Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17

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Political Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power

Stuart Elden*
Department of Geography, Durham University, Science Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

a b s t r a c t
Keywords: We all-too-often think of the spaces of geography as areas, not volumes. Territories are bordered, divided
Volume and demarcated, but not understood in terms of height and depth. ‘Secure the area’ is a common
Security
expression for the military and police, but what happens if another dimension is taken into account and
Verticality
Volumetric
we think what it means to ‘secure the volume’? This article draws on the emergent literature on vertical
Power geopolitics and Peter Sloterdijk’s work on spheres, but also looks at what happens below the surface,
Geopolitics with a particular focus on tunnels. Using Paul Virilio’s work, and some examples from the West Bank and
Israel’s border with Lebanon, it demonstrates how we need to think volumedthink about volume,
through volume, with volumedrather than simply the vertical to make sense of the complexities of
territory today.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Territory is not merely a cognate of land, a political-economic

term implying ownership, exchange and use value, distribution,
The phrase ‘secure the area’ is a common one in military and police partition, division. Nor is it sufficient, though it is necessary, to add
situations. What happens if we take the vertical as a key question, a strategic, political dimension to the term, understanding the
taking the additional dimension into account, if security has to con- power relations in a narrow sense of contestation and struggle. This
tend with volume? What would it mean to ‘secure the volume’? How can be given the shorthand of the notion of terrain. Land and terrain
does thinking about volume e height and depth instead of surfaces, are crucial elements, but not enough either alone or in combina-
three dimensions instead of areas e change how we think about the tion. Rather, ‘power’ should be understood, following Michel Fou-
politics of space? We all-too-often think of the spaces of geography as cault, in a somewhat broader sense, as including, among other
areas, not volumes. Territories are bordered, divided and demarcated, aspects, the legal and the technical.
but not understood in terms of height and depth. The politicalelegal adds a crucial element into the understand-
This article therefore builds on my claim that territory is a much ing, because it raises the spatial element of notions of jurisdiction,
more complicated and multi-faceted notion than it is usually un- authority, sovereignty, supremacy, superiority, administration and
derstood to be. Standard political geographical definitions describe so on. Put crudely, we should ask where does the law apply, and
it as a ‘bounded space’ or the ‘area controlled by a certain kind of where does it cease to apply. The politicaletechnical, trading on
power’. Previous work has challenged the former by suggesting work by Martin Heidegger and Foucault especially, understands the
that boundedness is a particular form made possible by a deeper technical in a broad sense as an art or technique, but it looks at
and underlying determination of political space, as calculable questions such as the relation between developments in mathe-
(2005, 2010). This article challenges the latter definition e that it is matics, particularly geometry, in making possible the large-scale
simply an ‘area controlled by a certain kind of power’. It first looks cartographic and land-surveying projects that contributed to the
at work on verticality, then work on the subsoil, with a particular modern sense of territory. Political arithmetic, statistics and surveys
focus on tunnels. In sum, the aim is to take seriously, in a political all have important geographical elementsdlook for example at
register, what Jeremy Crampton has called the ‘volumetric’ (2010, Matthew Hannah’s work on the census in Governmentality and the
96), a term that is productive because of the dimension and cal- Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth Century America and his more
culable resonances it has. First, though, a brief rehearsal of the recent book Dark Territory in the Information Age (2000, 2010; see
earlier argument concerning territory. Legg, 2007; Mitchell, 2002).
Taking these four dimensions of the political into accountdthe
economic, the strategic, the legal and the technicalddoes not
* Tel.: þ44 (0)191 334 1945. provide a better definition of ‘territory’, in the sense of a fixed,
E-mail address: [email protected]. ahistorical definition. But it gives a set of questions that might be

