On the Temporalities and Spatialities of the Production of Space

Since the 1950s, sociology has embraced various theoretical frameworks for coping with the spatialization of social phenomena, which from the 1970s has often been named “the production of space”. The present paper uses these approaches as an opportunity to examine which conceptual insights into the process at hand can be gained by addressing in four analytical steps what time, particularly, discloses in conceptual terms about the sociospatial process at stake. Based on the ascertainment that (section 1) these approaches address the temporalities of their respective research objects by means of definite spatialities, one peculiar history of sociology comes to the forefront. This history comprises (section 2) four original ways of addressing the spatialization of social phenomena methodologically, which are authored by Erving Goffman, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu and Martina Löw. The seven temporal-spatial scales implicit in these accounts suggest (section 3) that the production of space is a simultaneously poly-temporal and poly spatial social phenomenon. Its temporalities and spatialities involve (section 4) two methodological contributions to the recent sociological debate on the production of space.