Thinking Through Networks and Their Spatiality: A Critique of the US (Public) War on Terrorism and its Geographic Discourse

Abstract

Conventional thinking about war is encumbered by an inappropriate geographic paradigm that conceptualizes “targets” in terms of fixed latitudinal/longitudinal locations. This paper reconceptualizes terms such as “war” and “targets” to recognize intangible problems and develop appropriate counter‐terrorist strategies. This requires geographic inquiry focused on spatiality, not on location. We frame our discussion about terrorist networks (Al‐Qaeda in particular) in terms of understanding a network's sense of place and sense of space . The former “places” a network's meeting and recruiting grounds; the latter clarifies the operational dynamics of a network across space, at different scales, from the body to the neighborhood, to the region, and across nations. We argue that the roots of terrorism lie in conditions of disenfranchisement in particular types of places, understanding, however, that the socio‐cultural fabric of a terrorist network such as Al‐Qaeda evolves across space as well as time. Counter‐terrorist strategies should target neither people nor places but rather the conditions that give rise to terrorism; further, “intelligence” should focus on network dynamics, beyond particular people in particular places. We draw from network theories (specifically actor network theory and network approaches in economic sociology) to unravel network dynamics, and we draw from the literature on spatiality to interpret such dynamics in space, over time. We advocate a non‐military engagement with terrorism on both moral and strategic grounds; here we focus on the strategic dimension, the value of which has received scant attention.