0962-6298/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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asked in order to understand how territory has been understood, In a related enquiry, the French theorist Paul Virilio has dis-
and practised, at different times and places. Territory is a process, cussed how aerial warfare in World War I opened up new senses of
not an outcome; not so far from what is increasingly being un- battlespace, rather than just a battlefield, which cinema was quick
derstood as an assemblage, continually made and remade. Territory to develop in its own aesthetic. As he suggests, “Distance, depth,
can be understood as a political technology, or a bundle of political three-dimensionality e in just a few years of war, space became
technologies, understanding both political and technology in a training-ground for the dynamic offensive and for all the energies
a broad sense: techniques for measuring land and controlling ter- it harnessed” (1989, 35). In World War II civilian populations
rain (see Elden, 2010, 2013a). became targets in ways they had not been before, with an impact
To suggest, then, that territory is a ‘bounded space’ under the even in countries that had not been invaded such as Britain and
control of a group of people invites the initial questions: what do Japan. Equally, the advent of submarine warfare took warfare below
we mean by bounded, and how is that possible; what do we mean the surface. War was now fought in a three-dimensional space,
by space, or what determination of space; and what power re- a volume. In Virilio’s words:
lations are at stake. It might be the beginning of the definitional
The conquest of the third dimension by the aerial forces and the
work, but it is not the end. In other publications this way of
extension of the submarine offensive gave to the Second World
approaching territory has been worked through in detail both
War its ‘volume’. What was only yesterday the privilege of sea
politically and historically (2009a, 2013a). This article develops
powers became the privilege of the entire military establish-
these arguments conceptually and politically, especially in terms of
ment: the control of the sky completed the control of the sea’s
the problems that arise when space is reduced to a surface, a plane;
depths. Space was at last homogenized, absolute war became
when territory is reduced to an area.
a reality, and the monolith was its monument (1994, 39e40).
From area to volume These arguments influenced some comments in my book Terror
and Territory (Elden, 2009a, xxii). There the argument was that
One of the key thinkers of the notion of volume is the German while attacks from truck or car bombs, or suicide bombers were
philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. The first work of his in English that challenges to the security of a state, there were means of preven-
engages with these questions is a short book translated as Terror tion that could be erecteddwalls and fences being two of the most
from the Air (2009b), but whose German title Luftbeben (2002) common. A whole range of such building projects have been con-
would more accurately be rendered as ‘Airquake’ or ‘Air Tremors’. ducted since 2001 (see Brown, 2010). Attacks from the air are much
What Sloterdijk is seeking to analyse here is how the air itself, the harder to prevent, and attempts to secure vertical space can be
air we breathe, becomes targeted. In a way it parallels the critique found in the barrage balloons of World War II to the attempts of
Luce Irigaray made of Heideggerdtoo tied to the earth, forgetting a missile shield in the Cold War. The suggestion was that it was “not
the air (1983, 1999). The material in Sloterdijk’s book was first coincidental that two of the most extreme responses of the United
published in German as a chapter in volume two of the mon- States and its allies in the ‘war on terror’ have been to aerial attack:
umental Spheres trilogy. In German this is a three-volume, 2600 to the airplanes of September 11, 2001, and to Hezbollah’s Katyusha
page work (1998, 1999, 2004), the first volume of which has rockets launched against Israel in 2006” (Elden, 2009a, xxii).
recently been translated into English (2011b). The ‘Airquakes’ However it is crucial to underline that the state responses, as state-
chapter appeared in Society and Space in early 2009 (2009a), closely terror, were also characterised by aerial assault. The ‘Shock and
followed by the separate book (2009b). Awe’ initial attack on Iraq, not to mention earlier operations such as
Sloterdijk suggests that this work, taken as a whole, should be Desert Fox; the destruction of Fallujah; and attacks by Israel on
understood as the counterpart to Heidegger’s Being and Time, as Beirut or Gaza; NATO in the Kosovo War and Russia in Chechnya are
Being and Space (1998, 345; 2011b, 342) which he describes as “the all state-terror from the air. NATO’s intervention in Libya more
great unwritten book of Western Philosophy” (1999, 59 n. 17). recently might be understood in a similar way. All these operations
Sloterdijk takes the Heideggerian idea of being-in-the-world and use the vertical dimension to assert domination, they use aerial
analyses the ‘in’ the way Heidegger expressly denied (1967, 53e54), supremacy to terrify the civilian population on the ground. The
as a spatial term, as a question of location, of where we are (2005, book suggested that:
308; 2011a, 175e176; see 1998, 336e345; 2011b, 333e342). For
Recognizing the vertical dimension of territory shows that ter-
Sloterdijk, being is always being-with, not the isolated individual,
ritory is a volume rather than an area, and noting that lines on
but relations between; and being-with is always to be in a world.
maps have only a limited height when translated into lines on
This is a spatial determination of our existence, and he suggests that
the ground showcases a new level of vulnerability: a vulner-
a sequence of spheres help to make sense of this. They range from
ability to imagined senses of a protected territory, the body of
the bubbles of the first volume, where the first sphere is that of the
the state (Elden, 2009a, xxii).
womb, to the globes of the second volume, working through the
family home, architecture, the polis, and the nation. In the third
volume he pluralises this, using the idea of foam to capture the idea
Vertical geopolitics
of interlocked spheres (see Elden, 2012, 7e8; Klauser, 2010). What
is striking about Sloterdijk’s work is the way that he tries to think
These arguments link to ongoing work by a range of thinkers on
space so seriously as a volume, with three dimensions, rather than
what Stephen Graham has called ‘vertical geopolitics’ (2004a). As
merely an area. In terms of the work on terror, his examples are
Foucault suggests in his examination of the Dogs series of paintings
multiple, he is trying to show how poison gas attacks in World War
by Paul Rebeyrolle, “In the world of prisons, as in the world of
I, the Holocaust, gas chambers, aerial bombardment, etc. share
dogs. the vertical is not one of the dimensions of space, it is the
similar logics of assault. He broadens his analysis to include analysis
dimension of power” (2007, 170).
of radioactivity, meteorology, pneumatology (spiritual beings)d
means by which commanding the air can terrorise the earth, It dominates, rises up, threatens and flattens; an enormous pyr-
what he calls ‘atmoterrorism’. This relates to long-standing dis- amid of buildings, above and below; orders barked out from up
cussions of the bomber aeroplane, and missile attack (see Gregory, high and down low; you are forbidden to sleep by day, to be up at
2006, 2011a; Grosscup, 2006; Herz, 1959). night, stood up straight in front of the guards, to attention in front

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of the governor; crumpled by blows in the dungeon, or strapped Geo-politics is a flat discourse. It largely ignores the vertical
to the restraining bed for having not wanted to go to sleep in front dimension and tends to look across rather than to cut through
of the warders; and, finally, hanging oneself with a clear con- the landscape. This was the cartographic imagination inherited
science, the only means of escaping the full length of one’s from the military and political spatialities of the modern state.
enclosure, the only way of dying upright (Foucault, 2007, 170). Since both politics and law understand place only in terms of the
map and the plan, territorial claims marked on maps assume
The key thinker of the vertical dimension, and an inspiration for
that claims are applicable simultaneously above them and
many of those working in this area, is the Israeli architect and
below..
theorist Eyal Weizman. In a call for an understanding of what he
calls ‘the politics of verticality’, Weizman has shown how we must Traditional international borders are political tools dividing the
grasp the fractured spaces of the West Bank as three-dimensional, land on plans and maps; their geometric form, following prin-
with tunnels, bridges, hilltops, and airspace central to under- ciples of property laws, could be described as vertical planes
standing the conflict, as much as land, terrain, and walls (2002, extending from the centre of the earth to the height of the sky.
2003, 2007; Segal & Weizman, 2003). An extended quotation from The departure from a planar division of a territory to the crea-
Weizman illustrates his key argument: tion of three-dimensional boundaries across sovereign bulks
redefines the relationship between sovereignty and space.
Two-dimensional maps, fundamental to the understanding of
political borders, have been drawn again and again for the West The ‘Politics of Verticality’ entails the re-visioning of existing
Bank. Each time they have failed to capture its vertical divisions. cartographic techniques. It requires an Escher-like representa-
In the understanding and governing of territories, maps have tion of space, a territorial hologram in which political acts of
been principal tools. The history of their making relates to manipulation and multiplication of the territory transform
property ownership, political sovereignty and power. a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional volume
(Weizman, 2002, 2).
But maps are two-dimensional. Attempting to represent reality
on two-dimensional surfaces, they not only mirror it but also In his 2007 book Hollow Land Weizman works that through in
shape the thing they represent. As much as describing the detail. He examines the situation of the security barrier or wall in
world, they create it. the West Bank, and the way that this cuts off communities from

Fig. 1. Transport sovereignties in the West Bank.

