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INTENSITY OF INTERACTION
likely to signal the opera ti on of some territorial mechanísm. (An
extensión of this notion with respect to human territoriaüty is discussed
in Part II-E-2.)
One final note is necessary to distinguish between the forms of
territoriaüty expressed directly on the earth’s surface in some sort of
identifiable pattern and the forms of portable territory which are carried
around by the individual animal. Here we enter the field of proxemics
pioneered by Edward T. Hall. Just as humans are surrounded by a series
of “bubbles” which shape interpersonal behavior, animáis simílarly
appear to be encapsuled by a series of distance zones which contribute to
spacing behavior and which fundamentaíly affect the relationships
between members of the same as well as of different species. Hall
discusses four of tírese dístances: flight distance and critica! distance are
used when different species meet, whtle personal distance and social
distance are observable during interaction between members of the same
species. The relationships between territorialiíy as expressed on the
earth’s surface and these portable micro- territories are Jikely to be
extremely important and revealing, but there is still not enough research
currently available to offer any suggestions or to draw reliable
conclusions.
D. Territoriality and Human Analogies
The degree to which human behavior is related to behavior in non-
human animals, especially other primates, has fascinated man since his
origins. It is no wonder that observations of marked territorial behavior
in animals have sparked attempts to link the constellation of features and
functions of animal territoriality to human equivalents. In recent years
such works as On Aggression, by a leading ethologist, Konrad Lorenz,
and The Territorial Imperative, by Robert Ardrey, have embroiled the
study of human territoriality in a heated argument over ibis relationship
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which has centered around two closely associated questions. The first is
the degree to which analogies or direct inferences can be made from
animal behavior to behavior in man. How far can we assume, for
example, that human territoriality is comparable in form and
function with territoriality among animals? Secondly, is
territoriality in man (the existence of which is usually not
challenged) instinctual (genetic, pre-coded) and essentially
ineradicable except through major evolutionary change? Or is
it experiential, or culturally-derived, and therefore susceptible
to suppression, substitution, or elimination through childhood
socialization and culture change?
If these questions were simply part of an academic exercise or food
for the human imagination, their importance would be relatively limited.
But the character and foundations of human territoriality have become
associated with two of the most critical problems facing all mankind: the
nature of human aggression and the rapidly accelerating growth of
human population- popularly symbolized perhaps by the H-Bomb and
the Population Bomb. It is impossible, therefore, to discuss human
territoriality without reference to these centrally important problems of
our time.

1. On Aggression and Territorial Imperatives
Controversy over the nature and basis of human territoriality has
crystallized around a series of popular books concerned with the
relations between territorial behavior and human aggression. In these
studies, several of which have either misinterpreted or overinterpreted
the ethology literature, human aggression is viewed as an innate and
ineradicable drive linked to man’s animal origins and associated in large
part with the establishment and maintenance of territorial behavior.
Human territoriality is in turn viewed as a related instinctual impulse to
possess and defend a particular area as a means of fulfilling certain
biological or evolutionary needs, the most prominent of which is the
control and positive channeling of aggression. There has already been
some excellent criticism of this literature 10 and we will, therefore, not
enter very deeply into the major arguments. It is important, however, to
examine the theoretical origins of what might be called “popular
etiology,” for it has been the way in which the ethological literature has
been interpreted with respect to man that has elicited most of the
criticism and controversy (rather than the scientific literature itself).
The great majority of ethologists do not underestimate the enormous
differences between animal and human behavior patterns. Rather than
simply accepting these differences as given, many ethologists have been
concerned with interpreting human behavioral systems from a
comparative, evolutionary, and adaptational point of view. Often their
work has contributed an insight into the study of man that has been
lacking in the social sciences which, with some exceptions, have
traditionally tended to ignore and even deny the role of innate biological
factors in human behavior (or, alternatively, to consider learning as
exclusively human). Indeed, many of the studies of animal behavior
have caused major reevaluations of the very definition of man as several
human achievements heretofore consider unique to the cultural animal
have been found among his non-cultured relatives.
The basic ethological view on animal territoriality and aggression can
be summarized as follows.I II !l is generally accepted in modern biology
that. the primary driving force behind evolutionary change is natural
selection. Virtually all persistent anatomical, physiological, and
behavioral! characteristics-including social organization-are therefore
likely to be adaptive in that they promote the survival of the species.
Evolutionary processes, however, tend to favor (at least in vertebrates)
competitive or aggressive behavior at the individual level. Since this
kind of behavior could be expected to disrupt social life and group
cooperation, there must be some mechanism which can sustain group
formation in vertebrates through the control of intra-specific aggression.
