Space

Question 1

How do we talk about space?

Answer 1

• Latin roots - ‘spatium’. Two meanings:
  + an expanse - e.g. a room/area
  + distance between two points.
• often associated with a void/nothingness. Difficult concept to define as it isn’t thought of as a thing but instead as what is left behind when no other things exist. Therefore a significant lack of meaning.
• ‘absolute space’ - synonym of emptiness - nothing more than something which other things take place/exist in.
• place is a space with meaning - space is essentially meaningless.

Question 2

Defining space:

Answer 2

• tied historically to the idea of something without meaning.
• often the blank bits on a map.
• essentially, space is something which is abstract and without substantial meaning.
• Tuan: space is a ‘location which has no social connections to human being’
• geography has been described as a spatial science by an array of writers.

Question 3

Space and Richard Hartshorne:

Answer 3

• the ideas of space and place weren’t established to the same extent as they are now until the early 20th century.
• 1939: Richard Hartshorne wrote ‘The Nature of Geography’ - he argued that geography should take a chorographic discipline instead of a chronographical one.

Question 4

What is the difference between chorographical and chronographical?

Answer 4

• chorographical - fixated in differences across and between spaces.
• chronographical - interested in changes across time.

Question 5

What was Hartshorne’s objective?

Answer 5

• aimed to distinguish geography from history and geology. This was to give geography a clear academic remit and protect the disciplinary boundary preventing it from being subsumed into other areas.
• Hartshorne defined geography as ‘a science that interprets the realities of aerial differentiation of the world as they are found’.
• Hartshorne creates the idea of spatial differentiation.
• Still writing in 1964 - when there is a dispute between geographers in Europe and the USA.
• his work was interested in thinking about how things operated/were organised across space rather than what it is/what it does. However is a quite static definition.

Question 6

Support of Hartshorne:

Answer 6

• The Concept of Geography as a Space - Kant and Humboldt.

Question 7

Criticisms of Hartshorne’s work:

Answer 7

• Smith critiqued treating space as a concept. (1984)
• ‘unchanging box’ within which objects exist and events occur

Question 8

Space and the quantitative revolution:

Answer 8

• the QR can be described as one of the most significant changes of the time period.
• there were two big events which influenced the QR itself and the changes caused.
  + WW2
  + the significant development of technology.
• there was a focus on trying to create generalisable principles about the organisation of phenomena within space - e.g., like the redevelopment of cities that are being bombed.
• as a result, geography entered a stage of becoming a spatial science where it tried to present itself as more scientific to justify why it was still relevant.

Question 9

Geography as a spatial science:

Answer 9

• 1960s: period of mapping, strict rules and analysis and generalisable principles.
• geography’s links to military and association with colonialism pushed out regional geography within this period - instead seen as a spatial science.
• geographers wanted to use space as a way to predict order and test hypotheses. However there was a very flat understanding of space and therefore drew critiques and didn’t allow people to experience space differently.

Question 10

Spatial science - Castree 2012:

Answer 10

• ‘geography as a social science was devoted to searching for geographical order, measuring numerically (people and things) and testing rigorously hypotheses and models to develop generally applicable laws, rules and theories’
• Castree was highlighting that geographers began to simplify experience which drew critiques - specifically from Doreen Massey and Marxist theorists.

Question 11

The work of Edward Soja - cultural geography and space:

Answer 11

• three ways to conceptualise space:
  1) first space - ‘perceived space’
  2) second space - ‘conceptual space’
  3) third space - ‘hybrid space’

Question 12

What is first space?

Answer 12

• ‘perceived space’
• built environments, physically constructed things we can map and quantify.
• guided by politics and by land use.

Question 13

What is second space?

Answer 13

• ‘conceptual space’
• how we experience space itself/ how it exists in the mind.
• some similarities with idea of sense of place but they are treated very much separately.
• formed by social conventions, place and space marketing.

Question 14

What is third space?

Answer 14

• ‘hybrid space’
• how space actually takes shape.
• first and second space co-define one another.
• it isn’t possible to differentiate between how an environment is built and how that environment is used and interacted with.

Question 15

Space in action:

Answer 15

• space has developed as a concept throughout the 20th century. This has been due to political changes (WW2) but also theoretical influences (structuralism or the kind of feminist movement in late 90s/early 2000s).
• technologies have enabled mapping and numerical analysis.
• space is a more frequently mobilised concept.
• two main examples: cyberspace and atmospheres.

Question 16

What is cyberspace?

Answer 16

• 1983: most common date for the internet.
• general public internet: 1990s.
• mobile internet: approx. 10 years old.
• cyberspace triggered a bit of a crisis within geography as a discipline in the 90s.
• ‘cyber’ = cybernetic = Greek Kybernetes as the study of control and communication.
• discipline has disappeared and replaced by things like AI studies. About thinking how communication happens between people and technologies.
• Gibson presents a form of cyberspace (Matrix) - digital space in which people could interact.

Question 17

Cyberspace and Euclidean space:

Answer 17

• cyberspace was a way of thinking about the spatiality of networks that don’t exist across what we may call Euclidean spaces.
• in the 1990s geography was concerned that space was irrelevant as people thousands of miles away could still easily interact. Do cyberspaces render Euclidean/tangible spaces of the real world.

Question 18

How do geographers study cyberspace?

Answer 18

• digital communities: social media and how it intersects with things like political movements around the world.
• online identity: ‘is there an authentic self’. Knowing celebrities due to online presence.
• democracy: idea of cyberspace being a space for lobbying and campaigning and spreading misinformation. E.g., twitter/Facebook.
• how does cyberspace complicate the limits of sovereignty of a country?: how countries (UK/US) decide what is available to citizens when it’s on a global network. Therefore NK bans internet, social media restrictions in China and India.

Question 19

What are atmospheres?

Answer 19

• cyberspace is a virtual space where atmospheres are essentially an affective space or spatialised affect - way of feeling a lived experience. Despite being separate people with separate lives we may all feel the same thing in a given context.
• some areas/atmospheres that are inherently topophobic. Atmospheres are a way of talking about the fact that feeling is to do with the interactions between people and environments in a way that is hard to map out.
• it can be difficult to define atmosphere as space and affect are two constitutional parts which themselves are hard to define.

Question 20

McCormack and Bohme’s definitions of atmosphere:

Answer 20

• McCormack (2008) - “something distributed yet palpable.” exist within and beyond and between bodies.
• Bohme (1993) - a ‘haze’ - felt with intensity.

Question 21

Hygge and atmospheres:

Answer 21

• Danish concept used by Bille.
• ideas of comfort - e.g. using lighting to shape people’s experience of a space. E.g. there is a difference between lighting a room with lighting and lighting a room with candles as it changes how space is experienced in its entireity.
• “light makes things visible in a way that tinges the experience of a thing” (Bille 2015)
• we have different associations with certain colours of light.
  + blue light - most alert. e.g., police sirens/ambulances. Spot something in the darkness.
  + red light - easiest to adapt from red light to darkness.
• atmospheres can also be created by language - by interactions we have with people in them.

Question 22

Future of atmospheres?

Answer 22

• one critique is that often we think about them from an anthropocentric focus.
• performances can take shape based on the context in which they are carried out. E.g., would a change in atmosphere which is constructed in a different way and more stressful/higher pressured change the way an essay is written.