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each other. Much of the work of his study, and the earlier A Civilian ventilation for air conditioning units. This was previously the
Occupation (Segal & Weizman, 2003) looks at the architecture and frontline: the architectural traces show this legacy today (Fig. 3).
urban planning of Israeli settlements, and especially their situation Close by these buildings is a remarkable museum. Appropriately
on mountains and hilltops as strategically powerful positions. named the ‘Museum on the Seam for Dialogue, Understanding and
These demonstrate the ways that height plays an important role in Coexistence’ (see www.mots.org.il/Eng/Index.asp), it is housed in
the power relations of this fractured and contested space, and he a building which was formally an army outpost next to the Man-
uses the examples of roads that run over and under each other, with delbaum Gate between the two parts of the city. One of the major
an Israeli highway superimposed over the Palestinian road to mark exhibitions it has shown was entitled ‘Bare Life’ and used the work
out different transportation sovereignties (2007, 179e181) (Fig. 1). of Giorgio Agamben, among others, to think through the imbrica-
Taking into account airspace and overflight rights, which the tions of biopolitics and geopolitics in this contested space (Etgar,
Israelis control for the entire West Bank, and the water and sewage 2007) (Fig. 4).
systems below the surface, shows that it is not enough to think in Another contested site is the area known as ‘E1’, short for ‘East
terms of three dimensions. Rather, Weizman argues, there are three 1’. This is a large space between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim,
Israeli and three Palestinian dimensions at stake (2007, 15). intended to be a Jewish settlement. If completed it would almost
A few examples will be used here to think about the two- completely separate the West Bank into a northern and southern
dimensional and three-dimensional elements of geopolitical section, largely cut off from each other. It would entirely isolate
space. Part of the old border between Israeli-occupied land and Arab East Jerusalem. The area is ready to go if given the green light,
Jordanian-occupied land, the ‘green line’ which lasted from 1948 to but the Obama administration is set against it (on this plan see
1967, is now traced by a major arterial road in Jerusalem. The road, Shalev, 2009). At the moment there is extensive infrastructure
Chel Handasa street (Fig. 2), leads north from the Old City, and the there, including roads, roundabouts, street lights, road signs,
new Jerusalem light rail runs along this route (between Damascus powerlines and presumably irrigation and sewage tunnelsdthings
Gate and Shivtei Israel stations). on the surface, above it, and below it (Fig. 5).
While most traces of the previously contested nature of this But as yet there are no buildings, with one exception, the
space have been removed, some of the buildings still expose the police station on top of the hill, the Samaria and Judea Police
past. The buildings in the top right of Fig. 2 are effectively turned District Headquarters, said to be the biggest in the West Bank
away from the road; the exposed façade shows service ducts and (Fig. 6).

Fig. 2. Chel Handas street, looking towards the Old City.

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Fig. 3. Buildings on Chel Handasa street.

Throughout Jerusalem, the West Bank and elsewhere, what is has been horizontal, with an increasing vertical dimension. In fully
below the surface is mined for its historical artefacts and the po- urbanized terrain, however, warfare becomes profoundly vertical,
litical significance they have. Historical traces can help to justify reaching up to towers of steel and cement, and downward into
arguments for previous habitation and politically and legally build sewers, subway lines, road tunnels, communication tunnels, and
cases for land control today. As Weizman notes, “archaeology the like” (1996, 2; part cited in Graham, 2004a, 14). More recently
attempted to peel this visible layer and expose the historical Graham and colleague Lucy Hewitt have called for an explicitly
landscape concealed underneath. Only a few metres below the vertical sensibility to shape ongoing research in urban geography
surface, a palimpsest made of five thousand year-old debris, traces (Graham & Hewitt, 2012). This is of equal importance in political
of cultures, narratives of wars and destruction, is arranged chro- geography.
nologically in layers compressed with stone and by soil” (Weizman, Other geographers have taken the vertical in account in
2002, 8). These examples help to explain what he means by the important waysdtake, for example, Derek Gregory’s work on the
notion of “a political volume” (Weizman, 2004, 189).1 history of aerial bombardment (2011a), unmanned drones (2011b)
Ideas of verticality have been developed by Stephen Graham in and the everywhere war (2011c); work on aerial sovereignty, se-
a number of pieces (e.g. 2004a, 2011), culminating in the major curity and the projection of military power (Monmonier, 2010;
work Cities Under Siege (2010a, see also 2004b, 2010b) Graham has Williams, 2007, 2011a, 2011b); Trevor Paglen’s work on secret sites
worked through, in detail, what it means for warfare to become for the war on terror, many of which are underground or otherwise
urban. This relates to the argument made by Virilio, where war hidden, and which often relate to spy plane technologies (2010);
becomes even more fully a question of volume, battlespace, rather and Peter Adey’s studies of aerial life (2010a, 2010c) and on aerial
than a battlefield. Of course, siege warfare, catapults and tunnels, surveillance by helicopters over the contemporary megacity
ditches, walls and ramparts have long been important, and classic (2010b). Much of this work has concerned the target, and the tar-
accounts such as those by Thucydides, Caesar and Machiavelli show geting of that target from above (see also Sebald, 2003; Zehfuss,
the importance of an understanding of terrain. But Graham refers to 2011). The control of volume can be found in the idea of no-fly
Major Peters who analysed the challenge of urban warfare com- zones, of providing security for the ground through a mechanism
pared to what the US was used to, back in 1996: “At the broadest from the air. This has been seen, most recently, in Libya, continuing
level, there is a profound spatial difference. ‘Conventional’ warfare an earlier model from Iraq (Williams, 2007). Chris Harker has

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Fig. 4. The Museum on the Seam.

