Toward a sociological concept of space

pp. 105-127

in: Martina Löw, The sociology of space, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

The fourth chapter critically reflects on selected relativist concepts of space. Works by Emile Durkheim, Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Elisabeth Ströker, Niklas Luhmann, and others are presented as approaches to a processual treatment of the constitution of space. The author demonstrates that space cannot be determined as a relational arrangement simply by determining positional relations. Every analysis in the social sciences and humanities also involves the question as to what is arranged to yield spaces (things, living beings, even events with various material qualities and symbolic expressions), who arranges (with what right, with what power), and how spaces emerge, are materialized or changed, and how they structure society. Löw does not regard this conception merely as relativistic, but rather, redetermines it as a relational conception.