Territory and the governmentalisation of social reproduction: parliamentary enclosure and spatial rationalities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism

Recent applications of Foucauldian categories in geography, spatial history and the history of town planning have opened up interesting new perspectives, with respect to both the evolution of spatial knowledge and the genealogy of territorial techniques and their relation to larger socio-political projects, that would be enriched if combined with other discursive traditions. This article proposes to conceptualise English parliamentary enclosureea favourite episode for Marxist historiography, frequently read in a strictly materialist fashioneas a precedent of a new form of sociospatial governmentality, a political technology that inaugurates a strategic manipulation of territory for social change on the threshold between feudal and capitalist spatial rationalities. I analyse the sociospatial dimensions of parliamentary enclosure’s technical and legal innovations and compare them to the forms of communal self-regulation of land use customs and everyday regionalisations that preceded it. Through a systematic, replicable mechanism of reterritorialisation, enclosure acts normalised spatial regulations, blurred regional differences in the social organisation of agriculture and erased the modes of autonomous social reproduction linked to common land. Their exercise of dispossession of material resources, social capital and community representations is interpreted therefore as an inaugural logic that would pervade the emergent spatial rationality later known as planning.

Tower of Martín González or castle of La Raya (Soria): territory, history, defense and construction / La torre de Martín González o castillo de La Raya (Soria): territorio, historia, defensa y construcción

Abstract The Tower of Martín González, also known as castle of La Raya, is placed in the actual border between the Spanish provinces of Soria and Zaragoza and in the historical limit between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon: this is the reason for its name. The castle dominates the hedge of the plain-moors that surround the Valley of Nágima River. It is a castle with courtyard and a high tower in the western flank. The paper analyzes the castle in four main levels. All references about the castle are studied to draw a historical narration and to relate with the territory and other fortifications, both Castilian and Aragonese. Despite its advanced state of ruin, it preserves many rests that allow making an analysis of its defensive elements and constructive aspects. Resumen La torre de Martín González, también conocida como el castillo de La Raya, se sitúa en el límite actual entre las provincias de Soria y Zaragoza y en el límite histórico entre las coronas de Castilla y Aragón. Domina el extremo de los páramos que circundan el río Nágima. Es un castillo de tipo torrejón con patio de armas y una torre del homenaje adosada a su flanco occidental. El análisis contempla cuatro niveles fundamentales para el entendimiento de la arquitectura fortificada. La comunicación revisa la documentación existente sobre los elementos históricos que se ponen en relación, mediante el análisis territorial, con el sistema fortificado de frontera. A pesar de su avanzado estado de ruina, conserva restos que permiten realizar una lectura interpretativa de sus elementos defensivos y de sus aspectos constructivos.

A comparative study of the herpetological faunae of the Uluguru and Usambara mountains, Tanganyika territory with descriptions of new species / by T. Barbour and A. Loveridge.

v.50:no.2 (1928)

The Significance of the Disputed Territory in Bechuanaland 1887-1893

British Imperial policy in Southern Africa in the last three decades of the nineteenth century oscillated between two extremes. It began in the early 1870's with Lord Kimberley's attempt to effect confederation as a means of devolving Imperial responsibility and expenditure. It ended in 1899 with Britain's active intervention against the Boers. For most of the remaining years of those decades a middle course was adopted while the British Government struggled to reconcile its diverse political interests. Strategy, supremacy, economy, humanitarianism, and recognition of colonial aspirations were all at one time or another, in varying degrees, motivating forces behind Imperial policy. Many historians have pointed out how incompatible many of these ends were and how the attempt to pursue them all at once almost inevitably ended in at least one of them being sacrificed on the way. This study focusses on a relatively minor problem over a period of about seven years. It attempts to show how the British Government tried to reconcile, in this case, the predominant motives of economy and supremacy. The problem of the Disputed Territory now seems like a small fish in a big ocean because non the great hopes and fears that it raised were ever realized. But the anticlimactic nature of the outcome of events should not be allowed to conceal two important points: first, that the problem loomed large at the time in the eyes of the Imperial Government; and second, that in the case of its policy towards the Disputed Territory, the Government gained a greater degree of success in trying to reconcile seemingly incompatible ends than it did in many other instances.