Human Territoriality: A Theory
Author(s): Robert D. Sack
Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers , Mar., 1983, Vol. 73, No. 1
(Mar., 1983), pp. 55-74
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of American
Geographers
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Human Territoriality: A Theory
Robert D. Sack
Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706
Abstract. Territoriality is a means of affecting (enhancing or impeding) interaction and extends
the particulars of action by contact. Territoriality is defined here as the attempt to affect, influence,
or control actions, interactions, or access by asserting and attempting to enforce control
over a specific geographic area. A theory of territoriality is developed that contains ten potential
consequences and fourteen primary combinations of consequences to territorial strategies. It is
hypothesized that any instance of territoriality will draw from among these. Specific consequences
and combinations are predicted to occur in particular social-historical contexts.
Key Words: territoriality, spatial analysis, power, control, accessibility.
HUMAN territoriality is a vast, yet often neglected,
facet of human behavior. I propose
to analyze territoriality by considering it
to be a strategy for influence or control. I shall
present a theory of the potential advantages
that can come from the use of territoriality.
By human territoriality I mean the attempt
to affect, influence, or control actions and
interactions (of people, things, and relationships)
by asserting and attempting to enforce
control over a geographic area (Sack
1981). This definition applies whether such
attempts are made by individuals or by
groups, and it applies at any scale from the
room to the international arena. This is not
the usual definition of the term and is intended
to include many facets of behavior
often referred to by other concepts such as
property in land (real estate), sovereignty,
dominion, "turf," and "fixed personal space."
Like Dyson-Hudson and Alden-Smith
(1978), I shall skirt the issue of whether
human territoriality is a biological drive or instinct.
Rather, I see it as a strategy for establishing
differential access to things and
people. Interactions or access can occur
either territorially or nonterritorially. Nonterritorial
interactions have been the primary
focus of systematic spatial analysis. Yet these
occur in causal relationship to numerous
kinds and levels of territories. To ignore territoriality
or simply to assume it as part of the
context is to leave unexamined many of the
forces molding human spatial organization.
The area of geography that has most often
sensed the significance of territoriality is political
geography, but with some exceptions
(Soja 1971, 1974) political geography has not
yielded a sustained and systematic analysis of
its role and function. I intend to show how a
theory of the potential consequences of territoriality
can help to make a spatial perspective
of more direct use to the analysis
of property, political sovereignty, and the
territorial structure of organizations.
This paper is divided into three main sections.
The first develops the theory and contains
subsections on territoriality and spatial
analysis, the definition of territoriality,
hypotheses, tendencies, and combinations.
The second is about tests and implications of
the theory for large-scale social organizations,
and the third is about the implications
of the theory for individuals and informal
groups.
Theory
Territoriality and Spatial Analysis
For x to affect, influence, or control y presupposes
the transmission of energy between
x and y, where x represents a person, group,
or class doing the influencing or controlling,
and y represents a person, group, class, or
resource being influenced or controlled. The
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73(1), 1983, pp. 55-74
? Copyright 1983 by Association of American Geographers
55
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56 Sack
interaction must follow the principle of action
by contact which is based on the law of conservation
of energy (Hesse 1967; Sack 1973).
That is, contact will be along a continuum
from direct contact, which means touching,
to degrees of indirect contact, from speaking
face to face to transmitting information via
electromagnetic waves. Forms of contact depend
on technology and change historically.
Conventional spatial analysis has attempted
to specify the relative spatial configurations
that interacting objects possess and the
importance of the configurations to the process.
It encompasses a range from personal
distances to spatial arrangements of cities
and regions, and the flows of people, goods,
and ideas among them (Sack 1980). But conventional
spatial analysis has largely ignored
territoriality. Territoriality is a means by which
x can affect, influence, or control y. Territoriality
is based on, and extends, the principles
of action by contact (Sack 1973).
To illustrate the difference between territorial
and nonterritorial actions, both of which
are based on action by contact, let us suppose
a parent is home minding the children.
They are found in the study scribbling on note
cards, upsetting piles of books, and ripping
up manuscripts. The parent could have a
face-to-face, heart-to-heart talk with the children,
telling them not to touch these books,
note cards, and manuscripts. The parent
might even spank them. In either case, the
parent is attempting to control the actions of
the children directly by contact, and in a way
that focuses on specific categories of things
such as books, note cards, and manuscripts.
The parent, x, is attempting nonterritorially to
limit the children's (y) access to these re-
sources.
But there is another alternative to the same
goal. The parent could hope to control the
actions of the children regarding books,
manuscripts, and note cards without telling
them not to touch just these kinds of things.
This could be done by telling the children that
they may not go into the study without permission,
that the study is off limits. This is an
example of territoriality because it is an attempt
by x to limit the children's (y) access to
things by asserting control over an area. Of
course, asserting that the study is off limits,
as well as enforcing the assertion, requires
that the information be transmitted to the
children and that their behavior be monitored.
This, of course, requires contact and is
nonterritorial, but territoriality, if it works, can
avoid other nonterritorial contacts, in this
case further admonitions by the parent of the
children.
Definition of Territoriality
At this point let me define what I mean by
territoriality explicitly: the attempt by an individual
or group (x) to influence, affect, or
control objects, people, and relationships (y)
by delimiting and asserting control over a
geographic area. This area is the territory.
Please note:1
-This is not a usual definition of the term. (For
its many meanings and uses see Altman 1970,
1975; Edney 1974; Esser 1970; Malmberg 1980;
Soja 1971; Sommer 1969; Stokes 1974. But it is
close in intention to the meaning given by
Dyson-Hudson and Alden-Smith 1978.) The
most common definition is defense of area.
The individual is expected to be in the area
he/she is to defend. Defending area is presented
as a goal in itself or as a means to such
specific ends as control of population density,
control of food resources, or assertion of
dominance.
-Territoriality is an extension of action by contact.
It is a strategy to establish differential access
to people, things, and relationships. Its
alternative is always nonterritorial action.
-Geographic area can refer to either fixed or
portable areas, and x does not have to be in the
territory to assert control over it.
-Territoriality is built on or imbeded in nonterritoriality.
Nonterritoriality is required to back
up territoriality.
-Territoriality is not simply the circumscription
of things in space. It is not equal to a region or
area or territory in the old sense. It is circumscription
with the intent to influence, affect,
or control. A geographer's denoted region,
e.g., the Corn Belt, is not a territory in our
sense of the word, nor is the nodal region of
central place theory. Neither case uses an assertion
of control with the implication of sanctions
for transgressions.
-There are degrees of territorializing. A
maximum-security prison is more territorial
than a half-way house, and a closed classroom
is more territorial than an open one.
-There are numerous ways in which territoriality
can be asserted, including legal rights to property
in land and cultural norms and prohibitions
about usage of areas.2
-Territoriality occurs at all scales, from the
room to the nation-state. Territoriality is not an
object but a relationship. A room may be a territory
at one time and not at another.
-Territories most often occur hierarchically and
are part of complex hierarchical organizations.
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Human Territoriality 57
Although my example was of a room, the following
discussion can apply to factories,
nation-states, and other institutions.
-Considering territoriality a strategy for differential
access avoids the issue of whether territoriality
is an instinct.
-This definition cuts across prospectives and
levels of analysis. It involves the perspectives
of those controlled and those doing the controlling,
whether they be groups or individuals.
The overriding assumption is that despite
the inumerable kinds of territoriality and
levels of hierarchies, forms of technology,
and historical conditions and reasons for
control, under certain conditions territoriality
is a more effective means of establishing differential
access to people, or resources, than
is nonterritoriality for some or all of ten reasons.