The two which appear most widespread in vertebrate social groups are
dominance behavior, based upon recognition of an individual animal’s
status within the group and territoriality, which geographically limits
and confines aggressive and other potentially disruptive behavior. As
mentioned earlier, either the individual, knowing his position within the
dominance hierarchy, engages in ritualized dominant-subordinate
behavior rather than aggression or refrains from going into an area where
See, for example, the various essays in Man and Aggression, edited by Ashiey
I Territoriality did not disappear, but its role and character were
Montagu; and L. Berkowitz, “Simple Views of Aggression: An Essay Review.’’
II
Adapted from William Etkin, Social Behavior from Fish to Man.
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he is likely to be engaged in a dispute. In a very rough way, the
dominance hierarchy compartmentalizes animal society vertically in its
social organization while territoriality compartmentalizes the society in
terms of the space it occupies. “Boundary” creation and maintenance
stabilize social relationships by reducing intra-group conflict and
reinforcing established behavioral norms.
There are undoubtedly many implications for human behavior in the
evolutionary perspective of ethology. In the search for causes of certain
types of human behavior, however, the role of built-in biological
determiners must be weighed carefully against the much more powerful
influence of symbolic learning, culture and environment. Cultural
development and differentiation in man has provided a range of adaptive
opportunities unmatched in animals. Human territoriality and dominance
behavior— both clearly evident in man—are likely, therefore, to have
many causes, take many different forms, and serve a wide variety of
functions. The same can be said for human aggression. There may very
well be a territorial instinct in man as there appears to be in most
vertebrate animals. But territorial behavior in man, particularly at the
larger group level, is probably more directly rooted in early human social
and cultural evolution, when the ancestors of man moved from the dense
forest to become pack-hunters on the open savanna, than it is in some
primitive and ineradicable genetic “imperative” traceable to man’s
animal origins.
The new conditions associated with man’s move from the forest—
the advent of carnivorous habits, the use of weapons, intensive
competition between groups for resources and protection-stimulated
important social and cultural readjustments to limit intra-specific
aggression and to further promote group solidarity. As noted by J. H.
Crook, a major critic of the Ardrey-Lorenz view of aggressive
territoriality:
The development of ownership of tools, homesteads and domestic
animals would greatly have increased the opportunities for conflict
within communities, these things becoming in effect extensions of a
person’s “individual distance.” Complex patterns of conventional
behavior (in the usual sense of the word) would arise, giving way in
due course to codified laws concerning property and its exchange.
International conduct may be conceived as an extension of this
principle to a community and political level. (Man and Aggression, p.
172)
Through a process undoubtedly similar to this codification of
conventional behavior mentioned by Crook emerged the political system
and its variety of institutions. The political system was eventually to
develop a specialized existence of its own with the formation of the
state, but for most of human history it remained tightly intertwined with
the other distinguishable subsystems of society (economic, social,
kinship, religious). Despite its undifferentiated nature, however, the
political system at all times served to control competition, conflict, and
cooperation—functions which in animal societies were provided by a
primarily biologically-based territoriality and dominance hierarchy but
which in human society carne increasingly to revolve around culturally-
based and symbolically-expressed modes of socio-political organization.
significantly altered. As a means of societal integration, it declined

markedly in relative importance as early man developed a wider range of
socio-cultural and symbolic mechanisms to promote sharing and group
solidarity (and thereby control aggression). The incest tabu, for example,
helped bring primate sexuality under control and stabilize the family as
the basic human social and economic unit. In essence, therefore, many of
the primary functions of animal territoriality carne to be supplied by
non-territorial cultural regulations and conventions.
At the same time, however, a totally new form of territoriality
developed, larger in scale and symbolically or socially expressed, which
became institutionalized as part of the political system. In part, this
symbolic macro- territoriality encompassed the array of attitudes toward
land, space, and territory which existed at the individual or small group
level along with the potentially integrative functions it served. But it also
developed new dimensions as a regulatory mechanism for the society as
a whole-as a focus for group identity and membership, as an expression
of social and economic organization, as a basis for the exploitation of the
environment, and as a means of shaping and channeling human spatial
interaction.
As a corollary to the above development, societal territoriality- if not
also the carryovers of individual territorial behavior- became culturally
specific. That is, the patterns, processes, and functions of territoriality
carne to differ from society to society and from one time period to
another. Hali’s work on proxemics has clearly shown this cross-cultural
variability with respect to the portable micro-territorial “bubbles” all
men carry with them, while some of the cultural variety in perceptions of
the political organization of space has been discussed in Part I of this
paper.
