Abstract

The ‘national’ and the ‘global’ are powerful categories that hide as much as they reveal about our current epoch. I will argue that they are too powerful and that we need to elaborate analytic tactic that allow us to see what they obscure. Using complex conditions that might be present both in national and in global institutional settings is one step in this effort. Territory, authority, rights are here that I have found useful in this effort. They are complex, and they are made through struggles and conflicts. They exist in all complex forms of organization (tribal societies, kingdoms, empires, republics). They take on specific formats and interdependencies in each, including the nation-state. And they are becoming unstable in the case of the nation-state.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). She is currently working on When Territory Exits Existing Frameworks (Under contract with Harvard University Press). Forthcoming is the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2011). Recent edited books are Deciphering the Global: Its Spaces, Scales and Subjects (Routledge 2007), and Digital Formations: New Architectures for Global Order (Princeton University Press 2005). The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001.For UNESCO she organized a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]. The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001. Her books are translated into twenty-one languages. She has received several honors and awards, most recently a doctor honoris causa from each Delft University (Netherlands), DePaul University (USA), and Universite de Poitiers (France). She serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Newsweek International, among others, and contributes regularly to www.OpenDemocracy.net and www.HuffingtonPost.com.