The Spatial Turn

Scholars in many fields have rethought how they study space over the past several decades. Mapping, place, and the ways people imagine geography now appear across disciplines, partly because globalization has made location matter more. This shift has revived human geography and has also taken hold in the humanities and the social sciences beyond it. Rather than arguing again that space matters, this collection examines how different disciplines analyze it, compares their methods, points out shared ground, and asks why their approaches diverge.

Thirteen contributors from several regions and disciplines take part. Their chapters pair current reviews of the literature on space in their own field with, in several cases, original empirical work. Some chapters address geography directly, while others consider space in contemporary anthropology, sociology, religion, political science, film, and cultural studies. An introduction traces how the spatial turn developed across these fields.

The editors present the book as the first to address directly how theory and practice concerning space are used across a range of fields, each with its own conceptual outlook. It is aimed at anyone doing conceptual or theoretical work on space, whether within geography or in related areas.