relations, but a means by which such relations are communicated, imagined, legitimized, enforced, naturalized, and contested.

Nick Blomley is a Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University, with a particular interest in the geographies of law. He has written extensively on the spatial politics of property, drawing from lived social contexts. He is currently engaged in research on colonial land pre-emption, University land theft, and the dispossession of homeless people.