These ten reasons will be labeled potential
reasons for, or causes of, territoriality,
or potential consequences or effects of territoriality,
depending on whether x is interested
in establishing new territories or
using already existing ones. (There is no hope
of differentiating between a reason and a
cause, or between a consequence or effect,
without knowing the particular case. And
even then there are many who argue that reasons
are causes (Keat and Urry 1975). In any
case, both reasons and causes would draw
upon the same set of potentialities, the difference
being in how these potentialities influence
behavior. To avoid overusing a term I
shall interchange reason with cause, and
consequence with effect, and use the terms
potentialities or tendencies to subsume all
four.)
These ten reasons can apply either to relations
between individuals in small and informal
groups or to individuals in hierarchical
organizations. Of particular importance is
that they form fourteen primary combinations
that pertain especially to territorial behavior
in hierarchical organizations. Any instance of
territoriality will draw from among the ten
tendencies either singly or in the form of primary
combinations, and certain kinds of social
relations and hierarchical organizations
can be expected to use specific tendencies
and combinations.
A Preface to the Phrasing of the
Tendencies and the Primary Combinations
To identify and elaborate the role of territoriality
means that territoriality has to be conceptually
separated and described apart from
its numerous contexts. Identifying and
analyzing the implications of territoriality in
the abstract is somewhat analogus to the
quest for the meaning of geographic distance
in spatial analysis. One critical difference is
that territoriality is always socially or humanly
constructed whereas, physical distance is
not. This means that territoriality does not
exist unless there is a relationship x and y
specified by our definition. But no relationship
need exist between two objects in space
for there to be a distance between them.
Apart from comparing distances, there is little
that can be said abstractly about their potentials
to affect behavior. Their impacts depend
on the contexts in which they are used. Substituting
the physical measure of distance for
the physically and socially significant channels
of communication or interaction is to run
the risk of treating distance nonrelationally
(Sack 1973).
All territorial relationships are defined
within a social context, albeit an extremely
general one, of differential access to things
and to people. Because of this, more can be
said abstractly about territoriality than can be
said about distance; and because of its social
context, what is said can have normative implications.
In presenting the tendencies,
these normative implications will be held in
abeyance as much as possible until the
combinations are discussed. That is, the ten
tendencies will be described "neutrally." The
descriptions will not suggest that the use of
territoriality is either good or bad. Yet negative
or positive implications can be read into
these neutral descriptions. Such connotations
will, however, be addressed directly in
the discussion of the primary combinations.
Indeed, some of the combinations differ from
one another only in the purposes to which the
power or influence over territory are put or, in
other words, in the degree to which the combinations
draw upon benign or malevolent
connotations. These normative terms are still
intended to be very abstract and general. By a
benign relationship it is meant that the differential
access through territoriality favors both
x and y and does not disadvantage y. In other
words a benign relationship is nonexploitative.
Such a context is approached at an individual
level when a parent x uses territoriality
to prevent a young child y from running into
traffic, and at a group level when the workers
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58 Sack
x ory of a democratically organized and controlled
factory elect some of their members x
or y to serve for terms as managers. A
malevolent relationship occurs when differential
access through territoriality benefits x
at the expense of y.
Keeping the descriptions of the tendencies
neutral and the normative meanings of the
combinations general separates the expression
of the theory of territoriality from particular
theories of power and society. This allows
territoriality an intellectual "space" of its
own and prevents territoriality from becoming
the captive of any particular ethical theory or
theory of power. But the theory of territoriality
needs to have its contexts specified. It addresses
tendencies and potentials. By itself, it
can not be very precise about which potentials
or combinations will be put into action
because it says little about who is influencing
or controlling whom and for what purposes. It
needs to be combined with or informed by
descriptions of contexts or theories about
power and influence. Formulating the theory
of territoriality independently of particular
theories of power makes it possible to match
its tendencies and combinations to more than
one specific theory of power and social organization.
Such matchings can help specify
more clearly the context under which certain
potentials and combinations of territoriality
can be expected to occur, and it can make
clearer the territorial basis of theories of
power.3
The Ten Tendencies of Territoriality
By definition, territoriality, as an assertion
of control, is a conscious act, yet x need not
be conscious of the ten potentials or tendencies
for them to exist and to have effect.
These tendencies of territoriality come to the
fore given certain conditions. They are not independent
of one another. In fact, the first
three listed below-classification, communication
and enforcement-can be considered
logically (though not empirically) prior and
the rest derivative. This is because the first
three can be involved in the process in two
ways. First, they are by definition essential
attributes of any territory. That is, all examples
of territoriality would contain them. They
are necessary and sufficient attributes of territoriality,
which follow from our definition of
what we mean by the term. But second, these
three potentialities may not be either necessary
or sufficient reasons/causes for territoriality.
That is, although territoriality must
provide the potential for classification, communication,
and enforcement, it could be
"caused" by any one or several or all of the
ten. Let us proceed in order from No. 1 to No.
10 and again be reminded that the terms used
to describe them could fit either a benign,
neutral, or malevolent social context.
1. Territoriality involves a form of classification
that is extremely efficient under
certain circumstances. Territoriality
classifies at least in part by area, rather
than by type. When we say that anything
in this area or room is ours, or is
off-limits to you, we are classifying or
assigning things to a category such as
"ours" or "not yours" according to
their location in space. We need not
stipulate the kinds of things in place
that are ours or not yours. Thus territoriality
avoids, to varying degrees, the
need for enumeration and classification
by kind and may be the only means of
asserting control if we cannot enumerate
all of the significant factors and
relationships to which we have access.
This is especially true in political affairs,
where a part of the political is its concern
with novel conditions and re-
lationships.
2. Territoriality can be easy to communicate
because it requires only one kind
of marker or sign-the boundary. The
territorial boundary may be the only
symbolic form that combines direction
in space and a statement about possession
or exclusion. (Road signs and
other directional signs do not indicate
possession. Territoriality's simplicity
for communication may be why it is
often used by animals.)
3. Territoriality can be the most efficient
strategy for enforcing control, if the
distribution in space and time of the resources
or things to be controlled fall
somewhere between ubiquity and unpredictability.
For instance, models of
animal foraging have shown that territoriality
is more efficient for animals
when food is sufficiently abundant and
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Human Territoriality 59
predictable in space and time whereas
nonterritorial actions are more suitable
for the converse situation. The same
has been shown to hold in selected
cases of human hunting and gathering
societies (Dyson-Hudson and AldenSmith
1978; Stokes 1974).
4. Territoriality provides a means of
reifying power. Power and influence
are not always as tangible as are
streams and mountains, roads, and
houses. Moreover, power and the like
are often potentialities. Territoriality
makes potentials explicit and real by
making them "visible."
5. Territoriality can be used to displace
attention from the relationship between
controller and controlled to the territory,
as when we say "it is the law of the
land" or "you may not do this here".
Legal and conventional assignments of
behavior to territories are so complex
and yet so important and well understood
in the well-socialized individual
that one often takes such assignments
for granted and thus territory appears
as the agent doing the controlling.
6. By classifying at least in part by area
rather than by kind or type, territoriality
helps make relationships impersonal.
The modern city by and large is
an impersonal community. The primary
criterion for belonging is domicile
within the territory. The prison and
work place exhibit this impersonally in
the context of a hierachy. A prison
guard is responsible for a block of cells
in which there are prisoners; the
guard's domain as supervisor is defined
territorially. The same is true of
the foreman and the workers on the assembly
line, and so on.
