Durham Research Online
Deposited in DRO:
01 June 2010
Version of attached le:
Accepted Version
Peer-review status of attached le:
Peer-reviewed
Citation for published item:
Elden, Stuart (2010) 'Land, terrain, territory.', Progress in human geography., 34 (6). pp. 799-817.
Further information on publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132510362603
Publisher's copyright statement:
The nal denitive version of this article has been published in the Journal Progress in human geography 34/6 2010 c
The Author(s) 2010 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Progress in human geography page: http://phg.sagepub.com/ on
SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/
Additional information:
Use policy
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for
personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:
• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source
• a link is made to the metadata record in DRO
• the full-text is not changed in any way
The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.
Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom
Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971
http://dro.dur.ac.uk
Land, Terrain, Territory
Introduction
Political theory lacks a sense of territory; territory lacks a political theory.1
Although a central term within political geography and international relations, the
concept of territory has been under-examined. Jeffrey Anderson notes that
―politics is rooted in territory… [but] the spatial dimension of the political
economy is so prevalent that it is easily, if not frequently, overlooked‖ (1992:
xiii). Bertrand Badie suggests that ―the principle of territoriality often eludes
critics because it seems so obviously universal. It is a decisive component in the
actions of the state, but it is, nevertheless, linked to a historical development‖
(2000: 58). Claude Raffestin argues that ―the problem of territoriality is one of
the most neglected in geography‖, and that ―the history of this notion remains to
be done‖ (1980: 143).2 It is worth noting that Badie and Raffestin talk of
‗territoriality‘ rather than ‗territory‘; a point to which this paper will return.
While there are some excellent and important investigations of particular
territorial configurations, disputes or issues (see, for example, Sahlins 1989;
Winichakul 1994; Paasi 1996; Jönsson et. al. 2000), and some valuable
textbooks on the topic (Storey 2001; Delaney 2005), there is little that
investigates the term ‗territory‘ conceptually or historically.3 This is, in part,
because territory is often assumed to be self-evident in meaning, allowing the
study of its particular manifestations—territorial disputes, the territory of specific
countries, etc.—without theoretical reflection on ‗territory‘ itself. Where it is
defined, territory is either assumed to be a relation that can be understood as an
outcome of territoriality, or simply as a bounded space, in the way that Giddens
described the state as a ―bordered power container‖ (1981: 5-6, 11; see 1987).4
In the first, the historical dimension is neglected, since it appears that territory
exists in all times and places; in the second the conditions of possibility of such a
configuration are assumed rather than examined. Both take the thing that needs
explaining as the explanation; the explanandum as the explanans. Rather,
territory requires the same kind of historical, philosophical analysis that has been
undertaken by Edward Casey for another key geographical concept, that of place
(1997).5
Linda Bishai suggests that territory ―may be examined in a similar fashion as
sovereignty—through conceptual history‖ (2004: 59). Yet conceptual history,
Begriffsgeschichte, has, with partial exceptions, not been turned towards the
question of territory explicitly. There is, for instance, no explicit discussion of
territory in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, the Handbuch politisch-sozialer
Grundbegriffe in Frankreich, or the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie,
which are the most comprehensive works of the Begriffsgeschichte approach
1
pioneered by Reinhart Koselleck (see Bruner et. al. 1972-97; Reichardt and
Schmitt, 1985-; Ritter et. al. 1971-2007; Koselleck 2002, 2006). The work of the
Cambridge School of contextualist approaches to the history of political thought,
of which Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock are perhaps the most significant
figures, offers substantive help in its methodological principles, but only
tangentially in terms of its focus (Skinner 1978, 2002; Pocock 2009). Important
though such methods are, the approach employed here is closer to a
genealogical account, of the type Foucault developed from Nietzsche and
Heidegger‘s work (see Elden 2001, 2003b). Genealogy, understood as a historical
interrogation of the conditions of possibility of things being as they are, is helpful
for a number of reasons. It makes use of the kinds of textual and contextual
accounts offered by Begriffsgeschichte or the Cambridge school; but is critical of
notions that the production of meaning is reliant on authorial intent. It makes
use of the full range of techniques—including etymology, semantics, philology
and hermeneutics—that should inform the history of ideas; but pairs them with
an analysis of practices and the workings of power. And it is avowedly political;
undertaking this work as part of a wider project that aspires to be a ‗history of
the present‘.6
The best general study of territory remains Jean Gottmann‘s The Significance of
Territory (1973; see Muscarà 2005). It trades on his earlier book La politique des
États et leur géographie, where he claims that ―one cannot conceive a State, a
political institution, without its spatial definition, its territory‖ (1951: 71).
Nonetheless, in both works he tends to use the term in an undifferentiated
historical sense, as a concept used throughout history (see for example 1951:
72-3). Thus while he makes a detailed and valuable analysis, he is still perhaps
too willing to see territory existing at a variety of spatial scales and in a variety of
historical periods. This tends to create an ahistorical, and, potentially,
ageographical analysis. One of the very few attempts that begins to offer a more
properly historical account of territory is found in the work of the legal theorist
Paul Alliès in his book L‘invention du territoire, which was originally a thesis
supervised by Nicos Poulantzas in 1977. Alliès suggests that ―territory always
seems linked to possible definitions of the state; it gives it a physical basis which
seems to render it inevitable and eternal‖ (1980: 9). It is precisely in order to
disrupt that inevitability and eternal nature that an interrogation of the state of
territory is necessary.
This paper outlines some of the issues at stake in undertaking such a project. It
proceeds through a number of stages. First, it asks why territory has been
neglected as a topic of conceptual analysis, and critically interrogates work on
territoriality. Second, it suggests that often territory is effectively taken as ‗land‘
or ‗terrain‘; political-economic and political-strategic relations which are essential
but ultimately insufficient. Third, it argues that territory needs to be interrogated
in relation to state and space; and that its political aspects need to be
2
understood in an expanded sense of political-legal and political-technical issues.
Finally it proposes that territory can be understood as a political technology;
which is not intended to be an absolute definition, but to raise the questions that
need to be asked to grasp how territory has been understood in different
historical and geographical contexts.
The Neglect of Territory and the Problem with Territoriality
Why has territory been neglected? There are several reasons. First, the turn
away from reflection on the state, especially by post-structuralist approaches,
seems to have rendered suspect attention on these issues. As Joe Painter notes,
―conventional definitions of territory emphasize boundedness, identity, integrity,
sovereignty and spatial coherence—concepts that post-structuralism is often
thought to have demolished‖ (2009: 3). Second, and not unrelated, the fear of
what John Agnew identified as the ‗territorial trap‘ (1994a; 2009). Agnew
suggests that this is a threefold assumption of the conventional understanding of
the geography of state power: that ―modern state sovereignty requires clearly
bounded territories‖; that ―there is a fundamental opposition between ‗domestic‘
and ‗foreign‘ affairs in the modern world‖ and that ―the territorial state is seen as
acting as the geographical ‗container‘ of modern society‖ (1994a; see 2005: 41;
1994b). As Agnew notes the first assumption dates from the 15 th-20th century;
and the second two from last 100 years, although there are of course earlier
precedents (2005: 41). Others have made similar claims. Gottmann, for instance,
notes that it is all too easy to assume uncritically the modern, or legal sense of
territory as a ―portion of geographical space under the jurisdiction of certain
people‖ (1973: 5). All-too-often though, interrogations have not led to a more
careful examination of what territory is, and its intrinsic limits, but rather to an
avoidance of the topic altogether. It is through a historical conceptual
examination that moving beyond ‗the territorial trap‘, rather than simply skirting
around it, is possible. Third, a degree of conceptual imprecision regarding the
terms of territory and territoriality. The slippage between these two distinct
terms was noted above in the quotes from Ruggie and Raffestin, but they are
hardly alone. (I have lost count of the number of times that I have said that I am
working on territory only for the person to reply with a reference to, or
discussion of, territoriality.) It is crucial to achieve clarity about the aim of the
investigation.
