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Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

Article  in  Foreign affairs (Council on Foreign Relations) · January 2006

DOI: 10.2307/20032085

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Reviewed Work(s): Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages by
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Review by: G. John Ikenberry
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2006), p. 159
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
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 Recent Books
racist, and-in the view revived by the
economic historian Niall Ferguson-a
means of spreading modernity and civiliza
tion. Porter contends that the motives
behind British imperialism were "more
mixed, its spirit more ambivalent, and
its impact more uneven than any of the
popular versions of it-both pro and anti
would suggest." Vulnerability, ambivalence,
and limitations were the real hallmarks of
the British Empire-precisely the features
that Porter finds evident in the United
States' own post-World War II global
involvements. In the end, he succeeds in
showing the complexity of imperial power
but provides little help in understanding
the relationship between U.S. power and
global governance.
Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval
to GlobalAssemblages. BY SASKIA
SASSEN. Princeton University Press,
2006, 502 pp. $35.00.
Globalization is transforming the organi
zation of human activity and reshaping
patterns of rights and authority. In this
ambitious book, a noted sociologist at
tempts to capture the complex logic and
consequences of this epochal process.
Sassen's focus is on the historical transitions
that moved the world from the medieval era
to the national era and then to the global
era, and how territory and political commu
nity have been organized and restructured
along the way. Some readers will find the
book overly long and excessively abstract,
and, indeed, it is: the concepts, processes,
variables, transitions, and organizational
logics invoked depict a global system
of seemingly infinite complexity. One of
Sassen's themes is that nation building
and globalization are not antagonistic
processes; the laws, property rights, and
FOREIGN AFFAIRS September/October2006 [159]
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borders that states create are the infrastruc
ture of global exchange and integration.
Another theme is that globalization itself
unfolds in stages: in the years after World
War II, the process was geared primarily
toward building states, whereas today it
is geared toward "globalization inside of
national states." Most interesting is the
observation that the current stage of
globalization is shifting the locus of author
ity away from states to a "world of private
power" that nonetheless still operates
through national institutions. Underlying
these observations is a materialistic theory
of capitalism; nationalism, democracy, and
geopolitics are mostly absent.
Human Security and the UN:A Critical
History. BY S. NEIL MACFARLANE
AND YUEN FOONG KHONG. Indiana
University Press, 2006, 368 pp. $85.00
(paper, $35.00).
This latest offering in the multivolume
intellectual history of the United Nations
focuses on "human security." Coined in
the early 199os, the term has been used by
thinkers who have sought to shift the dis
course on security away from its traditional
state-centered orientation to the protection
and advancement of individuals within
societies. Although as much normative as
it is analytic, the concept is now integral
to the way large parts of the international
community think about security. This
impressive study explores the meaning
and significance of the term and the ways
in which the UN and associated agencies and
experts brought it to life. MacFarlane
and Khong provide a detailed account of
the individuals, commissions, reports, and
conferences that launched and disseminated
the idea. But the authors are equally atten
tive to deeper transitions in globalization,