Politics

Critical Essays in Human Geography

Virginie Mamadouh, John Agnew, John Agnew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351910279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Depending on the breadth or narrowness of the understanding of politics and the political, "politics" in human geography is defined as either the operation of power in all social relations or the workings of power directed to or by the state. This volume avoids the two extremes by acknowledging the transformation of approaches to the political in human geography over the past few decades but also by highlighting the continued importance of the more traditional state-based conception of politics. The selected articles are clustered around six themes: new agendas in political geography, state territoriality, international relations and globalization, internal territorial organisation and geographical scale, social movements and electoral participation, and identities and citizenship.

Part I
Agendas for Political Geography

[1]
Human Territoriality: A Theory

Robert D. Sack

Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wl 53706

Abstract. Territoriality is a means of affecting (enhancing or impeding) interaction and extends the particulars of action by contact. Territoriality is defined here as the attempt to affect, influence, or control actions, interactions, or access by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a specific geographic area. A theory of territoriality is developed that contains ten potential consequences and fourteen primary combinations of consequences to territorial strategies. It is hypothesized that any instance of territoriality will draw from among these. Specific consequences and combinations are predicted to occur in particular social-historical contexts.

Keywords: territoriality, spatial analysis, power, control, accessibility.

HUMAN territoriality is a vast, yet often neglected, facet of human behavior. I propose to analyze territoriality by considering it to be a strategy for influence or control. I shall present a theory of the potential advantages that can come from the use of territoriality.

By human territoriality I mean the attempt to affect, influence, or control actions and interactions (of people, things, and relationships) by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a geographic area (Sack 1981). This definition applies whether such attempts are made by individuals or by groups, and it applies at any scale from the room to the international arena. This is not the usual definition of the term and is intended to include many facets of behavior often referred to by other concepts such as property in land (real estate), sovereignty, dominion, “turf,” and “fixed personal space.”

Like Dyson-Hudson and Alden-Smith (1978), I shall skirt the issue of whether human territoriality is a biological drive or instinct. Rather, I see it as a strategy for establishing differential access to things and people. Interactions or access can occur either territorially or nonterritorially. Nonterritorial interactions have been the primary focus of systematic spatial analysis. Yet these occur in causal relationship to numerous kinds and levels of territories. To ignore territoriality or simply to assume it as part of the context is to leave unexamined many of the forces molding human spatial organization. The area of geography that has most often sensed the significance of territoriality is political geography, but with some exceptions (Soja 1971, 1974) political geography has not yielded a sustained and systematic analysis of its role and function. I intend to show how a theory of the potential consequences of territoriality can help to make a spatial perspective of more direct use to the analysis of property, political sovereignty, and the territorial structure of organizations.

This paper is divided into three main sections. The first develops the theory and contains subsections on territoriality and spatial analysis, the definition of territoriality, hypotheses, tendencies, and combinations. The second is about tests and implications of the theory for large-scale social organizations, and the third is about the implications of the theory for individuals and informal groups.

Theory

Territoriality and Spatial Analysis

For x to affect, influence, or control y presupposes the transmission of energy between x and y, where x represents a person, group, or class doing the influencing or controlling, and y represents a person, group, class, or resource being influenced or controlled. Theinteraction must follow the principle of action by contact which is based on the law of conservation of energy (Hesse 1967; Sack 1973). That is, contact will be along a continuum from direct contact, which means touching, to degrees of indirect contact, from speaking face to face to transmitting information via electromagnetic waves. Forms of contact depend on technology and change historically.

Conventional spatial analysis has attempted to specify the relative spatial configurations that interacting objects possess and the importance of the configurations to the process. It encompasses a range from personal distances to spatial arrangements of cities and regions, and the flows of people, goods, and ideas among them (Sack 1980). But conventional spatial analysis has largely ignored territoriality. Territoriality is a means by which x can affect, influence, or control y. Territoriality is based on, and extends, the principles of action by contact (Sack 1973).

To illustrate the difference between territorial and nonterritorial actions, both of which are based on action by contact, let us suppose a parent is home minding the children. They are found in the study scribbling on note cards, upsetting piles of books, and ripping up manuscripts. The parent could have a face-to-face, heart-to-heart talk with the children, telling them not to touch these books, note cards, and manuscripts. The parent might even spank them. In either case, the parent is attempting to control the actions of the children directly by contact, and in a way that focuses on specific categories of things such as books, note cards, and manuscripts. The parent, x, is attempting nonterritorially to limit the children’s (y) access to these resources.

But there is another alternative to the same goal. The parent could hope to control the actions of the children regarding books, manuscripts, and note cards without telling them not to touch just these kinds of things. This could be done by telling the children that they may not go into the study without permission, that the study is off limits. This is an example of territoriality because it is an attempt by x to limit the children’s (y) access to things by asserting control over an area. Of course, asserting that the study is off limits, as well as enforcing the assertion, requires that the information be transmitted to the children and that their behavior be monitored. This, of course, requires contact and is nonterritorial, but territoriality, if it works, can avoid other nonterritorial contacts, in this case further admonitions by the parent of the children.