What is the problem with territoriality? The first thing to note is that unlike, say,
‗spatiality‘, which is generally understood as a property or condition of space,
something pertaining to it; ‗territoriality‘ has today a rather more active
connotation. The other, older sense of ‗territoriality‘, as the condition, or status
of territory, rather than a mode of operating toward that territory, is generally
lost. It would be good to retrieve it. Second, territoriality in that more recent
sense itself needs to be distinguished, as there are at least two conflicting
3
traditions in the use of the term, the first biological; the second social. These
may not actually be distinct, and care should be taken to suggest an implied
nature/culture divide, but advocates of territoriality do present them in this way.
There is therefore a logic to approaching these works under their own
terminological division.
Writers such as Wagner (1960), Ardrey (1967) and Malmberg (1980) outlined
ways where territory can be understood through a basis in a fundamental
biological drive and as a form of animal association. Their work often covers a
great deal of ground, within a broad historical sweep, but they continually blur
territory and territoriality together, seeing territoriality as a constant human
element, played out in different contexts. This is an important tradition of
knowledge.7 Some geographers, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
utilised these behaviourist assumptions in the linkage between human and
animal territoriality.8 Edward Soja, for instance, declared in 1971 that
―territoriality, as it is used here, is a behavioural phenomenon associated with
the organization of space into spheres of influence or clearly demarcated
territories which are made distinctive and considered at least partially exclusive
by their occupants or definers‖ (1971: 19). The problem with this is that while it
can tell us something about human behaviour in space, it is not at all clear that it
can tell us something about ‗territory‘. In part this is due to the obvious point
that human social organisation has changed more rapidly than biological drives.
Indeed, Soja recognises precisely these issues (1971: 28), and as a later section
of this paper will demonstrate, does offer a more useful approach to territory.
Indeed as Soja notes almost two decades later, ―much of this work had to be
purely defensive, for the then prevailing view of territoriality was filled with bioethological imperatives which obscured any socio-political interpretation‖ (1989:
150 n. 9).
A rather different approach is offered by Robert Sack in Human Territoriality
(1986; see 1983). Despite its title Sack does not suggest a purely biological,
determinist approach. He suggests that territoriality is a geo-political strategy,
and not a basic vital instinct. Sack claims that while he sees ―territoriality as a
basis of power, I do not see it as part of an instinct, nor do I see power as
essentially aggressive‖ (1986: 1). Sack labels the area or place delimited and
controlled through territoriality a territory, but the non-specific nature of his
enquiry becomes clear here. A place can be a territory at times but not at others;
―territories require constant effort to establish and maintain‖; and as a corollary
of the previous definition they are ―the results of strategies to affect, influence,
and control people, phenomena, and relationships‖ (1986: 19). Indeed, in his
later Homo Geographicus, Sack conceives of the general ―role of place as
territory‖, suggesting that ―the meaning of place in this current book is then very
much like that of territory‖ (1997: 272 n. 1).
4
Sack effectively argues that territoriality is a social construct (not quite a
product), forged through interaction and struggle, and thoroughly permeated
with social relations. There are some excellent chapters—especially on the US
rectangular land survey and the church (1986 chs. 4 and 5)—but none of this
really gets to grips with the complexities in the term ‗territory‘ itself. The problem
with this mode of analysis—a problem it shares with the biological approach—is
that it is both historically and geographically imprecise. These kinds of
understandings seem to transcend historical periods and uneven geographical
development, and also function beyond geographical scale (see also Dear and
Wolch 1989). Perhaps this is only to be expected given that the focus is on
‗territoriality‘ instead of territory. Sack is at his best when he approaches the
question of territoriality historically, such as in the passages on Renaissance
thought (1986: 83), or on the role of capitalism in shaping understandings of
space and time (1986: 84-5).9 Yet, as Soja notes, ―neither my earlier work nor
Sack‘s however, provide a satisfactory social ontology of territoriality‖ (Soja
1989: 150 n. 9).
A related analysis to Sack can be found in some of the writings of the Swiss
geographer Claude Raffestin. Like Sack, Raffestin is cautious about assuming too
straight-forward a relation between animal and human territoriality (1988: 264).
Rather he develops a rich account grounded on a reading of Foucault and
Lefebvre together. While this has become more common in recent years,
Raffestin was pioneering in reading them together in his 1980 book Pour une
géographie du pouvoir. Raffestin develops Foucault‘s theory of power,
suggesting that ―relational space-time is organised by a combination of energy
and information‖ (1980: 46; see 2007). In a sense, energy can be read alongside
power; and information with knowledge, the other two terms of the Foucauldian
triad of space, knowledge and power. For Raffestin, ―population, territory and
authority‖ are the three elements of the state, and he suggests that ―the entire
geography of the state derives from this triad‖ (1980: 17; see Muir 1981).
Raffestin contends that ‗space‘ and ‗territory‘ are not equivalent, and that using
them indiscriminately has led to a lot of confusion. Space is, for Raffestin, the
anterior term, because territory is generated from space, through the actions of
an actor, who ‗territorialises‘ space (1980: 129). This is the potential danger, in
that while Raffestin wishes to make an argument for the conception precision of
territory, he invokes territoriality as the way into this term. The displacement of
territory by territoriality blunts the potential of his analysis. Yet at times he offers
some very valuable insights, particularly evident in his careful and historical
examination of the notion of the frontier (1986). A similar criticism could be
levelled against Rhys Jones, Peoples/States/Territories, who is similarly good on
the particular practices of state territorial formation, but tends to collapse
territory into territoriality, which loses the conceptual precision and analytic
purchase of the former term (2007: especially 3, 34).
5
An Approach to Territory
In identifying some of the reasons why territory has been neglected as a topic of
examination, Painter has suggested that ―‗territoriality‘ is often treated as
complex and dynamic; ‗territory‘ as more straightforward and not in need of
sophisticated analysis‖ (2009: 6). While it is difficult to dispute the complexities
surrounding territoriality, its dynamism appears not to be historical. Indeed,
given that territoriality is so widespread in animal and human behaviour, it can
only help us to understand territory if that is a term without a history. Rather it is
territory that is logically prior to territoriality, even if existentially second.
Strategies and processes toward territory—of which territoriality is but a
fraction—conceptually presuppose the object that they practically produce. It
may well therefore be more fruitful to approach territory as a concept in its own
right.
While Soja was initially discussed alongside behaviourist accounts, as indicated
this does not do justice to the richness of his analysis. One of the things that is
most notable is his claim that while all societies have spatial dimensions, few
operate in territorial ways, thus implying that territory is more historically and
geographically limited than is often assumed to be the case. He similarly notes
the tendency to assume that a Western model can be universalised to explain
the world more generally (1971: 16). He looks at a number of other societies,
suggesting that ―in nearly all of these societies there was a social definition of
territory rather than a territorial definition of society‖ (1971: 13, see 33). On this
basis, he comes to his general claim regarding ―the political organization of
space‖:
Its major purpose is to create and maintain solidarity within the
society by shaping the processes of competition, conflict, and
cooperation as they operate spatially (1971: 7).
