RE: Praxis

But what do we mean by "territorialism" and "hegemony." But as for
territorialism of the imperialist kind that was characteristic of the
conflicts among core and nearly core, it ended with US hegemony and seems
gone for good.

If they are used differently then different arguments are made.  No doubt,
"some form" of territorialism will continue -- nations must have states at
least for protection and coping.  And increasingly, as implied, those
nations, or their alleged representatives, needing protection or to further
their own interests must grapple with corporate globalization along with
their own "local" socio-cultural conflicts.  This is precisely why fights
with, or attack upon, institutions of global governance has picked up steam,
whether in the Gulf, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or in Seattle.  Aggrandizement or
protection against the agents of globalization, be they states or
enterprises, and the resolutions to "local" conflicts, increasingly draw in
the big guns, one way or another, who are there for their own purposes.

I don't foresee an era of "regional-local isolationism," if that is what is
implied by "regional hegemonies."  Given the ever more global nature of
capital, and the attending pressures on states in those burgeoning regions
of the planet where global capital invests, I'm suspect that regional
hegemonies could emerge as real hegemonic forces vis-a-vis the global
structures of governance and capital.  They seem quite engaged in balancing
local control and acquiescence, e.g. China wants in the WTO and must also
contend with the growing US military presence in EA, to where it has shifted
its military power to the equivalent of that in Europe, or so the Pentagon
reports.

While most capitalists do continue to have more pull in the states from
which they arose, I wouldn't want to underestimate the implications of
global integration on the possibilities of, or constraints on, regional
power.  (I note that today about 25% of the total output of US firms is
produced outside the US; that 500 corporations account for about one-third
of world output, etc.)  Leaders are bargaining for more / less control over
types of political, social, cultural controls (e.g. "let us handle it our
way") in order to fulfill various local objectives -- but also often
modernization.  Let'm have their cake, as Stremlin reads in Negri and Hardt,
since Empire has no problem with the local as long as they "remain local and
so long as empire retains the power to organize them in hierarchies."  On
the whole, locals seem to be increasingly giving up material and cultural
forms of sovereignty, even as they contest to put their values on top
because the global elite organizes and protects what really matters to them.

There is hope in the movements against corporate globalization.  But the
movements, even at this relative high point, are having a difficult time
putting forth a project which goes beyond contra globalization or the
collapse of legitimacy, to pro-something.  I would guess the movements must
at once must be "universalist" insofar as there is some uniting threads that
appeal to many which can provide something for the "proliferating local
particularizes exemplified by the multiculturalist rubric," without
subjugating those multiculturalisms, but also offer something more than
material social-equality, which may provide sufficient legitimacy as a
movement against inequalities of all kinds, but which falls well short of an
encompassing project.