ABSTRACT
In this chapter the action spaces of militant groups/action networks will be understood heuristically on two distinct, while intimately interrelated, analytical levels: the temporal action space and the territorial action space which both recognise and emphasise the 'real' geographies of militant action. However, these 'real' geographies of militant action are nevertheless cognitively informed in order to acquire meaning, without "maps of meaning" these 'real' geographies of militant action would be unnavigitable, their social relations unintelligible. (Cf. Clarke et al., 1976:10) While the 'real' geographies of militant social action are recurrent themes in the book and will be more explicitly extricated here, the underlying thread throughout this book is the ongoing constructions and reconstructions of militant collective identities. Collective identity for Alberto Melucci (1995 and 1989) is the process of constructing an action system, i.e. an interactive and shared definition produced by a number of individuals an d /o r groups concerning the orientations of their action and the field of opportunities and constraints in which such action is to take place. Put in slightly different terms, collective identity is the construction of an action space — a cognitive understanding concerning the ends, means and field of action which is negotiated and renegotiated through a recurrent process of activation of the relations that bind actors together. So if this is the overarching action space — the cognitive action space — it is nevertheless bounded in time and place and is inextricably interwoven in the temporal and territorial action spaces.