suggested that we equally need to theorise what he calls “ordinary The underground has long been seen as hidden, dangerous,
topologies” in order to understand the lived practices of people in risky or insecure. Biographer of London Peter Ackroyd has recently
some of these fractured, hierarchical and urban spaces (2012; see turned his attention to what happens beneath its streets, and de-
Secor, in press). In a more historical register Mark Whitehead’s scribes ‘London Under’ in this way:
important work on the government of the air (2009) shows how
It is an unknown world. It is not mapped in its entirety. It cannot
technology, policy and practice interrelate, how the atmosphere
be seen clearly or as a whole. There are maps of gas facilities, of
became an object of government, and demonstrates the essential
telecommunications, of cables and of sewers; but they are not
vertical dimension of the geographies of the modern state. In this
available for public perusal. The dangers of sabotage are con-
work he takes the idea of a spatial history and adds the vertical
sidered to be too great. So the underworld is doubly unknow-
dimension (see Carter, 1987; Elden, 2001). Several of these re-
able. It is a sequestered and forbidden zone (2012, 2).
searchers have collaborated in a recent project that seeks to analyse
‘from above’ (Adey, Whitehead, & Williams, 2011, 2013). Taking The underground is essentially associated with danger, risk,
a view from above includes the importance of aerial photography in undermining and subterfuge. Subterfuge means, of course, to flee
archaeology, surveillance and bombing in warfare, satellite images, below or underground, to be undercover. To be undercover is to be
and Google Earth, alongside architecture and urban design, and covert, hidden, clandestine. As Ackroyd points out, “Radical politi-
military surveillance and bombardment. A whole range of strat- cal groups, characteristically using terror and violence as their
egies are used to secure the air, and through that, the ground. weapons, are still known as ‘underground’ movements” (2012, 12).
Such concerns are magnified when it is an enemy city being
The depth of power discussed. This can range from Hitler’s bunker and other under-
ground defences, to more contemporary concerns with Osama bin
Yet this work, predominantly, has been orientated up, even if Laden’s cave complex in Tora Bora, or Iran’s nuclear programme.
looking down and seeking to understand what implications this One important study of ways used to challenge this is by Ryan
has on the ground. Peter Adey tells us that “both the ground and the Bishop on the US ‘Transparent Earth’ project. As Bishop outlines,
air reside in vertical reciprocity” (2010a, 3). But what happens this is a project which attempts to “read beneath the earth’s
below the surface, and does how this impact on questions of se- surface. harnessing lightning (natural and artificial), radio signals
curity? How should we think depth as well as height? and complex algorithms to ‘see’ through other sensorial means”

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 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17 7

Fig. 5. Area E1.

(2011, 272; see Graham & Hewitt, 2012, 16). What is intriguing, and development” (2009, 46). One example would be slant drilling,
which links this project to those discussed already, is the attempt to which was one of the claimed grievances of Saddam Hussein before
see the below from above. Bishop quotes Mark Smith of the Geo- the invasion of Kuwait which led to the first Gulf War of 1991. The
spatial Corporation as saying that “underground is truly the final claim was that Kuwait was not drilling directly down, but at an
frontier” (Geospatial Corporation, 2010; cited in Bishop, 2011, 277). angle which meant they were entering Iraqi territory below the
surface. Other issues where what goes on below the surface im-
The use of combinatory senses to render a visible image of that
pacts across boundaries would be the pollution or draining of un-
which could not be seen (the underground) provides yet
derground aquifers, and above the surface the implications of acid
another attempt to remove the ground of error for military
rain, climate change (Kythreotis & Paul, 2012) and what Thom
observation and control, re-inscribing the desire of mastery
Kuehls called “the space of ecopolitics” that takes us “beyond
operative in the view from above (Bishop, 2011, 273).
sovereign territory” (1996).
The military implications thus extend from the wall, the walled Here, the focus will be on urban infrastructure and then, via
city, and ramparts, to the moat, the trench, bunker and fortifica- a discussion of Paul Virilio’s early work, the question of tunnels.
tions of other kinds. Peter Nyers has recently discussed how the
remaking of the landscape in border regions through earthworks, Urban infrastructure
both construction and destruction, filling and ramping, can be used
for security reasons (2012). This is reshaping a three-dimensional Geographical research has long looked at the ways cities work,
landscape as part of a securitised terrain. and the infrastructure projects that make them possible. One key
Other subterranean issues have important security and geo- example is Matthew Gandy’s book Concrete and Clay on the
political aspects. The resources below the earth’s surface or under reworking of nature in New York City (2002), which especially
the sea bed are, of course, a major source of conflict and contest- provides an analysis of the infrastructure necessary to provide
ation. There is a whole body of geographical research on mining, oil water to the city. Gandy suggests that “the clouds of steam rising
and gas reserves. Some of these raise important challenges to tra- from the street remind us that the possibilities for urban life are
ditional ways of thinking about territory and its borders. As Bridge sustained by an unseen web of structures, connections, and re-
suggests, “the punctuated, discontinuous geographies of extraction lationships” (2002, 234; see Solis, 2005). In a later piece he ex-
do not coincide well with notions of national territory or amines the sewers of Paris (2004). In a similar vein, Chapter 2 of

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Fig. 6. Samaria and Judea Police District Headquarters.

