The Spatial Turn is a collection of writings by 13 scholars about geography and space. The term Spatial Turn finds it’s origin in the turning of geographical pursuit toward social and historical narratives. It emanates from the social sciences that reconsider space in the context of new dimensions in human geography.
The Spatial Turn
Interdiscplinary perspectives
Edited by Barney Warf and Santa Arias
Routeledge
Taylor and Francis Group
256 pages ISBN: 978-0-415-77573-1
2008
Review by Jeff Thurston
The Spatial Turn is a collection of writings by 13 scholars about geography and space. The term Spatial Turn finds it’s origin in the turning of geographical pursuit toward social and historical narratives. It emanates from in the social sciences that reconsider space in the context of new dimensions in human geography.
In a sense, while we talk about connecting geography to design today, this connnection is not new and the process could be considered merely as a spatial turn – the turn being to broaden the dialogue of geography and design through new varied approaches to space-geography connections. Much of this line of thinking stretches all the way back to the University of Chicago, ecological systems and integration, and was prominent in the 1960’s. It also builds upon the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault who directly questioned geography and space as they related to human geography and social studies.
As Barney Warf and Santa Arias state in the first writing, “the spatial turn is much more substantive, involving a reworking of the very notion and significance of spatiality to offer a perspective in which space is every bit as important as time in the unfolding of human affairs, a view in which geography is not relegated to an afterthought of social relations, but is intimately involved in their construction.”
Spatial Turns seek to integrate space across disciplines and the many writings in this book build upon this concept. They include various dynamics and descriptions that relate space to economics, power, media, sex, politics and geography. Both Foucault and Lefebvre criticised organized space and tended to see space as including ideological and at times subjective.
Landscape could be viewed as ‘spatial fixes’ whose presentaiton and representation at any given time were static, although rapidly were relegated to history as new and changing circumstances would replace them. While they enabled commodity production, the nature of the markets that drove commerce were subject to change for many reasons.
Edward Soja writes about the stirring of imagination through Spatial Turn. He describes the work of Peter Haggett in the mid 1960’s as lending an alluring quality to geographical study. Peter Gould and Donald Meinig similarly caused new thoughts as they brought new tools to talk about old and new geography. The interesting part of this book is that we can see new map technologies and approaches today that were actually discussed and debated many decades ago, but had not evolved at that time. The dialogue is richer today and the tools more widely available, perhaps lending themselves to produce the many Spatial Turns being talked about in this book.
The 1960’s saw explosive growth in human geography debate. This coincided with the broader social movements, anti-war sentiment at that time and the rising technological capabilities to fuse imagination with technology and the human element. As Sojas says, “the only significant academic movement at that time promoting a forceful spatial perspective was the Chicago School of Urban Ecology.” This evolved to build new forms discussion and debates about spatial knowledge. Foucault called this the “other way of thinking.” Lefebfvre called it “lived space” and described it as an opening up of the spaces in representation.
Sojas moved to work at the University of California in Los Angeles at that time and he describes the atmosphere of scientific debate in that community at the time. Many thoughts were opposed between scientists and conflicts arose between urban geography and social geographers. From Sojas perspective socialization and spatialization were inextricably intertwined. And as he rightly points out, the power of spatial thinking at the time would find more voices only recently in the new century. The Spatial Turn may have begun in Paris but it shifted to Los Angeles in later years Soja says.
Today it is hard to draw boundaries between who is and who is not a geographer. While tools have helped many people to use spatial data today, that does not mean that they are connecting those tools and products to human pursuits any more than before. What it does mean though, is that these tools and technologies have placed spatial definitions and terminology into the mainstream more than before. Jane Jacobs work is discussed. She suggested that uban spaces and life created ‘sparks’ that ultimately created environments for economic endeavour to take place, beginning with agriculture and production activities. This was labelled the ‘New Obsidian.’
Sebastian Cobarrubuas and John Pickles point out the associations among the many spaces and divisions we arbitrarily create or those more organized such as adnministrative boundaries. A map of the Amazon is labelled Home depot Lumber Yard, the northwest United States is called Bill Gates, Mexico is called ‘Your Previous Job’ and Europe is simply ‘Globalisation Uber Alles’. They point out that networks are driving much of the social geography going on around us, whether it is global economy, transboundary water, politics or communication, many of these networks are not readily seen and appear more indirectly, although they have profound influences.
