On the Temporalities and Spatialities of the Production of Space (original) (raw)
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Geographical concerns with space and place have escaped the confines of the discipline of geography. Many humanities scholars now invoke such conceptions as a means to integrate diverse sources of information and to understand how broad social processes play out unevenly in different locations. The social production of spatiality thus offers a rich opportunity to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogues between different schools of critical theory. Following a brief assessment of the spatial turn in history, history of science, and political philosophy, this paper explores its implications for literary and cultural studies. It invokes a detailed case study of late 18th century Lima, Peru to explicate the dynamics of colonialism, the construction of racial identities, and different power/knowledge configurations within a particular locale. Space in this example appears as both matter and meaning, i.e., as simultaneously tangible and intangible, as a set of social circumstances and physical landscapes and as a constellation of discourses that simultaneously reflected, constituted, and at times undermined, the hegemonic social order. The intent is to demonstrate how multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship can be facilitated by paying attention to the unique of circumstances that define places within given historical moments. As seen in this example from literary colonial studies, other disciplines, therefore, can both draw from and contribute to poststructuralist interpretations of space as a negotiated set of situated practices.
Spaces in Theory, Spaces in History and Spatial Historiographies
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Recently social and cultural studies have experienced a 'spatial turn'. Space-related research seems ever expanding: some historians relate macroeconomics and human agency to regional contexts; others focus on micro-spaces like houses, taverns and parish churches; even virtual or imaginary spaces (such as Purgatory) attract increasing attention. In all of these works, space emerges as a social construct rather than a mere physical unit. This collection examines the potential and limitations of spatial approaches for the political history of preindustrial Europe. Adopting a broad denition of 'political', the volume concentrates on two key questions: Where did political exchange take place? And how did spatial dimensions aect political life in dierent periods and contexts? Taken together, the essays demonstrate that premodern Europeans made use of a much wider range of political sites than is usually assumed-not just princely courts, town halls and representative assemblies, but common elds as well as back rooms of provincial inns-and that spatial dimensions provided key variables in political life, both in terms of the embedding of practical governance and in the more abstract sense of patronage networks, conceptualizations of power and territorial ambitions. As such, this book oers a timely and critical engagement with the 'spatial turn' from a political perspective. Focusing on the distinct constitutional environments of England and the Holy Roman Empire-one associated with early centralization and strong parliamentary powers, the other with political fragmentation and absolutist tendencies, it bridges the usual gaps between late medievalists and early modernists and those between historians and scholars from other disciplines. Preface, commentary and a sketch of research perspectives discuss the wider implications of the papers' ndings and reect upon the potential and limits of spatial approaches for political history as a whole.
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Space" may take many different significations of which, however, two are paramount for human geography: Space as a part of the world with specific characteristics and with activities located in or on it (object-space), and space as a frame of reference, used to locate and thereby order the relations among persons, things, activities and immaterial items (space as locational scheme). This paper argues that, from the viewpoint of an observer, every objectspace presupposes a locational scheme, but not vice versa. Spaces as locational schemes are discussed as instruments, which individuals and organizations use to coordinate their activities. Therefore, space is a constitutive element of the reproduction of the social and is not something external to the social, as most geographies and social theories would have it. Under modern conditions, it is, above all, the metainstitution of the state that has the power to define interpretative schemes, thereby constituting entities and controlling their interactions. The discussion of the mutual constitution of spaces and institutions reveals that, from a methodological point of view, in the end the analysis of space, society and power coalesce. By disclosing the constitutive conditions of institutions and power structures, the analysis of spaces as locational schemes turns out to also be a deconstructive practice.