Deutsche Gesellschaft
für phänomenologische Forschung

Series | Buch | Kapitel

194327

Toward a sociological concept of space

Martina Löw

pp. 105-127

Abstrakt

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.

Publication details

Published in:

Löw Martina (2016) The sociology of space: materiality, social structures, and action. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Seiten: 105-127

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-69568-3_4

Referenz:

Löw Martina (2016) Toward a sociological concept of space, In: The sociology of space, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 105–127.