Furthermore, as will be discussed later, there is reason to believe that
territoriality in early human society, when men were organized in small
bands of hunters and gatherers, may not have been all that different
qualitatively from the looser forms of territorial behavior among the
higher primates, particularly the gorilla and chimpanzee, man’s nearest
primate relatives. The basic social units among primitive hunters and
gatherers were extremely flexible and highly egalitarian, with group
membership changing with changing circumstances. Defined territories
existed, but territorial boundaries were rarely defended aggressively
against other groups-early man was fundamentally peaceful- and they
were usually quite permeable especially in times of stress. There was
probably no enigmatic explosion of aggressive territoriality as man was
differentiated from the other primates, as presumed by Ardrey’s The
Territorial Imperative. Instead, territoriality in early human society more
likely represented the culmination of many trends already well advanced
among the higher primates: the existence of relatively open social
groups, the ability of animals especially adult males—to shift
from group to
group without conflict, the preponderance of peaceful individual
encounters, and, in general, the greater permeability of territorial
boundaries.
Only when human society began to increase significantly in scale
and complexity did territoriality reassert itself as a powerful behavioral
and organizational phenomenon. But this was a cultural and symbolic
territoriality, not the primitive territoriality of the primates and other
animals. As Fried notes with respect to the evolutionary notion of human
society developing from an organizational emphasis on kinship to one
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focused on territory:
What we cannot accept is the implication that the territoriality that
underlies state formation has any but superficial resemblance to the
kind of territoriality that seems quite definitely to be much more
ancient than the cultural recognition of kinship. (p. 46)
Thus, although “cultural” territoriality fundamentally begins with the
origins of the cultured primate, man, it achieves a central prominence in
society only with the emergence of the state. And it probably attains its
fullest flowering as an organizational basis for society in the formally
structured, rigidly compartmentalized, and fiercely defended nation-state
system of the present day.
What can we conclude, therefore, about the relationship between animal
and human territoriality and the role of (30) instinctual factors in human
territorial! ty and aggression? First of all, there is little doubt that human
behavior is influenced by experience and inherited biological
characteristics. But whatever impulses man might have to hold territory
or to be aggressive, they can be modified or controlled by learning and
socialization into a particular culture. Nature and nurture do not form a
strict dichotomy, but internet in conjunction with specific ecological and
social conditions to shape patterns of individual and group behavior in
man. Aggression and territoriality may be characteristic of the human
species but are not inevitable, ineradicable, or Invariable.
Secondly, animal territoriality is related to human territoriality
primarily by analogy rather than by homology. In other words, there are
likely to be some interesting similarities in form and function, but the
motivations may differ markedly and whatever similarities exist are
probably not directly traceable to a common developmental or
evolutionary origin.
Thirdly, the basic differences between man and anima! are most
likely greatest at the larger group or societal level. In no other animal
species except man is the adult male so completely dependent! upon
others for his survival. It is no surprise, therefore, that nearly all the
chacteristics which distinguish man from other animals-culture, the
degree of dependence upon symbolic learning, knowledge of history and
tradition, the development of specialized forms of intra-specific
Communications, including language are all attuned to the maintenance
of men in integrated groups.
In terms of studying societal territoriality in man, it is probably more
fruitful to examine human territoriality at the individual or personal level
rather than seeking direct relationships with either individual or group
territoriality in animals. This does not rule out the fascinating questions
of shared biological factors in individual human and animal territoriality,
but primarily cautions against hasty biological interpretations of human
group territoriality in the absence of strong scientific evidence one way
or the other.
2. Territoriality and the Human Population
Explosion
The role of territoriality as a population control mechanism in many
animal species has been briefly discussed earlier in this paper and is
widely established in the animal behavior literature, especially in the
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classic work of V. C. Wynne-Edwards, Animal Dispersion in Relation to human population, whether well fed or hungry, now shows a tendency
Social Behavior. Unlike man, most animals maintain fairly constant to expand without limit. Lacking the built-in homeostatic system of
animal populations, man cannot look to any natural process to restrain
population levels which appear to be regulated not by predators,
his rapid growth. If growth is to be slowed down, it must be by his
starvation, accidents, or disease but primarily by several physiological own deliberate and socially applied efforts.
and behavioral mechanisms, some of the most prominent of which are
It is tempting to attribute war and its results in human society to the
associated with territoriality. Well before the limits of food supply are
operation of some macro-territorial mechanism of population control,
reached, these mechanisms begin operating to reduce numbers and to
working to reduce numbers, guarantee the survival of the most powerful
avoid disastrous overexploitation of avail- able resources, thus
and best organized societies, and thus assure the most effective
reestablishing population density at an efficiently balanced level.
