In the name of the territory

The exponential deployment of the scientific and political uses of the word “territory” is a matter of concern. It dates back to the early 1980s and can be explained by globalisation, the transformations and struggles it generates, and the quest for a new intelligibility of the world rearranged at different scales. But this does not exempt us from being clear-sighted about the political uses to which the word is put. Against an increasingly “local-populist” territorial ideology, the author states two conditions for building societies through territories without enclosing them.