Unravelling Territoriality in the European Union: Reconfiguring Territorial Affairs by Reconsidering the Guardian and Commercial Systems of Survival

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.