7. The interrelationships among the territorial
units and the activities they enclose
may be so complicated that it is
virtually impossible to unpack all of the
reasons for controlling the activities
territorially. When this happens the territoriality
appears as a general, neutral,
essential means by which a place is
made, or a space cleared and maintained,
for things to exist. Societies
make this place-clearing function explicit
and permanent in the concept of
property rights in land. The many controls
over things distributed in space
(as the interplay between preventing
things without the territory having access
to things within and things within
having access to things without) become
condensed to the view that
things need space to exist. In fact, they
do need space in the sense that they
are located and take up area, but the
need is territorial only when there are
certain kinds of competition for things
(in space). It is not competition for space
that occurs but rather a competition for
things and relationships in space.
8. Territoriality acts as a container or
mold for the spatial properties of
events. The influence and authority of a
city, although spreading far and wide,
is "legally" assigned to its political
boundaries. The territory becomes the
object to which other attributes are assigned,
as in the case of the political
territory being the unit receiving federal
support.
9. When the things to be contained are
not present, the territory is conceptually
"empty." Territoriality in fact helps
create the idea of a socially empty
space. Take the parcel of vacant land in
the city. It is an empty lot, though it is
not physically empty for there may be
grass and soil on it. It is empty because
it is devoid of socially or economically
valuable artifacts. In this respect, territoriality
conceptuality separates space
from things and then recombines them
as an assignment of things to places
and places to things. This assignment
or recombination makes it appear as
though there is a problem of which fact
to place where, or of facts without
places and places without facts.
10. Territoriality can help engender more
territoriality and more relationships to
mold. When there are more events than
territories or when the events extend
over greater areas than do the territories,
new territories are generated
for these events. Conversely, new
events may need to be produced for
new and empty territories.
These are brief descriptions of the ten consequences
that we hypothesize could come
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60 Sack
from the use of territorial organization and
that would be drawn upon to explain the reasons
for having territorial, as opposed to
nonterritorial, activity. Once again, these tendencies
are not independent and their precise
number and definition is not as critical as the
question of whether or not they contain the
essential facets of territoriality. Not all of them
need be used in any particular territorial instance
in history, and (as mentioned) their
meanings or imports would depend on the
historical conditions of technology and who
controls whom and for what purpose, i.e.,
their social context.
Primary Combinations
Most of human behavior occurs within
hierarchies of territorial organizations (e.g.,
individuals live in cities, which are in states,
which are in nations, etc.). Hence everything
we said about territories applies, in addition,
to hierarchical territorial organization. For
example, acting as a mold (No. 8) in terms of a
hierarchy of territories, as in the nation, the
states, and the municipalities, could mean
that a goal, such as 4 percent unemployment,
can be described at one geographic level
such as the national level, rather than at another,
such as the local level. Hence we can
have geographic precision at one scale and
not at another. Or a more general case would
be that territoriality, as a means of circumscribing
knowledge and responsibility by
limiting access to things as in Nos. 1 to 3
would be, in hierarchy, a series of levels of
circumscription of knowledge and responsibility,
with the lowest level and the smallest
territory having the least knowledge, the
highest having access to the most, by having
access to the entire territory.
In this vein, and still without being specific
about social contexts, we can procede to
consider the possible primary combinations
and general import of these tendencies within
social hierarchies. Figure 1 is a matrix tracing
the connections among the elementary tendencies
(Nos. 1 to 10) and the primary combinations
(a to m). The matrix shows only the
important links. An ?signifiesthata potential
is extremely important, and an x that it is important.
The absence of an x means that the
tendency is not important for that particular
combination. It does not mean that it has no
effect at all. (Note that whereas Nos. 1, 2, and
3 must be attributes of territoriality, they need
not be important causes/consequences of
territoriality. Their inclusion in the matrix is to
indicate when they, as characteristics of territoriality,
also become important causal consequences
of territoriality.) Without linking
territoriality to specific social contexts, we
cannot be more precise about the degree to
which each tendency contributes to a combination
or whether the x's can be called necessary
and/or sufficient conditions. It should
be noted that some combinations differ only
in the connotations and weights placed on
the tendencies.
a. Perhaps the most important and general
combination is that all ten tendencies
can be important components of
complex and rigid hierarchies. Specifically,
Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8 are important,
for they can allow hierarchical circumscription
of knowledge and responsibility,
impersonal relationships,
and strict channels of communication,
all of which are essential components
of bureaucracy (Scott 1981, 68).
b. Not only is the scope of knowledge
graded according to levels, but so too
would the scope of responsibility in
space and time by enforcing (No. 3) and
molding (No. 8) access to information.
Long-term planning would be the responsibility
of the highest level with access
to the greatest scope in knowledge
and short-term planning (or no planning
at all) would be the responsibility
of the lowest territorial level. Moreover,
an action could be subdivided into
parts, those having to do with policy
and the initiation of an activity, and
those having to do with the details of
carrying it out. The former would pertain
to the higher territorial levels, the
latter to the lower levels.
c. Upper echelons of an hierarchy tend to
use territories to define (No. 1), enforce
(No. 3) and mold (No. 8) groups, with
the result that members may be collected
and dealt with impersonally (No.
6). It is this cluster (Nos. 1, 3, 6, and 8) to
which the historical-anthropological literature
points when it discusses the territorial
definition of social relationships.
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Human Territoriality 61
x Tendency is important
4+ X ~ gg~ d/Sg &tS t () ~ ?Tendency is extremely important
COMBINATIONS
X X X x x a, Hierarchy and bureaucracy
x xL xL xt j, Divide and conquer
x x x x x n, Secession
c, Territorial definition of
x X X X social relations
x x x g, Mismatch and spillover
k Obfuscation by a
x x x k, ~~~~~~~wrong scale territory
x x h, Territoriality, an end, not a means
(X) 1, Social conflict obscured byx x territorial conflict-horizontal displ.
b, Long and short ran
x I A I ~~~~~~~~and stages
Obfuscation by stages. Clear at
x x m, nat. level, unclear at local
| | 0 H d, Efficient supervision-span of
control
x i, Inequalities
X . f Magic-representx__ x_ 9powerful in itself
x x x x x x x e, Conceptual separation and recom'
bination of space and substance
Figure 1. Internal relations of tendencies and combinations.
This is a relative concept and its opposite
is asocial definition of territory. The
difference between them is a matter of
degree.
An example of a territorial definition
of social relations would be the U.S. requirement
for becoming a voting
member and thus a part of an American
municipality. All one needs is to be a
U.S. citizen over a certain age and a
resident of the community. The community
is defined territorially and the
location within the territory is a necessary
condition for belonging to the
community. Laws enacted by the community
apply within its territorial jurisdication.
On the other hand, the rules
about inheritance of private property in
land would be an example of a social
definition of territory. The legal heir of
the deceased would come to own the
land regardless of where geographically
the heir is located. Every actual
claim to territory may involve elements
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62 Sack
of both, as when citizenship in American
municipalities is given only to U.S.
citizens. It has been observed that
primitive societies tend to rely more on
a social definition of territory whereas
civilizations and especially modern
societies do the opposite.
d. A significant yet simple combination is
that the hierarchical territorial circumscription
of knowledge and responsibility
(No. 3) can provide a very
efficient means of supervision. For
example, constraining the movements
of prisoners by placing them in cells
makes easier the task of supervising
them than if they were allowed to roam
freely in the prison. Indeed, even the
prison walls without cells are a more effective
means of supervision than is a
nonterritorial means of contact such as
handcuffing a guard to each prisoner.
