Territoriality and the rise of modern state

Abstract

The phenomenon of territoriality is often conceptualised with emphasis on boundary. This study concentrates on the social practices that produce territoriality. Bureaucratic administration is taken to be inherently involved in territoriality, the phenomenon itself being thus attributable to particular spatial and historical contexts.

The structure of the study is threefold. Firstly, dimensions of space and philosophies of science are analysed so as to arrive at a method supportive of the study. The idea of social construction of space together with constructivist epistemology is presented as a constructivist conception of space.

Bureaucracies emerge with the introduction of writing as a means of coordinating objects, people and events into a co-synchronous event-universe. Taxation and censuses being the most significant forms of horizontal administration, the first context of territoriality is the pre-modern city. The historical consolidation of administrative power takes place as 'system integration', while 'national integration' denotes the homogenisation of space (standardisation of norms, language etc.). These modes of integration coincide in the modern nation-state.

Finally, the modernisation of traditional Romanian village communities is analysed in the framework of territoriality. In the beginning of the twentieth century state administration still remains at a distance from the everyday village life. The consolidation of the state socialist system, however, culminates on 'systematization' - a centrally planned rearrangement of the rural settlement in the 1970's.