Week 2 23 September 2010 GEOG 3300 | Space, Place Scale Copyright Amy Lavender Harris, 2010 1 GEOG 3300 Space, Place Scale Week 2 Theories of Space,

Week 223 September 2010

GEOG 3300 | Space, Place & ScaleCopyright © Amy Lavender Harris, 2010

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GEOG 3300Space, Place & Scale

Week 2Theories of Space, Place & Scale

Department of GeographyFaculty of Liberal & Professional

StudiesYork University

Fall Term 2010-2011

Reading Response Assignments

• Three reading response assignments (due 7 October 2010, 11 November 2010 and 9 December 2010).

• 2-3 pages long.• Each worth 10% of final grade.• Engage with one or more course readings covered

during month before assignment due• A reading response is a critical commentary upon the

material, demonstrating grasp of literature and its relevance to course themes.

• Structure: formal, essay style with thesis statement and argument.

• Try focusing on a single example, experience or theme.Week 223 September 2010


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Critical Essay (Term Paper)

• Critical term essay of 10-12 pages, due on 10 December 2010.

• Opportunity to write about any theme or issue that interests you, as long as it develops an understanding of some aspect of space/place/scale.

• Must be informed by a theoretical approach / contextual literature.

• Must be analytical rather than merely descriptive (take an opinion, and/or apply the theoretical concepts to a new experience or setting).

• Recommendation: choose a specific subject, theme, place, or experience



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GEOG 3300 Term Paper:Suggestions for Organization

Section Content Pages

1Introduction: thesis statement (explain what you are

writing about, how you will do so, and why it is important or meaningful), summary of arguments you will use

1 or 2

2Context / background: brief explanation of theoretical

perspective(s) that inform your paper. Where does this perspective ‘fit’ in the literature/debates on SPS?

2 to 3

3Analysis: A thoughtful, complete exploration of your

subject (using evidence and examples) that justifies / fulfills your thesis statement.

5 to 7

4 Conclusion. 1 at most

Don’t forget to choose an interesting title and provide full references and notes as necessary. Yes, you can use “I”.



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Space, Place & Scale

• Foundational concepts in geography whose meanings are often taken for granted, as if self-evident.

• But these very concepts are contested and rife with hidden controversy.

• We cannot call truly ourselves geographers unless we understand these concepts and the controversies that enfold them.

• Approaches to geography change over time, but the most prominent shift has been the ‘cultural turn’ in geography and the concurrent ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences since the early 1970s. Place matters now in all the social sciences, not just geography (one leading example is the influence of Lefebvre across the social sciences).



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Defining Place• How we define ‘place’ matters • Dimensions of place:

– Place as location: coordinates, dimensions, scale– Place as an idea: public & private; inclusive or

exclusive; places of memory; socially constructed places; spaces of identity; place-making’; home & nation; contested places

• Cresswell: Places are “meaningful locations”• John Agnew: Places have three attributes: (1) location;

(2) locale; and (3) sense of place• Cresswell: “place is not just a thing in the world but a

way of understanding the world.”



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Space and Place

• Often ‘space’ is understood as something hollow or exterior: a container for place.

• In common usage (even by many geographers), ‘spaces’ are transformed into ‘places’ by naming [claiming] and filling them. In this sense space and place are treated as a duality, even as opposites.

• But this is overly simplistic. Rather than think of space as hollow or as an absence, we might understand ‘space’ as a broader and more abstract concept than ‘place’.

• Tuan describes space as ‘movement’ and place as ‘pause.’• Space as possibility, openness, the sublime, the ‘beyond’• Some geographers (e.g., Lefebvre) use ‘space’ where

others might use ‘place’



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Scale

• The subject of increasing geographical attention since the early 1990s (especially with the rise of GIS)

• Focus on ‘cartographic’, ‘geographic’ and ‘operational’ scale (Marston, 2000: 220)

• But scale is not just mechanical or measurable; it is not simply “given.”

• Scale is also socially constructed: “scale is not necessarily a preordained hierarchical framework for ordering the world … it is instead a contingent outcome of the tensions that exist between structural forces and the practices of human agents.” (ibid)

• The idea of scale as a theoretical concern in geography.• Scale as relational; invoking power, discourse, hierarchy:

the politics of scale (Agnew)



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Scale in Geographical Practice

• The politics of scale: manipulation of electoral boundaries and political territories by political parties, governments, trade unions; different ways spaces are divided and ordered. Mobilization at local and global scales. The ‘rescaling’ of territorial power (e.g., global trade agreements)

• Localities: spaces of dependence; networks of engagement (Kevin Cox)

• Sociological: micro / meso / macro scale (or) global, national, and urban scale … also rural (agrarian?) and bodily scale.