An important index of the degree of
supervisory efficiency would be the
span of control, i.e., the number of
supervisors per supervisees.
e. The combination of elements constituting
a territorial definition of social
relationships (Nos. 1, 3, 5, and 8) in
conjunction with the concept of a neutral
space-clearing device (No. 7) and
conceptually empty space (No. 9) point
to the oscillation, on a practical level,
between continual filling and emptying
a territorial mold and, on a conceptual
level, of the repeated separation and
recombinations of space and substance
through time. Both levels suggest the
contingent nature of the location of
objects in territory. The combination is
especially significant in modern society
and may characterize the conception of
territory most closely linked with modern
modes of thought. Science and
technology make practical the idea of
repeatedly controlling, filling, and emptying
vast territories; and, on a smaller
scale, technology and working conditions
produce purpose-built places
such as factories that are territorial
molds or containers for indefinitely
varied economic activities or, when
they are empty, for nothing at all. Consumer
society makes change essential;
geographically, change and the future
are seen as sets of spatial configurations
different from those that exist now
or that existed in the past. (A place that
has not changed its appearance has
been bypassed by time; it has stood
still.) Planning for change and thinking
of the future involves imagining the
separation and recombination of space
and substances (e.g., city planning involves
imagining a series of emptyings
and fillings). Territoriality, through Nos.
1, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9, serves as the device
to keep space empty or to mold things
together.
f. The combinations of reification (No. 4)
and displacement (No. 5) could lead
to a magical perspective. Reification
through territory is a means of making
authority visible. Displacement was defined
as having people take the visible
territorial manifestations as the sources
of power. The first makes the sources of
power prominent, whereas the second
disguises them. When the two are
combined they can lead to a mystical
view of place or territory. This is what
often happens, for example, in the
Catholic Church. Catholicism reifies
when it makes the distinction between
the primary sources of power (i.e., faith
and the church invisible) and the physical
manifestations of these (i.e., the
church visible). But Catholicism displaces
when it has worshippers believe
that the physical structures of the
Church and its holy places emanate
power. This is also what happens in
nationalism. The territory is a physical
manifestation of the state's authority,
and yet allegiance to territory or homeland
makes territory appear as a source
of authority.
g. The territorial component in complex
organizations can have a momentum of
its own, on the one hand increasing the
need for hierarchy and bureaucracy and
on the other diminishing their effectiveness.
This can come about when definition
and enforcement by area (Nos. 1
and 3) lead (unintentionally) to the circumscription
of the wrong area or the
wrong scale and thus to a mismatch of
territory and process. The mismatch
may become aggravated by using the
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Human Territoriality 63
territory as a mold (No. 8). Mismatch
would diminish the organization's effectiveness;
but because knowledge
and responsibility within the organization
are unequally shared, responsibility
for rectifying the problem may fall to the
existing hierarchy and thus entrench
and increase the role of bureaucracy.
h. Displacement (No. 5), in conjunction
with impersonality (No. 6) and territorial
multiplication (No. 10), makes it easier
for the territory to appear to be the end
rather than the means of control. An
example of this is the "people versus
place" issue that arises when municipalities
rather than people receive federal
funds (Edel 1980).
i. The territorial component can have a
momentum of its own to create inequalities.
Its facility in helping to establish
differential access to things (No.
3) can become institutionalized in rank,
privilege, and class.
j. The same tendencies that contribute to
effective organization and bureaucracy,
as discussed in a, could change their
import by being used as a general
means of dividing and conquering and
of making the organization more entrenched
and indispensible for the
coordination of the parts. In the context
of the workplace, the ten tendencies of
territoriality can be used to "deskill" a
workforce and create factory discipline
(Edwards 1979; Katz 1978; Marglin
1974-5).
k. Classification (No. 1), enforcement (No.
3), and mold (No. 8) especially can be
used (intentionally) to mismatch things
to places and places to things yet
obscure the mismatch by making
people believe that the assignment of
the particular tasks to the particular territories
is indeed appropriate. An example
of this would be assigning major responsibility
for funding pollution
abatement to local levels of government
(Dear 1981).
I. Displacement (No. 5), impersonal relations
(No. 6), and engendering territory
(No. 1 0) cou Id direct attention away
from causes of social conflict to conflicts
among territories themselves.
Examples of this can be seen in attention
given the urban crises and the conflicts
between the inner city versus the
suburbs and the Snowbelt versus the
Sunbelt rather than to social-economic
relationships causing the conflicts.
m. Molding (No. 8) the geography of actions
at various scales, coupled with assigning
long- and short-range planning
responsibilities to corresponding levels
of the hierarchy (Nos. 3 and 8 or b),
gives organizations the opportunity to
obfuscate the geographic impact of an
event. Either the geographic impact is
not clear at one or more of the crucial
levels or a decision is divided into parts,
so that the initiation of an action (that
may be irreversible) is considered in the
context of the largest territory and the
implementation of the action is left later
to the smaller territories (Pressman and
Wildavsky 1973; Vernez 1980). A combination
of the two could be our national
policy regarding nuclear power.
We can have a national goal to have 20
percent of our electricity generated by
nuclear power. This goal would pertain
to the nation as a whole and could be
well under way before the decisions to
locate the plants are made at the local
levels and before the decisions to dispose
of waste are even contemplated.
n. The same tendencies that could help to
make hierarchical organizational control
effective (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8 or a
andj) could backfire, leading instead to
a reduction of control and even to secession.
Dividing, conquering, deskilling,
and making relationships impersonal
may be nullified or offset by the
potentials they have of creating disorganization,
alienation, and hostility. In
some cases the assembly line went too
far in circumscribing and deskilling
(Edwards 1979). Workers have reacted
to senseless assignments and to alienation
with various degrees of resistance,
and industry has recently begun
to explore new kinds of organizations
aimed at decreasing the territorial circumscription
of workers at the lower
levels of the hierarchy (Aguren 1976;
Emery and Thorsrud 1969; Hackman
and Oldham 1980; Pugh and Payne
1977). Moreover, those who resist cirThis
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64 Sack
cumscription can make use of the
existing territories in various ways, as
when prisoners literally take possession
of cells and cell blocks, or as when political
units secede. In such cases we
would hypothesize that the reasons for
employing territory would come from
among the ten.
Internal Structure of the Theory
The explicit interrelationships among the
tendencies and combinations provide a description
of the theory's internal structure.
The previous discussion points to the most
obvious links. The matrix in Figure 1 along
with the preceding descriptions of the combinations,
makes it clear that some of the
combinations use exactly the same tendencies
as do others, but differ in the weights
assigned to them and in the emphasis placed
on their connotations and normative meanings.
For example, hierarchy, a, and divide
and conquer j, and secession, n, all employ
tendencies (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8) but they do
so with different imports. Hierarchy and bureaucracy,
a, can be thought of either as a
benevolent or neutral organization using territory.
Divide and conquer, j, emphasizes the
negative aspects of Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8 and
describes a malevolent organization wherein
x uses territoriality to disadvantage y. Secession,
n, describes the condition wherein y
uses territorial tendencies (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, and
8) to lessen or remove the authority of x. Similarly,
obfuscation by assigning the wrong
scale of territory, k, is the malevolent side of
mismatch and spillover, g. Social conflict
obscured by territorial conflict is the negative
side of territoriality as an end, h. Obfuscation
by stages (in terms of time and scale), m, is
the negative side of long- and short-range
planning, b; inequalities, /, is the negative
side of efficient supervision-span of control,
d.
