The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (5 page)

experience.

These analyses were not much developed by thèùrban sociology'' established

in the interwar period at the University of Chicago. This work involved the

attempt to develop ecological approaches to the study of the city, such as the

concentric ring theory. Theoretically important was Wirth's `Ùrbanism as a way

of life'' (1938; followed by Redfield's ``The folk society,'' 1947). Wirth argued that there are three causes of the differences in social patterns between urban and rural areas. These are: size, which produces segregation, indifference and social distance; density, which causes people to relate to each other in terms of specific 6

John Urry

roles, urban segregation between occupants of such roles, and greater formal

regulation; and heterogeneity, which means that people participate in different

social circles, none of which commands their total involvement, and this results in discrepant and unstable statuses. Wirth and Redfield thus claim that the

organization of space, mainly in terms of size and density, produces correspond-

ing social patterns.

Much effort has been spent on testing the hypothesis that there are two

distinct ways of life and that these result from the respective size, density and heterogeneity of urban and rural areas. However, the research has largely shown

that there are no such simple urban and rural patterns. Indeed, urban areas

often contain close-knit social groups, such as the urban villages of Bethnal

Green in London or of the immigrant ghettos in North American cities. More

generally, Gans (1986) questioned the thesis that most city dwellers are isolated, individualized and autonomous. Even inner-city areas can be centers of a complex sociality focused around, for example, gentrification. Other city areas are more suburban, where the focus of activity is the home and where the main

forms of activity are car-based (see Sheller and Urry, 2000, on urban sociology's treatment of automobility). In such cases it is the forms of mobility that are

important, and less the size and density of the urban area. Furthermore, rural life is not simply organized around farm-based communities, where people frequently meet each other, are connected in diverse ways, and tend to know each

other's friends (Frankenberg, 1966). Studies of rural communities have shown

that there may be considerable conflict and opposition in such places, especially around status, access to land and housing, and the nature of thèènvironment''

(Newby, 1979).

To a significant extent, then, sociology took over such easy contrasts in its

endeavor to construct a spatially determined analysis of the urban and rural way of life. Elsewhere it was shown that the concept of ``community'' can be used in various ways (Bell and Newby, 1976). First, there is its use in a topographical

sense, to refer to the boundaries of a particular settlement; second, there is the sense of community as a local social system implying a degree of social interconnection of local people and institutions; third, there is ``communion,'' a

particular kind of human association implying personal ties, belongingness,

and warmth; and, fourth, there is community as ideology, where efforts are

made to attach conceptions of communion to buildings, or areas, or estates, or

cities, and so on, in ways which conceal and perpetuate the non-communion

relations that are actually found.

Finally here, sociology has tended to reproduce not just the distinction in

popular discourse between the countryside and the city (Williams, 1973), but

also ToÈnnies's opposition of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Such binary dis-

tinctions have been especially criticized by Schmalenbach (1977), who adds a

third term, the Bund. The Bund involves community, but this is a community

that is conscious and freely chosen on the basis of mutual sentiment and emo-

tional feeling. And contra Weber, the affective basis of such a Bund is not

irrational and unconscious but conscious, rational and non-traditional. Such

BuÈnde are not permanent or necessarily stable (Hetherington, 1994).

The Sociology of Space and Place

7

Bringing

Bringing Space Back

Back in: the 1970s and 1980s

In this section I outline the Marxist and post-Marxist critique of this treatment of space and place. Castells (1977, 1978) argued that any scientific discipline

needed a properly constituted ``theoretical object,'' and maintained that urban

sociology (and by implication rural sociology) did not possess such a theoretical object. Such an object would be based on a distinctivè`structuralist'' analysis

of the unfolding contradictions of capitalist relations. These relations are

increasingly organized on an international basis and this gives a particular role to towns and cities which have become centers not of production, but of

``collective consumption.'' This term refers to services generally provided by

the state and necessary for thè`reproduction' of the energies and skills of the

labor force.

Castells, having identified a proper ``theoretical object'' for urban sociology,

``collective consumption,'' uses this to explain particular kinds of spatially varied politics. He argues that collective consumption cannot be provided unproblem-atically since states are rarely able (and willing) to raise sufficient taxation revenues. All sorts of disputes arise over the forms and levels of provision,

such as the quality of public housing, the location of health care, the nature of public transport, and so on. Each of these services becomes ``politicized'' because they are provided collectively. Thus a sphere of urban politics emerges focused

around these forms of collective consumption. Castells devotes particular atten-

tion to analyzing `ùrban social movements.'' These normally comprise a number

of different urban groups but come under the dominance of working-class

organizations, to become in effect a new kind of class politics. Thus, he argues strongly against efforts to understand the urban in terms either of ``culture'' or

``way of life'' or of a spatial determinism.

