#spatial theory

[vortexstreet]

Henri Matisse, Interior with a Goldfish Bowl (Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges), 1914, Oil on canvas, 57.9 x 38 inches (147 x 97 cm), Centre Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art, Paris

[mesogeography]

Well, one thing I object to is the very notion that they have of ‘geography’ being a tyranny. To begin with: why is distance always negative, something to be overcome? There could be a whole thesis countering this but at the most simple of levels, what of the pleasures of travel? This inattention betrays a deeper attitude. Our overvaluation of speed (time here as only money) has robbed us of many things that are at least equally precious. But, second, ‘geography’ is more than distance. What an impoverished view of the planet! What of the variety of place? What of specificity and difference? If time is the dimension of change, then space is the dimension of coexisting difference. And that is both a source of nourishment (something that the globalisation gurus seem altogether to have foregone), and a challenge (how negotiate difference, how to address inequality, and so forth). So I don’t accept the terms of debate, that ‘geography’ is just a negative tyranny. And that critique is before we get to the more standard criticisms of neoliberal globalisation – that it has produced a world even more unequal than the one it inherited. Incidentally, I don’t think there is a non-adjectival ‘globalisation’. What we have now is a particular form: dominated by finance and multinational corporations and by a rhetoric (though not a reality) of ‘free trade’ and market forces. So I’m not a localist. I’m an internationalist, but one who believes (a) that such a thing is really only possible through a prior grounding and (b) that the terms of our present globalisation have to be challenged politically

Doreen Massey

3:AM Magainze. Interview by Andrew Stevens

https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-future-of-landscape-doreen-massey/

[zwischenstadt]

Samuel Finer's history of government sidesteps what he describes as 'the extremely obscure and contentious question of how states emerge from primeval and tribal societies' in favour of examining how 'states such as we know them today emerged through aggregation from smaller territorial units or the disaggregation of larger territorial units'... In fact the evidence on primary state formation is not so murky as Finer suggested.  Overall, research on this topic indicates that the process cannot be explained in terms of (1) a surplus produced through intensive agriculture; or (3) the rise of towns and cities.  Even if these factors do facilitate the further development of the state and the subsequent formation of empires, all three factors long predated primary state formation (Service 1975; Spencer 2003).  So they may be enabling factors but cannot trigger state formation.  The archaeological record points instead to the role of expanded capacities for economic and political control over the areas that lie further than a day's round trip from the political centre or capital.  This corresponds to the idea of infrastructural power proposed by Mann (1986, 2008).  Territorial expansion in turn mobilized resources through the exaction of surplus in the form of tributary flows to underwrite this administrative transformation, which thereby created a virtuous circle among bureaucratic governance, resource extraction through tribute, and further territorial expansion.  Such expansion occurred through penetration into the territories of neighbouring polities, which was easier when they were smaller and weaker (Service 1975; Finer 1997a; Spencer 2010).  Like chiefdoms, states usually formed networks based on competitive alliances.  Unlike networks of chiefdoms, however, these networks were periodically centralized into a single political unit, which incorporated several polities; and these may be termed 'empires' (Finer 1997a, 1997b; on empires and imperialism, see also below).  In addition, competition for control spurred political and administrative and military innovation, and this in turn fed into the state's increased capacities for territorializing political power over larger areas and larger populations (Redmond and Spencer 2012; Wright 1977). In sum, the key issue in state formation, which takes states beyond chiefdoms, is the ability to extend territorial control through the logistics of space-time distantiation and through the bureaucratization of a central authority.

Bob Jessop, The State: Past, Present, Future pgs 129-130

Jessop summarizing the tradition of research on ancient state formation. Perhaps of interest to @averyterrible

[zwischenstadt]

We need to theorize totality because we live in a political-economic system, neoliberalizing capitalism, that is oriented towards totalization- that is, the planetary extension of the commodity form, no matter what the social, political or environmental consequences.  Now, obviously, this totality is not a homogenizing one; it is, as Lefebvre recognized, global (or general), hierarchical and fragmented.  It is premised upon, and in turn intensifies, differentiation across contexts, and it is always mediated through political institutions, politico-cultural identities, social struggles, and so forth.  But, while deciphering specificity, contextuality and the local are important tasks, so too is grasping the totalizing context in which such apparent 'particularities' are embedded- the 'context of context'... We need a theory that can grapple with both sides of this dialectic.  Approaches that veer too far in one or the other direction- structuralism or contextualism- will lose analytical traction in relation to the tricky problems and transformations we are trying to understand.  The issues at stake here are not going to be illuminated effectively through a metaphysical debate about whether or not the world is a totality.  Rather, the key problem is how to understand the historical specificity of the worldwide economic and environmental system in which we are embedded, how it is evolving, its contradictions and crisis tendencies, and the possibilities for gaining some kind of ration, collective, democratic control over the structural forces and political-economic alliances that are currently appropriating and transforming the conditions for our common planetary life.  A theory of totality is only needed under circumstances in which an historical social system exists that totalizes itself; this is a key lesson I learned years ago from Moishe Postone.

