Out of the 'moribund backwater': territory and territoriality in politicalgeography

Political geography emerged from the 'moribund backwater' to which Brian Be rry had assigned it during the discipline's 'quantitative and theoretical r evolution'. It didn't fit well into the emerging conception of spatial scie nce, however, which paid scant attention to one of political geography's ma in spatial concepts - that of the bounded space. This essay traces the cons ideration of bounded spaces in political geography over the last 30 years, focusing on Peter Taylor's major contributions, first, to the spatial analy sis of the translation of votes into seats in constituency-based electoral systems and, secondly, his essays on territories and territoriality. (C) 20 01 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.