Stuart Elden

The Birth of Territory, published in 2013, traces how the concept of territory emerged as a political and conceptual category through legal, theological, and mathematical thought from antiquity to the early modern period. Elden argues that territory is not simply land but a specific way of understanding and governing space politically.

Yes, Stuart Elden has written extensively on Michel Foucault, including analyses of Foucault's concepts of space, security, and governmentality. His work connects Foucault's ideas to broader questions in political geography and political theory.

Stuart Elden is a British political geographer whose interdisciplinary work bridges geography, political theory, philosophy, and intellectual history. He is known for drawing on thinkers such as Foucault, Heidegger, and Lefebvre to rethink concepts like territory and space.

Elden argues that territory is not merely a synonym for land or area, but rather a historically specific political-technological concept involving the measurement, bounding, and governance of space by state power. His work traces how this concept crystallized over centuries of European legal and political thought.