Defensible Spaces

Defensible space is the concept of creating spaces that include a series of architectural guidelines that are used when designing a new urban residential area to promote both the territorial claim of the residential groups to their surroundings and their ability to conduct natural surveillance of their spaces. Constructing safe environments with safe vocabularies for enhancing well-being is crucial for achieving quality of life in both peace and wartime. Warzone countries that suffer from many changes due to the effect of war (or fourth-generation wars) should be prepared to face those changes with safe spaces as well.

Return to the ancestral land: The semiotic map of the Mapuche people

Indigenous territorial claims are a long-standing concern in the history of Latin America. Land and nature have profound meaning in indigenous thinking, which is neither totally understood nor legitimized by the rest of society. This article is aimed at shedding light on this matter by examining the meanings at stake in the territorial claims of the Mapuche people. The Mapuche are an indigenous group in Chile, who are striving to recover their ancestral land. This analysis will be based on the concept of Umwelt, coined by von Uexküll to refer to the way in which species interpret their world in connection with the meaning-making process. Considering the applications of Umwelt to the human being, the significance assigned to land and nature by the Mapuche people emerges as a system of meaning that persists over time and promotes interdependence between people and the environment. On the other hand, the territorial claim of the Mapuche movement challenges the fragmentation between individuals and their space, echoing proposals from human geography that emphasize the role of people in the constitution of places.

The Politics of Maps

This book traces how the geographical sciences have become entwined with politics, territorial claim-making, and nation-building in Israel/Palestine. In particular, the focus is on the history of geographical sciences before and after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and how surveying, mapping, and naming the new territory became a crucial part of its making. With the 1993 Oslo Interim Agreement, Palestinians also surveyed and mapped the territory allocated to a future State of Palestine, with the expectation that they would, within five years, gain full sovereignty. In both cases, maps served to evoke a sense of national identity, facilitated a state’s ability to govern, and helped delineate territory. Besides maps’ geopolitical functions for nation-state building, they also became weapons in map wars. Before and after the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, maps of the region became one of the many battlefields in which political conflicts over land claims and the ethno-national identity of this contested land were being waged. Aided by an increasingly user-defined mapping environment, Israeli and Palestinian governmental and non-governmental organizations increasingly relied on the rhetoric of maps to put forth their geopolitical visions. Such struggles over land and its rightful owners in Israel/Palestine exemplify processes under way in other states across the globe, whether in South Africa or Ukraine, which are engaged in disputes over territorial boundaries, national identities, and the territorial integrity of nation-states. Maps, no less, have become crucial tools in these struggles.

Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency - an Actor in National Security?

One disparate feature between Finnish civilian and military intelligence is their express relationship to national security. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service prominently declares to be an expert in national security whereas no corresponding public territorial claim has been made by its counterpart – the Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency (FDIA). This observation leads to the question: are the tasks of the FDIA limited solely to the military defence of Finland or has it any more comprehensive role in safeguarding national security. This article aims to examine this question by comparing the provisions governing the purpose of civilian and military intelligence and analysing the provision on the targets of military intelligence. Legal analysis indicate that military intelligence targets are broadly located in the field on national security, both at the core of military activities and in the outer reaches on non-military activities. The FDIA actually has a wide mandate which extends its mission beyond the reaches of civilian intelligence.

Undermining State Authority in the Philippines

This chapter discusses Malaysia’s use of subversion as an instrument of extortion against the Philippines during the late 1960s and 1970s. Upon Malaysia’s independence, the Philippines asserted a territorial claim over part of Malaysia’s territory of Sabah. Malaysia considered this claim to be without merit and a threat to its territorial integrity. Unable to resolve the dispute, Malaysia turned to subversion. It cooperated with Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines to weaken Manila’s hold over its periphery as a means to persuade the Philippines into abandoning the Sabah claim. The chapter illustrates the deleterious effects of subversion on Philippine state authority in the South, thus showing the “ground-level” consequences of foreign interference. Its focus on Malaysia and the Philippines also demonstrates that states that are not territorially contiguous can use subversion to undermine state authority.