Juliet Fall has a tribute to him here [https://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections-epd/epd-1-claude_raffestin?publicationCode=epd&pbEditor=true] and Sage have made some articles by or about him available open access until the end of 2025.

These articles are mainly from a special section of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space from 2012, put together by Francisco Klauser from a workshop we organised at the University of Durham. That section included pieces by Klauser, Fall, Alexander B. Murphy, Claudio Minca, and a piece commissioned by Raffestin, translated by Samuel Butler.

Francisco R Klauser, Thinking through Territoriality: Introducing Claude Raffestin to Anglophone Sociospatial Theory

Claude Raffestin, Space, Territory, and Territoriality trans. Samuel A Butler

Alexander B. Murphy, Entente Territorial: Sack and Raffestin on Territoriality

Claudio Minca, Claude Raffestin’s Italian Travels

Juliet J. Fall, Reading Claude Raffestin: Pathways for a Critical Biography

In addition, an earlier piece by Fall and another piece by Raffestin from other Sage journals are included in this virtual theme issue, also made open access.

Juliet J. Fall, Lost geographers: power games and the circulation of ideas within Francophone political geographies

Claude Raffestin, Territoriality: A Reflection of the Discrepancies Between the Organization of Space and Individual Liberty

Juliet and her Geneva colleagues have a tribute in French here  [ https://www.unige.ch/lejournal/index.php?cID=7458] . Not much else of Raffestin’s important work has been translated into English, but I know these other pieces – they require subscription, unfortunately:

Elements for a Theory of the Frontier, trans. Jeanne Ferguson, Diogenes 34 (134), 1986.

From Text to Image, Geopolitics 5 (2), 2000, 7-34; also available in Jacques Lévy ed. From Geopolitics to Global Politics: A French Connection, Routledge, 2001.

Could Foucault have Revolutionised Geography? trans. Gerald Moore, in Jeremy W. Crampton and Stuart Elden eds., Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography, London: Ashgate, 2007.

It would be great if his book Pour une géographie du pouvoir was translated one day… 

Update: more of his work in French is here, [https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/home/search?view=list&search=Raffestin&with-restricted-access-masters=false&advanced-search=0_cnIndividu%3D25021] much open access. Thanks to Ed Draper at Sage, Kate Derickson at Environment and Planning D: Society and Space for agreeing to do this virtual theme issue and Juliet for thetribute.

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12.11.2025