Full Description
The nature of spatial imaginations has become central to a range of major social and political debates. Narratives on spatial inequality, from the North-South divide in global economic and political visions, to marginalisation and 'ghettoisation' in Western cities, appear regularly in our daily newspapers. Such examples indicate that issues of space/spatiality are as crucial in our current societies as never before. 'Space Odysseys' brings together leading social scientists including John Urry and Derek Gregory to address a number of central issues in spatiality and social relations in the early 21st century. Starting from the presupposition that space is a social dimension and a social construct, it then presents examples of these conceptions of space at work. While the book title's indirect reference to the film '2001: A Space Odyssey' indicates the contributors' interest in questions of voyages and mobility, the plural use shows that the approaches to this conceptual exploration are multiple, reflecting differences in experience, in social context and/or in gender, class and ethnicity. The book is divided into three main sections. The first explores issues of 'mobility, immobility and embodied narratives', the second section deals with 'territoriality, mobility and identity politics and the final section concludes with chapters on 'the spatial production of knowledge'.
Contents
Contents: Introduction, Kirsten Simonsen and Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt. Mobility, Immobility and Embodied Narratives: The complex spaces of scandal, John Urry; Ambivalent spaces of restlessness, ordering (im)mobilities at airports, Jörg Bechman; Spatiality, temporality and the construction of the city, Kirsten Simonsen; 'Space Oddity': a thought experiment on European cross-border mobility, Anke Strüver. Territoriality, Mobility and Identity Policies: Framing mobility and identity: constructing transnational spatial policy discourses, Ole B. Jensen and Tim Richardson; 'Your Passport Please!' on territoriality and the fate of the Nation-State, Wolfgang Zierhofer; Territoriality and mobility - coping in Nordic peripheries, Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt; Mobility and territorialising regimes: reflections on Andean history, Fiona Wilson; The making of globalized everyday geographies, Benno Werlen. The Spatial Production of Knowledge: 'Local' illustrations for 'International' geographical theory, Costis Hadjimichalis and Dina Vaiou; The unhealthy and misplaced other, Keld Buciek; Connective dissonance: Imaginative geographies and the colonial present, Derek Gregory; Index.
