Throughout history, the relationship between Jews and their land has been a vibrant, much-debated topic within the Jewish world and in international political discourse. Identity and Territory explores how ancient conceptions of Israel—of both the land itself and its shifting frontiers and borders—have played a decisive role in forming national and religious identities across the millennia. Through the works of Second Temple period Jews and rabbinic literature, Eyal Ben-Eliyahu examines the role of territorial status, boundaries, mental maps, and holy sites, drawing comparisons to popular Jewish and Christian perceptions of space. Showing how space defines nationhood and how Jewish identity influences perceptions of space, Ben-Eliyahu uncovers varied understandings of the land that resonate with contemporary views of the relationship between territory and ideology.

This groundbreaking work explores the vital importance of territory and space to any genuine understanding of nationalism and identity. Too often, the contributors argue, national identity is analyzed apart from the lands that are integral to its formation, as territory is seen as a commodity to be brokered rather than as central to a group's self-definition. This volume combines theoretical insights with structured case studies on how national identity manifests itself in space and at different geographical scales.

Why do nations come into conflict? What factors lead to the horrors of ethnic cleansing? This timely book offers clear-eyed answers to these questions by exploring how national identity is shaped by place, focusing especially on Serbia, Hungary, and Romania. Moving beyond studies of nationalism that consider only the economic and geostrategic value of territory, George W. White shows that the very core of national identity is intimately bound to specific places. Indeed, nations define themselves in terms of spaces that have historical, linguistic, and religious meaning, as Serbs have clearly demonstrated in Kosovo. These territories are concrete expressions of a nationAIs identity, both past and present. With his detailed analysis of the places that define national identity in Southeastern Europe, White convincingly shows why territorial disputes so often escalate into war.

This book provides a multi-disciplinary study of territory, identity and space in a devolved UK, through the lens of spatial planning. It draws together leading internationally renowned researchers from a variety of disciplines to address the implications of devolution upon spatial planning and the rescaling of UK politics. Each contributor offers a different perspective on the core issues in planning today in the context of New Labour’s regional project, particularly the government’s concern with business competitiveness, and key themes are illustrated with important case studies throughout.

This volume combines theoretical analysis with a rich set of case studies to understand how national identity is negotiated across spatial scales. As nationalism and identity have continued as critical global flashpoints, this book provides the only up-to-date, comprehensive treatment of the territorial and scalar dimensions of national identity.

The Geography of Ethnic Violence is the first among numerous distinguished books on ethnic violence to clarify the vital role of territory in explaining such conflict. Monica Toft introduces and tests a theory of ethnic violence, one that provides a compelling general explanation of not only most ethnic violence, civil wars, and terrorism but many interstate wars as well. This understanding can foster new policy initiatives with real potential to make ethnic violence either less likely or less destructive. It can also guide policymakers to solutions that endure. The book offers a distinctively powerful synthesis of comparative politics and international relations theories, as well as a striking blend of statistical and historical case study methodologies. By skillfully combining a statistical analysis of a large number of ethnic conflicts with a focused comparison of historical cases of ethnic violence and nonviolence--including four major conflicts in the former Soviet Union--it achieves a rare balance of general applicability and deep insight. Toft concludes that only by understanding how legitimacy and power interact can we hope to learn why some ethnic conflicts turn violent while others do not. Concentrated groups defending a self-defined homeland often fight to the death, while dispersed or urbanized groups almost never risk violence to redress their grievances. Clearly written and rigorously documented, this book represents a major contribution to an ongoing debate that spans a range of disciplines including international relations, comparative politics, sociology, and history.

Home Territories examines how traditional ideas of home, homeland and nation have been destabilised both by new patterns of migration and by new communication technologies which routinely transgress the symbolic boundaries around both the private household and the nation state. David Morley analyses the varieties of exile, diaspora, displacement, connectedness, mobility experienced by members of social groups, and relates the micro structures of the home, the family and the domestic realm, to contemporary debates about the nation, community and cultural identities. He explores issues such as the role of gender in the construction of domesticity, and the conflation of ideas of maternity and home, and engages with recent debates about the 'territorialisation of culture'.