Territory and territoriality in the hospital context: an interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

This article deals with the hospital as a territory of complex organization, crossed by multiple interests, which occupies a critical position in the delivery of healthcare service. In that space professional identities are formed, with great social acknowledgement. This work also aims at understanding the hospital from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. It uses a theoretical framework related to the concepts of territory and territoriality from geography and other fields of knowledge, such as healthcare science and philosophy. By this interdisciplinary approach, the hospital is considered to be: a territory of production of health actions made by segments and surfaces, agency of professionals and users that intersect in a tangle of lines of segmentarity; networks and meshes that reveal the production of territory; power and regimentation, and the knowledge/power which reveals the relationships between subject and object, that is, the relationships that take place in the territory and that mean territoriality. Lastly, the hospital territory, like any other territory, is the concrete and abstract expression of the appropriate space. It is formed in its multidimensionality by social actors who always redefine it in their everyday routines, in a force field relationally entangled with powers at various intensities.