Spaces and Places

By theorizing the concepts of “space” and “place,” geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, planners, [Page 1349]psychologists, and several different kinds of specialized scholars have tried to bring within their fields the recognition that the relationship between ourselves, the others, and the surrounding environment is a crucial one. Things, such as objects, occur in space in the same way that social relations do. To put it in other words, situations take place, or, to follow one of the major theorists of this topic, we consider “places not as points or areas on maps, but as integrations of space and time; as spatio-temporal events” (Massey 2005, 130, emphasis in original). Consumption as a social practice occurs precisely within places, some of them specifically devoted to the multiple facets of consuming, like restaurants or shopping centers, but it is also embedded in spatial terms because place, in itself, is a commodity. People buy, trade, use, recycle, destroy, or build places. Consumer culture may be then considered, above all, a culture of consuming (within) places. Before reviewing the most recent and relevant issues in spaces and places, this entry briefly retraces the role played by the former in the history of thought, since this category is neither new nor objective.