To understand these three processes of competition, conflict, and cooperation
Soja proposes a tripartite analysis of resource, power and social organisation,
which repays careful thought.
1. ―control over the distribution, allocation, and ownership of scarce
resources (including land, money and power—the ability to make
authoritative decisions)‖
2. ―the maintenance of order and the enforcement of authority‖
3. ―the legitimization of authority through societal integration‖ (1971: 7).
The claim here is that for the analysis of territory this is more useful than his
trading on behavioural biological models; more helpful than Sack‘s social
6
approach through territoriality; and can be brought into fruitful combination with
Raffestin. While Raffestin is too willing to approach territory through territoriality,
and tends to see space as an ahistorical absolute, he is invaluable in thinking the
way that territory needs to be understood through representation, appropriation
and control, broadly understood as the workings of power.
In competition, conflict, and cooperation; and resource, power and social
organisation Soja has identified two groups of three related terms. These terms
begin to allow us to think through three inherently related, yet ultimately distinct
concepts: land, terrain, territory. The suggestion being made is that land, terrain
and territory need to be conceptually distinguished; even if in many instances
they are practically intertwined.
-
Land is a relation of property, a finite resource that is distributed, allocated
-
Terrain is a relation of power, with a heritage in geology and the military; the
-
Territory is something that is both of these, and more than these. Territory
and owned; a political-economic question. Land is a resource over which
there is competition.
control of which allows the establishment and maintenance of order. As a
‗field‘, a site of work or battle, it is a political-strategic question.
must be approached in itself rather than through territoriality; and in relation
to land and terrain.
Each can, of course, be read in what appears to be non-political ways: land as an
aesthetic category; terrain in a scientific register; territory as the mere outcome
of territoriality. Yet each of these is shot through with relations of power. There
is a political economy to the environment; a political-strategy to the impact of
technology; and an understated politics to territoriality.
Land
Some accounts see territory as a form of property. The modern English word
territory—a word shared by the Romance languages and found in many
Germanic ones—is traditionally derived from the Latin terra. This is a word
translated as ‗earth‘ or ‗land‘. Part of the reason for this is its etymology: tir is the
dry, terra is dry land. There is a similar reference in the word ‗terrace‘, or
‗terracotta‘, baked earth. In Old Irish tir is land or earth and ters is dry. In Latin
torrere is to dry, parch; in Greek tersesthai is to become dry; in Sanskrit trsyati is
he thirsts. While the term ‗land‘ is found in Old English (sometimes spelt as
lond), and has a distinct lineage, it is not surprising that a number of writers
have made the explicit link between land and territory. Those taking a
perspective from territoriality often make that suggestion. Hoebel suggests that
7
land is the basis of human existence, ―the most important single object of
property. All societies are territorially based, and most sustenance is drawn from
the soil, either directly or indirectly‖ (Hoebel 1949: 331; see Malmberg 1980:
84). For Ardrey ―ownership of land is scarcely a human invention, as our
territorial propensity is something less than a human distinction‖ (1967: 4);
whereas Malmberg stresses how ―closely related behavioural territory and
property in land really are‖ (1980: 87).
Here though the interest is in those that take a political-economic approach to
the question of territory, stressing the linkage between territory and land; seeing
territory as a form of property. Soja makes this point clearly:
Conventional Western perspectives on spatial organisation are
powerfully shaped by the concept of property, in which pieces of
territory are viewed as ‗commodities‘ capable of being bought, sold,
or exchanged at the market place (1971: 9).
Unsurprisingly, many of those offering such a view are often operating within a
Marxist perspective. Whereas the question of land is sometimes underplayed in
accounts of Marx, it is an important element of his analysis, trading on earlier
political economists such as Ricardo. In Marx, Lefebvre insists, there is a notion
of land alongside the labour and capital issues. Rather than look at capital-labour
relations then, there is a three way relation of ―land-capital-labour‖ (1974: 325;
1991: 282). One of the final chapters of Volume III of Capital, entitled ―The
Trinity Formula‖ relates the three terms to their economic aspect: ―Capitalprofit… land-ground-rent, labour-wages, this trinity form holds in itself all the
mysteries of the social production process‖ (1981b: 955). But Marx‘s comments
in this chapter—compiled by Engels from three fragments—are rather cursory.
Scattered discussions in other parts of this volume on rent and mines give some
extra details.
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels recognise the geographical character
of different systems of political rule (1970: 45). While feudalism operated with a
category of land, it was capitalism and the emergence of the modern state that
cemented the idea of land as a taxable asset. Equally the organic relation of
people to land is fractured. In Capital Volume I, Marx suggests that ―the
expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of
subsistence and from the instruments of labour, this terrible and arduously
accomplished expropriation of the mass of the people forms the pre-history of
capital‖ (1981a: 928, see 876). There were a range of political-economic
changes in the transition from the Medieval to the Early Modern world that
impacted on land, including industrialisation, the concentration of people in
towns and cities, the emergence of the middle classes, the shift to national
8
rather than local markets, and a gradual concentration of jurisdiction with the
centralisation of state power.
It is clear that Marx intended this treatment to be much more extensive—indeed
in his projected plan, after Capital the next volume was to be On Landed
Property before a volume on labour, and ones on the state, international trade
and the world market (1983: 270, 298; see 1975: 424). Yet apart from the
workshop of the Grundrisse little of this is extant (1973: 275-9, 485-8; for a
fruitful development see Harvey 1982). One of the comments in the Grundrisse is
revealing. Marx claims that ―the relation to the earth as property is always
mediated through occupation of the land and soil, peacefully or violently‖ (1973:
485). Lefebvre similarly suggests that ‗land‘—la terre—must be understood in this
potentially broad sense:
La terre? This is not solely agriculture, but also the subsoil and its
resources. It is also the nation-state linked to a territory. And hence
also absolute politics and political strategy (1974: 374-5; 1991,
325).
Perry Anderson‘s Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the
Absolutist State provide a large-scale analysis of state development from within
this broad perspective, concentrating on the material forces and economic
conditions for different political formations (1974a; 1974b). This is not
economically reductive, for while he sees land as crucial, his determination of
political space is not wholly economically determined. In Lineages, for example,
he looks at conflict within feudalism. Unsurprisingly this was often conflict over
land:
The typical medium of inter-feudal rivalry, by contrast, was military
and its structure was always potentially the zero-sum conflict of the
battlefield, by which fixed quantities of ground were won or lost.
For land is a natural monopoly: it cannot be indefinitely extended,
only redivided. The categorical object of noble rule was territory,
regardless of the community inhabiting it. Land as such, not
language, defined the natural perimeters of its power (1974b: 31).
In some respects this is unremarkable, but a number of important issues are
indicated here. Possession of land is the determinant of power, and conflict over
land a key indicator of power struggles. Land though is not something that can
be created, but is a scarce resource, one whose distribution and redistribution is
an important economic and political concern.
Thinking territory as land, as property, thus gives a political-economic relation.
This is an essential part of any analysis of territory. Yet just as Lefebvre
9
recognises that analysis of social space must go beyond property relations of
―earth and land‖, to look at the productive process that imposes ―a form on that
earth or land‖, this requires an emphasis that goes beyond the economic (1974:
102; 1991: 85).
