Legal terrain—the political materiality of territory

This lecture sketches the contours of a political-legal theory of terrain. It argues that terrain is a useful concept through which to think the materiality of territory. Terrain combines geophysical issues alongside strategic ones, and helps in attempts to develop a broader understanding of territory. Terrain makes possible, or constrains, various political, military and strategic projects; dynamic geophysical features of the earth complicate political-legal understandings. Terrain is where the geopolitical and the geophysical meet, and the lecture suggests that it is a helpful concept for making political-legal understandings of territory better account for the complexities of the geophysical.