William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (1991) examines ‘Rails and the disruption that followed the New York City blackout of 2003
Water’ and their role in the modern city. (2010, chap. 2).
Stephen Graham’s Cities Under Siege (2010a, 2010b) is also Work on the underground elements of cities is, of course,
important here, as it looks at the destruction of infrastructure fa- extensive. Pike (2005) provides a discussion of underground rail-
cilities, among other aspects of the new military urbanism. But on ways, catacombs and other burial sites, sewage and ruins (see Solis,
infrastructure, his most important book is the earlier work with 2005; on the last, see also Edensor, 2005). There is work from
Simon Marvin Splintering Urbanism (2001) and the edited collection archaeology on the ancient burial sites of Rome and other cities
Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails (2009). Graham’s work (Rutgers, 2000). There has been some work on the subterranean in
has therefore moved from providing an analysis of how cities work a colonial context (Braun, 2000; Pike, 2007; Scott, 2008), and on the
to how they are prevented from working, from the construction to large number of literary works that have significant subterranean
the destruction of infrastructure as a weapon of war. In terms of elements (Ackroyd, 2012; Williams, 2008). There is also a growing
security, one of the things that the US and Israel are most concerned body of work on practices of urban exploration, where activists
about at present is the perceived threat from Iran. In terms of the enter into working or abandoned sites to see the working of cities
effectiveness of a strike against Iranian facilities there is a need to or military installations. The Jinx group in New York have cata-
get beneath the surface. Conventional weapons will not suffice. logued their own exploratory practices, They have a particular
There is therefore discussion of the potential of bunker busting aesthetic to their work, presented in the book Invisible Frontier
bombs. Graham reports on how the US has been developing (Deyo & Leibowitz, 2003), and found on their website (http://www.
a ‘Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator’, a tactical nuclear warhead of jinxmagazine.com/), where the operatives dress in sharp suits or
limited kilotons, that can annihilate a bunker complex (2004a, 19). cocktail dresses and pose for photographs in some of the places
The irony of using a nuclear weapon to prevent nuclear prolifera- they have accessed. In a statement of their intent they talk of the
tion is profound. physical geography below the streets of New York City:
In a slightly different register there is the continual need for
renewal and repair of infrastructure systems (see Graham & New York City stands anchored in five-hundred-million-year-
Thrift, 2007). A related analysis, with its focus on breakdown old igneous bedrock, in compressed strata of shale and stone.
rather than intentional damage, is Jane Bennett’s discussion of Since the seventeenth century this bedrock has been dug,

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entrenched, drained, tunnelled, and blasted to accommodate writings (2010, 2011) and his excellent Place Hacking website
the roots of a growing infrastructure. As of the summer of 2001, (www.placehacking.co.uk).
the streets conceal a labyrinth 780 miles in area, and over eight Luke Bennett has labelled some of these urban exploration
hundred feet deep. practices as ‘bunkerology’, with a particular focus on people who
explore “abandoned Cold War bunkers” (2011, 421).2 What is
Four hundred forty-three miles of train tracks carry the subways intriguing about these explorations are that they enter into sites
and commuter trains beneath New York. Cars access the city which were often created for security purposes at an earlier time,
through twenty-two tunnels. but which raise security issues in the present. Bennett is careful not
to suggest that those who enter sites are causing damage, or to read
Three hundred forty-six miles of aqueducts and six thousand
this “solely from a sociology of deviance or cultural criminology
miles of water mains and tunnels carry 1.5 billion gallons of
perspective”, but he does note that it “certainly appears that many
water beneath the city each day. Most of the city’s water mains
urbex practitioners enjoy the uncertain legality of their practice
were built before 1930, and they fail at the rate of 90.11 breaks
and relish the `cat and mouse’ game of gaining access and evading
per one thousand miles per year.
the attention of site owners or their security guards” (Bennett, 2011,
Seven hundred and fifty thousand manholes access the utility 426). Indeed Jinx’s Invisible Frontier is, in a sense, an elegy. In April
grid. New York City power runs through 83,043 miles of un- 2003 they made the following statement:
derground cable, enough to encircle the globe three and a half
times. Thirty-three thousand underground transformers step Jinx has ceased its unlawful trespassing activities for the dura-
down the charge for consumer use. One hundred six million tion of the present period of war and heightened alert in the
telephone calls connect each days through New York’s one United States; though neither odious nor evil, the activities of
hundred million miles of telephone cables, which, if stretched urban exploration create the hazard of false alarms and could
end to end, could reach the sun (Deyo & Leibowitz, 2003, 1). potentially divert police resources from serious matters. Obe-
dience of just laws is not a private matter. Every crime un-
In their work much of this infrastructure, the subterranean city dermines our safety by making the staggering task of law
as well as buildings and other structures above the surface, be- enforcement harder in this period of terrorism and war
comes a place of exploration. Their sites include the tunnel for an (reproduced in Deyo & Leibowitz, 2003, vii).
aqueduct, an abandoned smallpox hospital, and bridges. Further
work has been done by Bradley Garrett, who has documented in While the choice of date is perhaps surprisingdthe time of the
detail urban exploration in Paris, London and elsewhere in his Iraq war, rather than the aftermath of the 2001 attacks in New

Fig. 7. Atlantic Wall Bunker in Audinghen, Pas-de-Calais, France.

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10 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17

Yorkdtheir concerns would fit with those of the security services. It past. Yet as Gane outlines (1999, 86e87), Virilio was not interested
is worth remembering that while the attack that brought the twin in this simply for historical, critical reasons, but he found inspira-
towers of the World Trade Center down came from the air, the 1993 tion in the inclined planes and oblique angles for his own archi-
attack was from an underground car park. In London, the security tecture. This was brought to fruition in his collaboration with the
risks of the underground Tube have long been known, with the architect Claude Parent. Parent and Virilio proposed that conven-
bombs of 7th July 2005 adding to the security concerns (see tional architecture had been too concerned with the flat and the
Murphy, 2012). Across the Atlantic, and by road rather than rail, straight-forwardly vertical. They were interested in angles, tan-
John Updike’s novel Terrorist revolves around a plot to blow up the gents, and the implications of military practices for urban design:
Lincoln tunnel linking New Jersey to Manhattan (Updike, 2006; see
Amoore, 2009). Urbanism will in future have much more to do with ballistics
than with the partition of territories. In effect, the static vertical
Bunker archaeology e beyond the vertical and horizontal no longer correspond to the dynamics of human
life. In future, architecture must be built on the oblique, so as to
Bennett refers in passing (2011, 422) to Paul Virilio’s early work accord with the new plane of human consciousness (Parent &
Bunker Archaeology (2008 [1975]) which examined the structures of Virilio, 1996, 65).
the Atlantic Wall. The Atlantic Wall was built along the Dutch,
As Gane puts it, “The emphasis was insistent: conventional ar-
Belgian and French coast by German forces to defend against an
chitecture had condemned humanity to horizontality and therefore
Allied invasion (Fig. 7).
to stasis” (1999, 88). Virilio suggests that the project was designed
Virilio, who was born in 1932, grew up in Brittany and saw the
to challenge ideas of the inside and outside, and to move to ques-
war at close hand as his city of Nantes was subjected to Blitzkrieg.
tions of the above and below (Virilio & Lotringer, 2002, 22). But it
As he says in an interview, “war was my university. Everything has
was not merely a shift from a two dimensional, this or that side of
proceeded from there” (Der Derian & Virilio, 1995).3 In the late
a line, way of thinking. In their argument, and their architectural
1950s Virilio studied the architectural work of the Atlantic Wall
practice, it was also a challenge to ways of thinking the vertical,
fortifications in the area near where he grew up, though most of the
straight-forward ways of conceiving height and depth.
work was not published until the 1970s. Virilio was fascinated by
The way they did this was to force us to think of angles, ori-
what he described as “these heavy gray masses with sad angles and
entation and slopes. Virilio suggests that:
no openingsdexcepting the air inlets and several staggered
entrances.” (1994, 13). Virilio found these of interest for a range of . the ruled surface is Euclid. In a post-Euclidean space, it goes
reasons. In part they were of recent political interest, but also without saying that surfaces are orientated. Most architects
because of the links he saw with other architectural forms from the limit themselves to Euclidean forms: the orthogonal. They put