• Remember: this is about scale as an idea, not only as something empirical or measured.



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Genealogies of Place

Cresswell outlines three broad approaches to place:1. Descriptive (‘ideographic’) approaches to

place2. Phenomenological approaches (the ‘essence’

of being ‘in place’; emphasis on experience and meaning)

3. Social constructionist approaches (Marxian, feminist, postmodern, postcolonial)



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Approach Associated Schools Preoccupations with Place

Descriptive

-Regional Geography (Richard Hartshorne)-Early cultural geographers (Carl Sauer)-Spatial Science (1970s)

-‘ideographic’-‘chorology’-Regions and cultures-Place as a thing: ontologically given-Environmental determinism (although Sauer held that culture transforms nature)-‘Place’ remains largely undefined

Phenomenological

Phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard)-Humanistic geographers (Yi-Fu Tuan, Anne Buttimer, David Seamon, Ted Relph, Edward Casey)

-experienced, ‘embodied’ or lived place--’topophilia’ (Tuan)-Home and dwelling-belonging and attachment-‘authenticity’Place as primordial or Place as “mutually constituted” by environment and culture-‘romantic’? Naïve?

Social Constructionist

-‘Radical’ Geography-Marxism (David Harvey-Feminism (Gillian Rose, Doreen Massey)-Poststructuralism and postcolonialism (Edward Soja, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said)

-Social determinism: places as socially constructed-Spatial ‘turn’ in the cultural and social sciences-Class, gender and race-Transgression and resistance; power and privilege-Postcolonial legacies-‘ungrounded? Incoherent?-What happens to ontology?



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1. Descriptive Approaches to Space

• An early and relatively simplistic (naïve?) approach to space and place

• Place as a thing (ontologically given): ideographic (focused on the particular)

• Primarily a descriptive approach• Place region; territory; boundaries; measurable

space• Many early regional geographers were environmental

determinists (although Carl Sauer suggested that cultures also transform natural environments)

• Place and culture: ‘human regions’; anthropology• Spatial science in the 1960s and 1970s (‘quantitative

revolution’)



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Place and Space in Descriptive Geography: the rise of Humanism

“Since the particular had no place in the hierarchy of values developed in the post-enlightenment world studies of place were often relegated to ‘mere description’ while space was given the role of developing scientific law-like generalizations. In order to make this work people had to be removed from the scene. Space was not embodied but empty. This empty space could then be used to develop a kind of spatial mathematics – a geometry. But this idea of place as a fascination with the particular and the study of place as ‘mere description’ depends on a particular naïve view of places as given parts of the human landscape. In the 1970s humanistic geographers began to develop notions of place which were every bit as universal and theoretically ambitious as approaches to space had been.” (Cresswell, 2004: 19)



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2. Phenomenology and Humanism

• In the 1970s, ‘place’ becomes explicitly the central preoccupation in human geography.

• Emphasis on subjectivity and experience• Dwelling, home, belonging, attachment, authenticity:

the meaning of everyday experiences of place• Humanism: Tuan• Phenomenology (Relph, Casey, Seamon): place and

being / consciousness• To a certain extend phenomenological and

humanistic approaches to place have been supplanted by social constructionist perspectives. Is the pendulum shifting back?



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3. Social Constructivist Approaches to Space and

Place(a) Postmodern Geographies (power and discourse)(b) Marxism (class)(c) Feminism (gender)(d) Postcolonialism (race)

Note that these categories intersect, conflict and overlap.

Almost all contemporary research in geography is informed by social constructionist perspectives.