A more geographical focus was developed by Massey (1984). She argued that

spatiality is an integral and active feature of the processes of capitalist production; it has various aspects besides that of region, including distance, movement, proximity, specificity, perception, symbolism, and meaning; and space makes a

clear difference to the degree to which, to use realist terminology, the causal

powers of social entities (such as class, the state, capitalist relations, patriarchy) are realized (Sayer, 1992). In particular, there are a number of distinct spatial forms taken by the social division of labor; there is no particular historical

ordering in the emergence of each of these forms of restructuring; that which

develops depends upon the specific struggle between capital and wage labor; one

important pattern of spatial restructuring involves the relocation of certain more routine elements of production away from headquarters and research and development functions; and these diverse patterns of spatial restructuring generate

new patterns of inequality, which are not just social but also spatial. On this

account a particular locality is the outcome of a unique set of ``layers'' of

restructuring dependent upon different rounds of accumulation. How these

layers combine together in particular places, and especially how international,

national, and local capitals combine together to produce particular local social 8

John Urry

and political effects, became the subject of major research programs (for exam-

ple, in the UK, Bagguley et al., 1990).

One implication of spatial differentiation is to challenge the notion that social class is a national phenomenon, that classes are essentially specified by the

boundaries of the nation-state. The emphasis within the restructuring literature on local/regional variation has led analysts to rethink social classes through this prism of space (later, gender and ethnicity were subject to similar analyses).

Thus, there are international determinants of the social class relations within a nation-state; there are large variations in local stratification structures within a society, so that the national pattern may not be found in any particular place at all; the combination of local, national, and international enterprises may produce locally unexpected and perverse commonalties and conflicts of class inter-

est; there are marked variations in the degree of spatial concentration of class; some class conflicts are in fact caused by, or are displaced onto, spatial conflicts; and, in certain cases, localities emerge with distinct powers to produce significant social and political effects (see Urry, 1995; FroÈbel et al., 1977, on thè`new international division of labor'').

Some of these points were developed into Harvey's (1989) concept of ``time-

space compression.'' He shows how capitalism entails different ``spatial fixes''

within different historical periods. In each capitalist epoch, space is organized in such a way as to facilitate the growth of production, the reproduction of labor

power and the maximization of profit. And it is through the reorganization of

such time-space that capitalism overcomes its periods of crisis and lays the

foundations for a new period of capital accumulation and the further

transformation of space and nature through time.

Harvey examines Marx's thesis of the annihilation of space by time and

attempts to demonstrate how this explains the shift from ``Fordism'' to the

flexible accumulation of ``post-Fordism.'' The latter involves a new spatial fix and most significantly new ways in which time and space are represented.

Central is thè`time-space compression'' of both human and physical experiences

and processes. Harvey brings out how this ``compression'' can generate a sense of foreboding, such as when the railway first transformed the countryside. In the

past couple of decades mobility has been carried to further extremes, so that time and space appear literally compressed: ``we are forced to alter. . . how we represent the world to ourselves. . . . Space appears to shrink to àglobal village' of telecommunications and àspaceship earth' of economic and ecological interdependencies . . . we have to learn how to cope with an overwhelming sense of

compression of our spatial and temporal worlds'' (Harvey, 1989, p. 240). Inter-

estingly, Heidegger in 1950 foresaw much of this ``shrinking'' of the distances of time and space, the importance of `ìnstant information'' on the radio, and the

way that television is abolishing remoteness and thus `ùn-distancing'' humans

and things (Zimmerman, 1990, pp. 151, 209).

However, these dramatic ways in which time and space are compressed does

not mean that places necessarily decrease in importance. People appear to have

become more sensitized to what different places in the world contain or what

they may signify. There is an insistent urge to seek for roots `ìn a world where The Sociology of Space and Place

9

image streams accelerate and become more and more placeless. Who are we and

to what space/place to we belong? Am I a citizen of the world, the nation, the

locality? Can I have a virtual existence in cyberspace?'' (Harvey, 1996, p. 246).

Thus, the less important the temporal and spatial barriers, the greater the

sensitivity of mobile capital, migrants, tourists, and asylum-seekers to the variations of place, and the greater the incentive for places to be differentiated, albeit through processes which are highly capitalized.

Finally, Giddens, in his post-Marxist theory of time and space, argued that

the movement of individuals through time and space is to be grasped through the

interpenetration of presence and absence, which results from the location of the human body and the changing means of its interchange with the wider society

(Giddens, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1991). Each new technology transforms the inter-

mingling of presence and absence, the forms by which memories are stored and

weigh upon the present, and the ways in which the long-term dureÂe of major

social institutions are drawn upon within contingent social acts. Presence-availability depends upon the degree to which, and the forms through which, people

are co-present within an individual's social milieu. Communities of high pres-

ence-availability include almost all societies up to a few hundred years ago.

Presence-availability has been transformed in the past century or two through

the development of new transportation technologies and the separation of the

media of communication from the media of transportation. Thus there is varia-

tion in ``time±space distanciation,'' the processes by which societies arè`stretched'' over shorter or longer spans of time and space. Such stretching reflects the fact that social activity increasingly depends upon interactions with those who are absent in time-space. In contemporary societies there is the

disembedding of time and space from social activities, the development of an

`èmpty'' dimension of time, the separation of space from place, and the emer-

gence of disembedding mechanisms, of symbolic tokens and expert systems,

which lift social relations out of local involvement. Expert systems bracket

time and space through deploying modes of technical knowledge which are

valued independent of the practitioners and clients who make use of them.

Such systems depend on trust, on a qualitative leap or commitment related to

absence in time and/or space. Trust in disembedding mechanisms is vested not in