There are three different perspectives to space. The first comes from postmodernist Manuel Castells. Castells’ trilogy The Information Society argues that global space has been split into two, the sphere of the net, which is material time sharing which no longer relies on being bound to a particular place, meaning everyone can connect virtually. The second is the sphere of the self, where people’s constructions of identities feed into social movements and developments. From this he suggested that there are three different types of identities. First, ‘legitimising identity’ where people legitimise the authority of dominant institutions. Secondly, ‘resistant identity’ through resisting the net by isolating into communes, such as resisting globalisation. Thirdly ‘project identity’, which constitutes a new global society and changes history. This argument was constructed by examining a number of developments from changes in political systems, industry, technology, and economical factors. The reason behind this was to discover if a grand narrative exists in the world and also people’s position in society. Castells’ views were analysed more in depth through the example of flexible women. This was helpful, making a complicated idea a bit more understandable.

 

However, Castells’ theories have been criticised for having blind spots. Critics believe that Castells gets caught up in the networking hype that we live in a whole new era, which promises increased productivity and equality. Castells pinpoints the ways in which the global economic and political networks empower some people, however by doing this, he is disempowering groups that are left out. Another problematic feature of Castells’ analysis is the categorising binaries. These point to the contradictory roots of inequality as well as the loss of patriarchal power, fuelling and separating people rather than addressing and resolving issues. 

 

Through multimethodological analysis of material, discursive and lived dimension of space, the traditional analysis of globalisation is enriched. Deconstruction is a useful tool for criticising texts, as it allows one to uncover the issues of binaries underpinning Castells’ analysis of global space. The method of deconstruction to prove this was shown through the example of populist politics, focusing on Pauline Hanson.

 

The second perspective used to analyse globalisation and its construction is the theory of Third Space, developed by Edward Soja. This theory expands on the realist and materialistic framework. First space refers to material qualities, realist positivist analysis that aims to measure map developments across global space. Second space refers to a discourse and vision of global space and developments. Lastly, third space undoes the oppositional nature of realism and constructionism, realism believing the truth is out there and you just have to go and find it, and constructional believing that meaning does not exist and truth is therefore made. This method looks into discourses within society in greater depth and also the inequalities that have been created, clearly highlighting how individuals look at space from the inside and not from above. These methodical approaches were explored through the example of gendered spaces, making the methods much easier to understand through a real word issue of the feminist movement and also the example of flexible economy, flexible theory.

 

The third perspective comes from Feminist Geographers, who believe that the world is not a man’s world. They criticised both Castells and Soja for only considering their male perspectives, arguing that it is also important to look from the female perspective when talking about space. They used the example of miner’s wives to back their argument that we should not look to the political construction of space as it is generated from a male dominated view.

 

The final idea explored was the move from studying global space in the form of ‘mapping’ which aimed to achieve an accurate overview of vast stretches of space to gain knowledge through statistics, which could often be faulty. Instead space should be viewed in terms of a horizontal or ‘flat’ ‘network’ which refers to sharing political economic factors amongst a larger community. This metaphor of a network suggests that we live in space, and therefore are not viewing it from above, therefore, we see the world from our personal political position which causes a natural bias.

 

Due to not having explored this style of research before I found this a complicated reading. However, after breaking it down and exploring all the examples I believe I may have manged to grasp a basic understanding of the topic. I hope to build on this foundation in the lecture and understand the topic of researching space well enough to complete the group research task. However, to ensure I properly understand, I may do some extra research and reading into this topic and explore some of the arguments posed more in depth.