(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Identity, Territory, and Self-Determination:
Factors Underlying Potential National and
International Conflict
David B. Knight
Dean of Social Sciences
University of Guelph
The State
States‘ remain the principal territorial framework for
international society. Whereas all States are legally
equal within the international system, in geographical
terms there are great differences within and between
States, including differences that find reflection in the
way individual States may be perceived as partici-
pants in the system (Cohen 1991; Knight, 1993).
The State, a physical and legal entity, is a bounded
container for the contents of a particular portion of the
earth’s surface, which includes the people, their gov-
emment, resources, and means for communication
and movement. The State, theoretically, is “the chief
custodian of overall social order; it is monitor, comp-
troller, arbitrator" of all people, things, and processes
operating within the delimited bounds (Greer and
Orleans, cited in Knight, 1982). Further, as Johnston
(1982) has observed, the State acts as the promoter of
accumulation, as the legitimator of capitalism, and as
the creator of social consensus and order. In order to
perform these three roles, each State develops its own
instruments and mechanisms by which the structural
links between social formation and the State can func-
tion hierarchically and so enable the reproduction of
the system.
The State is thus itself a geographical factor because
things happen that have spatial consequences as a
result of decisions and actions by State agents and
institutions. States’ actions pertain to their own and
others’ territories. An essential quality of statehood is
territory; all States have territory that is bounded, for-
mally or informally, by human decisions and actions.
‘
State, with a capital “s" herein, refers to an internationally recog-
nized independent, self-governing territory, sometimes called a
country. State with a lowercase “s” refers to a politico-territorial
unit within a State, such as Minnesota within the United States.
Territory
Territory by itself is a passive concept. People, by
their beliefs, decisions, and actions, give meaning to
territory. Territory thus is not; rather, it becomes! It is
true that many people obtain meaning from “their”
territory and the landscape within it by believing that
the territory and its landscape are living entities that
are already filled with meaning. And it is true that
such meanings may be reflected in a people’s cultural
ecology, the spatial patteming of their settlement and
land use systems, their naming of places, their patterns
of movement, and perhaps in reverential beliefs they
hold about specific parts of the landscape around
them. To suggest that these meanings are simply fig-
ments of the collective imagination-—-parts of the
“geographies of the mind”-—is to be radical, at least
for those people who accept the apparent truth of such
meanings. Meanings gained from territory-which are
really attributions to the territoxy—-reflect a cultural
relationship with the territory. Consider, for instance,
the powerful links most US citizens have to Washing-
ton, DC, where the human-created capital landscape
serves as an important symbolic place for members of
the American nation.
A State’s territory is thus not value-free; it holds dif-
ferent kinds of meanings for its people versus—but
from quite different perspectives and degrees of
knowledge, insight, and appreciation—those who do
not belong. People of the State will revere and gain
strength from their territory. People will see certain
structures or specific locations, such as statues, capital
cities, battlefields, and even the territory as a whole, as
sacred or at least very special. In sum, territory is a
social construction (Williams and Smith, 1983).
If it is accepted that territory “becomes,” then States
are not geographical givens. No State exists because
of firm geographical factors. States and their spatial
parameters-dimensions, shapes, and boundaries-
exist because human actions and various local and
world economic-political-social processes have led to
their creation and continuation. These actions and pro-
cesses occur in specific time-space settings and so
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268