Call for Contributions: Oxford Intersections: Borders | Oxford University Press Section: Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System

 

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I am delighted to pass along this quite interesting call for contributions. It is edited by edited by June Wang (王珺), Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong:

Oxford Intersections: Borders | Oxford University Press
Section: Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System

About the Series

Oxford Intersections is Oxford University Press’s online reference platform of thematic article collections, designed to map cutting-edge debates at the intersections of established fields. Each collection consists entirely of commissioned contributions — original, authoritative articles that orient readers within fast-moving conversations, trace the intellectual stakes of contested concepts, and open new research directions.

As Section Co-Editor for Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System, I am currently soliciting commissioned contributions across two thematic areas. Scholars developing original arguments on either area are warmly encouraged to be in touch.

Area I — Alternative Territorialities and Heterarchical Statehood

This area reframes sovereignty and territory as plural, contested, and assembled — not as a fixed Westphalian container. Drawing on decolonial thought, post-structuralist analytics (Foucault, Deleuze), and STS approaches to infrastructure-as-politics, contributions examine how political authority, legitimacy, and control are enacted through heterarchical actors, logistical networks, and spatial configurations that exceed the flat cartographic state. The section foregrounds voices and cases from Africa and Asia to ensure that “decentring” does not remain a purely Euro-American theoretical gesture.

Topics under commission include:

* Decolonial and anti-sovereign critique: normative and epistemic decentring of Western territorial sovereignty
* Relational statehood and heterarchical authority
* Topological territory and infrastructural space: corridors, chokepoints, special economic zones, logistical worlds, and BRI geopolitics
* Planetary politics and post-statist geographies: alternatives to state territorialism across scales

Area II — Digital Sovereignty and Digital Territory in a Multipolar World

This area argues that sovereignty is being re-assembled through digital infrastructures, data regimes, AI governance, and network control in an era of “weaponized interdependence.” The digital is treated not as a thematic add-on but as a core modality of contemporary territorialization: states and firms govern territory through cables, clouds, platforms, algorithmic standards, and jurisdictional chokepoints. Contributions are expected to situate digital sovereignty within the political economy of platform capitalism, the geopolitics of technological competition, and the longer genealogy of infrastructure as imperial and counter-hegemonic terrain.

Topics under commission include:

* Tech cold war and the multipolar world: competitive decoupling, weaponized interdependence, and the fragmentation of global digital infrastructure
* Digital sovereignty: AI governance, internet fragmentation, digital authoritarianism, and the uneven geographies of platform power
* Digital infrastructure and territory: submarine cables, cloud jurisdiction, data centre geopolitics, and the material politics of digital space
* Data colonialism and algorithmic power: extraction logics, platform capitalism, and the reconstitution of colonial hierarchies in technical architectures

Information on developing and submitting expressions of interest follow below

Expressions of Interest

Scholars whose work aligns with either of the areas above are encouraged to submit a short abstract of approximately 200 words outlining their proposed contribution to the Section Editor for consideration. Please indicate clearly which thematic area, and where possible which topic, your proposed piece addresses.

Abstracts should be sent to:

June Wang, [June.wang@cityu.edu.hk]

Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong