Society/Space Flashcards
Approach 1: (Smith, 2005)
Society is mapped onto space
George Simmel (1855)
positioned society in space. Space provided a medium that ‘fixed’ social processes long enough for them to be scrutinised by scholars and policy makers
Approach 1 advantages
This approach sees space as scientific
Space as an index of the social
Approach 1 disadvantages
Social categories are socially constructed and;
It uses spatial as a measure of the social.
Approach 2
The active contribution of space to social identity
analysts began to explore where those categories came from, and why they are produced and reproduced. Geographers became interested in the difference that space makes to these processes.
Approach 2 difficulties
Assumption of binary social divides
Binary divides are a basic tool for exploring social construction
Preoccupation with “others”
Soja (1996)
Soja (1996) explores this third option in a book he calls Thirdspace. He write that ‘the spatial dimension of our lives has never been of greater practical and political relevance than it is today; (1996:1)
Approach 3 identity
Social categories are made through practice, social worlds can be renegotiated and identity is unfixable
Homi Bhahba (1994)
Homi Bhahba (1994) has called hybrid identities.
Approach 3 Gilroy
‘different view of culture, one which accentuates its plastic, syncretic qualities and one which does not see culture flowing into neat ethnic parcels but as radically unfinished social process of self-definition and transformation’ (1993:61).
