Unbundling territoriality in the era of real time cyberspace

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Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1.5, The Australian National University, 19 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: 1993 when Ruggie termed the 'unbundling of territoriality' was a year in which knowledge and communication that is its accessibility and dissemination entered a new realm of space and time. On the 30th of April 1993 the World Wide Web and its underlying technology was made freely available to use by anyone. Today over one billion people use the Internet, or every sixth person on the planet. A collective brain one might say is forming in front of our eyes growing with every new person entering three W's into a web browser. While Ruggie aimed to search for, and investigate into, a fundamental transformation of the modern system of states, he emphasized that such an analysis would find a fruitful starting point in the [re]conceptualisation of territoriality. This paper will utilize Ruggie's concept, by applying its analysis to the emerging and manifesting space-time implosion driven by the Internet and other communication technologies. Therefore, it is argued that Cyberspace provides a practical sphere to investigate into the unbundling of territoriality in a postmodern world. In the first section the impact on territoriality resulting from the emergence of the Cyberspace will be discussed. Ruggie's model of differentiation between systems of rule and territory is applied to explain the transformation of territory in the postmodern era of Cyberspace. It is followed by an investigation into the consequences of Cyberspace on sovereignty. Showing that Cyberspace does indeed provide a new stage in Ruggie's terms, facilitating an unbundling and relocation of sovereignty away from state territory. The third section discusses the implication of the virtual space on the rise and acceleration of globalisation. It is argued that globalisation, could not be perceived as a postmodern phenomenon without the Cyberspace revolution. The last part of the paper, proposes the need to rethink the notion of movement in the age of virtual and real spaces. Cyberspace allows 'tourists' in line with Bauman's description to choose between virtual and real movement. The preceding discussion will finally lead to the conclusion that the conceptualisation of Cyberspace as one aspect responsible for the unbundling of territory provides an important explanatory insight into the transformation from modernity to postmodernity.