Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2014
Whereas traditional conceptions tend to conflate territory and its physical spatial extension, this paper advances an argument to oppose such reductionism. It explores the features of a non-intuitive, radical conception of territory and proposes to apply it to law. Relationship, rather than space, is suggested to be at the conceptual core of territory, so that spatial and non-spatial territories can be seen as superimposed one onto the other and endowed with multiple connections, according to different scales and degrees of visibility. Territory is regarded as an activity of boundary-drawing and as a process which creates pre-assigned relational positions, both of which are key concerns for law. From this perspective, law is an inherently territorial endeavour. The focus of enquiry is consequently shifted to the actors who, by building and shaping their social relationships, draw different types of boundaries, on the technologies they apply, and the aims they attempt to achieve through boundary-drawing.
Contre les conceptions traditionnelles qui confondent le territoire avec sa prolongation spatiale physique, cet article fait une proposition antiréductionniste. Il explore les caractéristiques d'une conception radicale et non intuitive du territoire, et les applique au droit. Au coeur du concept du territoire, il identifie des relations plutôt que des espaces, de sorte que territoires spatiaux et non spatiaux puissent être vus superposés les uns sur les autres, dotés de raccordements multiples, selon différentes échelles et degrés de visibilité. Le territoire peut alors être envisagé à la fois comme une activité de tracement de frontières et comme un processus qui crée des positions subjectives pré-assignées, toutes deux étant des soucis primaires pour le droit. De ce point de vue, le droit est un effort éminemment territorial. Le centre de l'enquête est par conséquent décalé sur les acteurs qui, en établissant et en formant leurs rapports sociaux, tracent différents types de frontières, sur les technologies qu'ils appliquent et les objectifs qu'ils essayent de réaliser en traçant des frontières.
1 The first group is represented for instance by Robert Ardrey and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfledt. See Ardrey, R., The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (New York: Atheneum, 1966)Google Scholar; Eibl-Eibesfledt, I., Ethology: The Biology of Behaviour (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)Google Scholar. The second group is represented especially by Robert D. Sack. See Sack, R. D., “Human Territoriality: A Theory” (1983) 73: 1 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sack, R.D., Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Sack, R.D., “Human Territoriality” in Smelser, N.J. & Baltes, P.B., eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2003)Google Scholar.
2 Probably the best attempts to overcome intuitive conceptions of territory have been provided by radical geography since the 1970s, which however, as we will see, is more focused on space than territory. See Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991/1974)Google Scholar; R.D. Sack, “Human Territoriality: A Theory”, supra note 1; Soja, Edward W., Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989)Google Scholar; Rose, Gillian, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Blomley, Nicholas, Law, Space and the Geographies of Power (New York: The Guildford Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Massey, Doreen, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Harvey, David, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996)Google Scholar; Delaney, David, Race, Place, and the Law: 1836-1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Delaney, David, Territory: A Short Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Something akin to this has been attempted for instance by Pierre Bourdieu, who advanced the idea that social places are structured like (and upon) physical places. See e.g. Bourdieu, P., “Effets de lieu” in Bourdieu, P.., ed., La misère du monde (Paris: Seuil, 1993)Google Scholar.
4 See von Uexküll, Jakob, “A stroll through the worlds of animals and men. A picture book of invisibile worlds” in Schiller, C.H., ed., Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a modern concept (New York: International Universities Press, 1957/1934) at 54 Google Scholar. For an outlook on contemporary debates around von Uexküll's ideas, see the 2001 special issue of 134: 1/4 Semiotica “Jakob von Uexküll: A paradigm for biology and semiotics”.
5 A pervasive critique of the nefariousness of social constructist theories can be found in the latest works by Bruno Latour. See e.g. Latour, B., Reassembling the Social (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.
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7 The term is used here without connection to sociological functionalist theories.
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11 Interestingly, legal territories are transversal to the just mentioned ones. Other types of similar transversalities can be imagined, which, on the whole, invite to de-essentialize the physicalist conception of territory.
12 Malmberg, Torsten, Human Territoriality: Survey of Behavioural Territories in Man with Preliminary Analysis and Discussion of Meaning (Den Haag, Paris, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1980) at 11 Google Scholar.
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