The matrix also points to dynamic relationships
among the combinations and to likely
links or paths among them. Overall, there is
the suggestion that territoriality can help to
further the goals of either a benign, neutral,
or a malevolent organization by increasing
the organization's authority and control up to
a point. Then, some of the combinations formerly
helping to intensify the need for hierarchy
(like mismatch and spillover, g, and territoriality
as an end, h) may combine to
obstruct the efficiency of the organization
and lead to decreased control over, or secession
of, its parts.
Figure 2 is a more detailed description of
some of the likely flows from the consequences
of territoriality. This diagram begins
with the assumption (illustrated by the path to
a) that the original goals were benign or neutral
and that the institution draws from among
the tendencies of territoriality to increase its
hierarchical control. If combinations d and b
are emphasized by the organization, combinations
i and m would have to be reckoned
with. Even without emphasizing d and b, the
use of territorial hierarchy could lead to combinations
g and h. These can either help
create the need for more hierarchy and territoriality
and thus form a positive feedback
loop to the path to a, or they can lead to inefficiencies
and negative feedback, and eventually
ton. Moreoever g and h can come to be
employed intentionally to disguise the
sources of power and thus subvert the goals
of the institution (by forming k and /) from
benevolent or neutral, a, to malevolent, j.
The dynamic interrelationships among the
combinations stem from their normative implications.
These were intentionally characterized
in very general and abstract terms and
without regard to any particular theory of
power so that the effects of territoriality
would not be captured by any particular
ideological position or theory of organization.
(The description of the combinations as
malevolent, neutral, or benign is hardly part
of a theory of power, and the idea of the link
between territoriality and bureaucracy, although
using Weber's definition of the latter,
does not commit the theory of territoriality to
other parts of Weber's analysis.)
Empirical Contexts, Predictions, and
Tests: At the Level of
Formal Organizations
Keeping the ethical connotations abstract
makes it possible to match territoriality with
more than one view of power and organization.
There are in fact many such views. Some
focus on the major forces within an entire soThis
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Human Territoriality 65
o.n
g h
I
1-10 d b ai a
g h
n t
Figure 2. Internal flows.
ciety and others on the forces within different
types of organizations of less comprehensive
scope (Scott 1981). It would be important to
consider which theories of organization and
power would have more or less in common
with the tendencies and combinations of territoriality
and why. At this point it is clear that
some have more in common with territoriality
than do others and that two-Weber's and
Marx's-are especially fruitful.
Two facets to Weber's work have a bearing
on our discussion. The first considers the
internal dynamics of organizations and especially
of bureaucracies, and the second addresses
the historical-social context in which
certain organizations are more or less likely
to occur.
Taking the second first, we note that Weber
(1947) refers to three general or ideal types of
organizations: charismatic, traditional, and
bureaucratic. The first is not necessarily
linked to any period or type of society. The
followers and leaders form a loose organization.
There are few if any officers, rules of
procedure, and clear hierarchies. But as the
group persists and especially as the question
of succession arises, charisma becomes
routinized. It gives way to one or the other of
the two more formal types of organizations:
the traditional or the bureaucratic.
As the name implies, traditional organizations
rely on traditional modes of conduct
and problem solving. The leadership is drawn
from a specific clan, family, or circle of
friends. Justification for authority is based on
custom. Hierarchy is not well structured and a
person's ability and personality may change
the power and scope of his or her appointment.
Legitimacy of authority is not drawn
from holding an office proper but from being
connected to traditional positions of leadership.
Traditional organizations occur primarily
in "traditional" societies. These include
primitive, oriental, and feudal societies.
Hence the routinization of charisma in these
kinds of societies will lead to traditional or-
ganizations.
The bureaucratic form of organization is
most closely linked to, and characteristic of,
highly complex, economically integrated
societies. These are modern societies and include
capitalistic and socialistic economies.
Bureaucracies, as noted in the discussion of
combination a, are characterized by (among
other things) formal lines of communication,
clear hierarchy and definitions of authority,
and impersonal relations. The routinization of
charisma in modern society would normally
lead to bureaucracy.
Little modification has been made to the
historical facet of Weber's formulation.
Rather it is to the first facet, the processes
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66 Sack
within organizations and bureaucracies, that
his followers have made the most amendments.
Weber saw the bureaucratic form as
potentially the most rational and efficient. He
recognized some of its negative features such
as its tendency to make relationships too
uniform and impersonal, which could cause
the organization to dissolve or split apart and
could create opportunities for charismatic
leaders to form new ones. But he was most
impressed with bureaucracy's positive potential
of rationality and efficiency. Overall he
presented the bureaucracy as a neutral instrument
with the potential to do good.
Bureaucracy's negative side was investigated
and elaborated more fully by Weber's
successors, especially Michels and Merton.
Michels (1949) examined German socialist
organizations and found that despite their
idealistic and egalitarian beginnings, these
organizations became increasingly institutionalized,
authoritarian, and hierarchically
rigid and the officials became more interested
in perpetuating themselves and their offices
than in their commitment to the original goals
of the organization. This trend he attributed
to bureaucracies in general and called it the
"iron law of oligarchy." Merton (1957)
pointed to another malevolent side to bureaucracy.
An emphasis on strict formal procedures,
discipline, and rules leaves officials
with the view that adherence to formal procedures
is an end in itself. This Merton called
"displacement."
Many other studies of bureaucracy's problems
exist and their collective import is that
although Weber's characterization was not
wrong, there is more than he observed to the
internal dynamics of bureaucracies that often
leads them away from efficiency and benign
or neutral purposes. Most importantly, these
studies recognize the same dynamic qualities
and end states of bureaucracy that are discussed
in our theory. Careful comparison of
them with our theory can help to specify the
conditions in each. For example, we would
expect that if, and to the degree that, an organization
were territorial, the displacement
Merton refers to and the displacement in territoriality
would both increase and be mutually
reinforcing for overlapping reasons.
An historical dimension can be added by
considering the connection between our
theory and Weber's discussion of traditional
and modern societies. If we assume Weber's
distinctions between traditional societies (including
primitive, oriental, and feudal societies)
and traditional organizations on the
one hand and highly complex integrated
modern societies (both capitalist and socialist)
and bureaucracy on the other, then we
would have grounds to expect that when traditional
societies are territorial, their reasons
are not based on the tendencies and combinations
that have most to do with bureaucracy.
Thus we would expect impersonality,
No. 6, territorial definition of social relations,
c, and span of control, d, not to be related to
territorial use in traditional societies and to be
positively related to territorial use in modern
societies.
Furthermore, we would expect the reasons
for, or effects of, territoriality in traditional
society to cluster around classification, No. 1,
communication, No. 2, enforcement, No. 3,
reification, No. 4, and displacement, No. 5
(especially in a magical context, f) and to involve
combinations such as divide and conquer,
j, territoriality as an end rather than a
means, h, and territorial inequality, i. There
could of course be cases in which traditional
or premodern societies employed bureaucracies,
as in the Chinese Mandarin system of
elected officials and the English feudal system
of king's courts. In such cases we would
predict that if territoriality were used by the
bureaucracy, it would be for reasons such as
impersonality, No. 6, and territorial definition
of social relations, c. An indication of the use
of territoriality for impersonality, No. 6, would
be if these organizations rotated their officials
from one territory to another, or at least assigned
an official to a region other than that
person's native one. An indication of territorial
definition of social relations, c, would be if
the administrative units were not the same as
pre-existing social-territorial ones.
