ABSTRACT
Animals introduced humans to territory: The more one studies the motives which determine the various movements of animals, the more one is impressed with the almost universally instinctive recognition of “home” and the rights over home territory which they show and practice. Territory is navigated through intentionality and communication rather than organised through a grammar of maps, facilitated through sociability rather than channelled along boundaries. The marking of territory is thus inextricably bound with the determination of the relative rights of territory, the relations not only to territory but also to each element and being within that territory. Comparative ethology has also informed some very critical early twentieth-century sociology on spatiality and territory, including Erving Goffman’s exploration of territory and the social use of space within psychiatric institutions and prisons in his work, Asylums. Pursuing the language of security and defence, the further characterisation of territory with the notion of dominance is significant.
