The development of territorology requires the overcoming of the dichotomy between determinist and constructivist approaches, in order to advance towards a general science of territory and territorial phenomena. Insights for this task can come from at least four main threads of research: biology, zooethology and human ethology; human ecology, social psychology and interactionism; human, political and legal geography; and philosophy. In light of the insights derived from these traditions, the article aims to conceptualize territorial components, technologies, movements, effects, and their (...) interplay, in order to establish the main lines of inquiry for territorology. A general territorology, it is argued, amounts to a sociology of territorial acts and relations, whose aim is to analyze the expressive and functional components of territories, as fixed through their organizational and technological devices. (shrink)

Etude sur l'exercice du pouvoir politique et du gouvernement depuis le début de l'ère chrétienne.

This article challenges the negative image that, since the late 19th century, has been associated with crowds, and it does so by focusing on a number of bodilyanatomic aspects of crowd behavior. I first demonstrate that the work of one of the leading crowd psychologists, Gustave Le Bon, instigated a racist body politics. As a contrast to Le Bon's political program, I examine Walt Whitman's poetry and argue that the crowd may embody a democratic vision that emphasizes the social and (...) political import of sexuality and body -to- body contact. Further, I dispute classical crowd theory's idea of an antagonistic relationship between crowds and individuality. Following Elias Canetti, I claim instead that the bodily compression of crowds in fact liberates individuals and creates a democratic transformation. The analysis results in a rehabilitation of crowds and briefly suggests how a reinterpretation of crowd behavior may inform current debates in social theory. (shrink)

It could be conceivable that society is not an organism, that it has no structure, that it functions only temporarily or seemingly. The most obvious analogies are not the best. The Human Province, p.245 True, he [man] wants to “preserve” himself, but he also simultaneously wants other things which are inseparable from this.Crowds and Power, p. 293 The planning nature of man is a very late addition that violates his essential, his transforming nature.The Secret Heart of the Clock, p. 119 (...) Man, regarding himself as the measure of all things, is almost unknown. His progress in self-knowledge is minimal, every new theory obscures more of him than it illuminates. The Conscience of Words, p. 111. (shrink)