The second major theory of power that
could be linked fruitfully with territoriality is
Marxism. Unlike Weber, Marx did not examine
the possibility of bureaucratic dynamics
as an independent phenomenon. His writings
consider bureaucracy as an institution to be
manipulated by class power. The twists and
turns of bureaucracy were based on the development
of economic classes and their interrelationships.
Once communism removes
class conflict, the state, as the primary opThis
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Human Territoriality 67
pressor, would wither away. Marx did not address
himself to whether other forms of organizations
would wither away within the
state, but recently Marxists have recognized
that bureaucratization is a force to be reckoned
with in socialist countries, if not in the
Utopian world of communism. The Soviet
bureaucracies have internal dynamics and
contradictions of their own. The oligarchical
tendencies of government bureaucracy, for
instance, can create the equivalent of class
structure and interests. Yet their precise imports
and dynamics are altered by their socialhistorical
contexts (Konrad and Szelenyi
1979). This literature then could add further
specifications to the directions and imports
of the dynamics within bureaucracy.
More important is that Marxists' theory of
class conflict in capitalism, when applied to
territoriality, would single out the obfuscatory
combinations of territoriality (k, I, and m) as
the most important in the later stages of
capitalism (Clark 1981; Newton 1978; Walker
and Heiman 1981). The obfuscatory combinations
would be expected because of the
general tendency of capitalism to disguise
class conflict and because of the peculiar position
of the state vis-a-vis labor and capital.
On the one hand the state tries to maintain
capitalism, and on the other it must contain or
reduce class conflict, claiming to be the
champion of the people and a vehicle for providing
social needs. This dual role means that
the sources and forms of power must often be
disguised and the obfuscatory tendencies of
territoriality could help do this. Territorial
obfuscation need not be applied only at the
state or local-state level. It could appear as
well in the workplace, the school, and in the
realms of consumption.
Marxist theory, in conjunction with a general
analysis of modernity, points to the
present and the recent past as the times to
expect the most intense and frequent occurrence
of conceptual separation and recombination
of substance and territoriality, e. This
is because capitalism reinforces the view of
space as a framework for the location and
distribution of events. Capitalism helps make
place into commodities. It makes us see the
earth's surface as a spatial framework in
which events are contingently and temporally
located. Capitalism's need for capital accumulation
and growth makes change paramount
and, geographically, change means a
fluid relationship between things and space.
The future is conceived of, and future actions
produce, continual alterations of geographical
relationships. Territoriality then becomes
the mold for both filling space and defining
and holding a space empty.
Whereas Marxist theory is not clear enough
about precapitalist modes to help us decide
whether territoriality would be used differently
in feudalism than in the Oriental or
Asiatic mode, Weber said both kinds of traditional
societies have occasional examples of
bureaucracies. He suggested, however, that
European feudalism may have had more
bureaucracies; and Wittfogel (1957), claiming
to build upon Marx, argued that bureaucracy
characterized the Asiatic-despotic mode.
Marx and Engles did characterize the
primitive mode as essentially different from
other precapitalist modes, so that we would
expect its use of territoriality to be distinct. To
them, the primitive means small-scale egalitarian
society with few if any institutions of
oppression. Hence its use of territoriality
would be quite different from that found in
class societies, whether precapitalist or
capitalist. For instance, in primitive society
one would not expect to find frequent or intense
use of territoriality for impersonal relations
(No. 6), mold (No. 8), conceptually
empty space (No. 9), or multiplication of territories
(No. 10), and one would not expect to
find most of the combinations, especially territorial
definition of social relationships, c.
There is more that could be said about the
links between the theory of territoriality and
Weberian, Marxist, or other theories of power
and organization. More specific connections
could be made, and these could be tested in
concrete historical cases. But this discussion
was intended only to illustrate the point that
the theory of territoriality can be joined to
different theories of power and can lead to
different expectations about which tendencies
will arise and under what occasions.
Keeping the formulation of the theory of
territoriality neutral and apart from any one of
these theories of power has allowed us to link
it with several. This is especially important
because none of them is all encompassing
('Ieberian analysis anticipates things that
Marxist analysis does not and vice versa) and
none of them is completely correct. Figure 3
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68 Sack
X = General agreement that the tendency or
combinations is significant
0 = General agreement that the tendency or
= combinations is insignificant
/Cg/q0</ /e/t wi = Significant in Wittfogel's view as interpreted
by theory
/Q / t /0>/tt/ We = Significant in Weberian's view as interpreted
by theory
C- ;!,2/~te/ >/;!>/Ma = Significant in Marxian's view as interpreted
by theory
Th = Significant from perspective of theory
X X X X X 1 Classification
X X X X X 2 Communication
X X X X X 3 Enforcement of access
X X X x x 4 Reification symbol
X x X x X 5 Displacement
x x x x 0 6 Impersonal relations
X X X X 0 7 Neutral space-clearing
X x X x 0 8 Mold
X X X X 0 9 Conceptually empty space
X x x x 0 10 Multiplication of territories
X X We Wi 0 a Hierarchy and bureaucracy
X x x x O i Divide and conquer
X X x x 0 n Secession
X X We Wi 0 c Territorial definition of social relations
x x x 0 g Mismatch and spillover
? Ma 0 0 0 k Obfuscation by assigning wrong scale territory
x x x 0 h Territoriality, an end, not a means
? Ma 0 0 0 1 Social conflict obscured by territorial conflict-horizontal displ.
X X We Wi 0 b Long and short range planning and stages
? Ma 0 0 0 m Obfuscation by stages. Clear at nat. level, unclear at local
X X We Wi 0 d Efficient supervision-span of control
X x X X 0 i Inequalities
X x x x x f Magic-representation becomes powerful in itself
LTrh | Th L 0~L 0 < )f sp., Conceptual separation and recombination
of space and substance
Figure 3. Historical predictions.
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Human Territoriality 69
summarizes the predictions derived from
connecting the theory of territoriality to
Wittfogelian, Weberian, and Marxist analysis
and to a general knowledge of history. Figure
3 is only suggestive. It is intended to point to
the utility of joining territoriality to other
theories. Different ones could have been
selected and the same theories could have
been explored at different social scales.
Testing the theory of territoriality does not
always require connecting it to grand theories
of power. A case in point is the use of the
simple yet important combination d-efficiency
of supervision/span of control. Span
of control in the sociological literature refers
to the ratio of supervisors to supervisees
(usually at a given level within an hierarchical
organization, although it could represent
aggregation for all levels) and is used as an
index of supervisory efficiency.4
From the theory of territoriality we would
predict that, everything else being equal, the
greater the territorial circumspection of
supervisees, the fewer the supervisors, up to
a point (e.g., when resistance or secession, n,
could occur). For example, guarding convicts
who are in prison (and thereby territorially
circumscribed) is easier (requires fewer
supervisors) than guarding convicts who are
allowed to roam at will. The theory also points
in very general terms to some (though by no
means all) of the circumstances under which
this association will most closely come to the
fore. It will be recalled that territoriality is an
extension of action by contact, and its
suitability depends, among other things, on
the available channels and forms of communication.
If only one kind of contact were
to be available (such as face-to-face contact)
or if no other kind were to be substituted, we
would expect an extremely strong positive
association between degrees of territoriality
and span of control. In the convict example
this would mean that the guards would use
the same form of surveillance and supervision-namely
person-to-person, face-toface,
direct contact, whether the prisoners
were confined or not. More generally, the
theory would predict that if no substitutions
in the form of surveillance or supervision
(excluding changes in supervisory skill) are
made, then as territoriality increases, so too
does the span of control and conversely.