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3(a) Postmodern Approaches

• Associated with a “spatial turn” in the social sciences and a simultaneous “cultural turn” in geography

• 1970s to the present• Reflects influence of social theory and cultural studies• Place/space as culturally constructed• Power, discourse, transgression, resistance,

subversion, difference, hybridity (Soja: ‘trialectics of spatiality’)

• How spatial meanings are imposed, composed and resisted; how places are re/presented

• Language; textuality matter; graffiti; film• Guy Debord, Michel de Certeau, Mike Davis, Edward

Soja



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3(b) Marxist Approaches

• For a time this was called ‘radical’ geography (see the journal Antipode, for example)

• Space under capitalism• Lefebvre, Harvey• Places are under threat due to the restructuring

of economic spatial relations under globalization and the increasing mobility of production and capital

• ‘Space-time compression’ (Harvey)



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3(c) Feminism/Gender

• Gendered power relations are entrenched in place, alongside patriarchy, ableism, heterosexism

• Places are the products of structural relations• Bodies matter (this view overlaps with humanism

and phenomenology)• Accessibility; autonomy; mobility; safety;

resistance; difference• Challenge to the role of ‘home’ as a ‘domestic’

place (e.g., Gillian Rose, Doreen Massey)



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3(d) Postcolonial Approaches

• Challenge notions around territory and dominance, empire, colonialism

• The idea that even ‘after’ the colonial period has ended, its influences persist

• Hegemonic and counter-hegemonic influences• Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Derrida (indirectly)• Genocide, ‘orientalism’ (Said), ‘exotics’• Race and racism.



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Criticisms of these approaches …

• Regional geographers and environmental and social determinists tend to view place as a thing (whether pre-existing or produced)

AndHumanistic geographers are sometimes criticised for seeing

place (even where constituted mutually by nature and culture) naively in terms of a romanticized past

ButSocial constructionists – who argue that place is socially

constructed through narratives, language (postmodern views) and relations of power (Marxist, feminist geographers) – are criticised for denying the essential realities of physical place

Where does this leave us?



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And some possible ways of opening up space/place …

• David Seamon (a phenomenologist) describes place via the metaphor of dance and rhythms

• Yi-Fu Tuan (a humanist) on place and/as experience• Allen Pred and Nigel Thrift (influenced by Anthony Gidden’s

structuration theory): place is always ‘becoming’; places are “biographies of people negotiating” sense of place. See also Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life

• Edward Soja: “thirdspace” (“trialectics of spatiality”)• Homi Bhabha: hybridity• Places as negotiated, contested,

threatened/eroded/homogenized, resisted (or enabling resistance), authentic/inauthentic

• Place as an event or a symbol of connections; place as flow• The future of place? David Harvey (a Marxist); Ted Relph (a

phenomenologist) on the erosion of place. • Lefebvre on space-time compression and flows of capital.

What sort of place/space is Vari Hall?

• Viewed descriptively, phenomenologically, or as a constructed space?

• How is Vari Hall a contested space? • To whom does Vari Hall ‘belong?’• Who is excluded from it? How?• What can we make of the ongoing redesign of

Vari Hall?



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Other Spatial

Cosmologies



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Spatial opposites …

• Tuan suggests that most cultures conceive of space (however differently) as oriented around opposites:Life death

Male femaleWe theyLand waterMountain valleyNorth southCentre peripheryHeaven earthHigh lowLight darkness

Left rightBelow AboveDown upBehind in frontExterior interiorNew old

Etc.



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… or cosmological correspondences:

Wood spring east Lesser yang green Anger

Fire summer south Greater yang red Joy

Earth ------------ centre balance yellow Desire

Metal autumn west Lesser yin white Sorrow

Water winter north Greater yin black Fear

Chinese cosmological correspondences. Source: Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. Page 18.



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Space and the Body …



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Space in Islam

• In Mecca, “the Ka’ba [the most holy structure] forms the keystone of other forms of interlocking spatiality in Islam, providing the direction (qibla) in which believers face during the cycle of five daily prayers, and constituting the focus of the pilgrimage (hajj) that all Muslims, health and financial status permitting, are enjoined to undertake at least once in their lifetime.”



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Traditional Chinese Worldview



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At the Threshold of Place

“’A threshold,’ wrote the third-century philosopher Porphyrus, ‘is a sacred thing.’ Thresholds, though wider than the idea of doors, share their role as repositories of desire and temptation. What is opened at a door? Onto what landscape of the imagination does a threshold gaze? Gaston Bachelard has written that a door is an entire cosmos of the half-open. A threshold is perhaps, by extension, a cosmos of the already half-understood.” (Gary Michael Dault, Cells of Ourselves, 1989)

Documents

Week 2 23 September 2010 GEOG 3300 | Space, Place Scale Copyright Amy Lavender Harris, 2010 1 GEOG 3300 Space, Place Scale Week 2 Theories of Space,