ABSTRACT
Modernity, place and the Neo-liberal Project are at their closest expression in the idea of the Public Limited Company (PLC)-state. This chapter looks at the form and process of modernity in the Marchlands through the Neo-liberalist Project's attempt to capture space in the concepts and practices of the PLC-state, the ‘hollowed’ welfare, nation-state. How could a neo-liberal state emerge from a Party-state? With what alternatives might it compete? It concentrates on the economic imperative in the context of nation building and state building in the formation of place. It first considers the way that the boundaries of the new states were constructed. It then examines the cultural, societal and locational practices, perceptions and conceptions that were used to modernise the new states and the uncertainty of the neo-liberalist state as the outcome. The idea of the state is produced at a different scale on the register of multi-scalar place relationships from localities or regions, but its synthesis and othering are part of the same differentiating processes of spatial modernity.
