Space, Place, and Location Midterm (simplified)

Space

Abstract, geometric, measurable, and open; defined by coordinates and distance, representing potential, movement, and freedom.

Place

Space that has been experienced, felt, and given meaning; where human identity, memory, and emotion attach.

Yi-Fu Tuan

A scholar who posits that place has a personality shaped by emotions, stories, and sensory experiences of inhabitants.

Direct experience

Experiences through touch, sight, movement, smell, and sound that transform abstract space into meaningful place.

Indirect experience

Experiences through memory, imagination, and symbolism that contribute to the transformation of space into place.

Doreen Massey

A scholar who emphasizes that places are relational and dynamic, shaped by movement, power, and interaction.

Street ballet

Jane Jacobs' concept illustrating how everyday activity and human presence give urban spaces meaning and safety.

Colonialism

A process that reorganizes and redefines space through domination, dispossession, and replacement.

Settler colonialism

A structure aimed at eliminating Indigenous societies to seize land for permanent use, as described by Patrick Wolfe.

Mapping, naming, and borders

Tools used by colonial powers to impose their own spatial order, erasing Indigenous place-making and relationships to the land.

Thingification

The dehumanization of the colonized into objects, a concept introduced by Aimé Césaire.

Boomerang effect

The phenomenon where the violence of colonization corrupts the colonizer's own society, as described by Aimé Césaire.

Counter-geographies

Spaces of resistance, survival, and agency created by colonized or oppressed people within oppressive systems.

David Harvey

A scholar who introduced the concept of time-space compression, explaining how capitalism accelerates global connections unevenly.

Power geometries

Massey's concept highlighting that not everyone experiences globalization the same way, with different groups having varying levels of mobility.

Movers (Power geometries)

Corporations and elites who control mobility in the context of globalization.

Moved (Power Geometries)

Migrant workers and refugees who have constrained mobility.

Excluded (Power Geometries)

Rural or disconnected communities that are left behind in the context of globalization.

Modernization theory

A theory that assumes Western capitalism is the universal path to progress, justifying continued intervention in the Global South. (W.W. Rostow)

Dependency theory

A theory that exposes how resources and profits flow from periphery to core nations, maintaining underdevelopment. (Walter Rodney)

Development programs

Initiatives like those from USAID or IMF that often replicate colonial power relations, promoting aid that reinforces dependence.

Time-Space Compression

The speeding up of social life and the shrinking of distance through new tech, transport, and communication, 'a process driven by capitalism's push to annihilate space by time' - Harvey

Global Sense of Place

Concept that pushes us to see place as dynamic, contested, political

Experiential Perspective

Experience as the way humans know and construct reality; how senses, emotions, and thought combine (Tuan)

Power Geometry

Describes how different groups relate differently to global flows (Massey)

Ages of Colonialization

Periods of colonial history: The age of conquest (1400s-1700s), The rise of imperialism and settler colonialism (1700s-1898), Late colonialism (1898-1975?)

Goal of Settler Colonialism - Land

To take land for permanent use; for settlement, agricultural, and/or industrial uses.

Goal of Settler Colonialism - Elimination

Replace indigenous inhabitants with new inhabitants, which doesn't only mean death; it includes cultural erasure and the severing of social relationships.

Example of Elimination

Indigenous boarding schools in the US and Canada.

Race in Settler Colonialism

Race is made in the targeting; prejudice leads to distinguishing.

Negative Impact of Settler Colonialism

Dissolution of native societies.

Positive Impact of Settler Colonialism

Erects new colonial society.

Structure of Settler Colonialism

Not an event; the goal is to assimilate Indigenous people into non-native culture, ending the need for reservations or tribal lands.

Indigenous Boarding Schools - Initial Perception

First good because schools had funds.

Indigenous Boarding Schools - Reality

Children started getting taken from their homes, weren't allowed to speak their native language or express any culture.

Indigenous Boarding Schools - Violence

Physical violence secured obedience; many children died and were buried at these schools.

Survivance

Coined by Gerald Vizenor; to capture indigenous active survival in the face of colonization.

Active Sense of Survivance

Continuing native stories; native survivance stories are renunciations of domination, tragedy, and victimry.

Example of Boomerang Effect

Nazism: logical effect of colonialism.

Resistance/Counter Geography

Resisting some form of oppression, colonialism or enslavement.

Loophole of Retreat

Harriet Jacobs resists slavery by hiding in her grandmother's attic for seven years away from her enslaver.

Resistance in Algeria

Algeria resisted colonialism of the French by establishing the FLN, using guerilla warfare, urban bombing to get independence back.

Development in Geography

Refers to the changing of an economy, usually at the level of the nation-state, and how economic change impacts social and cultural relationships.

USAID

Operates in 100 countries to provide disaster and anti-poverty relief, technical assistance, and economic development.

Water for All Initiative

Aimed at increasing access to clean water and sanitation facilities in Angola.

Modernization

Required for development, including industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism.

Outside intervention

Necessary for modernization; 'traditional society' is incapable of modernizing on its own, justifying the role of the US as a facilitator in 'developing' countries.

Dependency

When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.

Core countries

Have a structural (lasting) advantage over periphery countries; maintain control over services, economies, higher value manufactured goods, and technology.

Periphery countries

Countries that are economically dependent on core countries.

IMF and World Bank

Provided loans to adjust Jamaica and implemented privatization, currency devaluation, and reduced tariffs to integrate Jamaica.

Result of IMF and World Bank intervention

Ended up destroying local industries and agriculture in Jamaica.

Dependency in Jamaica

Jamaica produces cheap exports and imports expensive goods, echoing power and profit flow outward from periphery to the core.

Orientalism

A discourse that constructs 'the Orient' (Middle East, Asia, North Africa) as exotic, backward, and irrational, opposite of the 'modern, rational West'.

Stereotypes and binaries in Orientalism

West = savage and traditional; East = civilized and modern.

Material effects of Orientalism

Justified colonial administration, military occupation, and economic exploitation.

Contemporary impact of Orientalism

Still shapes media, policy, and popular culture today.

Knowledge and culture in Orientalism

Shows how knowledge and culture produce power; empire rules not only through armies but through representations.