Social Sciences and the study of territory

Territory became a concept increasingly used in geography and other social sciences from 1960's and 1970's. Usually, the term was used in reference to the space of the sovereignty or jurisdiction of a country or its administrative units, and it was especially relevant in political geography. The concept of territory has been loaded more and more with social content, and has been conceived as a social and lived space. The territory was thereby proposed as an axis from which certain issues could be adequately considered and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. It has also been developed a sociology of the territory or territorial sociology, and architecture, urban planning, engineering, agronomy and other applied technical disciplines have spoken of sciences of territory. The changes of meaning that this concept has experienced are related to social transformations and to changes of the same scientific disciplines. It has been alleged that often people do not belong to a single territory, that current mobility frequently determines that people deterritorialize, that have multiple identities, that in the age of globalization, local areas and territories are meaningless. There are currently numerous social, economic and spatial diagnosis about the current situation in the world, offering guidelines for territorial policy, and providing guidance or elements for thought about the order of the territory, and what goals we must try to achieve. This requires talking about the future and determine in which model of society we are thinking.