新国家空间理论是对国家空间重构的系统性描述,它将国家空间看作动态的“过程”,而非预定的、固定的“容器”。其核心观点为:①以社会建构的国家空间为研究对象,并关注其多维重构,尤其是尺度重组过程;②关注资本积累方式的转变、国家管制模式转型和行动者的社会政治斗争等多重动因;③关注国家空间选择性及其演变趋势,以及国家空间重构的分层特征。不过,该理论也存在若干不足,如缺乏对行动者的详细探讨、缺乏对尺度和领域以外的空间维度的分析、重构趋势仍有待验证等。尽管如此,新国家空间理论有效整合了人文地理学关于国家治理与空间关系的相关理论,对于全球化研究、城市和区域治理研究以及行政结构重组研究等仍具有重要的借鉴意义。
New state space is a theoretical framework developed by Neil Brenner, which serves as a systematic account for state spatial restructuring that has been increasingly evident since late 1970s. This framework is different from previous theories concerning the state in social sciences, especially in political science, which view the state space as a pre-given, fixed container and thus being trapped within state-centrism. Moreover, this theory is different from some strands on globalization research in human geography and political economy since 1970s, for some of them tend to remain "spatial fetishist" and "methodological territorialist" while emphasizing the importance of global scale instead of national scale, and some others tend to emphasize the declining, eroding or disappearing of state territoriality. Rather, the new state space approach develops a "processing" idea on state space, i.e., to view state space as a presupposition, an arena, and an out- come of continually evolving social relations, rather than a pre-given container. Specifically, the main points of new state space approach can be summarized as follows. 1) The state space is constructed by social pro- cesses including capital accumulation, state regulation, class struggle etc. Since this social constructed state space is polymorphic, two intertwined dimensions of state spatiality can be distinguished as state space in the narrow sense and state space in the integral sense. 2) The process of state spatial restructuring is driven by a variety of sociospatial dynamics, especially structural changes such as the globalization of capital flows, the crisis of Keynesianism and the rise of neoliberalism. 3) The process of state spatial restructuring can be regulated by state using the state spatial selectivity, which refers to the processes of spatial privileging and ar- ticulation through which state policies are differentiated across territorial space in order to target particular geographical zones and scales.