a society need not map onto a particular territory. I'm not
thinking of cyberspace or subcultures here. I'm thinking
of cultures that define themselves by the people, language,
and customs rather than by location. Nomadic peoples are
an obvious example: the Bedouin are sometimes referred
to as "stateless Arabs" because they don't limit themselves
to the territory of any one nation. Some of the native peoples
of North America were organized this way, which was one
of (many) sources of conflict between them and the
Europeans: the two cultures had very different concepts of
land ownership, and a tribe that thought it was saying "yes,
you can share this piece of our hunting ground" would then
discover that the Europeans interpreted this as "from now
on this land is only for our use, because we have bought it
from the Indians."
Vicki
rosenzweig@acm.org