Terrain
The conflict over land indicated by Anderson is significant. Property is important
as an indicator, but conflict over land is twofold: both over its possession and
conducted on its terrain. Land is both the site and stake of struggle. In this it
differs from conflict over other resources. Strategic-military reasons thus
become significant. As well as seeking to maximise the possession of land as a
scarce resource, feudal lords and nascent states were also concerned with
security, management and administration. Defensible borders, homogeneity and
the promotion of territorial cohesion offer a range of examples—examples that
straddle the strategic issues and link closely to the development of a range of
techniques of state practice. France, for example, following the Treaty of the
Pyrenees in 1659, began a process of mapping and surveying its land,
employing technical specialists both to map and reinforce its so-called ‗natural
frontiers‘.
A related term to that of land is therefore ‗terrain‘. This is land that has a
strategic, political, military sense. The English ‗territory‘, the French territoire
and related terms in other languages derive from quite a specific sense of the
Latin territorium. Territorium is an extremely rare term in classical Latin that
becomes common in the Middle Ages. The standard definition is the land
belonging to a town or another entity such as a religious order. It is used, for
instance by Cicero for the agricultural lands of a colony (1858: Vol IV, 522) and
in phrases such as that describing the birthplace of the Venerable Bede in his
Ecclesiastical History. Bede is described as being born ―in territorio eiusdem
monasterii‖, ―in lands belonging to the monastery‖ (1969: V, 24). This
monastery was Jarrow in northeast England. In Alfred the Great‘s Anglo-Saxon
translation, Bede was born ―on sundorlonde of the monastery‖, outlying lands,
lands sundered from the estate itself, but under its possession, and thus it has
been claimed that this is basis for the name of the town Sunderland, although it
is not clear this it was this sundorlonde (Brown 1855: 277, 280; Colgrove 1969:
xix).
As a number of writers have discussed, the etymology of territorium is disputed,
with the meaning of the place around a town supplemented by that of a place
from which people are warned or frightened (see, for example, Connolly 1995;
Neocleous 2003; Hindess 2006). The Latin terrere is to frighten, deriving from
the Greek trein meaning to flee from fear, to be afraid, and the Sanskrit, trasati:
he trembles, is afraid. This means that the term territory has an association with
10
fear and violence, an association that is more compelling in history than
etymology. As argued elsewhere, ―creating a bounded space is already a violent
act of exclusion and inclusion; maintaining it as such requires constant vigilance
and the mobilisation of threat; and challenging it necessarily entails a
transgression‖ (Elden 2009: xxx).
Terrain is of course a term used by physical geographers and geologists. Yet all
too often the term terrain is used in a very vague sense. Evans, for instance,
notes that ―to some of us, ‗terrain analysis‘ means, especially, quantitative
analysis of terrain‖, thus seeing a greater need to qualify the mode, rather than
object, of analysis (1998: 119). Terrain is seen as land form, rather than process
(Lane et. al. 1998; see Wilson and Gallant 2000; Lawrence et. al. 1993). It is also
a term used by military strategists. Yet there is a relation as well as a separation,
with knowledge of battlefield terrain essential to military success. There are a
number of important studies of different military campaigns and the question of
terrain, but little conceptual precision (see, for example, Parry 1984; Winters
1998; Rose and Nathanail 2000; Doyle and Bennett eds. 2002).10 For Doyle and
Bennett, terrain ―encompasses both the physical aspects of earth‘s surface, as
well as the human interaction with them‖ (2002: 1). At times terrain seems to be
landscape devoid of life, as it is when targeting of cities is discussed without
reference to those living within it, or it is reduced from a concrete materiality to a
level of virtuality.
Max Weber‘s analysis of the historical development of the state, and Michael
Mann‘s study of the changing dynamics of power (1986; 1993), where they do
discuss territory, could be seen to be operating in a way that sees territory as
terrain, a political-strategic relation. In his interview with the geographers of the
Hérodote journal, Foucault deflects their inquiry about his use of spatial
categories, suggesting that they are not primarily geographical, but instead shot
through with power. As he declares, ―territory is no doubt a geographical notion,
but it‘s first of all a juridico-political one: the area controlled by a certain kind of
power‖ (2007: 176). As his interviewers respond, ―certain spatial metaphors are
equally geographical and strategic, which is only natural since geography grew
up in the shadow of the military‖ (2007: 177). They make the explicit linkage
between the region of geographers and the commanded region, from regere; the
conquered territory of a province, from vincere; and the field as battlefield.
Foucault then notes how ―the politico-strategic term is an indication of how the
military and administration actually come to inscribe themselves both on a
material soil and within forms of discourse‖ (2007: 177).
Lefebvre offers further concrete and compelling discussion of this relation:
Sovereignty implies ‗space‘, and what is more it implies a space
against which violence, whether latent or overt, is directed – a
11
space established and constituted by violence… Every state is born
of violence, and state power endures only by virtue of violence
directed towards a space… At the same time, too, violence
enthroned a specific rationality, that of accumulation, that of the
bureaucracy and the army – a unitary, logistical, operational and
quantifying rationality which would make economic growth possible
and draw strength from that growth for its own expansion to a
point where it would take possession of the entire planet. A
founding violence, and continuous creation by violence (by fire and
blood, in Bismarck‘s phrase) – such are the hallmarks of the state
(1974: 322-3; 1991: 280; see 133/122; 2009; see Brenner and
Elden 2009).
What is central in Lefebvre‘s reading is the relation between accumulation,
violence and the ―unitary, logistical, operational and quantifying rationality‖. For
Lefebvre this highlights the limitations of a political-economic reading of territory
as land:
Neither Marx and Engels nor Hegel clearly perceived the violence at
the core of the accumulation process… and thus its role in the
production of a politico-economic space. This space was of course
the birthplace and cradle of the modern state (1974: 322; 1991:
279; see 413/358).
In a related analysis Achille Mbembe has looked at the kinds of violence upon
which colonial sovereignty was founded. The first of this was founding violence,
which ―underpinned not only the right of conquest but all the prerogatives
flowing from that right… it helped to create the space over which it was
exercised‖. The second and third kinds of violence concern legitimation and
authority, and in particular the ―maintenance, spread, and permanence‖ of
authority (2001: 25). But it is the first that is central here: the creation of the
space through violence over which violence is then exercised. Heidegger‘s
discussion of the transition from the Greek polis to the Latin imperium similarly
links these two senses—land and terrain:
For the Romans, on the contrary, the earth, tellus, terra is the dry,
the land as distinct from the sea; this differentiates that upon
which construction, settlement, and installation are possible from
those places where they are impossible. Terra becomes territorium,
land of settlement as realm of command [das Sieglungsgebiet als
Befehlsbereich]. In the Roman terra can be heard an imperial
account, completely foreign to the Greek gaia and gē (1982: 88-89;
1992: 60).
12
It is important to note that the German term Gebiet—with its sense of region—
has a rather different set of associations than the Latin territorium. Gebiet is the
term used in Weber‘s famous description of the state. It bears relation to the
notion of a Flächenstaat or a ‗territorial state‘, with Gebiet as a region over which
violence reigned: a Bereich-Gewalt, a field of violence. It is in this context that
Heidegger‘s description of a ―land of settlement as a realm of command‖ bridges
the land-terrain understandings.
Land and terrain are obviously important notions, and many theorists combine
elements of both approaches. It is therefore clear that the political-economic
and political-strategic understandings have considerable merit, and that
especially their historical interrogation offers much towards a critical analysis.
