Re-Positioning the Local in the Actor-Network Space – Global-Historical Challenges and Illyrian Tax Policies

Abstract

The essay argues for a new understanding of the global which goes beyond its separation from other levels of spatial analysis. According to Latour’s actor-network theory, the global can be conceptualised as a network of interconnected localities where people act and interact within place-specific contexts. The essay illustrates this argument with reference to the negotiations between the French central bureaucracy and local elites of rural communities in the ‘Illyrian Provinces’ in former Tyrol and Salzburg during the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century.