| |
A general term used to describe a portion of space occupied by a person, group, local economy or state. When associated with the state the term has two specific connotations. The first is of territorial sovereignty, whereby a state claims exclusive legitimate control over a given area defined by clear boundaries. The second is of an area not fully incorporated into a state, as with a colonial territory (British Antarctic Territory) or a frontier region (Northern Territory in Australia). More generally, territory refers to the bounded social space occupied and used by different social groups as a consequence of following strategies of territoriality. Sometimes territory is used as equivalent to such spatial concepts as place and region, conveying the sense of a clustering or concentration of people or activities (e.g. Storper, 1997). It also finds increasing use as a metaphor; as, for example, in the \'territory\' of the geographer, with reference to the academic division of labour, or the \'territory\' of the imagination, to symbolize both an inner psychological \'terrain\' and personal ownership of it. This latter metaphor betrays the modern origins of the term as associated with state sovereignty: in the definition of private property rights guaranteed by the state and the modern \'self\' owning or investing exclusively in its territory (Wikse, 1977; Agnew, 1994). (JAA)
References and Suggested Reading Agnew, J.A. 1994: The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of international relations theory. Review of International Political Economy 1: 53-80; Storper, M.J. 1997: Regional economies as relational assets. In R. Lee and J. Wills, eds, Geographies of Economies. London: Edward Arnold, 248-58; Wikse, J.R. 1977: About possession: the self as private property. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. |
|