Yet, like the approach through territoriality, they tend to fail the historically
specific test. As a political-economic relation the importance of property in land
is clear from as far back as there is recorded human history. From Plato‘s Laws
or Kleisthenes‘s urban reforms of Athens (Elden 2003a), to its importance in
William the Conqueror‘s Domesday Book of 1086, property in land clearly
predates the specificity of state territory.11 Land as a commodity to be bought
and sold was an important element of the construction of the United States of
America with the Louisiana purchase and the sale of Alaska by Russia. A similar
argument can be made concerning terrain, with a strategic importance that also
extends throughout human history. From Thucydides‘ History of the
Peloponnesian War through Julius Caesar‘s accounts of The Gallic War or The
Civil War, land as terrain is of serious military significance. Equally when
Machiavelli talks of territory in The Prince this too is closer to a sense of terrain.
The translation of the Classical Greek khora or the Latin terra, agrum or finibus
as ‗territory‘ masks these distinctions.
Territory
The point being made here is to underline that ‗territory‘ is certainly something
that is closely related to ‗land‘ or ‗terrain‘ but is more than them. ‗Territory‘
needs to be thought in its specificity. This approach being outlined thus differs
from the account offered by Saskia Sassen in her recent book Territory,
Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, which examines what
she calls medieval, modern and global state assemblages through an
interrogation of the interrelation of three key terms—‗territory‘, ‗authority‘ and
‗rights‘, conjoined as ‗TAR‘ (2006). Sassen suggests that the particular ways that
they work in combination help us to understand the political configurations that
arise at a particular point in time. In this sense ‗territory‘ is assumed as a static,
ahistorical concept in order to illuminate another problematic (see, for example,
2006: 18). Indeed, Sassen says that ‗territory‘, ‗authority‘ and ‗rights‘ are her
―building blocks‖ and are ―navigators inside the two black boxes that are the
national and the global. Each evinces the analytic capability for dissecting these
13
two master categories‖ (2006: 6). One particularly telling remark is when she
suggests that ―my concern is not historical evolution but developing an analytics
of change using history‖ (2006: 27). While this can yield some potential insights,
it does so at great violence to the history of thought.
In distinction, a more fruitful way forward is to analyse how territory is
dependent on a number of techniques and on the law. In doing so this approach
exceeds merely conceptual history, but begins to fold the analysis of practices
into its genealogical account. The legal aspects of the relation between
sovereignty, jurisdiction and authority with territory has been relatively well
examined—the historical emergence of these terms less so—but in terms of
techniques these include advances in geometry, such as the coordinate or
analytic geometry pioneered by René Descartes (a form of geometry that uses
algebra, coordinates and equations). There are also a series of related
developments in cartography and land surveying, particularly including the use
of the cross-staff and quadrant to find latitude; new tools and techniques of
measurement; the rediscovery of Ptolemy‘s Geography; and changes in
maritime navigation particularly through more accurate measurement of time
and therefore longitude.12
The mapping and control of territory is, in large part, dependent on such
techniques. Only with these kinds of abilities could modern boundaries be
established as more than a simple line staked out on the ground. For
mountainous regions, for deserts or tundra, or particularly for the abstract
division of unknown places in the colonised world, such techniques were crucial.
They are made possible through a calculative grasp of the material world, what
Lefebvre calls abstract space but which actually characterises the emergence of
a category of space in Western thought more generally. Spatium in classical
Latin did not mean ‗space‘, but rather an extent; similarly the Greeks had no
word for space. One of Lefebvre‘s comments is relevant here: ―as a product of
violence and war, [abstract space] is political; instituted by a state, it is
institutional‖ (1974: 325; 1991, 285). As a range of thinkers have noted, in this
sense cartography does not just represent the territory, but is actively complicit
in its production. It is no surprise that the key sponsors of advances in
cartographic techniques were states (Corner 1999: 222; Pickles 2004: 31; King
1996: 16-17; Jacob 2006; Strandsbjerg 2008). In the quotation cited earlier,
where Soja suggests that Western territory is related to property, he continues:
Space is viewed as being subdivided into components whose
boundaries are ‗objectively‘ determined through the mathematical
and astronomically based techniques of surveying and cartography
(1971: 9; see Paasi 1996: 19).
14
Then, drawing on the anthropologist Paul Bohannan, he notes that ―we are the
only people in the world who use seafaring instruments to determine our position
on the ground‖ (Bohanan 1966: 165). These ‗seafaring instruments‘ have of
course developed greatly even in the years since this observation, but the basic
determination remains. How does the quantification of space and the role of
calculative mechanisms enable the commanding of territory and the
establishment of borders?13
There is, at least, a twofold relation between the strategic and the technical. On
the one hand, for instance, the work undertaken by Vauban for the French crown
was dependent on a range of newly discovered techniques; as was the surveying
work of the Cassini family (Godlewska 1999; Mattelart 1999). As von Clausewitz
recognised, such techniques were essential to modern military operations:
―Bonaparte rightly said in this connection that many of the decisions faced by the
commander-in-chief resemble mathematical problems worthy of the gifts of a
Newton or an Euler‖ (1976: 112; see Alliès 1980: 57; Lacoste 1976: 16). On the
other, there is an inherent violence to these techniques. In the famous title of
Lacoste‘s 1976 book, ―geography is, above all, making war‖ (see 1976: 7). At the
same time as these calculative techniques, there are political-juridical
developments in legal codes; in the understanding of the sovereignty-territory
relation and the distinction between sovereignty and majesty, all of which
determine the question of political rule over space.
Foucault‘s Security, Territory, Population lectures are invaluable here, because
although Foucault moves away from a focus on territory, the shift he is
concerned with demonstrates the development of a range of techniques that
would indeed be brought to bear on territory as an object of governance,
alongside that of population (2004). Foucault claims that there is a shift between
territory as the focus of governance and the government of things, essentially
people as a population. In distinction to his historical argument, but using his
conceptual tools, Foucault is most valuable in seeing the parallel shift from
people to population and from land/terrain to territory. Territory is no longer
merely the economic object of land; nor a static terrain; but territory is a vibrant
entity, ―within its frontiers, with its specific qualities‖ (2004: 99-100). The
strategies applied to territory—in terms of its mapping, ordering, measuring, and
demarcation, and the way it is normalised, circulation allowed, and internally
regulated—are calculative. Territory is more than merely land, and goes beyond
terrain, but is a rendering of the emergent concept of ‗space‘ as a political
category: owned, distributed, mapped, calculated, bordered, and controlled
(Elden 2007).14
15
Conclusion: Territory as a Political Technology
It would be unusual or reductive to see the political-economic, political-strategic,
political-legal or political-technical in strict isolation. Political-economic accounts
often indicate a strategic relation; strategic work recognises the importance of
law and the dependence on measure and calculation. Yet it is only in seeing
these elements together, and in privileging the legal and the technical, that an
understanding of the complexities of territory can be attained. To concentrate on
the political-economic risks reducing territory to land; to emphasise the politicalstrategic blurs it with a sense of terrain. Recognising both, and seeing the
development made possible by emergent political techniques allows us to
understand territory as a distinctive mode of social/spatial organisation, one
which is historically and geographically limited and dependent, rather than a
biological drive or social need. Indeed, recognising and interrogating this does
not just allow us to see that the modern division and ordering of the world is
peculiar and clearly not the only possible way, but it also allows us to begin to
escape what Agnew described as ‗the territorial trap‘. As Agnew himself notes,
social science has often been too geographical and insufficiently historical (1995:
379). It is through a historical conceptual examination that moving beyond ‗the
territorial trap‘ rather than simply avoiding it might be possible (Brenner and
Elden 2009; for a related inquiry see Murphy 1996).