But if alternative forms of contacts and levels
of skill are available for substitution, these
may be employed either instead of or in conjunction
with changes in the span of control
as adjustments to changes in degrees of
territoriality. At present, the theory cannot
predict what the mix will be.
To the best of my knowledge there do not
appear to be any institutions that do not have
the option of responding to a change in territorial
organization by substituting one form
of communication or skill for another. (Society
can respond to the release of large numbers
of convicts from prisons by increasing the
number of police and/or by less direct forms
of surveillance and control.) Our best hope,
then, of testing the association of territoriality
and span of control is to find instances
of institutions in which the alternatives are
few and easily identifiable. Examples might
be found in comparisons among types of
office management, factory-floor layouts,
and work stations and in comparisons between
open and closed classrooms. But it appears
thus far that the institution having the
fewest and most readily identifiable organizational
alternatives is the military. This is the
institution I shall use to test the association.
A Formal Organization: United States Army
Evidence for the U.S. Army comes from its
published manuals describing the ideal composition
of army units and their goals (Department
of Army 1972, 1976). Current
data on the actual composition of units are not
available, and even if they were they would be
vast and vary from day to day, so it is convenient
to use manuals describing the Army's
own goals and norms. These manuals influence
behavior. They are distributed to troops
and are used in strategic calculations. As
anyone even slightly acquainted with Army
life can attest, the Army follows the "manual"
and the rules are as uniform and inflexible as
can be. Differences in the manuals' description
of the composition of the units, no matter
how slight, are significant because it goes
against the Army's grain to alter anything.
The manuals give a comprehensive list and
description of the numbers of soldiers, their
individual and collective job descriptions and
objectives, the chain of command, and the
equipment that is supposed to be present for
the different military units from platoon to diThis
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70 Sack
vision. In order to limit the variables as much
as possible I shall concentrate only on three
fighting units and on their lowest levels: the
Infantry, the Airborne Rangers, and the Special
Forces or Green Berets. Their degrees of
territoriality are found in descriptions of their
missions. Their spans of control are simply
the numbers of officers per men at each level
in the hierarchy; channels of communication
and skills are measured by the amount of
communication equipment per unit and the
ranks of the officers respectively.
Located along a continuum that extends
from very territorial to slightly territorial or
nonterritorial, we have respectively the Infantry
platoon, which has as one of its principle
objectives the "maintenance and security of
terrain"; the airborne Rangers, whose principle
objective is scouting and whose only territorial
function is "the securing of target objectives"
(a smaller-scale territory to be held
for a brief period of time); and the Special
Forces or Green Berets, whose objective is
unconventional warfare (i.e., "operations
which include but are not limited to guerilla
warfare, evasion and escape, subversion and
sabotage, conducted during periods of peace
and war in hostile or politically sensitive territory,"
which does not include the holding of
territory at any scale (Department of Army
1976)).
In other words, the objectives of the Infantry
are most stationary and can be approached
territorially, and the objectives of
the Green Berets are least stationary and
cannot be approached territorially. (There
may be other nonterritorial differences in
their objectives, but what they are is not readily
apparent.)5 From our theory we would expect
that, everything else being equal, the
more territorial is the objective, either or both
the greater will be the span of control and the
less will be the need for communication and
varied skills. Conversely, if the objective becomes
less territorial, then there will be either
or both an increase in communication and
skill and a decrease in span of control. (We
cannot yet predict which one or in what
proportions.)
The Army's description of its own organization
conforms to our expectations. The
ideal or complete units had the following
compositions (Department of Army 1972,
1976).
The most territorial, the infantry battalion,
had:
at the level of rifle company,
6 officers (of whom 1 was a captain), and 165
enlisted men;
at the level of rifle platoon,
1 officer (a lieutenant) and 43 enlisted men;
and at the level of rifle squad,
0 officers and 10 enlisted men with the following
ranks:
1 SSG, 2 SGT, 4 SPA, and 3 PFC;
also at the squad level were two pieces of radio
equipment.
The intermediate group territorially, the airborne
Rangers, had:
at the company level,
8 officers (of whom 2 were captains), and 208
enlisted men;
at the level of platoon,
3 officers (all lieutenants) and 129 enlisted men;
and at the patrol level,
0 officers and 5 enlisted men with the following
ranks:
1 SSG, 1 SGT, 2 SPA, and 1 PFC;
also each patrol had three pieces of radio
equipment.
For the Green Berets, the least territorial, the
units are called detachments and are usually
of three types: "A," " B," and "C."
"A" detachment is the basic operational unit and
has 2 officers (a captain and a lieutenant) and 10
enlisted men, all of whom are sergeants of various
ranks. "B" detachment is a mall command
unit and has 2 officers (a major and a captain)
and 3 enlisted men, all of various ranks of
sergeant. "C" detachment has 7 officers (1
lieutenant colonel, 2 majors, and 3 captains) and
15 enlisted men, all of various ranks of sergeant.
There is no list of standard equipment for these
units. Their needs vary per mission and in general
they will have little communication equipment,
for the preferred form of contact among
themselves is face to face.
From these data, we can see that the Army,
albeit reluctantly, conforms to our predictions.
It alters its requirements for span of
control, forms of communication, and skills
of its men as the degree of territoriality of the
mission changes. The Infantry units have a
high span of control, the least number of
higher-ranking officers per troops and the
greatest number of Pfc's. The Ranger Company
has a greater number of sergeants per
Pfc's at the platoon level and one more captain
per company than the Infantry. Also,
Rangers are divided into smaller units-the
patrols-and have more radio equipment. (If
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Human Territoriality 71
they did not, one would expect a lower span
of control.) The Special Forces or Green Berets
have a remarkably higher proportion of
officers to enlisted men, and all the enlisted
men have the rank of sergeant or above. (If
there were more radio equipment per person,
one might expect a slightly greater span of
control.)
Empirical Contexts, Predictions, and
Tests at the Individual Level
I discuss the implications of the theory in
social organizations first because they would
employ the combinations as well as the tendencies
and because they involve the scale
of activities that geographers customarily
examine. I now briefly consider some of the
implications of the tendencies at the level of
individuals. For this level the psychological
literature rather than the socioeconomic literature
could serve to specify important contexts
for the use of territorial tendencies. Because
there are as many situations that could
be used to specify or test the theory at the
individual level as there are at the organizational
level and because the latter is the customary
geographical level of analysis, my discussion
of the individual level will be limited
to two examples.
Consider once again the parent who is
minding the children while working in the
study. The parent used territoriality primarily
because of its ease of communication (No. 2)
and its classification by area, rather than by
kind (No. 1). This could be an economical
strategy if the objects to be "protected" are
geographically containable and if the children
are very young and cannot understand
what would be meant by the parent singling
out this or that kind of object as things not to
touch. To determine more precisely if this is a
plausible hypothesis, experiments could be
conducted wherein parents are asked to restrict
their children's access to objects variously
distributed in space. The experimenter
could also vary the objects, the children's
ages, and other factors. The experiment
could be made even more discerning if
something about the parents' personalities
and goals were included. For instance, some
parents might believe that whereas it is easier
to use territoriality on certain occasions, it is
deceitful to do so. That is, the parent might
believe that using the advantages of definition
by area rather than by kind (No. 1) may
make the children unaware of what it is they
are not allowed to do, and this may run
counter to the parent's philosophy of childrearing.
Therefore, the parent might recognize
the economical advantages of territoriality
but might find them outweighed by the
disadvantages, in this case the deceit. If these
kinds of parents could be preselected, we
could then predict opposite effects of the
same tendency.
