The sociology of space is a sub-discipline of sociology that mostly borrows from theories developed within the discipline of geography, including the sub fields of human geography, economic geography, and feminist geography. The "sociology" of space examines the social and material constitution of spaces. It is concerned with understanding the social practices, institutional forces, and material complexity of how humans and spaces interact. The sociology of space is an inter-disciplinary area of study, drawing on various theoretical traditions including Marxism, postcolonialism, and Science and Technology Studies, and overlaps and encompasses theorists with various academic disciplines such as geography and architecture. Edward T. Hall developed the study of Proxemics which concentrates on the empirical analysis of space in psychology.
Definition of space Space is one of the most important concepts within the disciplines of social science as it is fundamental to our understanding of geography. The term "space" has been defined variously by scholars: In general terms, the Oxford English Dictionary defines space in two ways:
A continuous extension viewed with or without reference to the existence of objects within it. The interval between points or objects viewed as having one, two or three dimensions. However, the human geographers' interest is in the objects within the space and their relative position, which involves the description, explanation and prediction of the distribution of phenomena. Thus, the relationships between objects in space is the central of the study. Michel Foucault defines space as; "The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space…..we live inside a set of relations." Nigel Thrift also defines space as; "The outcome of a series of highly problematic temporary settlements that divide and connect things up into different kinds of collectives which are slowly provided with the meaning which render them durable and sustainable." In short, "space" is the social space in which we live and create relationships with other people, societies and surroundings. Space is an outcome of the hard and continuous work of building up and maintaining collectives by bringing different things into alignments. All kinds of different spaces can and therefore do exist which may or may not relate to each other. Thus, through space, we can understand more about social action.
History of the sociology of space Georg Simmel has been seen as the classical sociologist who was most important to this field. Simmel wrote on "the sociology of space" in his 1908 book "Sociology: Investigations on the Forms of Sociation". His concerns included the process of metropolitanisation and the separation of leisure spaces in modern economic societies. The category of space long played a subordinate role in sociological theory formation. Only in the late 1980s did it come to be realised that certain changes in society cannot be adequately explained without taking greater account of the spatial components of life. This shift in perspective is referred to as the spatial turn. The space concept directs attention to organisational forms of juxtaposition. The focus is on differences between places and their mutual influence. This applies equally for the micro-spaces of everyday life and the macro-spaces at the nation-state or global levels. The theoretical basis for the growing interest of the social sciences in space was set primarily by English and French-speaking sociologists, philosophers, and human geographers. Of particular importance is Michel Foucault’s essay on "Of Other Spaces", in which the author proclaims the "age of space", and Henri Lefebvre's seminal work "La production de l'espace". The latter provided the grounding for Marxist spatial theory on which David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Edward Soja, and others have built. Marxist theories of space, which are predicated on a structural, i.e., capitalist or global determinants of spaces and the growing homogenization of space, are confronted by action theoretical conceptions, which stress the importance of the corporeal placing and the perception of spaces as albeit habitually predetermined but subjective constructions. One example is the theory of space of the German sociologist Martina Löw. Approaches deriving from the post-colonialism discourse have attracted greater attention in recent years. Also in contrast to Marxist concepts of space, British geographer Doreen Massey and German sociologist Helmuth Berking, for instance, emphasise the heterogeneity of local contexts and the place-relatedness of our knowledge about the world.
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