They talk about the work of Deleuze who was interested in ‘mappings’ that show these connections. This form of social discourse arose through the Bureau d’Etudes and Hackitectura – based in Paris and Seville – enaged in activist mapping and new forms of spatial practice. Make no mistake, these forms of ‘hacking’ exceed what we like to claim is happening social-wise in terms of neogeography today because they are aimed directly at revealing connections and reality in ways that are not readily discerned. They are nomadic in nature, with open-ended spaces.
Reading this book reveals a rich understanding of the connections between research thinking and actual social movements and practices that we have seen or participated in throughout time. We may wonder where or why types of maps and realisations of space occurred and this book tends to connect dots between them. The Bureau d’Etudes arose not on whim, but out of unemployment and squalor and the political art movement called ‘archives of capitalism’.Cobarrubias and Pickles include several maps in the book that represent such connections between these networks.
It is not surprising that Hackitectura evolves from hackers, artists, architects and others involved in activism. They all seek to convery social issues and discussion in new ways. They seek to remap and mashup the atmosphere and influences around them that they perceive.
It is this line of spatial thinking that gives rise to Mediterranean space, for example, where networks of economy, culture and shared spaces break down borders and even languages. The remapping of the Strait of Gibraltar is an example of this where once would hardly recognise the division of space between Morocco and Spain – a solid Mediterranean forming in terms of representation.
Barney Warf later talks about the Spatial Turn arising from the invention of print. That gave rise to books and the democratisation of shared and collaborative debate, moving it from religious scholars primarily to anyone. Can we similarly now say that the Internet is further democratising publishing where not only media people can publish but anyone can – I think so. Warf points out that printing enabled grid based mapping and thinking for territorial order. Today we find economic borders collapsing, although we operate largely without borders, laws remain national and localised mostly. This was later more formalised by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
It is interesting to dwell upon Warf’s comment that fibre optic cables today may literally be considered as ‘power geometries.’ He further points out that sense of place today is discreet and arises anywhere one is. People can be several places (or spaces) at one time. Flows are inherent in the spaces we live. Money flows, labour flows, trade flows and environmental processes even flow. Information is the most notable of these flowing interactions.
The European Union is discussed in terms of ‘linkage and leverage’ – those who connect because of trade and formal membership and those who connect by leveraging to join and participate. Is Canada and Mexico linked or leveraged to the United States in a similar fashion?
Harry Dahms talks about the need for a new language or new criteria to describe what these Spatial Turns mean. There is a need to identify them and channel them to active pursuits. He argues that sociology has not had great success in causing geography to link to social pursuits. Individuals are both carriers of social change and creators at the same time. Meanwhile Santa Arias outlines the importance of accuracy since it was only when longitude could be more accurately determined that expectations rose. Countries could then point to success and expectation more formally, accurately and include greater needs for success based on known (and unknown) spaces.
Knowledge about topography, hydrology, geology similarly increased expectations. How can we argue today, given all the ‘tools of accuracy’ that we work with, that we cannot improve society – or at least more accurately delineate where to find success and less negative consequence?
Juan Ramon Restina talks about the intuitive spaces arising between interactions and representations. The concept of camera positions, angles and the creation of tensions and representations that invoke feelings within people are unique to the portrayal of spaces. Where is the crossover between cartographic mapping and representation as compared to film and do they act similarly? How do historical presentations and current reality come together within the same or different spaces?
The Spatial Turn is important to read. It is a reminder to those using spatial tools and knowledge today that they should explore more and attempt to realise new vistas and ways for evaluating and understanding problems. This is particularly true where change, particularly surrounding spaces is involved.
We like to think all that we do related to geography today is new, and it is not. Many people have discussed and debated social and human geography issues in recent history. We should not let their lessons vanish or go unheard, they are valuable realisations and often provide insight that could be helping us to understand tools, technology, conceptual knowledge and inter-disciplinary endeavours today.
I’m glad that this book has been published. It will be interesting, insightful, and thought provoking to all those people talking about integrated spatial systems today. It provides the clues as to where barriers to achieving them may lie and how to overcome them with some further debate and discussion.
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Jeff Thurston is co-founder and co-editor of V1 Magazine for Vector1 Media. He is based in Berlin.
