Beyond Territoriality: A Geography of Africa from Below

Edited by Michel Ben Arrous
Dakar: CODESRIA, 1996. 45 p.

This working paper is an attempt to construct an approach to the analysis of political disorder (in the sense of partial or total obliteration of instituted order) in which territorial elements could be seen as keys for interpretation. The goal is to contribute to the development of conceptual tools adequate for use in interpretation. This paper challenges certain familiar concepts such as that of the border, as well as other concepts which are beginning to become familiar, such as the concept of the « Terroir », and it advances new concepts, notably those of territorial dissidence and imagined territory whose heuristic possibilities may be greater.