Places, spaces and Macy's: place–space tensions in the political geography of modernities

Abstract

Place and space are treated as the fundamental concepts for answering where and what questions. Their relationship is defined as a tension with places tending to be enabling and spaces dis-enabling in progressive political practice. The political geography of this position is explored through identifying nation-state and home-household as exemplary examples of place–space tensions. The addition of nation to state and home to household is interpreted as necessarily resulting from the social turmoil that is modernity. While nation turns state space into place, states remain major space producers of the modern age. The way in which home turns household space into place is derived from the identification of three modernities within which this new place–space tension was created. For both nation-state and home-household their treatment as place–space tension highlights their ambiguous political roles. A final place–space tension is identified at the global scale between a geoecology place and a globalization space.