Selective Territorialization
RWS Concept
Selective territorialization describes the process through which world-societal processes acquire relevance in particular territorial contexts without becoming territorially contained.
The concept is part of Regional Development in World Society (RWS) and addresses a central problem of regional analysis: how globally circulating processes, expectations, standards, resources and forms of knowledge become regionally consequential.
Working Definition
Selective territorialization refers to the process through which world-societal processes acquire relevance in particular territorial contexts through selective connections to organizational, institutional, material and decision-related structures.
Territorialization is selective because not all global processes become equally relevant everywhere. Some are taken up, translated, measured, financed, regulated or institutionalized, while others remain weakly connected or absent.
The concept therefore does not imply that society itself becomes territorial. Rather, it describes how territorially specific relevance is produced within a functionally differentiated world society.
Theoretical Problem
Regional analysis often treats regions as pre-existing spatial units within which economic, political and social processes unfold.
RWS takes a different starting point.
A region is not assumed to be a closed container or an autonomous social system. Instead, the analytical question is:
How do heterogeneous world-societal processes become territorially relevant in particular places, and how are these connections stabilized over time?
Selective territorialization provides one analytical entry point for answering this question.
World Society and Territorial Relevance
In world society, communication in fields such as politics, science, law, finance, education, health, environmental governance or the economy is not confined to territorial boundaries.
Nevertheless, these processes have territorially differentiated consequences.
International climate standards may become relevant for one coastal region through adaptation programmes and climate finance.
Global mineral demand may transform another region through new extraction projects, infrastructure and migration.
Scientific classifications, environmental regulations or financial instruments may acquire practical relevance only where organizations are able to observe them, translate them into decisions and connect them to available resources and material conditions.
Selective territorialization therefore concerns the production of territorial relevance, not the territorial enclosure of societal processes.
Selectivity
Territorialization is inherently selective.
Selection occurs because organizations cannot process all available expectations and information simultaneously, while institutional arrangements structure which distinctions, expectations and procedures become relevant.
This produces differentiated patterns of connection.
A global programme may become highly consequential in one region but remain marginal in another. A legal standard may exist nationally but acquire different practical importance across municipalities. A financing mechanism may formally be available to many territories while effectively accessible only to organizations with sufficient technical and administrative capacity.
Territorialization is therefore closely connected to capacity, inequality and exclusion.
Organizations
Organizations play a central role in selective territorialization.
Municipal governments, ministries, companies, universities, courts, development agencies, cooperatives, NGOs and international organizations observe global and national expectations and translate some of them into decisions.
Through decisions, organizations can connect otherwise heterogeneous societal processes.
For example, a municipal administration may connect scientific climate projections, legal requirements, infrastructure planning and financial programmes within a territorial adaptation strategy.
A mining company may connect global commodity markets, environmental licensing, technological standards and local labour markets through investment decisions.
Organizations are therefore important observation sites for analysing how territorial relevance is constructed.
Knowledge, Measurement and Standards
Selective territorialization frequently depends on processes of knowledge production and measurement.
A territorial condition must often become observable before it can become relevant for decision-making.
Indicators, maps, classifications, inventories, risk assessments, environmental impact studies and monitoring systems can transform complex territorial conditions into forms that organizations can process.
A recurrent mechanism can be represented schematically as:
knowledge → measurement → standardization → finance → governance
This is not assumed to be linear or universal; it identifies a recurrent mechanism through which territorial relevance may be constructed and stabilized.
Material Conditions
Territorialization is not purely communicative or institutional.
Material conditions influence which connections are possible, costly, attractive or conflictual.
Mineral deposits, mangrove ecosystems, transport infrastructure, water availability, urban settlement patterns and exposure to climate risks can all affect how world-societal processes acquire territorial relevance.
Materiality does not determine regional development directly. It enters regional processes through observation, valuation, measurement, organization and decision-making.
Selective territorialization therefore connects societal processes to materially differentiated environments without reducing regional development to geography or natural resources.
Selective Territorialization and Regionalization
RWS distinguishes selective territorialization from regionalization.
Selective territorialization concerns the process through which world-societal processes acquire relevance in a territorial context.
Regionalization concerns how newly territorialized processes become related to historically accumulated regional structures, organizations, institutional arrangements and material conditions.
This distinction can be expressed schematically:
World-societal process
↓
Selective territorialization
↓
Territorial relevance
↓
Interaction with existing organizations, institutions, material conditions and historical structures
↓
Regionalization
Territorialization therefore does not yet produce a region by itself.
A region emerges through the historically contingent configuration of multiple territorialized processes and their interaction with already existing structures.
Example: Climate Governance
International climate governance provides a clear example.
Climate science, international agreements, adaptation standards and climate-finance instruments operate within world society.
They become territorially relevant only selectively.
In a coastal region, climate risks may be measured, mangrove ecosystems classified as relevant for carbon storage, adaptation projects formulated and external funding mobilized.
Through these processes, climate governance acquires territorial relevance.
How they then interact with local governments, fishing communities, protected areas, infrastructure, land-use conflicts and existing development trajectories is a question of regionalization.
Example: Mining
Global demand for minerals does not transform all mineral-bearing territories in the same way. It acquires territorial relevance through exploration, investment decisions, licensing, infrastructure construction, labour recruitment and fiscal arrangements.
These processes connect global commodity markets to specific territories.
Their regional effects depend on existing settlement patterns, municipal institutions, infrastructure, political organization and previous economic structures.
Mining therefore provides a particularly visible case of selective territorialization followed by differentiated regionalization.
Analytical Questions
The concept directs empirical research toward questions such as:
- Which world-societal processes become territorially relevant?
- Through which organizations do these processes enter a territorial context?
- Which forms of knowledge and measurement make them observable?
- Which standards and classifications structure decisions?
- Which financial resources become available or inaccessible?
- Which material conditions facilitate or constrain connections?
- Which actors and organizations are excluded from decision processes?
- Why do similar global processes produce different regional outcomes?
- How do newly territorialized processes interact with historically accumulated regional structures?
- Which expectations become decision-relevant, and through which organizational processes?
Relation to RWS
Selective territorialization is one of the core concepts of Regional Development in World Society.
It helps specify the relationship between world society and regional development without treating regions as closed territorial containers.
Within RWS, regions are understood as:
historically contingent configurations in which heterogeneous world-societal processes become selectively connected, organizationally stabilized, materially conditioned and institutionally condensed.
Selective territorialization identifies the process through which heterogeneous world-societal processes acquire territorial relevance within particular contexts.
Related Concepts
Knowledge, Measurement & Decision Relevance →
Organizations & Regional Structures →
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Regional Development in World Society →
Conceptual note — part of the ongoing theoretical development of Regional Development in World Society (RWS).