The sociology of space is a branch of sociology that primarily draws from theories created in the subfields of economic, feminist, and human geography as well as geography as a whole. Examining the material and social makeup of spaces is the “sociology” of space. Its focus is on comprehending the material intricacy, institutional dynamics, and social practices that underlie interactions between people and places.
Drawing from a variety of theoretical traditions such as Marxism, postcolonialism, and Science and Technology Studies, the sociology of space is an interdisciplinary field of study that covers and overlaps thinkers from academic fields such as geography and architecture. Proxemics is a field of study that was founded by Edward T. Hall and focuses on the empirical study of space in psychology.
Definition of space
Being essential to our comprehension of geography, space is one of the most significant ideas in the social science fields. Scholars have defined “space” in a variety of ways.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes space in two general ways:
an endless extension that can be examined with or without consideration for the objects that are contained within it.
the distance between two or three-dimensional objects or points.
The things in the space and their relative positions, on the other hand, are of interest to human geographers, who also describe, explain, and forecast the distribution of phenomena. Therefore, the focal point of the research is the interactions between things in space.
According to Michel Foucault, “the space that gnaws and claws at us, the space that draws us out of ourselves, the space where our lives, our time, and our history are eroded, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. We live inside a set of relations.”(Source: )
Nigel Thrift further defines space as; “The outcome of a series of highly problematic temporary settlements that divide and connect things up into different kinds of collectives which are slowly provided with the meaning which render them durable and sustainable.”[/2]
Simply put, “space” refers to the social context in which we interact with one another, our communities, and our environment. Space is the result of persistently and diligently constructing .
History of the sociology of space
The most influential classical sociologist in this discipline has been identified as Georg Simmel.[/3] In his 1908 work “Sociology: Investigations on the Forms of Sociation,” Simmel wrote about “the sociology of space.” Among his concerns were the division of leisure areas in contemporary industrial society and the trend of metropolitanization.*[4]
For a long time, the category of space was secondary to the construction of sociological theories. The realization that some societal developments cannot be sufficiently explained without giving more weight to the spatial aspects of living came around in the late 1980s. The term “spatial turn” describes this change of viewpoint. The idea of space draws attention to juxtaposition in organizational systems.
Theoretically, sociologists, philosophers, and human geographers who spoke English and French laid the groundwork for the social sciences’ rising interest in space. The essays “Of Other Spaces” by Michel Foucault,[5], in which the author declares the “age of space,” and “La production de l’espace” by Henri Lefebvre, are particularly significant.(6)
The latter served as the foundation for Marxist spatial theory, which has been expanded upon by David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Edward Soja, and others. Action theoretical conceptions of space, which emphasize the significance of the corporeal placing and the perception of spaces as albeit habitually predetermined but subjective constructions, stand in contrast to Marxist theories of space, which are based on a structural, i.e., capitalist or global determinants of spaces and the growing homogenization of space.
Duality of space
The concept of a “relational” model of space was created by Martina Löw. It looks at how social commodities and living things are “ordered”[11] and how space is created through processes of perception, memory, or ideation to take the form of societal structure. From the perspective of social theory, it builds upon Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, [12] whose idea of the “duality of structure” is extended by Löw into a “duality of space” using sociological terminology.
The fundamental tenet is that although people behave as social agents and create spaces in the process, their actions are influenced by social, legal, cultural, economic, and, ultimately, geographical systems. Therefore, spaces are the result of action. Spaces structure activity, that is, spaces, simultaneously.
Löw makes a critical distinction between “spacing” and “synthesis,” two elements that are typically mutually decisive in relation to the composition of space. The act of placing social commodities and persons in locations, or the state of being placed in places, is referred to as spacing. However, Löw contends that an ordering formed by placements is only truly established as space when the constituent parts are actively linked by humans—during processes of perception, ideation, or remembering, for example.
Löw terms this combination. Studies by Cedric Janowicz (who conducted an ethnographical-space sociological study of food supply in the Ghanaian city of Accra) and Lars Meier (who investigated the constitution of space in the daily lives of financial managers in London and Singapore) have empirically tested this concept.
Marxist approaches
Henri Lefebvre was the principal exponent of Marxist spatial theory. He postulated that dialectical contradictions are geographical rather than temporal, and that “social space” is the location where the relations of production are replicated.13] According to Lefèbvre, three elements engage dialectically in the social construction of space. How space is made up:
by “spatial practice,” which refers to the reproduction of space in daily life; by “representation of space,” which refers to the development of space intellectually; and by “spaces of representation,” which Lefebvre uses to refer to intricate symbolizations and ideational spaces.
According to Lefebvre, this spatial production of the 1970s produced a non-reflexive, alienating space that was dominated by mathematically abstract conceptions of space and replicated in spatial practice.
