TITLE:
Unravelling Territoriality in the European Union: Reconfiguring Territorial Affairs by Reconsidering the Guardian and Commercial Systems of Survival
AUTHORS:
Bastiaan Matthijs Hissink Muller
KEYWORDS:
Territoriality, European Union, Systems of Survival, Territorial Cohesion
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.5,
May
18,
2021
ABSTRACT: Even
when seen in its simplest forms, the basics of the territorial affairs of the
European Union are complicated. For that reason, the purpose of this research
is to make them easier to understand this by using the guardian and commercial
systems of survival as heuristic tool. Through conceptual reflection five
related developments then come to the fore: 1) the commercial syndrome emerges
in the essentially guardian territorial affairs, 2) commercial rule challenges
guardian encircling rule via networking, 3) the market of territories formed
with commercial territoriality makes the territorial affairs in the European
Union chaotic and ambivalent, 4) parasitic traders engender corruption in
guardian corpora and generate systemic corruption in those territorial affairs,
and 5) technical elites puzzle two contradictory territorial logics together by
complexifying and loosening cognitive dissonance away. In short, what helps to
more thoroughly understand the puzzling territorial affairs in the European
Union is to recognise their fundaments in two interrelated puzzles, the
guardian and commercial ones, instead of just seeing a single one. The
reconsideration of the guardian and commercial syndromes this involves then
indicates essential reconfigurations of territorial affairs and that,
paradoxically, this symbiosis between the two systems of survival stays on
course as long as the territorial puzzles are not solved. And to easier
understand territorial affairs thus, also opens up a wide field of inquiry
uncovering the interlinked underlying manners of territorialisation, which are
exemplarily shown in the European Union by territorial cohesion policy.