The overall suggestion here is thus that territory is not best understood through
territoriality, but through an examination of the relation of the state to the
emergence of a category of ‗space‘. Edward Casey describes his book The Fate of
Place as an inquiry which ―traces out the idea of place vis-à-vis space‖ (2002:
xvii). What understanding of space was necessary for the idea of territory to be
possible? If territory is seen as a ‗bounded space‘ or as Giddens‘s ‗bounded
power container‘, the question that remains is what is this space and how are
these boundaries possible? As Paul Alliès suggests, ―to define territory, we are
told, one delimits borders [frontières]. Or to think the border, must we not
already have an idea of homogeneous territory?‖ (1980: 32). To put this more
forcefully, boundaries only become possible in their modern sense through a
notion of space; rather than the other way round. Focusing on the determination
of space that makes boundaries possible, and in particular the role of calculation,
opens up the idea of seeing boundaries not as a primary distinction that
separates territory from other ways of understanding political control of land; but
as a second-order problem founded upon a particular sense of calculation and
concomitant grasp of space. How does that concept of space become a politicallegal category and what kinds of techniques are at work?
Two qualifications to this analysis are necessary. The first is that this is an
approach derived from, and directed toward, Western political thought. The
problematic term ‗West‘ is of course open to question, but it is intended here to
16
be read in relation to a chronology of thought that can be traced from Ancient
Greece, to Roman appropriations and late medieval Latin rediscoveries, providing
the conceptual frame within which the emergence of the modern state and its
territory occurred.15 Other traditions would have very different histories,
geographies and conceptual lineages. The specificity of the analysis begun here
militates against generalisation and pretensions to universalism. Nonetheless, it
is hoped that this historical conceptual approach would be useful in other such
analyses, even if it would need to be supplemented, developed, and critiqued.
The second qualification is that while this work seeks to utilise an expanded
understanding of territory that goes beyond narrowly economic or strategic
accounts, but which is also attentive to the specificity of the notion, its approach
is necessarily partial. As Valérie November notes, ―the notion of territory is at the
same time juridical, political, economic, social and cultural, and even affective‖
(2002: 17). Here, the social, cultural, and affective elements have been
underplayed in order to emphasise the political in a broad sense. This is not to
suggest that those other elements are unimportant, but rather that they have
been discussed elsewhere in some detail. The literature on the nation, on
attachment to homeland, and identity politics, for instance, can profitably be
read from a territorial perspective (see Winichakul 1994; Paasi 1996; Yiftachel
2006). Folding the insights of those analyses into the outline offered here would
be a necessary step for any account which aimed to be comprehensive.
Three interlinked propositions thus provide an agenda for future work; a project
which seeks to grasp the history of the state of territory:
1. Territory must be approached as a topic in itself; rather than through
territoriality. Indeed, it may well be the case that the notion of ‗territoriality‘
with regard to humans can only be appropriately understood through a notion
of territory. In other words, while particular strategies or practices produce
territory, there is a need to understand territory to grasp what territoriality, as
a condition of territory, is concerned with.
2. Territory can be understood as a ‗bounded space‘ only if ‗boundaries‘ and
‗space‘ are taken as terms worthy of investigation in their own right as a
preliminary step. These terms require conceptual and historical work
themselves; rather than being sufficient for an explanation.
3. ‗Land‘ and ‗terrain‘—as political-economic and political-strategic relations—are
necessary but insufficient to grasp ‗territory‘.
Territory can be understood as a political technology: it comprises techniques for
measuring land and controlling terrain. Measure and control—the technical and
the legal—need to be thought alongside land and terrain. Understanding territory
as a political technology is not to define territory once and for all; rather it is to
indicate the issues at stake in grasping how it was understood in different
historical and geographical contexts. Territory is a historical question: produced,
17
mutable and fluid. It is geographical, not simply because it is one of the ways of
ordering the world, but also because it is profoundly uneven in its development.
It is a word, concept and a practice; where the relation between these can only
be grasped genealogically. It is a political question, but in a broad sense:
economic, strategic, legal, and technical. Territory must be approached politically
in its historical, geographical and conceptual specificity.
Acknowledgements
This paper was initially given as a keynote lecture to a joint session of the
Finnish Political Association and Finnish Sociological Associations conferences, at
the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. Versions of the paper have been
given at the University of Turku, Finland; Lancaster University; University of
Salford; National University of Singapore; University of Macau, China SAR;
Durham University; Queen Mary, University of London; University of Cambridge;
University of Swansea; Technische Universität Berlin; and Ben Gurion University,
Israel. Some of the ideas were discussed in a keynote lecture to the Global
Studies Association annual conference, Royal Holloway, University of London. I
am grateful to the audiences in all of these places for their thoughtful
engagement with these ideas. Several other people have discussed these topics
with me over several years. I would especially single out Neil Brenner and Joe
Painter. I am grateful to Anssi Paasi, Roger Lee and three reviewers for Progress
in Human Geography for their comments on an earlier draft. The research in this
article is funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, the award of
which is grateful acknowledged.
References
Agnew, J. 1994a. The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of
International Relations Theory, Review of International Political Economy
1, 53-80.
Agnew, J. 1994b. Timeless Space and State-Centrism: The Geographical
Assumptions of International Relations Theory, in Stephen J. Rosow, N.
Inayatullah and M. Rupert (eds.) The Global Economy as Political Space,
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 87-108.
Agnew, J. 1995. The Hidden Geographies of Social Science and the Myth of the
‗Geographical Turn‘. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13,
379-80.
Agnew, J. 2005. Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power, Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Agnew, J. 2009. Globalization and Sovereignty, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Alliès, P. 1980. L‘invention du territoire. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de
Grenoble.
18
Anderson, J. J. 1992. The Territorial Imperative: Pluralism, Corporatism, and
Economic Crisis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, M. 1996. Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern
World, Cambridge: Polity.
Anderson, P. 1974a. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London: NLB.
Anderson, P. 1974b. Lineages of the Absolutist State, London: NLB.
Antonsich, M. 2009. On Territory, the Nation-State and the Crisis of the Hyphen.
Progress in Human Geography, 33, 789-806.
Ardrey, R. 1967. The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal
Origins of Property and Nations, London: Collins.
Badie, B. 2000. The Imported State: The Westernization of the Political Order,
translated by Claudia Royal, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bede, 1969. Bede‘s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited by B.
Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Latin-English edition, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Bishai, L. M. 2004. Forgetting Ourselves: Secession and the (Im)possibility of
Territorial Identity, Lanham: Lexington Books.
Bohanan, P. 1966. African Outline: A General Introduction, Penguin:
Harmondsworth.
Brenner, N. and S. Elden, 2009. Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory,
International Political Sociology 3, 353-77.
Brown, R. 1855. An Inquiry into the Origin of the Name ‗Sunderland‘; and as to
the Birthplace of the Venerable Bede, in Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Archaeologica Aeliana; or, Miscellaneous Tracts
Relating to Antiquity, Volume IV, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Society of
Antiquaries, 273-83.
Bruner, O., Conze, W. and Koselleck, R. 1972-97. Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe:
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland,
Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, Eight Volumes.
Casey, E. S. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Casey, E. S. 2002. Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cicero, 1858. Orationes, with a commentary by G. Long, London: Whittaker and
Co., Four Volumes.
Colgrove, B. 1969. Historical Introduction, in Bede‘s Ecclesiastical History of the
English People, Bede‘s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited
by Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Latin-English edition, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, xvii-xxxviii.
Connolly, W. E. 1995. The Ethos of Pluralization, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Corner, J. 1999. The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention, in
D. Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings, London: Reaktion, 213-52.