Definition of Territoriality

At this point let me define what I mean by territoriality explicitly: the attempt by an individual or group (x) to influence, affect, or control objects, people, and relationships (y) by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area. This area is the territory. Please note:¹

• This is not a usual definition of the term. (For its many meanings and uses see Altman 1970, 1975; Edney 1974; Esser 1970; Malmberg 1980; Soja 1971 ; Sommer 1969; Stokes 1974. But it is close in intention to the meaning given by Dyson-Hudson and Alden-Smith 1978.) The most common definition is defense of area. The individual is expected to be in the area he/she is to defend. Defending area is presented as a goal in itself or as a means to such specific ends as control of population density, control of food resources, or assertion of dominance.
• Territoriality is an extension of action by contact. It is a strategy to establish differential access to people, things, and relationships. Its alternative is always nonterritorial action.
• Geographic area can refer to either fixed or portable areas, and x does not have to be in the territory to assert control over it.
• Territoriality is built on or imbeded in nonterritoriality. Nonterritoriality is required to back up territoriality.
• Territoriality is not simply the circumscription of things in space. It is not equal to a region or area or territory in the old sense. It is circumscription with the intent to influence, affect, or control. A geographer’s denoted region, e.g., the Corn Belt, is not a territory in our sense of the word, nor is the nodal region of central place theory. Neither case uses an assertion of control with the implication of sanctions for transgressions.
• There are degrees of territorializing. A maximum-security prison is more territorial than a half-way house, and a closed classroom is more territorial than an open one.
• There are numerous ways in which territoriality can be asserted, including legal rights to property in land and cultural norms and prohibitions about usage of areas.²
• Territoriality occurs at all scales, from the room to the nation-state. Territoriality is not an object but a relationship. A room may be a territory at one time and not at another.
• Territories most often occur hierarchically and are part of complex hierarchical organizations. Although my example was of a room, the following discussion can apply to factories, nation-states, and other institutions.
• Considering territoriality a strategy for differential access avoids the issue of whether territoriality is an instinct.
• This definition cuts across prospectives and levels of analysis. It involves the perspectives of those controlled and those doing the controlling, whether they be groups or individuals.

The overriding assumption is that despite the inumerable kinds of territoriality and levels of hierarchies, forms of technology, and historical conditions and reasons for control, under certain conditions territoriality is a more effective means of establishing differential access to people, or resources, than is nonterritoriality for some or all of ten reasons. These ten reasons will be labeled potential reasons for, or causes of, territoriality, or potential consequences or effects of territoriality, depending on whether x is interested in establishing new territories or using already existing ones. (There is no hope of differentiating between a reason and a cause, or between a consequence or effect, without knowing the particular case. And even then there are many who argue that reasons are causes (Keat and Urry 1975). In any case, both reasons and causes would draw upon the same set of potentialities, the difference being in how these potentialities influence behavior. To avoid overusing a term I shall interchange reason with cause, and consequence with effect, and use the terms potentialities or tendencies to subsume all four.)

These ten reasons can apply either to relations between individuals in small and informal groups or to individuals in hierarchical organizations. Of particular importance is that they form fourteen primary combinations that pertain especially to territorial behavior in hierarchical organizations. Any instance of territoriality will draw from among the ten tendencies either singly or in the form of primary combinations, and certain kinds of social relations and hierarchical organizations can be expected to use specific tendencies and combinations.

A Preface to the Phrasing of the Tendencies and the Primary Combinations

To identify and elaborate the role of territoriality means that territoriality has to be conceptually separated and described apart from its numerous contexts. Identifying and analyzing the implications of territoriality in the abstract is somewhat analogus to the quest for the meaning of geographic distance in spatial analysis. One critical difference is that territoriality is always socially or humanly constructed whereas, physical distance is not. This means that territoriality does not exist unless there is a relationship x and y specified by our definition. But no relationship need exist between two objects in space for there to be a distance between them. Apart from comparing distances, there is little that can be said abstractly about their potentials to affect behavior. Their impacts depend on the contexts in which they are used. Substituting the physical measure of distance for the physically and socially significant channels of communication or interaction is to run the risk of treating distance nonrelationally (Sack 1973).

All territorial relationships are defined within a social context, albeit an extremely general one, of differential access to things and to people. Because of this, more can be said abstractly about territoriality than can be said about distance; and because of its social context, what is said can have normative implications. In presenting the tendencies, these normative implications will be held in abeyance as much as possible until the combinations are discussed. That is, the ten tendencies will be described “neutrally.” The descr...