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POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF
SPACE
Territorial Dimensions of politics
CONCEPT OF TERRITORIALITY
Territory: an area of land under the jurisdiction
of a ruler or state.
 Territoriality: In political geography, a country's
or more local community's sense of propertyand
attachment toward its territory, as expressed by
its determination to keep it inviolable and
strongly defended
 The Concept of Territoriality
Human territoriality is the attempt to control
what goes on in a specific geographical area.

Human territoriality is the attempt to control
what goes on in a specific geographical area.
There are various ways to control space that
range from pure physical force of an individual to
organized sets of laws.
 Most geographers believe that human
territoriality differs from the territorial behavior
observed in other forms of life because human
behavior is learned and animal behavior is
instinctive.

NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA
POLAR REGION
NATURE AND MEANING OF BOUNDARIES

The Nature and Meaning of Boundaries
Political boundaries exist at a variety of scales,
and these boundaries influence how goods and
services are distributed, who gets represented
and who does not, and how issues are confronted.


Think of ways that political boundaries structure
human affairs and understandings.
Political boundaries of significance exist both ‘above’
and ‘below’ the state.
Above: boundaries such as the former Iron Curtain, the
current boundary between NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) and non-NATO states, or the boundaries
that have been drawn through the world's oceans to
demarcate zones of control.
 Below: municipalities, voting districts, special districts,
and areas zoned for particular land uses. Focusing
attention on smaller-scale political-territorial units allows
students to see how everything from the delivery of
services to the reach of certain laws is affected by the
particular configuration of political territories.

NATO
UTAH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS
INFLUENCES OF BOUNDARIES ON
IDENTITY, INTERACTION, AND EXCHANGE
Influences of Boundaries on Identity, Interaction,
and Exchange
 Illustrate the effects of identity, interaction, and
exchange on populations.

STATE SHAPES

Shapes of states

Five basic shapes
Compact = efficient
 Elongated = potential isolation
 Prorupted = access or disruption
 Perforated = South Africa
 Fragmented = problematic


Landlocked states
STATE SHAPES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
BOUNDARIES

Types of boundaries

Physical
Desert boundaries
 Mountain boundaries
 Water boundaries


Cultural
Geometric boundaries
 Human features (language, religion, ethnicity)


Frontiers
CULTURAL BOUNDARIES
FEDERAL AND UNITARY STATES
Federal States: strong power to units of local
government within the country
 Unitary States: places most power in the hands
of central government officials
 A country’s cultural and physical characteristics
influence the evolution of its government system.
 Unitary systems work best with countries that
are more homogenous and have a strong sense of
national unity.
 Federal systems work best in multinational
states to help empower different nationalities,
especially if they live in separate regions.

UNITARY VS. FEDERAL
EXAMPLE COUNTRIES
Unitary
United Kingdom
 Jordan
 Turkey
 Denmark
 France
 Cuba
 North Korea
 South Korea

Federal
United States of
America
 India
 Brazil
 Canada
 Australia
 Russian Federation
 Venezula

SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN POLITICAL
PATTERNS AND PATTERNS OF ETHNICITY, ECONOMY,
AND ENVIRONMENT



The division of the world into individual states
impedes efforts to confront environment problems
such as the depletion of the ozone layer, the loss of
biodiversity, and global warming.
We are not living in a world in which most
fundamental human realities can be understood or
addressed within the territorial state. Yet the state is
still fundamentally important as is illustrated by the
dozens of interstate territorial conflicts in the
contemporary world.
There are dozens of active territorial disputes that
have flared up in recent years. If control over
territory had lost its political/geopolitical significance
in the modern world, such conflicts would not be an
important dynamic in international relations.