Fig. 8. Closed border crossing at Rosh Hanikra.

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 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17 11

needles on top of towers, and this became the Gothic, or volume that cannot be simply measured along a third axis. Issues
whatever you like. But my particular concern was to enter into such as reach, instability, force, resistance, incline and depth matter
topology, in other words, into non-Euclidean spaces, to use alongside the simply vertical. These have geometric, physical and
vaguer forms, including at the level of the floor (Virilio & political aspects. But Virilio is suspicious of the idea of politics that
Lotringer, 2002, 22, 29). is not at the same time a geopolitics. He is asked by interviewer
Enrique Limon if his oblique function, as a “critique of the vertical
A crucial part of this is that, despite the opening up of the above
and horizontal norms in architecture and urbanism at the time” is
and below dimensions, Virilio claims that the horizontal remains
a ‘political’ space (2001, 54):
important and it is actually the vertical that is challenged by the
transformation: “the horizontal plane remains, it is not negated. A political space is a geopolitical space. ‘Political’ means nothing.
What is negated is the vertical” (Virilio & Lotringer, 2002, 34). He A political space applies to a piece of land, whether small (a city)
suggests that this comes from his analysis of the Atlantic Wall or large (the nation-state). It is geopolitical in the ‘political ge-
structures. ography’ sense, but also in the ‘geometry’ sense. There is a polit-
As soon as one starts to incline planes and to get rid of the ical geometry. Bentham’s Panopticon for instance is a police-state
vertical, the relationship with the horizon changes. Gravity does political geometry. This is geopolitics, i.e., political geometry,
not come into play in the perception of space in the same way at not political geography. A space is always political through ge-
all. When one stands on an inclined plane the instability of the ography and geometry. Geostrategy and war brought me to this
position changes the relationship with the horizon. The idea is conclusion. For the military only strategies matter (2001, 55).
that as soon as a third spatial dimension (the oblique) is brought
These are useful, and productive, suggestions that can be taken
into the relationship with regard to space and weight changes,
much further. Virilio came to believe that speed was the key to
the individual will always be in a state of resistance. The idea
understanding social and political processes, and moved away from
of the oblique comes from such inclined bunkers (2001, 53).
a focus on space (Virilio & Lotringer, 2002, 53; see Virilio, 1977). He
A number of diagrams and schemas illustrate their claims. Vir- suggests that this is due to a change in military and political
ilio’s work is useful in forcing us to think of the complexities of techniques:

Fig. 9. Welcome to Rosh Hanikra.

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12 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17

Fig. 10. IsraeleLebanon border at Rosh Hanikra.

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 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17 13

Fortification, which was geophysical in the ancient times of the What this work provides is the potential for getting away from
Great Wall of China or the Roman limes, has suddenly become the straight up and down that characterises some work on the
physical and even ‘micro-physical’, no longer located in the space vertical. Thinking angles rather than the vertical is a potentially
of a border to defend, or in the covering or armor of a casement more powerful challenge to the flat, planar understanding.
or tank, but in the time of instantaneous electromagnetic
countermeasures (1994, 203e204). Tunnels
But this early work on war and architecture bears careful ex-
amination (see also Hirst, 2005). It makes more sense to think of the Tunnels provide a possible example here, since they rarely go
developments Virilio is tracing as working with, alongside and in directly down, but use entrance shafts to gain access to a range of
tension with, geophysical fortification, rather than as its replace- sites (Bridge, 2009). Mining for coal and mineral resources is part of
ment. What is intriguing is that while his work is certainly attuned the industrial past or present for many regions, and subsidence,
to the above and below, what we might call the vertical in a simple access and reclamation projects raise questions of dimensionality
sense, it actually challenges that approach to become more pro- alongside political-economic concerns. With the focus on security,
found. If the horizontal is inclined, then what we customarily call however, some rather different questions are raised. Tunnels pro-
the vertical is simply the horizontal at a particularly steep angle. In vide the possibility of moving things in or out of locations that are
challenging the simply vertical, Virilio forces us to think of volume, otherwise secured. In World War Two, many prisoner of war es-
in all its dimensions, angles other than the perpendicular, and with capes were through tunnels; today they are raised as security
all its orientations. It is something of a disappointment that he concerns between Egypt and the Gaza strip, and between Mexico
turned away from this line of inquiry: and the US. Given the blockade of Gaza, these tunnels are the
means by which vital building materials, fuel, food and medicines
At that time I was interested in geomorphology, syncline, anti- can be brought into the strip without much scrutiny. Of course, this
cline, everything that goes into geology. Those were the books I lack of regulation means weapons can also be moved, and are
was reading thendtoday they would bore me to deathdand I certainly noted by Israel as a threat. There is continual demolition of
had noticed that there is practically nothing flat on the surface of suspected sites by the Israelis (see Weizman, 2007, 254e258), and
the Earth. Nothing. There are many more inclined planes (Virilio at the time of writing (August 2012), use of these tunnels was being
& Lotringer, 2002, 34). limited by security concerns in the Sinai peninsula.