19
Cosgrove, D. 1998. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, with a new
introduction, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Cox, K. 1991. Redefining ‗Territory‘, Political Geography Quarterly 10: 5-7.
Cox, K. 2003. Political Geography and the Territorial. Political Geography 22:
607-10.
Crampton, J. forthcoming. Cartographic Calculations of Territory. Progress in
Human Geography.
Dear, M. and J. Wolch 1989. How Territory Shapes Social Life. in M. Dear and J.
Wolch (eds.), The Power of Geography: How Territory Shapes Social Life,
Boston: Unwin Hyman, 3-18.
Delaney, D. 2005. Territory: A Short Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell.
Dockés, P. 1969. L‘espace dans la pensée économique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle,
Paris: Flammarion.
Doyle, P. and M. R. Bennett (eds.) 2002. Fields of Battle: Terrain in Military
History, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Doyle, P. and M. R. Bennett 2002. Terrain in Military History: An Introduction, in
Doyle and Bennett (eds.), Fields of Battle: Terrain in Military History,
Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1-7.
Driver, F. 1991. Political Geography and State Formation: Disputed Territory.
Progress in Human Geography 15, 268-80.
Elden, S. 2001. Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault and the Project of a
Spatial History, London/New York: Continuum.
Elden, S. 2003a. Another Sense of Demos: Kleisthenes and the Greek Division of
the Polis, Democratization 10, 135-156.
Elden, S. 2003b. Reading Genealogy as Historical Ontology. in A. Milchman and
A. Rosenberg (eds.) Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Elden, S. 2004. Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible, London:
Continuum.
Elden, S. 2005. Missing the Point: Globalisation, Deterritorialisation and the
Space of the World, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
30, 8-19
Elden, S. 2006. Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics
of Calculation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Elden, S. 2007. Governmentality, Calculation, Territory, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 25, 562-80.
Elden, S. 2009. Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Elden, S. 2010. Territory. in J.A. Agnew and J.S. Duncan (eds.), A Companion to
Human Geography, Oxford: Blackwell.
Evans, I. S. 1998. What do Terrain Statistics Really Mean? in S. Lane, K. Richards
and J. Chandler (eds.), Landform Monitoring, Modelling and Analysis,
Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 119-38.
20
Foucault, M. Questions on Geography, translated by C. Gordon, in J. Crampton
and S. Elden (eds.) Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and
Geography, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Foucault, M. 2004. Sécurite, Territoire, Population: Cours au Collège de France
(1977-1978), edited by M. Senellart, Paris: Gallimard.
Giddens, A. 1981. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism: Vol. 1
Power, Property and the State, London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. 1987. The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two of A
Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Godlewska, A. M. C. 1999. Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from
Cassini to Humboldt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gottmann, J. 1951. La politique des États et leur géographie, Paris: Armand
Colin.
Gottmann, J. 1973. The Significance of Territory, Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia.
Grosby, S. 1995. Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of Modern
Societies. Nations and Nationalism 1, 143-62.
Hachet-Souplet, P. 1912. La génèse des instincts, Paris: Flammarion.
Hadden, R. W. 1994. On the Shoulders of Merchants: Exchange and the
Mathematical Conception of Nature in Early Modern Europe, Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Hannah, M. 2009. Calculable Territory and the West-German Census Boycott
Movements of the 1980s. Political Geography 26, 66-75.
Harvey, D. 1982. The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hediger, H. 1955. Studies of the Psychology and Behaviour of Captive Animals in
Zoos and Circuses, translated by G. Sircom, London: Butterworths
Scientific Publications.
Heidegger, M. 1982. Parmenides, Gesamtausgabe Band 54, Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, M. 1992. Parmenides, translated by A. Schuwer & R. Rojcewicz
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hindess, B. 2006. Terrortory, Alternatives 31, 243-257.
Hoebel, E. A. 1949. Man in the Primitive World: An Introduction to Anthropology,
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Howard, E. 1948. Territory in Bird Life, London: Collins, 2nd Edition.
Jacob, C. 2006. The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography
Throughout History, translated by T. Conley, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Jessop B, N. Brenner and M. Jones 2008. Theorizing Sociospatial Relations,
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, 389-401.
Johnston, R. J. 1995. Territoriality and the State, in G. B. Benko and U.
Strohmayer, Geography, History, and Social Sciences, Dordrecht: Kluwer,
213-25.
21
Johnston, R. 2001. Out of the ‗Moribund Backwater‘: Territory and Territoriality in
Political Geography. Political Geography 20, 677-93.
Jones, R. 2007. Peoples/States/Territories: The Political Geographies of British
State Transformation, Oxford, Blackwell.
Jönsson, C., S. Tägil, and G. Törnqvist, 2000. Organizing European Space,
London: Sage.
King, G. 1996. Mapping Reality: An Exploration of Cultural Cartographies,
London: Palgrave.
Kolers, Avery 2009. Land, Conflict and Justice: A Political Theory of Territory,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koselleck. R. 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing
Concepts, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Koselleck. R. 2006. Begriffsgeschichten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Kratochwil, F. 1986. Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into
the Formation of the State System, World Politics XXXIX, 27-52.
Lacoste, Y. 1976. La géographie, ça sert, d‘abord, à faire la guerre, Paris:
François Maspero.
Lane, S. N., J. H. Chandler, and K. S. Richards 1998. Landform Monitoring,
Modelling and Analysis: Land Form in Geomorphological Research, in S.
Lane, K. Richards and J. Chandler (eds.), Landform Monitoring, Modelling
and Analysis, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1-17.
Lawrence, C., R. Byard and P. Beaven 1993. Terrain Evaluation Manual, London:
Transport Research Laboratory.
Lefebvre, H. 1974. La production de l‘espace, Paris: Anthropos.
Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space, translated by D. Nicholson-Smith
Oxford: Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays, edited by N. Brenner
and S. Elden, translated by G. Moore, N. Brenner and S. Elden,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Linklater, A. 2003. Measuring America: How the United States was Shaped by
the Greatest Land Sale in History, New York: Plume.
Macleod, G. and Jones, M. 2007. Territorial, Scalar, Networked, Connected: In
What Sense a ‗Regional World‘?, Regional Studies, 41, 1177-1191.
Malmberg, T. 1980. Human Territoriality: Survey of Behavioural Territories in
Man with Preliminary Analysis and Discussion of Meaning, The Hague:
Mouton Publishers.
Mann, M. 1986. The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from
the Beginning to AD 1760, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mann, M. 1993. The Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and
Nation States 1760-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marx, K. 1973. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
(Rough Draft), translated by M. Nicolaus, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
22
Marx, K. 1975. Preface (to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy), in
Early Writings, translated by R. Livingstone and G. Benton,
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, K. 1981a. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol I, translated by B.
Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, Karl 1981b. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol III, translated by
D. Fernbach, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, K. and F. Engels 1970. The German Ideology, edited by C. J. Arthur,
London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, K. and F. Engels 1983. Collected Works, London: Laurence & Wishart, Vol
40.
Mattelart, A. 1999. Mapping Modernity: Utopia and Communications Networks, in
D. Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings, London: Reaktion, 169-92.
Mbembe, A. 2001. On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Muir, R. 1981. Modern Political Geography, London: Macmillan, 1981.
Murphy, A. B. 1996. The Sovereign State System as Political-Territorial Ideal:
Historical and Contemporary Considerations, in T. Biersteker and C. Weber
(eds.), State Sovereignty as a Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 81-120.
