The Concept of Territoriality and Attachment to Place

Abstract

The two major aims of this article are to survey the different phases in the introduction and definition of‘Territoriality’ as a concept in Western geographical literature, and to investigate the definitions from a meta-geographical point of view, focusing on the axiomatical structure of each definition and the ideological characteristics which each structure has as a system of representation of the world from on a particular social standpoint.‘Territoriality’ in human geography has its origin in ethology, and the concept was introduced in geography at the beginning of the 1960's. In ethology, the concept was defined first as the aggressive instinct of an organism defending its surroundings. The logic of this theory is a bit circular because of its premise of‘an aggressive instinct to be controlled’. This difficulty was overcome for example in sociobiology by posutulating the maximization of‘inclusive fitness’: in this view, territoriality is defined as a strategy which functions when the defense of a territory brings more benefit than non-territorial behavior. This postulate derives from the original metaphor of the utilitarian behavior of man in Europe, and it became the frame of reference in interpreting animal behavior. At any rate, the ethological concept stimulated an interest in human geography in the territorial behavior of man, which has generally been neglected in spatial analysis and is defined as an attempt to control actions and interactions of objects by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a specific geographical area.The influence of the ethological concept on human geography can be found in some definitions, where geographers use the works of ethologists, but generally they cite first the concept implicitly in an analogical way: there was not any reflection about the difference between animals and man. For example, from the end of the 1960's to the middle of the 1970's, the ethnic or religious segregation within a city is cited as an urban territoriality of man. These implicit analogies are examined in behavioral geography in the 1980's, and it is explicitly recognized that human territoriality has not only biological bases but also symbolical and institutional aspects which are different from animals, and that territoriality has an analogical sense in human behavior.In addition to this behavioral territoriality, the analogical use of the concept has been examined from the humanistic approach from the middle of the 1970's, in the name of ‘emotional territoriality’. This approach aims to surpass simple analogies and reflect the emotions and symbols of mankind. It partly criticizes the behavioral approach because of its axiomatical restriction of the object to the observable and measurable, and treats the concept of territoriality by connecting it with ideas such as‘attachment to place’and so on.The same connection with the emotional is found in some theories in political geography from the beginning of the 1970's. For example, there are such expressions as ‘group's sense of attachment to geographical area’and‘sense of belonging to a particular place’, which signify the sharing in common of a territorial iconography or symbolism like a national flag. These emotional conceptions can be called: a societal territoriality, which is related to the formation and maintenance of‘an attachment to place’by ideological manipulation and societal forces. This conception is found also in the concept of social space, where a value system and other social factors are homogeneous.From another point of view, a conceptual investigation enables us to clarify the ideological and disguised characteristics of these emotional conceptions in the real world, and particularly in geographical theories.

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