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.