Subject: clave typology & inventory in process
Date: May 02, 2001 @ 05:02
Author: michael donner (michael donner <m@...>)
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nice going grant

this consensus census & most nearly official inventory of the sovereign
countries of the world certainly does move things along

it isnt & cant be considered absolute
but i agree it is the very best we can hope to do for now
& i would like to proceed on that basis
while always keeping an eye out for other versions or views of reality
as well as for any changes in reality that might occur

your 192 sovereign entities inclusive of all their member territories
both the metropolitan & the outlying areas
both the political core constituencies & the dependencies
can be regarded as the most probable basis tho not the only possible basis
for both a world class clave census & a world class tripoint census


indeed adopting your list will result in a reduction of our previous
tricountry point count by 1 member from 161 to 160
since dzehma aka the algeria morocco western sahara tripoint will bite
the dust in this case
but we dont need to face that issue to proceed with the clave census


however one additional broadly consensual territorial entity does exist
producing a final or 193rd mereotopological item
which not only cant be dismissed out of hand for the clave survey
but which actually completes the coverage of the global surface


this is of course the so called nonsovereign area aka just the area &or
the human heritage territory which was first legally established & defined
as all of antarctica in 1959 & which was by the 1982 unclos regime
effectively increased by all the maritime territory in the world situated
beyond 12nm from the dry lands of what are now your 192 sovereign countries
including perhaps a few unclaimed rocks scattered about the world
& allowing for but ignoring renegade sector claims by canada russia france
australia etc to the polar regions

traditionally nonsovereign lands & seas such as these were considered terra
nullius or no mans land
but their legal status today seems more like a case of everyones land
so whether it is considered a 193rd manifestation of particular sovereignty
or a globally sovereign federal territory or a case of omnisovereignty
itself or of something else again seems utterly optional
while its mereotopological role & area seem quite fixed & unoptional


considering this 193rd item as something rather than nothing & even as a
fully manifested instance of sovereignty would also substantially enlarge
the inventory of the trisovereign points
but again we can certainly postpone dealing with that


what we cant postpone much longer i think in our approach to a clave
typology & inventory is the decision of whether to go with just the
territories of the normally constituted 192 countries of the world or to
go for comprehensive coverage of the global surface by also counting the
193rd & largest part of the whole

m


ps & misc
nice point about french guiana & its tripoint

we have yet to find a fully formed maritime tricountry point
but bhqasa is close

the subtlety you detect may be the result of an observation by david
who has pointed out that clavity is a matter of actual boundaries wherever
they occur & not merely of landforms
& applying this principle to island based territory as was just done with
the usa can get very strange by some conventional standards & meanings of
clavology

but i believe your analysis is fully coherent & consistent with this so far
& i also really like your comprehensive explanation

>
>Country count
>Michael, if it helps, I've attached a list of the 192 "core countries" that
>seem to have the most wide-spread recognition. Any tripoint survey would also
>have to take into account at least the existence of French Guiana, an
>Overseas Department of France with a debated/approximate borders with
>Suriname and Brazil. This, I think, is the only land-surface boundary between
>country and dependency. If you are going to use nautical boundaries (as it
>seems to me you are), then there may be other dependency-related borders out
>there.
>
>Exclaves
>I thought I had detected a subtle variant use of the word "exclave" by this
>group, which I liked. But maybe I'm wrong, in which case my recent
>enclave/exclave dichotomies are meaningless. I certainly agree with a
>previous mail from Brendan that the perfectly complimentary dictionary
>definitions of ex/enclaves is confusing and pointless - basically two names
>for the same thing: a bit of one country enclosed by another. But although I
>can't find it in a handy dictionary today, is there not another, more general
>usage, of "exclave", to mean any detached part of a parent country (Brendan's
>"fragment")? In terms of etymology, such a usage is at least defensible:
>enclave = something enclosed within a country; exclave = something detached
>from a country. With such usage the exclave/enclave contrast becomes useful,
>and allows us to sort the territory into four basic categories from which we
>can build.
>
>Indian/Bangla enclaves
>I had assumed that the oft-quoted 111 and 51 enclaves represented the *total*
>count - ie including enclaves-within-enclaves. But, Brendan, your recent
>posting seems to suggest that the 2nd and 3rd order enclaves need to be
>*added* to this total. That is:
>111 Indian enclaves + 3 Indian 2nd order enclaves + 1 Indian 3rd order enclave
>51 Bangladeshi enclaves + 21 Bangladeshi 2nd order enclaves.
>Is that correct?
>(I'm accepting here that the exact figures are unknown, as you've already
>said.)
>
>Why enclaves happen
>Finally, addressing the notion of enclaves as signs of the spread and
>recession of nations, I've always had a different picture in my head, which I
>might as well throw into the pot. Borders are simple lines traced in two
>dimensions (on the surface of a map, a globe or the wrinkled real world), but
>people distribute themselves *fractally* - little outlying patches of folk,
>with their own little outliers, with *their* own outliers, right down to the
>three Lithuanian guys on the lupin farm in Belarus. So *any* attempt to draw
>a 2-D line of demarcation across a populated landscape is flawed to some
>extent, because fractals are (2+a fraction)-dimensional. Possible solutions
>are:
>a) Draw the border through uninhabited territory (desert or frontier
>countries)
>b) Use huge natural divides (rivers, mountains) to minimise the fractal
>overspill
>c) Move the people (the Partition solution)
>d) Ignore their wishes (the chopping up of Africa, in many places)
>e) Enclaves
>
>Grant
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