The Political Uses of Territoriality

In: Environment and behavior: eb ; publ. in coop. with the Environmental Design Research Association, Band 20, Heft 5, S. 576-600

Abstract

This article describes the territorial dimensions of a recurrent struggle between authority and community. Authority prefers and requires the expansion of territorial units; community prefers and requires the contraction of units. A model is proposed that attempts to synthesize these countertendencies by arguing that territorial expansion occurs as part of a process of expanding production, but that the consumption of the resulting productive surplus contracts territories and creates waste. The process is entropic, and helps explain why neither authority nor community triumphs.