Categories and cleavages : The end of territorial peace?

Résumé 0

Politics tends to divide the territory into categorical slices of size (rural areas, small and medium-sized towns, metropolitan areas) or binary slices (“peripheral” areas, “included” metropolises) in such a way as to serve clients according to opportunities. Is this the end of territorial peace and the activation of social cleavages through the territory? So much for politics. On the scientific side, the need for a comparable framework of analysis over time pushes many statisticians and researchers to mobilise the same categories, in search of the mythical “relevant territory”. However, the territory is made up of flows, links and interdependencies between scales and actors. Moreover, it is highly diverse. It is therefore necessary to construct global analytical frameworks and ideal-types to characterise the different spatial trajectories and to shed light on public action.