Although the spatial aspect of social existence may at first appear as only remotely related to man’s quest to maintain and to enhance his freedom in the face of the encroachment of the society of which he is always a part, a mere glance at the historical development of the idea of freedom will reveal its intimate connection with the area that at any one time defines the extent of the human community. Freedom in the epochs preceding our own was not primarily or solely a matter of persons but of areas. The house, the manor, the village, the principality ,and the city—these were the stable anchorages in terms of which a man’s status and the scope of his freedom were defined before the advent of the modern national state. It was this areal context which gave the concept of sovereignty its reality and its meaning.
Louis Wirth, “Localism, Regionalism, and Centralization,” The American Journal of Sociology 42 (no. 4, 1937): pp. 493–509.
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