Virtual Territories: Technology, Representation, and the State in a Digital Age
Sep 2025 · Oxford University Press
Ebook
240
Pages
Tools
info
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
As technology continues to evolve and advance, new weapons, communication media, surveillance systems, and more are increasingly interwoven into warfare, diplomacy, trade, and every other aspect of international relations. To make sense of the shifting grounds of international politics, it has become essential to understand how technological and political change interact. Virtual Territories examines this relationship by focusing on the mechanism of representation, which encompasses both how technologies and their capabilities are represented and how technologies produce or alter representations of the world. Through a series of case studies, Jordan Branch demonstrates how these representations are involved in producing novel ideas and concepts, making particular political arguments tenable or convincing, and foreclosing certain political choices or outcomes. The book explores these consequences in four empirical areas: the technologies of nineteenth-century state-building and imperial expansion, digital geospatial technologies and territorial borders, cybersecurity threats and how states address them, and remote and possibly autonomous warfare through drones. Branch's analysis of the representational dynamics between technology and politics presents implications for the core features of international relations, including the future of the territorial state and the international system itself.
As technology continues to evolve and advance, new weapons, communication media, surveillance systems, and more are increasingly interwoven into warfare, diplomacy, trade, and every other aspect of international relations. To make sense of the shifting grounds of international politics, it has be...
Discover more
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
