--- Begin Forwarded Message --- Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:36:47 -0500 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Classic Sources on Study of Place and Space Sender: [log in to unmask] fyi mapsters, I thought you might find this item from H-Urban interesting, thought provoking, maddening, and even, for its citations...useful!!! Alice H.----- Forwarded by ahudson/MHT/Nypl on 03/15/2001 02:40 PM ----- Wendy Plotkin <[log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] edu> cc: Sent by: Subject: Re: Classic H-NET Urban Sources on Study of Place and History Space Discussion List <H-URBAN@H-NE T.MSU.EDU> 03/15/2001 02:07 PM Please respond to H-NET Urban History Discussion List 1) Posted by Richard H. Schein <[log in to unmask]> Sharon Pearce asked for "classics" on space and place. She also associates the terms with the concept of landscape. As those three words are (to borrow from Raymond Williams) "keywords" in the discipline of geography, I am struck with the general absence of citations from that literature in her proffered list. I assume this is due in part to (a) the often failure of geographers to speak to wider academic and lay audiences; (b) a conflation in her bibliography between those articles that treat space, place, and landscape as a priori givens and those that ask more theoretical and conceptual questions about what these terms might mean (and what their implication then might be). Presumably the latter are her "narrower and more academic studies," and they do seem to get shorter shrift. Place (and its conflation with community) does seem to be a hot-button topic these days in the popular literature, from BOWLING ALONE to THE GEOGRAPHIES OF NOWHERE to New Urbanist solutions for suburban anomie. In the spirit of bridging (inter-disciplinary) boundaries, and with the realization that despite my disciplinary chauvinism, geographers do not have any exclusive claim to the terms, I offer the following. You could do worse than to consult the DICTIONARY OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY (4th edition), Ed. R.J. Johnston, Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) under the entries for place, space, cultural landscape and landscape. For my money, the most interesting work in these areas in the last generation is predicated on "de-essentializing" the concepts; consequently demonstrating that places and landscapes are ultimately what Doreen Massey calls the loci of articulated social relationships. In doing so, we not only collapse the distinction between space and place (where space is the Cartesian grid and place is a humanistic reading), we also can allow for place meaning to be fluid and contestable at both the individual and societal level. Beyond Massey's essays (and her best on this topic is probably Doreen Massey. 1993. "Power-Geometry and a progressive sense of place." In MAPPING THE FUTURES: LOCAL CULTURES, GLOBAL CHANGE, ed. Jon Bird et al, pp. 59-69. New York: Routledge), key works on space (and place) might then include David Harvey's CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY and Ed Soja's POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES. Both draw upon Henri LeFebvre's PRODUCTION OF SPACE (as well as his WRITINGS ON CITIES); and I assume that Pearce does the same, as her categories of built, planned, imaginary, literary would seem to be drawn from LeFebvre (and I note that many of these works are cited in Dolores Hayden's book, which Pearce mentions). Rosalyn Deutsche on democracy and the public sphere/public space is still one of the best things around (and is reproduced in her recent book EVICTIONS: ART AND SPATIAL POLITICS [see the H-Urban review at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22562870858851]). On landscape, I suggest books by Denis Cosgrove (SOCIAL FORMATION AND SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPE is his first which "unpacks" western ideas about landscape since the Renaissance), James Duncan (see THE CITY AS TEXT, or co-edited works with David Ley and Trevor Barnes, WRITING WORLDS AND PLACE/CULTURE/REPRESENTATION), and Don Mitchell or Groth and Bressi (eds. UNDERSTANDING ORDINARY LANDSCAPES), as well as those listed by Pearce. I'd better quit as there is the danger of simply reading down my bookshelves within geographical sub-disciplines (next up: Agnew and Duncan, eds., THE POWER OF PLACE or Nast and Pile eds., PLACES THROUGH THE BODY) Finally, I am somewhat troubled by what is probably meant as a minor annotation in Pearce's bibliography, and I am over-reading. In citing Blunt and Rose WRITING WOMEN AND SPACE, she notes that the book has an overtly political bent. I suppose if the emphasis is on "overtly" then I am overreacting. But if the emphasis is on the fact of the political bent, so do all of those other books she mentions (and I don't mean this in a sinister or conspiratorial way). Simply, the lesson to be drawn from literatures on the production of space and place is that these "things" are never neutral (even the Cartesian grid in the form of the Mercator projection got its due on "The West Wing" last Wednesday evening!): space, place, landscape are particular epistemological framings on the world that, if not overtly political, are nevertheless implicated in the processes of social (and political and economic and cultural) reproduction regardless of authorial intention. ************************* Richard H. Schein Department of Geography 1457 P.O.T. University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA (859) 257-2119 [direct/voice mail] (859) 257-2931 [department office] (859) 323-1969 [fax] [log in to unmask] http://www.uky.edu/AS/Geography/ 3) Posted by Marshall Feldman <[log in to unmask]> Given the way you have framed the problem, Henri Lefebvre's _The Production of Space_ is relevant. This enigmatic, but important book, is where Lefebvre makes his famous distinction between conceived, perceived, and lived space. You also might want to look through the Open University's (UK) four-book series, _Understanding Cities_. There are lots of brief excerpts dealing with the experience of lived space as place. Their sources may be helpful. Marsh Feldman University of Rhode Island --- End Forwarded Message ---