Muscarà, L. 2005. Territory as a Psychosomatic Device: Gottmann‘s Kinetic
Political Geography. Geopolitics 10, 26-49.
Neocleous, M. 2003. Off the Map: On Violence and Cartography, European
Journal of Social Theory 6, 409-25.
November, V. 2002. Les territoires du risque: Le risque comme objet de reflexion
géographique, Bern: Peter Lang.
Olwig, K.R. 2002. Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic: From Britain‘s
Renaissance to America‘s New World, Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Paasi, A. 1996. Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: the Changing
Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border, London: John Wiley & Sons.
Paasi, A. 2009. Bounded Spaces in a 'Borderless World': Border Studies, Power
and the Anatomy of Territory. Journal of Power 2, 213-34.
Painter, J. 2009. Territory-Networks, unpublished manuscript.
Parry, J. T. 1984. Terrain Evaluation, Military Purposes, in C. W. Finkl, Jnr (ed.)
The Encyclopedia of Applied Geology, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold
Company, 570-80
Pickles, J. 2004. A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the
Geo-Coded World, London: Routledge.
Pocock, J.G.A. 2009. Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and
Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Raffestin, C. 1980. Pour une géographie du pouvoir, Paris: Libraires Techniques.
Raffestin, C. 1986. Elements for a Theory of the Frontier, translated by J.
Ferguson, Diogenes 34, 1-18.
23
Raffestin, C. 1988. Repères pour une théorie de la territorialité humaine, in G.
Dupuy, G. Amar and B. Barraque (eds.), Réseaux territoriaux, Caen:
Éditions Paradigme, 263-79.
Raffestin, C. 2007. Could Foucault have Revolutionized Geography? translated by
G. Moore, in J. Crampton and S. Elden (eds.) Space, Knowledge and
Power: Foucault and Geography, Aldershot: Ashgate, 129-37.
Reichardt, R. and Schmitt, E. 1985-. Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in
Frankreich 1680-1820, München: Oldenbourg, 21 volumes.
Ritter, J., Gründer, K., and Gabriel, G. 1971-2007. Historisches Wörterbuch der
Philosophie. Basle and Stuttgart, Schwabe, 13 volumes.
Rose, E. P. F. and C. P. Nathanail (eds.) 2000. Geology and Warfare: Examples
of the Influence of Terrain and Geologists on Military Operations, Bath:
The Geological Society.
Rose-Redwood, R. 2006. Governmentality, Geography and the Geo-Coded World.
Progress in Human Geography 30, 469-486.
Ruggie, J. 1993. Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in
International Relations, International Organization 47, 139-174.
Sack, R. D. 1980. Conceptions of Space in Social Thought: A Geographical
Perspective, London: Macmillan.
Sack, R. D. 1983. Human Territoriality: A Theory, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 73, 55-74.
Sack, R. D. 1986. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sack, R. D. 1997. Homo Geographicus: A Framework for Action, Awareness and
Moral Concern, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sahlins, P. 1989. Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrennees,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sassen, S. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global
Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Skinner, Q. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Two Volumes
Skinner, Q. 2002. Visions of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Three Volumes.
Soja, E. W. 1971. The Political Organization of Space, Commission on College
Geography Resource Paper No 8, Washington: Association of American
Geographers.
Soja, E. W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical
Social Theory, London: Verso.
Spruyt, H. 1994. The Sovereign State and its Competitors. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Steinberg, P. E. 1994. Territory, Territoriality and the New Industrial Geography,
Political Geography 13, 3-5.
24
Steinberg, P. E. 2009. Sovereignty, Territory, and the Mapping of Mobility: A
View from the Outside. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 99, 467-495.
Storey, D. 2001. Territory: The Claiming of Space, Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Strandsbjerg, J. 2008. The Cartographic Production of Territorial Space: Mapping
and State Formation in Early Modern Denmark. Geopolitics 13, 335-58.
Swetz, F. 1987. Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century,
La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Taylor, P. J. 1994. The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern WorldSystem, Progress in Human Geography 18, 151-62
Taylor, P. J. 1995. Beyond Containers: Internationality, Interstateness,
Interterritoriality, Progress in Human Geography 19, 1-15.
Teschke, B. 2003. The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of
Modern International Relations. New York: Verso.
Vollard, H. 2009. The Logic of Political Territoriality. Geopolitics 14, 687-706.
von Clausewitz, C. 1976. On War, edited and translated by M. Howard & P.
Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wagner, P. L. 1960. The Human Use of the Earth, London: Free Press of
Glencoe.
Wilson, J. P. and J. C. Gallant, 2000. Terrain Analysis: Principles and Applications,
New York: John Wiley.
Winichakul, T. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation,
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Winters, H. A. with G. E. Galloway Jr., W. J. Reynolds, and D. W. Rhyne 1998.
Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War,
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Woodward, R. 2004. Military Geographies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yiftachel, O. 2006. Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Notes
1
2
3
A recent book (Kolers 2009) makes the claim that territory is a ‗blind spot‘
of political philosophy, and aims to address this. However it applies liberal
justice theory to a relatively unproblematic notion of territory, rather than
providing a properly political theory of territory.
Similar claims are made, among others, by Gottman 1973: ix; Ruggie,
1993: 174; Kratochwil 1986: 27-8; and most recently by Antonisch 2009.
This is despite periodic attempts to reassert the importance of the concept
of territory to political geography. See, for example, Cox 1991, 2003;
Driver 1991; Johnston 2001. More detailed work has generally come from
those outside the discipline. See, for example, Mann 1986, 1993; Spruyt
1994; Teschke 2003.
25
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
One of the most productive developments of this in geography has been
Taylor 1994; 1995. For a recent account, see Paasi 2009.
This is not to suggest, of course, that territory is the privileged object of
social/spatial theory, but rather that compared to other dimensions (see
Jessop et. al 2008; Macleod and Jones 2007) it has been underexamined.
There is simply no study of territory comparable to Casey‘s for place; it is
conceptually much less examined than network; and with the exceptional
of some initial skirmishes (i.e. Cox 1991; Steinberg 1994) there has been
no ‗territory debate‘. Other terms, such as landscape, have received much
more careful historical analysis (see Cosgrove 1998; Olwig 2002).
An attempt to show how an understanding of territory can illuminate
contemporary events is made in Elden 2009.
Key works in animal behaviour that influenced this work include HachetSouplet 1912; Howard 1948; and Hediger 1955.
From within political science Grosby (1995) has attempted to reassert this
notion.
A related criticism might be offered of his Conceptions of Space in Social
Thought (1980), which offers a conceptual but largely ahistorical account
of different understandings of space, particularly in relation to the divide
and relation between the human and physical sciences. For discussions
which use Sack to think the more specific territory of the state see
Johnston 1995, 2001; and within political science Vollard 2009.
A broader sense of the military impact on space and environment is found
in Woodward 2004.
Though see Anderson 1996: 17, where he suggests that the recordkeeping exercise of the Domesday book, and one a century later in France
―was the basis of a new conception of territory in Western Europe, which
gradually spread to central and eastern Europe‖.
This argument is made at greater length in Elden 2005. For a range of
useful accounts see Dockés 1969; Swetz 1987; Hadden 1994; and
Linklater 2003.
The philosophical aspects of this model of calculation were discussed in
Elden 2001 and 2006; and the relation between the state and space was a
key theme in Elden 2004, especially Chapters 5 and 6.
Related analyses of calculation deriving from Foucault can also be found in
Rose-Redwood 2006; Hannah 2009; Steinberg 2009; Crampton,
forthcoming.
For an initial survey, see Elden 2010.
26