Fig. 11. Tunnel at Rosh Hanikra.

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14 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17

Between the US and Mexico walls and fences are being erected, He also notes how struggles above the surface now travel
and can be adapted for various purposes (Rael, 2011), but beyond the beneath as well, with Israeli and Palestinian sewage systems
idea of a 51 foot ladder for every 50 foot fence (Rael, 2011, 415), there becoming politicised, and becoming weapons through deliberate
is the possibility of going beneath them. Both people and drugs are spillage (Weizman, 2002, 7; 2007, 21e22). Similar concerns
moved, and while the USeMexico border gets the most notice, around shared infrastructure can be found in other divided cities,
tunnels have also been used for drug smuggling between the US and such as the Cypriot capital Lefkosia/Nicosia (see Hocknell, 2001). It
Canada, and for cigarettes between Ukraine and Slovakia.4 also has important implications in the city of Jerusalem. Weizman
In the West Bank, as Weizman has shown, roads often use suggests that “subterranean Jerusalem is at least as complex as its
bridges or tunnels to enable crossing points between Palestinian terrain. Nowhere is this more true than of the Temple Mount/
villages and between Israeli settlements. Given the importance of Haram al-Sharif” (Weizman, 2002, 9). This site combines the third
contiguity to territorial viability, these are sometimes discussed in holiest Muslim site after Mecca and Medina, the Al-Aqsa Mosque
potential future settlements, linking otherwise disconnected parts and the Dome of the Rock, but one of its retaining walls is the
of a future Palestinian state, either within the West Bank, or, more Western Wall of the Jewish Second Temple, part of which is
ambitiously, to Gaza. Yet these few pockets of Palestine are not known as the Wailing Wall. As Weizman explains, there is a dis-
simply enclosed by Israeli-controlled land on their borders, but also pute as to whether this wall was built as a structural support or as
above and below. Israel has refused to handover control of airspace free-standing, and whether the temple was built at the same or
even after its disengagement from Gaza, and as Weizman notes, the a lower elevation than the mosque. If at the same elevation then
same is true for what is below the surface: the remains of the temple have been lost; if below then the re-
mains may be underneath the Muslim holy site. Division of this
During the Oslo and Camp David negotiations, Israel insisted on location along standard two-dimensional boundaries would
keeping control of the underground resources in any permanent therefore lead to either Muslim or Jewish holy sites within the
resolution. A new form of subterranean sovereignty, which territory of their neighbour. Weizman explains Bill Clinton’s pro-
erodes the basics of national sovereignty, is first mentioned in posed solution at Camp David as “a daring and radical manifes-
the Oslo Interim Accord (Weizman, 2002, 7). tation of the region’s vertical schizophrenia”:

Fig. 12. Blocked tunnel at Rosh Hanikra.

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 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17 15

The border between Arab East and Jewish West Jerusalem bio-metrics and geo-metrics, means of comprehending and com-
would, at the most contested point on earth, flip from the hor- pelling, organising and ordering.
izontal to the vertical e giving the Palestinians sovereignty on Geo-metrics might therefore be a term worth retrieving from the
top of the Mount while maintaining Israeli sovereignty below rather bland sense of modern geometry. The original geo-metricians
the surface, over the Wailing Wall and the airspace above the were land surveyors, sent into the fields on the banks of the Nile to
Mount. The horizontal border would have passed underneath redraw their borders after the floodwaters had subsided. Geometry
the paving of the Haram al-Sharif. A few centimetres under the became an abstract science, but the works of the Roman land
worshippers in the Mosque of al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, surveyorsdthe Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorumdshow the
the Israeli underground could be dug up for remnants of the importance of the practical side (Campbell, 2000). Geo-metrics re-
ancient Temple, believed to be “in the depth of the mount” mains a useful way to make sense of calculative strategies turned
(Weizman, 2002, 9; see 2007, 54e55). towards land, terrain and territory.
Can we extend this to think about geo-power as a related term to
This was a proposed boundary that has, to date, not been
bio-power? (see Grosz, Yusoff, Saldanha, Nash, & Clark, 2012) And
realiseddbetween 1948 and 1967 the entire site was held by Jor-
what would the ‘geo’ mean here? Geopolitics has tended to become
danian forces; since 1967 it has been occupied by Israel. Yet the
conflated with global politics or political geography writ large. But
proposal is one that demonstrates the three-dimensional com-
could we turn this back to thinking about land, earth, world rather
plexities of the situation on, above, and below the ground.
than simply the global or international? I have spoken elsewhere
A similar dimensional complexity can be found in Rosh Hanikra,
about the geo-politics of Beowulf or King Lear (2009b, 2013b),
at a site just north-east of the kibbutz of that name on Israel’s
a description which is not anachronistic, but an attempt to make
northern border with Lebanon. A wall at the border shows the
sense of the land and earth politics of these texts. How would our
distance between Beirut and Jerusalem, and the border post itself in
thinking of geo-power, geo-politics and geo-metrics work if we took
the middle. The notice above the border gate says “Welcome to
the earth; the air and the subsoil; questions of land, terrain, territory;
Rosh Hanikra Border Crossing”. Yet the border has long been closed,
earth processes and understandings of the world as the central
and has a United Nations presence (United Nations Interim Force in
terms at stake, rather than a looser sense of the ‘global’?
Lebanon e UNIFIL) in the zone immediately to the north of the
Work in this register equally needs to think in terms of the
crossing, in Southern Lebanon (Fig. 8).
volumetric. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests this word dates
This is a popular tourist site, despite the military presence in the
from 1862, is formed from Volume and Metric, and means “Of,
area. One of the reasons is because of its location on a cliff face, with
pertaining to, or noting measurement by volume”. While the term
tunnels and grottoes formed by geological processes and erosion by
is used in cartography and physics, there is real potential in working
rain and sea water. A cable cardsaid to be the steepest in the world,
out in detail its two aspects: the dimensionality implied by ‘volume’
at an angle of 60 dtakes visitors down to visit these (Fig. 9).5
and the calculability implied by ‘metric’. The political technology of
But this terrain also shows why it cannot be reduced to a sim-
territory comprises a whole number of mechanisms of weighing,
ple two-dimensional boundary line, a divided area. Rather we
calculating, measuring, surveying, managing, controlling and
need to remember this is one of the areas where the 2006 war
ordering. These calculative techniquesdsimilarly to those
between Israel and Hezbollah was fought, with Katyusha rockets
employed in biometrics and geo-metricsdimpact on the com-
fired into Israel, and Israel sending troops, tanks and its airforce
plexities of volume. In terms of the question of security, volume
across the borderline. Traces of the security apparatus can be seen
matters because of the concerns of power and circulation. Circu-
in this area, with the antennas and bunker fortifications (Fig. 10).
lation does not simply happen, nor does it need to be contained,
Indeed, much of the difficulty Israel had in that war was due to the
controlled and regulated, on a plane. Thinking about power and
fortifications built underground by Hezbollah and its Iranian allies
circulation in terms of volume opens up new ways to think of the
north of the border (Weizman, 2007, 258; see Graham & Hewitt,
geographies of security.6
2012, 17e18).
Just as the world does not just exist as a surface, nor should our
At this site you can also see the remains of a railway line, built
theorisations of it; security goes up and down; space is volumetric.
during the British Mandate period, linking Haifa with Beirut and
There is, as the referencing in this article attests, already an
Tripoli (Fig. 11).
extensive literature on many of these questions, but taken inde-
Some of the tunnels are still passable, while the point at which it
pendently they do not cover all its dimensions. Literature on the
left the cliff face and passed over a bridge is closed and blocked
vertical has tended to look down, from above, rather than also
with sandbags (Fig. 12).
approach these questions from below. Work examining what
The railway bridge was destroyed by Jewish Haganah forces in
happens below the surface needs to be better connected to the
March 1948, to prevent this route being used to transport arms
discussions of the above and the surface. Most fundamentally,
from Lebanon into the disputed territory of mandate Palestine in
thinking merely straight up and down may blind us to different
the 1948e1949 war. This is another example of the need to think
angles of approach, and the function of the oblique. Only by
above and below, to conceptualise space in three dimensions, in
thinking through all of these aspects can we reflect more pro-
terms of the bordering and securing of territory.
foundly on the politics, metrics and power of volume.

