Category Archives: territories

Lines, barred lines. Movement, territory and the law

International Journal of Law in Context, 6,3 pp. 217–227 (2010) Cambridge University Press

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7878758&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1744552310000121

.

In this paper an attempt is made to analyse the complex relationship between law, territory and movement. Beginning with a quick overview of the notion of property, the paper suggests that this legal notion represents a way of imagining the practice of inhabiting the planet. Dwelling and travelling are explored as two alternative and complementary ways of inhabiting, and a closer inspection is paid to the moments when they confront each other both ideologically and practically. A territorial question is identified at the core of law, namely the issue of the movement of bodies in space (or motility), together with the control of such movements. From this perspective, movement is not simply one among the many objects over which law exerts control, rather law itself is a territorial endeavour, a movement that acts upon other movements.

.

On Territorology. Towards a General Science of Territory

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 27(1): 52–72, March 2010

http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/1/52

.

The development of territorology requires the overcoming of the dichotomy
between determinist and constructivist approaches, in order to advance
towards a general science of territory and territorial phenomena. Insights
for this task can come from at least four main threads of research: biology,
zooethology and human ethology; human ecology, social psychology and
interactionism; human, political and legal geography; and philosophy. In
light of the insights derived from these traditions, the article aims to conceptualize
territorial components, technologies, movements, effects, and their
interplay, in order to establish the main lines of inquiry for territorology. A
general territorology, it is argued, amounts to a sociology of territorial acts
and relations, whose aim is to analyze the expressive and functional components
of territories, as fixed through their organizational and technological
devices.

pdf version