SPACE and TERRITORY

Prof.Krishnendra Meena
CSRD/SSS
 SPACE
 Key topic of Geography

 Identifying and Unifying focus

 Very difficult to define

 Geographers have been late to adopt the term because of the

emphasis on physical geography
 SPACE
 Recent attempts to define space look at the following
philosophical questions:
 A) Do we experience in space or experience space?
 B) What is the distinction between space and place?
 C) What is the relation between space and time?
 D) Is the world in space or is space in the world? (ELDEN
2009)
 STILL NO CONCRETE DEFINITION
 SPACE
 Trilogy
 ABSOLUTE, RELATIVE & RELATIONAL (David Harvey)
 ABSOLUTE: Space as an absolute is understood as a
geometrical system of organization (usually Euclidean
geometry with x, y, and z dimensions) in which people and
objects are located and move through
 RELATIVE: Space in part dependent on the relations to
objects, as it is a positional quality of a world of material
things. Relative space can also be based on challenging the
fixed geometries of space. Perspective plays a key role.
 SPACE
 RELATIONAL: A Development over Absolute and Relative
conceptions. In this sense space is relational because objects
exist only as a system of relationships to other objects. Space
is thus a system of interrelations, as constituted by them.
Space is multiplicity, heterogeneous and plural.
 Therefore, always in the process of making, never finished or
closed.
 SPACE
 SPATIAL PRACTICES,
 REPRESENTATIONS OF SPACE AND
 REPRESENTATIONAL SPACE (LEFEBVRE, 1991)
 SPATIAL PRACTICES: refer to the processes, flows,
movements, and behaviours of people and things that can be
perceived in the world.
 REPRESENTATIONS OF SPACE: refers to conceptualized
space, to the space constructed by assorted professionals and
technocrats. (Planners, Engineers, Developers, Urbanists,
Architects, Geographers and others of Scientific Inclination)
 SPACE
 REPRESENTATIONAL SPACE: or space of representations
is directly lived in space, the space of everyday experience.
It is space experienced through complex symbols and images
of its ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’, and ‘overlays physical space,
making symbolic use of its objects. Produced by people in
everyday practice.
 Shapes GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS/
SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATIONS
 Territory
 Etymology derives ‘‘territory’’ from the Latin word
territorium ‘‘the land around a town’’ and terra or land
 Terra means land, earth, nourishment, sustenance; it conveys
the sense of a sustaining medium, solid, fading off into
indefiniteness. But the form of the word, the [Oxford
English Dictionary] says, suggests that it derives from
terrere, meaning to frighten, to terrorize. And Territorium
is a ‘‘place from which people are warned.’’ Perhaps these
two contending derivations continue to occupy territory
today. To occupy a territory is to receive sustenance and to
exercise violence. Territory is land occupied by violence.
(Conolly, 1996) .
 Territory
a bounded social space that inscribes a certain sort of
meaning onto defined segments of the material world
 marks a differentiation between an ‘‘inside’’ and an
‘‘outside.’’
 The basics of territory, then, are fairly straight-forward: a
space, a line, some meaning, some state of affairs.
 Territoriality
 Territoriality refers more to the relationship between
territories and some other social phenomena. It draws
attention to the territorial aspects, conditions, or implications
of something else. So, the territoriality of state authority
focuses on the spatial aspect of formal political power.
 Relational--territoriality of institutions (schools, prisons,
hospitals), of organizations (corporations, military,
religions), of activities (child’s play, money laundering, drug
use), or of aspects of identity or social being
 Territory/Territoriality
 A shift from territory to territoriality brings different
relationships more clearly into view, so a related shift from
nouns to the verb forms derived from territory bring social
practices and processes more clearly into view.
 In recent years a number of scholars have written about the
de-territorialization or re-territorialization of state power
under conditions of globalization.
 These verb forms draw attention to territoriality as an
activity and to territories as the products of social practices
and processes. As transitive verbs they imply objects.
 Human Territoriality
 Definition:
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.
 Territoriality
 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 non-territorial 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
 Territoriality is built on or imbedded in non-territoriality.
Non-territoriality 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.
 Territoriality
 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.
 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.
 Territoriality
 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.