Conclusion Acknowledgements

While it is well known that biopolitics works on the basis of The first version of this article was given as a Committee for
calculation and metrics geopolitics works with similar operative Social Theory lecture at the University of Kentucky in March 2012. I
principles. Just as population did not displace territory as the object am grateful to Sue Roberts and her colleagues for the invitation and
of government, but both categories emerged at a similar historical their hospitality. It was then given, in a revised form, as the Political
juncture as new ways of rendering, understanding and governing Geography lecture at the Royal Geographical Society annual con-
the people and land, so too with the current moment (Elden, 2007, ference in Edinburgh in July 2012. I thank the editors for their
2013c; see Shah, 2012; Thompson, 2007). Biopolitics and geo- invitation and especially Phil Steinberg for seeing this through to
politics can be understood through processes and technologies of publication, Peter Adey and Gavin Bridge for their responses, the

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16 S. Elden / Political Geography xxx (2013) 1e17

audience at both events for their questions, and Ben Anderson for Elden, S. (2009b). Place symbolism and land politics in Beowulf. Cultural Geogra-
phies, 16, 447e463.
some incisive comments on a written version. All photographs
Elden, S. (2010). Land, terrain, territory. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6),
except Fig. 7 taken by Stuart Elden between 2007 and 2009. I am 799e817.
grateful to David Newman, Haim Yacobi and Bimkom e Planners Elden, S. (2012). Worlds, engagements, temperaments. In S. Elden (Ed.), Sloterdijk
for Planning Rights (see http://eng.bimkom.org/) for showing me now (pp. 1e16). Cambridge: Polity.
Elden, S. (2013a). The birth of territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
sites in the West Bank. Fig. 7 photograph taken by Michel Wal in Elden, S. (2013b). The geopolitics of King Lear: territory, land, earth. Law and Lit-
2008 and used by permission, http://commons.wikimedia.org/ erature, 25.
wiki/File:Atlantic_Wall_Audinghen_802.jpg. Elden, S. (2013c). How should we do the history of territory? Territory, Politics,
Governance, 1(1).
Etgar, R. (2007). Bare life. Jerusalem: Museum on the Seam.
Endnotes Foucault, M. (2007 [1973]). The force of flight (G. Moore, Trans.). In J. W. Crampton,
& S. Elden (Eds.), Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography (pp. 169e
1
Weizman’s work has been criticised for his lack of attention to those that live in 172). Aldershot: Ashgate.
the spaces he analyses (Harker, 2012), a criticism that is perhaps partially blunted Gandy, M. (2002). Concrete and clay: Reworking nature in New York City. Cambridge:
by his most recent work on humanitarianism (2012a) and what he calls ‘forensic MIT Press.
architecture’ (2012b, 2012c; Keenan & Weizman, 2012). Gandy, M. (2004). The Paris sewers and the rationalization of urban space. Trans-
2
See also the exchange between Bennett and Bradley Garrett at the Society and actions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24(1), 23e44.
Space open site http://societyandspace.com/material. Gane, M. (1999). Paul Virilio’s bunker theorising. Theory, Culture & Society, 16(5e6),
3
He goes on to add cinema to this. His connection of cinema to war is discussed 85e102.
earlier in this article. Garrett, B. L. (2010). Urban explorers: quests for myth, mystery and meaning. Ge-
4
For a general analysis see Lichtenwald and Perri (2011); and on SlovakiaeUkraine ography Compass, 4(10), 1448e1461, along with the linked video article. http://
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/19/us-slovakia-ukraine-tunnel- vimeo.com/5366045.
idUSBRE86I0ZO20120719. Garrett, B. L. (2011). Assaying history: creating temporal junctions through urban
5
See www.rosh-hanikra.com/default.asp?lan¼eng. exploration. Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 29(6), 1048e1067.
6
On security, my thinking has been shaped by works such as Campbell (1998), Geospatial Corporation. (2010). Geospatial Corporation maps the world under the
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dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.12.009