Many academics have written about place, and it is not my intention to write about all of them. Instead, I will discuss those academics who have (in my eyes) influenced key debates about place at some point in the evolution of the concept.
Manuel Castells
'a place is a locale whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity' (1996: 200)
Working in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, provided Castells with the opportunity to write about the contemporary problems and challenges facing cities. His first major work was the 1977 book The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach moved away from the tradition of urban sociology which had grown out from the University of Chicago in the 1920s, drawing instead on classical Marxist theory as a consequence of spending time in the company of Henri Lefebvre, a leading Marxist theorist. Castells saw how cities are characterised and defined by the flows that pass through them, that local ways of life are 'being undermined by the (network) logic of global capital accumulation as place is annihilated by space' (Hubbard 2004 :75) and that 'bounded and meaningful places ...are being superseded by spaces characterised by circulation, velocity and flow' (ibid.). That the network s the organising principle of the contemporary society.
Although you may argue that capital, people and knowledge certainly flow between places, it is also true that places are unique and remain strongly identifiable. With time, the distinctive social and cultural capital of place is becoming more valued.
Castells, M (1996) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture; Volume 1: The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Working in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, provided Castells with the opportunity to write about the contemporary problems and challenges facing cities. His first major work was the 1977 book The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach moved away from the tradition of urban sociology which had grown out from the University of Chicago in the 1920s, drawing instead on classical Marxist theory as a consequence of spending time in the company of Henri Lefebvre, a leading Marxist theorist. Castells saw how cities are characterised and defined by the flows that pass through them, that local ways of life are 'being undermined by the (network) logic of global capital accumulation as place is annihilated by space' (Hubbard 2004 :75) and that 'bounded and meaningful places ...are being superseded by spaces characterised by circulation, velocity and flow' (ibid.). That the network s the organising principle of the contemporary society.
Although you may argue that capital, people and knowledge certainly flow between places, it is also true that places are unique and remain strongly identifiable. With time, the distinctive social and cultural capital of place is becoming more valued.
Castells, M (1996) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture; Volume 1: The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell.
David Harvey
David Harvey rose to prominence as a spatial scientist with the publication of his 1969 book Explanations in Geography. After time spent in Baltimore, his political and intellectual trajectory shifted and his output revealed him as a left-wing radical geographer, who had embraced the ideology of political economist Karl Marx. Harvey wanted to study the world in order to change it, to be more socially just.
For Marx, capitalism is a contradictory economic system based on three logics: the quest for profit (accumulation), competition between rivals and technological innovation in production. By replacing workers with machinery, there is a decline in workers as consumers and therefore the removal of a market for commodities. This process results in a periodic 'crises of over accumulation', resulting in economic crisis. In The Limits to Capital, Harvey shows how switching from current production to log-term fixed capital investments in the geographical landscape (buildings infrastructure) can provide capitalism with a get-out clause, a mechanism for crisis displacement and a long-term return on investment. Space is therefore produced within capitalism.
When thinking about the way the place-space relationship is perceived, Harvey (1990) called our awareness of how lives in one place are affected by the actions of distant strangers our 'geographical imagination'. It is this awareness which brings different places within the same economic universe together and becomes possible to make universal generalisations about the unique particularities of place.
Harvey, D. (1990) 'Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80, 418-434.
For Marx, capitalism is a contradictory economic system based on three logics: the quest for profit (accumulation), competition between rivals and technological innovation in production. By replacing workers with machinery, there is a decline in workers as consumers and therefore the removal of a market for commodities. This process results in a periodic 'crises of over accumulation', resulting in economic crisis. In The Limits to Capital, Harvey shows how switching from current production to log-term fixed capital investments in the geographical landscape (buildings infrastructure) can provide capitalism with a get-out clause, a mechanism for crisis displacement and a long-term return on investment. Space is therefore produced within capitalism.
When thinking about the way the place-space relationship is perceived, Harvey (1990) called our awareness of how lives in one place are affected by the actions of distant strangers our 'geographical imagination'. It is this awareness which brings different places within the same economic universe together and becomes possible to make universal generalisations about the unique particularities of place.
Harvey, D. (1990) 'Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80, 418-434.
Doreen Massey
Massey