Where does territory collide?

The bounded area of land, and often the waters and airspace above and around it, over which a sovereign state holds exclusive authority and within which other states are expected not to interfere. Elden's 2010 Land, terrain, territory traced how this idea took shape historically, arguing that a state's territory is not merely physical ground but a political and legal claim that binds a people, a government, and a defined space together. The referent here is the extent of a state's sovereignty over land, guarded as territorial integrity, and it is not an area an animal defends, a patch of market handed to a salesperson, or the geographic limit of a court's authority.[1]

Unit

One state's demarcated land area, fixed by borders and treaty

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Delimited by boundary treaties and surveyed borders, and represented on maps and in claims of sovereignty

An area that an individual animal, a pair, or a group actively defends against others of its own species, securing exclusive access to resources such as food, nesting sites, or mates. Burt's 1943 Territoriality and home range concepts as applied to mammals made the influential distinction between a territory, the defended part of the range, and the home range, the wider area an animal simply travels through without defending. The referent is a defended space in nature, marked and patrolled by its holder, and it has nothing to do with the land a state governs, a region assigned to a seller, or the reach of a legal authority.[2]

Unit

One defended area held by an animal or group, sized in metres or hectares

Recovery means

A territory may be abandoned outside the breeding period and re-established or contested each season

Measured by

Mapped by tracking an animal's movements and defensive displays, and by scent marks, calls, or boundary patrols

The set of customers or accounts, often grouped by geography, assigned to a single salesperson or sales team as their area of responsibility. Zoltners and Sinha's 2005 Sales territory design reviewed decades of models for carving a market into such areas so that workload and sales potential are balanced fairly across a sales force. The referent is an administrative division of a company's market, drawn to allocate selling effort, and it is a managerial construct unrelated to a nation's sovereign land, an animal's defended patch, or the geographic bounds of a court.[3]

Unit

One salesperson's assigned block of customers or accounts

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Defined by account lists and postal or regional boundaries, and evaluated by balance of workload, potential, and travel

The authority of a court or government to make and apply law over people, property, and events within a defined geographic area, the traditional principle that legal power stops at a jurisdiction's borders. Berman's 2002 The globalization of jurisdiction examined this territorial basis of legal authority and how cross-border activity, especially online, strains the assumption that a place fixes which law applies. The referent is the geographic scope of legal power, a question of authority rather than of ground itself, and it is distinct from the land a state owns, the space an animal defends, or the customers a firm assigns to a seller.[4]

Unit

One court or government's area of lawful authority

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Fixed by statute and constitution defining the area and matters over which a body may act, and tested case by case