Off the Map

Reviews / Votes

'This sharp and lucidly argued book offers us powerful insights into the ways in which established perspectives have occluded our understanding of how power works in the international system. It is an indispensable guide to illuminating crucial developments in a time of crisis and bewilderment.' Antony Anghie, University of Utah ''Off the Map' is a bold intervention that compels international lawyers to confront a dimension of their discipline that has long been taken for granted: its cartographic imagination. Nikolas M. Rajkovic shows with remarkable clarity how international law's core concepts-territory, jurisdiction, sovereignty-are products of a historically contingent visual and spatial order that continues to evolve. As Rajkovic says, to remain on the map, International Law must go beyond defending an inherited conceptual turf. This is a book that will greatly appeal to all students and scholars of International Law, but also to International Relations, Political Geography and History.' Ayse Zarakol, University of Cambridge 'To map is to govern, to order, to comprehend - until the world outpaces your map. In this interdisciplinary tour de force, Professor Rajkovic reimagines the cartography of international law for a world of digital infrastructures, algorithmic management, informal economies and black sites. In a series of elegant meditations, Rajkovic brilliantly challenges traditional notions of sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory for a world truly gone, in his words, 'off the map'.' David Kennedy, Harvard Law School 'Law and lawyers, rule and rules, maps and mapping, space and place, landscape and territory, information and infrastructure, optics and units, meaning and metaphor, worldview and world view: In this stunningly original book, familiar themes are reconfigured, concepts realigned, theory transformed. Juriscape displaces jurisdiction - definitively. All things modern melt away.' Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University