Neil Brenner

• In the rapidly growing literature on globalization, many authors have emphasized the apparent disembedding of social relations from their local-territorial preconditions. Such arguments neglect the relatively fixed and immobile forms of territorial organization upon which the current round of globalization is premised, such as urban-regional agglomerations and territorial states. Drawing on the work of David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre, this article argues that processes of reterritorialization - the reconfiguration of forms of terrritorial organization such as cities and states - must be viewed as an intrinsic moment of the current round of globalization. Globalization is conceived here as a reterritorialization of both socio-economic and political-institutional spaces that unfolds simultaneously upon multiple, superimposed geographical scales. The ongoing restructuring of contemporary urban spaces and state institutional-territorial structures must be viewed at once as presupposition, a medium and an outcome of this highly contestedIn the rapidly growing literature on globalization, many authors have emphasized the apparent disembedding of social relations from their local-territorial preconditions. Such arguments neglect the relatively fixed and immobile forms of territorial organization upon which the current round of globalization is premised, such as urban-regional agglomerations and territorial states. Drawing on the work of David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre, this article argues that processes of reterritorialization - the reconfiguration of forms of terrritorial organization such as cities and states - must be viewed as an intrinsic moment of the current round of globalization. Globalization is conceived here as a reterritorialization of both socio-economic and political-institutional spaces that unfolds simultaneously upon multiple, superimposed geographical scales. The ongoing restructuring of contemporary urban spaces and state institutional-territorial structures must be viewed at once as presupposition, a medium and an outcome of this highly contested dynamic of global spatial restructuring. New theories and representations of the scaling of spatial practices are needed to grasp the rapidly changing territorial organization of world capitalism in the late 20th century.…