propagation of the human species. This kind of logic. parallels that
Why is modern man unique among the animals in seemingly being
behind the “organismic approach” to political geography which
unable to control his numbers? Has the unchecked growth of human
generated the Germán school of geopolitik. The latter, among other
population signaled the beginning of physiological and social
programs, attempted to rationalize Germán expansion as an imperative
catastrophes as a “natural” reaction against overpopulation? Are the
search for lebensraum (living space), viewing the state as a natural
ecological disasters generated by a crowded world an inevitable
organism which must grow or die.12
outgrowth of spiraling population numbers? These and related questions
This interpretation reflects the degree to which notions of individual
have again linked the study of human territoriality to the controversy
territoriality and private property have be- come incorporated into the
over analogies between human and animal behavior and have also
perceptions of spatial political organization within the nation-state
sparked a number of popular studies outlining the potential biological
system. But rather than being a kind of inevitable biological imperative,
and evolutionary calamites embedded in the current condition.
the state-as-living-organism interpretation of territoriality is a culturally-
Much of what we have said with respect to territoriality and human
derived idea (or, on occasion, ideology). This does not reduce its
aggression holds true for the relationship between territoriality and
importance as a factor influencing international relations, for indeed it
population control. There is little doubt that territorial behavior in
continues to represent! a salient feature in Western conceptions of
animals often serves to regulate population numbers. When densities are
spatial. organization and must be studied as such. The fact of its cultural
increased, formerly flexible territorial Systems appear to rigidify to
origins, however, as is true with respect to territoriality and aggression,
guarantee the survival of the “fittest.” When this fails to check rising
negates its inevitability and ineradícability. Put more simply, war is not
density effectively—through, for example, the exposure of weaker
unavoidable. States can survive without territorial expansion. Whatever
animals (including the young) to predation or starvation-the territorial
functions war may serve, substitutions can be found.
system tends to break down, carrying along with it the delicate fabric of
The relationships between population control and micro-territoriality
social order. In the ensuing upheaval, significant physiological and
are much more difficult to assess. Does increasing density “violate” the
behavioral changes take place which tend to promote a Wholesale die-
micro-territorial fabric of personal space “bubbles,” sparking off
off of the population (including not only the least fit) which can serve to
physiological and behavioral changes similar to those which occur in
reestablish the pre-existing equilibrium. Through all this, it is population
over- crowded groups of animals? Do the stresses of crowded III
density and not food supply which is the chief factor limiting animal
conditions fatally swell the human adrenals as they do in the Sika deer?
numbers.
Are our cities becoming “behavioral sinks” or “human zoos”? In a new
That man developed cultural substitutes for the primarily biological
book, The Social Contract, Robert Ardrey explores the alternatives open
or instinctual mechanisms of population control, including territoriality,
to man should some socially accepted method of comprehensive birth
is widely recognized. But just as it is often asserted that human cultural
control not be adapted and human population numbers continue to
and political evolution worked to reduce the effectiveness of culturally-
expand unchecked. Among these alternatives, all of which parallel the
derived means for regulating aggression, so too is it claimed that man
“death by stress” characteristic of animal societies which have grown
has progressively shed himself of the population control mechanisms
beyond control by conventional means, he includes automobile
developed in early human society. In an article in Scientific American,
accidents, drug addiction, cardiac and other “stress” diseases,
Wynne- Edwards summarizes this position as follows:
homosexuality, suicide, and the various psychological and social
Primitive man, limited to the food he could get by hunting, had disorders associated with overcrowded urban life. (He considers
evolved a System for restricting his numbers by tribal traditions and conventional war less important since it has become involved mainly
taboos, such as prohibiting sexual intercourse for mothers while they
were still nursing a baby, practicing compulsory abortions and with wasting expensive machinery and thus no longer kills enough men
infanticide, offering human sacrifices. . . . These customs, consciously to significantly affect overall population numbers.)
or not, kept the population density nicely balanced against (31) the
feeding capacity and hunting range. Then, some 8,000 to 10,000 years
III 12
ago, the agricultural revolution removed that limitation. There was no The view of the state as a living organism is most closely
longer any reason to hold down the size of the tribe; on the contrary, associated with the writing of Friedrich Ratzel. See “The Laws of the
power and wealth accrued to those tribes that allowed their population Spatial Growth of States,” in Kasperson and Minghi (eds.), The
to multiply. . . . The old checks on population growth were gradually Stnicture of Poiitical Geography.
discarded and forgotten.
Given the opportunity for procreation and a low detail rate, the

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Whether or not we accept the startling observations of Ardrey and

other popularizing ethologists, there is no doubt that overpopulation has
created exceedingly stressful conditions in the modern world. Whereas
large-scale societal territoriality in man is almost surely a cultural
phenomenon and therefore open to modification or substitution, the
absence of a powerful biological basis for micro territoriality is by no
means as well established. We simply do not yet have enough
information on the physiological, psycho- logical, and social effects of
overcrowding in man. Many of the questions asked in the preceding
paragraphs thus remain unanswerable at the present time.

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