Mobilizing theory - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 28

Foucault's work - three lineages of power, sovereignty-discipline-government,
describe the modern forms of state authority, which are exemplified by the
geopolitical form of the State (Dean, 1999; Gilbert, 2007). Disciplining citizens to
uphold and protect the welfare of the State through individual actions is central
to “bounding” nation-state borders and “securing”.
As Michel Foucault explains, through his work on governmentality, the
mechanisms for protecting a population are no longer just the sovereign protecting
territorial peripheries. Rather, a shift occurs in eighteenth-century Europe, from
a “form of power targeted on a territory to a form of power bearing on a
population” (Donzelot, 1997, p. 3). Or, as explained in the History of sexuality
Vol. 1 , and the beginning of his work on biopower, the population is governed
from the “right of death” to the “power over life” (Foucault, 1979). The idea of
the sovereign protecting itself from the outside and the inside (from external threats
and by educating its population to uphold and protect the state) diversifies the
methods by which the State is protected. As Donzelot (1997, p. 5) explains,
In place of the necessity to compel obedience in order to ensure the safety of
his territory, the sovereign opts for the proper use of freedom in order to
maximise the security of the population.
This follows Paasi's (1999) observation that the creation of a border is simultan-
eously discursive and material, a vehicle for the internalization of state power and
nation-building, in which national identity is simultaneously materially bounded
and discursively self-policed. The federal practice of tightening borders serves as a
way to demarcate the “us” and “them” - or, where the “we” starts and “them”
begins (Brady, 2000, p. 173). These practices reify dichotomous worldviews, which
are tightly bound within the political demarcations of a nation-state framework.
In turn, citizens internalize (or metabolize) these boundaries and reproduce them
throughout the whole nation (not just at the ports of entry). This idea of
decolonizing the mind, that Indigenous scholars advance (for example Smith, 2002;
Wilson, 2008; Absolon, 2011), is a fundamental component of building robust
governance models. This work bucks the dominant frameworks and encourages
people to see fully the power dynamics associated with governance systems,
particularly transboundary governance models.
Where the border begins - Treaty of Westphalia
Although it is difficult to pinpoint a time in history when a boundary became
conflated with citizenship and nationhood, many scholars of international
relations point to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as that very defining moment
(Jackson and Owens, 2005). What has come to be known as the Westphalian system
marks a transition away from city-states and towards governments of larger territorial
units, in which the nation comprises the territory and the people inhabiting the
land. Thus, it is only in relatively recent history that territorial power and sovereignty
have been conflated into distinct territorial units that can be determined by abstract