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| SPACE, POWER AND TERRITORY: A REVIEW ON TERRITORY IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY |
| LIU Yun-gang1, YE Qing-lu2, XU Xiao-xia3 |
1. School of Geography Sciences and Planning, and Guangdong Key Laboratory for Urbanization and Geo-simulation, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China;
2. Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan;
3. Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China |
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Abstract Along with the ‘Social Turn’, the issue of power and space became rather significant and pivotal in the west. Thus, this paper intends to elaborate the theoretical connotation and evolution of territory and address the analytic framework of territorial politics through an overview of the literature, so as to shed light on the significance and possibility of using territory concept to probe the complex social phenomena. There is no doubt that the spatial construction of territory and territoriality, implicating the mutually constructing relation between space, power and behavior, would be helpful to develop a critical perspective to unravel the practices of spatial politics. Viewing from the skeleton of social space theory, territory could be produced through the process of power inserting form the elemental space. Moreover, space, place and territory could transform into each other under varied contexts. As far as territory itself is concerned, it is essentially comprised of space, power and boundary. It also proclaims that theory of territory in human geography has proceeded from biological approach to social approach, and shifted from state-centrism to multivalence and multi-scale. After that, this paper introduces two main empirical research subjects of territory in political geography, including state territoriality and politics of identity. Finally, it puts forward an analytic framework of territorial politics, comprising multiple processes of territorialization, de-territorialization and re-territorialization.
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Received: 10 June 2014
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2015, Vol. 30 