Individuals in institutions could be used to
examine the effects of the tendencies. For
example, the shadow realm of "personal
space" can be looked at territorially. A problem
would be to consider the kind of person
who would need or use a larger or smaller
personal space. Suppose again that personal
space, as an instance of territoriality, offers
an efficient means of classifying and protecting
oneself without disclosing what is
being protected (Nos. 1 and 3). Therefore, it
might be expected that people who have a
weak sense of self would be less willing to
mix physically with others, especially strangers
or potential competitors, and hence
would be more inclined to use territoriality to
help ensure that they would not be approached,
than would those who have a
strong sense of self. This means that territoriality
would help protect the more insecure
without disclosing what it is that needs pro-
tecting.
To explore the relationships in a social
context we could consider an elementary
school classroom of which there are now two
general kinds: open and closed rooms. The
former would not make territorial organizations
clear and important, whereas the latter
would. From what has been said, we would
expect that students who have a strong sense
of self and who would therefore need territoriality
less would feel more comfortable and
function better in an open classroom,
whereas those who do not have a strong self
image would prefer to be and would function
better in a closed classroom. In addition,
from our theory we would expect that even if
the teacher has cooperative children, the
span of control would be less in an open than
in a closed classroom. That is, the studentThis
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72 Sack
teacher ratio would be lower for the former
than for the latter.
Conclusion
In the two previous sections I have attempted
to demonstrate some of the more evident
implications of the theory. Its utility must await
more thorough and varied tests.
Verifying the potentialities and combinations
is a long-range project with the following
objectives:
-taking many key cases to determine if the reasons
for territorial as opposed to nonterritorial
behavior are the ones identified;
-determining the precise conditions and circumstances
in which territoriality becomes an
advantage;
-determining whether there are conditions and
circumstances in which territoriality is the primary
or even necessary means of attaining
these advantages;
-determining the degree to which such advantages
(and hence territoriality as the means)
are important to the organization.
Little work of this kind has been done (with
the exception of Dyson-Hudson and AldenSmith
1978) despite the fact that there are
countless examples of territories in different
historical contexts. The previous sections
suggest two points of departure. One or two
tendencies can be examined in the context of
small-scale, informal groups for as many
carefully selected cases as possible. This approach
may even approximate laboratory
conditions. For instance, minute experiments
could be made to determine if and when territoriality
is used by parents to control the activities
of their children because of its tendency
to classify by area (No. 1).
The other avenue would be to focus on the
tendencies and combinations at the level of
complex organizations. This may be the best
strategy for exploratory studies because it
would permit the selection of important organizations
or institutions offering a range of
territorial uses. This would make it possible to
observe how most or all of the tendencies
work together and at a "geographical" scale.
Our previous discussions and Figures 2 and 3
suggest critical times and institutions to
explore. For instance, there is the important
distinction between primitive societies and
technologically advanced civilizations and
the expectation that territorial definition of
social relations is characteristic of the latter.
There is the possibility that territoriality is
used differently in the Oriental or Asiatic
type than in the feudal. There is the internal
dynamic of bureaucratic organizations, which
could be expected in socialist as well as
capitalist states (and even in traditional
societies if they have bureaucracies). And
there are the obfuscatory roles of territoriality
in advanced captialism and the effect of the
conceptual separation and recombination of
territoriality and substance that occur with
capitalism and modernity.
Work on two critical contexts is already
underway. The history of the Catholic church
has been selected in order to explore the development
and internal dynamics of territoriality
in a bureaucratic organization spanning
almost 2,000 years and several socioeconomic
forms. Church council records and
canons provide rich documentation about
reasons for, and consequences of, the
church's territorial organizations (e.g.,
parishes, dioceses, and archdioceses as well
as the consecration and internal partitioning
of holy places and churches). The development
of the American political system has
been chosen as an example of the role of political
territorial units in a capitalist system.
United States political history offers rich and
abundant historical data on the role of territoriality
in the divisions of power, in intergovernmental
relations, and in the connection
between citizen and government.
Other societies and periods, as well as
smaller-scale organizations, could and should
be selected. For example, the built environment
and the internal architectural design of
buildings can be studied in terms of their use
of territoriality to establish differential access
to and control of people and things. The tendencies
and combinations of territoriality
could be linked to studies of the factory, the
prison, the asylum, and the school.
The subject is complex, and varied forms of
evidence will be needed. These will include
the political-economic facts of the time, contemporary
documents and data, and major
historical and philosophical interpretations of
them. Often such philosophical interpretations
contradict each other. In such cases
there may be little hope of settling the issues
by looking at the "facts." Even a wrong idea
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Human Territoriality 73
can become an important social fact. Rather,
contradictory interpretations can be used as
evidence for the theory of territoriality by
finding out if they draw from the tendencies
and combinations in expected ways. If they
do, we can be more confident that the
theory's tendencies and combinations do
outline the domain of causes and effects of
territoriality.
The precise wordings of the tendencies
and combinations are not expected to be
found in these documents, interpretations,
and theories. Rather, we might expect the
evidence to be undistorted, or even made
clearer, if references to territoriality are rephrased
in terms of the theory. Nor is territoriality
expected to be the most important
factor in the actual events or in the theories
about them. Rather, we expect that when territoriality
is used, it is used for reasons that
draw from among the ones we suggested;
and if competing philosophies and viewpoints
about the events reveal this, then our
case is strengthened.
Finally, it must be borne in mind that territoriality
in human behavior is only a strategy
for access and control. Geographically, it is
one of two possibilities. The other is nonterritorial
access and control. Both are based on
the principles of action by direct or indirect
contact. Territoriality is an extension and
elaboration of this principle but requires action
by contact in the form of nonterritoriality
to back it up. This reciprocal relationship
means that one part cannot be understood
without knowing the other. Spatial analysis
has concentrated on nonterritorial activity,
neglecting territoriality by confining it to an
unspecified context. Neglecting territoriality
weakens our understanding of nonterritorial
activity. It leaves unexamined many if not
most of the geographic forces molding
human spatial organization.
Acknowledgment
Later phases of research for this project are
based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. SES-8117807.
Notes
1. The definition of territoriality at this point is
clear enough to distinguish territorial from
nonterritorial behavior in most cases. The possibility
of a few borderline cases should not
present major problems.
2. Assertion of control includes defense of area
but is not only that, for it is more than a reactive
position. Assertion of control includes influencing
or affecting, but it connotes a sense
of punishment or retribution for transgression.
3. Our discussion of territoriality is in some respects
analogous to the chemical theory of
valency and the periodic table. If we think of
territoriality as an atom, its definitional attributes
describe its nucleus, from which are entailed
the ten primary and fourteen combinations
of valences. These are the mechanisms
that will bind territoriality to other elements.
The general social context we are using to describe
the theory (that is, our statement that the
relationship between x and y can be neutral,
benign, or malevolent) points to possible elements
with which territoriality can combine
and also to the valences that would be used.
Connecting the theory of territoriality to more
explicit and developed social theories and
theories of power would further specify likely
elements that can be linked to territoriality.
These social theories of power would provide a
periodic table the elements of which could be
combined with territoriality to form compounds
having predictable properties.
4. The sociological literature does not consider
the territorial facet of organizations. Indeed, for
a time sociologists have thought of span of
control as an ideal or fixed entity (Haire 1964)
rather than as a relationship whose effectiveness
could vary with different contexts, including
geographical ones.
5. The existence of other nonterritorial factors as
part of the goals of these units could add
"noise" to the territorial "signal" and would
make this example less than perfect. Yet the
territorial "signal" is loud enough and comparative
studies may be able to remove the
other "noise".
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