Space, Place and Everyday Mobility
How everyday life is lived through space — walking the city, dwelling in places, and moving through the non-places of contemporary mobility.
Definition
Space, place and everyday mobility concern how ordinary life is produced, experienced and contested through spatial practice — the ways people move through, inhabit and give meaning to the environments of daily life.
Scope
This topic examines the spatial dimension of everyday life. It covers de Certeau's account of walking as a spatial practice, Lefebvre's theory of the social production of space, the anthropology of 'non-places' associated with travel and transit, and feminist geographers' insistence on the gendered and power-laden character of space and place. It connects everyday-life theory to questions of geography, mobility and the city.
Core questions
- How does de Certeau treat walking as a creative spatial practice?
- What does it mean to say that space is socially produced?
- What are 'non-places', and how do they differ from meaningful places?
- How are space and place shaped by gender and power?
Key concepts
- spatial practice
- walking the city
- production of space
- place and non-place
- mobility
- gendered space
Key theories
- Walking the city
- De Certeau treats walking as a spatial 'speech act' through which pedestrians appropriate and improvise the urban grid from below, against the totalising view of planners and maps.
- The production of space
- Lefebvre argues that space is not a neutral container but is socially produced, comprising perceived, conceived and lived dimensions that are bound up with power and capital.
- Non-places
- Augé identifies the proliferating 'non-places' of supermodernity — airports, motorways, supermarkets — as spaces of transit and anonymity that lack the relational and historical density of places.
History
The spatial turn in everyday-life studies drew on Lefebvre's The Production of Space (1974, English 1991) and de Certeau's chapter 'Walking in the City' (1984). In the 1990s Augé theorised the non-places of globalised mobility, and feminist geographers such as Massey insisted that space and place are deeply gendered and relational, shaping a rich body of work on the everyday geographies of ordinary life.
Debates
- Place versus placelessness
- Whether contemporary mobility erodes meaningful, rooted place in favour of generic non-places, or whether people continue to make place and meaning even within transient spaces.
Key figures
- Michel de Certeau
- Henri Lefebvre
- Marc Augé
- Doreen Massey
Related topics
Seminal works
- lefebvrespace1991
- decerteau1984
- auge1995
Frequently asked questions
- What is a 'non-place'?
- Marc Augé's term for spaces such as airports, motorways and chain hotels that are defined by transience and anonymity. Unlike a 'place', a non-place is not invested with identity, history or stable social relations; it is somewhere one passes through rather than dwells.