Space, Time and political responsibility in the midst of global inequality (Massey 2006)
Introduction
The way space is conceptualised is of fundamental importance, implications for conduct of social sciences, development geography, and the way political positions are constructed and engaged- with. Focusing on aspects of inequality in our neoliberally, globalised world.
Leads to considering notions of political responsibility.
3 propositions of space- 1st space is a product of practices, relations, connections and disconnections, we make space in the conduct of our lives- from intimate to global. 2.d space is the dimension of multiplicity, without space no multiplicity. 3rd- space is always in process- never finished- always connections and relations yet to be made. Space is ongoing production. Always open to the future, responsibility and politics. Space is a real challenge to political engagements and the practice of daily life.
Need to develop conceptualisations to deflect the challenge of space
Evasive imaginations
strategy of turning space into time, geography into history. those behind in globalisation, seen as 'give us time', 'they will catch up', developing, progress. uneven geography organised into a historical queue. However, obliteration of the contemporaneity of space, only one historical queue, defined by those in the lead. Countries behind cant define a path of their own. There is no alternative.
Further consequences, it ignores any possibility that the inequality of the world is being produced now, as a structural fact of globalisation, ignores the effects of the current form of 'connectedness', renders less likely others can catch up
It also makes more bland, less urgent and pressing the differences between places. Denies equal standing, also denial of implication in the production of inequality and reduction of difference to place, imply erasure of ethical and political challenges.
Problems with concepts concerns singularity of their assumed form, and who defines that form point to the apparent difficulty involved in a real recognition of the spatially differentiated and unequal present. Turning of space into time.
Formed by hegemonic dominant forces, and infiltrates with our everyday lives.
ignoring the relations that have contributed to producing
these positions, deprives those who hold such a stance
of any political purchase upon them
Second evasive imagination
thinking of space as a surface, space is assumed to be equivalent to the landscape 'out there', the surface of the earth etc. travelling rendered as travelling across space.
Maps render space as a complete whole
Rather in this paper, space is proposed as a dimension that cuts through stories/trajectories. Space is imbued with time, simultaneity of unfinished, ongoing, trajectories, not static things.
3. Space, time, identity, subjectivity
Space and time as necessary to each other, space is accorded as much attention as time
Time should be complimentary to space and outwardlookinngness
There has been a long history of understanding subjectivity and identity in terms of time and temporality
Social-scientific re conceptualisation over recent years- subjectivities and identities are constitutively relational, constituted in and through those engagements, connections and disconnections, those practices of interaction.
Reconceptualisation raises umber of issues- means spatiality as well as the temporality of our identities and subjectivities is something of consequence, 2nd questions what is the geography of relations through which any particular identity is established and maintained? 3rd raises questions what is our social and political relationship to those geographies through which our selves are constructed. Raises questions of the geography of responsibility.
We can look inward at the geographies of identity, looking at different actions, which leads to essentialisms, or we can look at the relational construct of identity, a global sense of place, runs outwards, questioning a wider ethics and politics.
What is at issue is an attitude, the scaffolding of one's self-conception, a stance in relation to the world, an openness to wider engagement with the world, an outwardlookingness. Throwing oneself into space, into an awareness of the planet-wide configurations of trajectories, lives, practices into which we are set and through which we are made.
4. Identity, space, responsibility
can this temporal dimension of responsibility be paralleled in the spatial and in the present? For as 'the past continues in our present', so also is the spatially distant implicated in our 'here'
4 reflections made about this. 1. a responsibility that is relational but characteristic of extension is geographical rather than historical involves compensation for already unequal positions and address the production of these positions themselves
2nd reflection- notion of responsibility with extension that is explicitly spatial, a chain of actrions produces the current unequal world
3rd- guilt and political responsibility engages with an extension of time on one hand and space on the other, guilt is backward looking, linking responsibility to identity.
4th- another significant difference between responsibility over temporal distance and in the spatial present, past reparations are for abnormal events, however political responsibility today in present relations much challenge normality itself, case of current global inequality, normality is the disaster
This is a challenge of space, about the full recognition of space as the dimension of the social, challenging the ongoing, ordinary, constitutive interrelatedness, about the possibility for a more configurational and outwardlooking stance and our repsonsibiltiy for it