Neil Brenner, Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays

I’m not wild about Moishe Postone but I think I get what Brenner means here

[zwischenstadt]

The university has for centuries claimed access to universality, in cooperation with classical philosophy and traditional humanism.  But it can no longer continue to fulfill this 'function' to the extent that it institutionalizes the social division of labor, helping to organize, nurture, and accommodate it.  Isn't this this the function assigned to the university today?  To adapt itself to the social division of productive labor, that is, to the increasingly stringent requirement of the market, the technical division of intellectual labor and knowledge?  Science (like urban reality) has become a means of production and has become politicized in the process.  Can a philosophy that arises from the separation of physical and intellectual labor, and is subsequently consolidating in spite of or even in opposition to this separation, still claim to be a totality? This is a difficult situation.  At one point it looked like abstract thought had successfully undergone the most trying ordeals; it appeared to have come back to life throughout the sciences after out 'speculative Holy Friday" (Hegel) and the death of the Logos embodied in classical philosophy.  Pentecost held even more surprises.  The specialized intelligentsia received the gift of languages from the Holy Spirit, and linguistics assumed the role of the science of sciences, a role that had been abandoned by philosophy, which was supposed to have supplanted religion.  Under cover of this false unity and confusion, which by no means excluded the existence of fragmentation and arbitrary segmentation, industrial practice imposed its limtiations.

Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution

Why universities are political, whether ya like it or not

[numinous-archives]

Lefebvre's (1974) Spatial Triad

[Direct excerpts]

Spatial Practice, which embraces production and reproduction, and the particular locations and spatial sets of characteristic of each social formation. Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. In terms of social space, and of each member of a given society’s relationship to space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and specific level of performance.

Representation of space, which are tied to the relations of production and the ‘order’ which those relations impose, and hence the knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’ relations.

Representational spaces, embodying complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life, as also to art (which may come eventually to be defined less as a code of space than as a code of representational spaces).

Spatial Practice: The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it. From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of its space.

Representations of Space: conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers, as of a certain type of artist with a scientific bent – all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived. This is the dominant space in any society (or mode of production). Conceptions of space tend, with certain exceptions to which I shall return, towards a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs.

Representational Space: space as directly lived through its associated images and symols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’, but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated – and hence passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said, though again with certain exceptions, to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs.

Citation/Reference

Lefebvre, H. (1974/1991). The Production of Space. Wiley-Blackwell.

pp. 33-39

[numinous-archives]

Fibiger, M. Q. (2023). What Are Religious Hotspots? An Introduction. Numen, 70(1), 1-16.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341673.

Abstract

This introductory article outlines the meanings behind and the reasons for suggesting “religious hotspots” as a new analytical concept in the study of religion. The idea of suggesting this concept is not to replace others – for instance, a pilgrimage site, a religious place, a supernatural place, or a storied place – but to broaden the perspective and to emphasize the dynamic, multidimensional, and relational aspects of place, not least concerning how a religious place can be a hotspot for some and a cold one for others, but also how a place can change from being a hotspot to a cold spot and vice versa. Being a heated place, a religious hotspot can also have an unintended effect on people being there. They can either become “infected” by or “cured” of a feeling of religious or spiritual belonging. The concept is a contribution to the growing interest in space and place when analyzing religion, in recognition of how a landscape or a particular religiously legitimized site can be an important element in collective cultural, social, and political meaning-making.

6 | Precis

A religious hotspot is a religiously or spiritually legitimized place, and it can be a goal for religious tourism as well as pilgrimage. It can be classified as a supernatural or energetic place, meaning that the supernatural or the thaumaturgical is understood as being present in one way or another, but is perceived in multiple ways as long as it is not inscribed in a particular tradition. When it becomes fixed, it can become a place of pilgrimage. In other words, a religious hotspot can be difficult to define. It is context-related and depends on the circumstances in which it is understood and by whom. It can therefore have multiple meanings. Concurrently, it is also a place that attracts people because it is understood as producing meaning: religious or spiritual, or cultural and social in terms of identity-making. This means that a religious hotspot can have several definitions, nuances, presentations, and connotations, which is not only important in relation to modern religious hotspots but also when trying to understand the dynamics of a place.

[sustainableyadayadayada]

how to measure access to parks

how to measure access to parks

Two simple measures of park access are the total area of parks in a city and the average distance of residences from a park. You can divide the former by population to get a normalized stat that can be compared across cities or tracked over time, and you can look at various stats on the latter such as the percent of households within 10 minutes of a park. Here are a few more ideas from a guy in…

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