David Harvey in particular, who was interested in the ways in which the shift from Fordism to “flexible accumulation” affected people’s perceptions of space and time, gave Marxist spatial theory a significant boost.In [14] He demonstrates how several technological and economic advancements have cracked the Fordist system’s crisis-prone rigidity, raising the rate of capital turnover.
Economic cycles generally accelerate as a result of this. Harvey claims that “time-space compression” is the outcome. Determining the relationship between proximity and distance gets increasingly challenging as the sense of long-term, future, and continuity fades.
Postcolonial theories of space
Space theories that draw inspiration from the discourse around post-colonialism emphasize the diversity of spaces. Doreen Massey claims that referring to an African nation as a “developing country” is incorrect since it suggests that differences in space and time are the same (Massey 1999b). This reasoning views such a nation as merely an early form of the “developed” globe, treating it as nothing more than that; she denounces this as “Eurocentrism.”
In this vein, Helmuth Berking criticizes as “globocentrism” notions that assert that globalization is homogenizing the world more and more. He challenges this by pointing out how unique and significant local knowledge resources are to the creation of (distinct and particular) places. According to him, local circumstances serve as a kind of filter or framework for global processes.
Relational view of space
Geographer and critical theorist Nigel Thrift[28] developed a relational theory of space in his writings, proposing that space should be seen as a byproduct of these processes rather than as a container inside which the world operates. He gave an explanation of the four created spaces in contemporary human geography. The way that contemporary geography conceptualizes space divides it into four categories.
They are Place Space, Image Space, Empirical Construction of Space, and Unblocking Space.
The first definition of space is its empirical production. Empirical space is the method through which the ordinary fabric of life is put together. Even while these seemingly basic items—cars, homes, cellphones, computers, and roads—are remarkable accomplishments in our day-to-day lives and have a significant impact on who we are today.
For instance, modern technology like GPS did not appear out of nowhere; rather, it was first developed over a century ago, starting in the 18th century. Physical space, another name for the first space, is actual and palpable.
The unblocking space is the second space. This kind of space is the process by which regular paths of communication are established and frequently delineated. The flow of commodities, money, people, and information, as well as the movements of office workers and inebriated youths, may all be part of the regular.
In contrast to earlier periods in geography, when boundaries were understood as blocked areas (such as a capitalist, neoliberal, or urban environment), we are now beginning to understand that limits do not exist in space. The world’s space is always changing and flowing, making it challenging to pin down in one concise description. The second space is intellectual or ideological, sometimes referred to as mental space. For instance, the
The term “image space,” which describes the process by which images have given rise to new types of spaces, is the third space. The pictures could take many forms, from paintings to photos, from postcards to portraits, and from religious themes to amusement.
These days, images have a big impact on us in a lot of ways. Some images might teach us new things about the world we live in, such as new social and cultural values. Signs, symbols, and images all have a spatial expression of some type.
The term “fourth space” describes the act of arranging places to make room for emotive and other embodied potentials. location space is more symbolic than a location and can be thought of as a distinct kind of space. This fourth category of space aims to comprehend that place plays a crucial role in shaping people’s lives in particular ways and that place can help us grasp a wide range of topics that are concealed from us.
Scale: the local and the global
Ontological status of the global and the local
The idea of “scale” was taken for granted up until the 1980s, despite the fact that both physical and human geographers examined problems at the “regional scale” or “national scale.” Materialists and idealists disagreed on issues like whether scales are only mental constructs used to classify and arrange the universe or if they are actual social products made of tangible materials. While some geographers believe that scales are useful conceptual tools for organizing the world, others make the case that scales are actual social products that are based on Marxist materialism.
These geographers draw on Immanuel Kant’s idealist philosophy. For those idealists who drew influence from Kantian, the earth’s geological boundaries determine the “global,” whereas the “local” is described as.
Metaphors of scale
There are five common metaphors that are used to illustrate how the universe is scaled: the ladder, concentric circles, Matryoshka nesting dolls, earthworm burrows, and tree roots. First, the global scale is viewed as being above the local and all other scales when employing this metaphor of a hierarchical ladder, with the global being the highest step on the ladder.
Second, the scalar link between places can be conceptualized in a specific way thanks to the application of concentric metaphor. In this second metaphor, the national and global scales are still larger circles that contain the local and the regional, but the local is portrayed as a relatively small circle surrounded by the larger regional circle.
This metaphor gives us a sense of scale where the local and the globe are interconnected rather than entirely distinct from one another. Similar to the earthworm burrow metaphor, the tree roots metaphor also refers to how difficult it is to pinpoint the precise boundary between one scale and another because both burrows and tree roots penetrate several soil strata.
When considering the usage of metaphor, one should be mindful that the selection of one metaphor over another is determined by how someone is trying to comprehend a certain event rather than which is empirically a “more accurate” portrayal of something.