L5. Territoriality and Spatial Ordering

Question 1

What is territoriality?

Answer 1

• A conceptual tool
• means to an end
• direct assertion of coercive power (or potential)
• is a strategy
• primary geographical expression of power

Question 2

What are the 3 essential elements of territoriality?

Answer 2

• Classification by area: general assertion of authority (ex. citizenship)
• Form of communication: borders must be marked
• Attempt to enforce control over access: requires and expresses power (ex. customs and immigrations checks)

Question 3

What is the formal definition of territoriality?

Answer 3

the attempt by an individual or group to affect influence or control people, phenomenon and relationships by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area

Question 4

What is biopower?

Answer 4

• term developed by Micheal Foucault
• Focus on regulating the individual and their bodily movements can regulate entire populations (self-regulating populations)
• Ex. following laws not because you are afraid of punishment but because you think it is correct and is habitual (modern, liberal states)
• exercising power and control over individuals and populations by regulating and managing various aspects of their biological and social lives

Question 5

What are welfare functions of modern states?

Answer 5

Functions and actions meant to improve the well-being of a states population
- health and ‘low politics’
- social order/policing
- social and legal rights

Question 6

What is Panopticon?

Answer 6

• a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham
• used one-way observation (all cells could be seen into by a central point but those in the cell couldn’t see other cells or the central location)
• idea was that prisoners would stop behaving badly because of the risk that they could always have eyes on them
• Thought the anxiety of being caught would cause an internalization of norms

Question 7

Foucult’s analogy of a “surveillance society”

Answer 7

The connotation is very different in french and english
- Surveiller similar to nurturing, watching over, guidance
- Surveillance: negative, exercise of power, person doing the surveillance is doing it help themself not someone else

Question 8

Describe Scott’s theory of literal and figurative spatial order

Answer 8

• Order can be created through spatial relationships
• Literal: spatial knowledge can be embodied and local (varying from place to place, frustrating to an outsider)
• Figurative: spatial knowledge that is clear to outsiders (straight lines, same sized blocks, organized street names)
• Ex. Statistics: state knowledge, originated as state records, censuses are affective ways of summarizing vast amounts of information

Question 9

What is the connection between Le Corbusier and Spatial order

Answer 9

• Le Corbusier wanted everything to be exactly the same, and super regimented.
• If he got his way, there would be no difference between local and state knowledge because everything would be the same

Question 10

How is simplification and legibility a tool of the state?

Answer 10

• Beneficial to states to have standardization of practices, environments, and people
• Can more easily understand their populations (and then control them)
• In a surveillance society, the state is always the observer
• Social order relies on simple information