关于地方文化意义的研究在西方人文地理学研究中占据着重要的地位。全球化背景下,地方的意义正在被全球性力量中和与消解。在这种断裂之下,原有的对于"地方性"的想象反而在认同形成的过程中被不断加强。本土社会力图在一个"时空压缩"的"超空间"时代中,保存其自身基于地方意义的身份认同。哈维认为,一切基于地方意义形成的认同都是反动与禁锢的。他提出,应从资本运作的角度出发,理解地方差异的形成,从而理解地方建构中的社会关系与权力关系的建构。但马西则在批判哈维理论的基础上提出了全球(进步)的地方感理论,指出应从多样的社会建构出发,理解地方性的形成过程。马西认为,地方的本质特点包括:开放以及与外界密切的社会联系;地方本身是一个过程,认同在不断的再建构过程中;地方内部具有其认同的多样性;进步的地方感并不否认地方性的存在等。基于马西的进步地方感理论,研究通过对广州关于移民以及粤语传承问题讨论中出现的话语进行的文本分析,指出广州本地社会在上述讨论的过程中,其少部分话语已经呈现出进步地方感所批判的禁锢性,因此需要在重新认识地方的过程中加以修正。

The study on the social and cultural implications of place has been gaining increasing importance within western human geography. Most importantly, scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of how identity can retain an articulation with place-specific sociality and culture in a global age. David Harvey believes that the working of global capitalism has resulted in a fragmentation of places-a direct consequence of spatial uneven development and the dissolution of place meanings, which leads to place-bound and reactionary identities, as well as a rising xenophobia. In his viewpoint, any politics based on place meanings or identities is reactionary by nature and is at the risk of producing exclusionary place politics. Doreen Massey, in rejecting the binary opposition between the constructs of the local and the global, proposes a theory of a "global (progressive) sense of place". Based on the arguments of Massey, we raise a culture-based critique of the discourses that have been emerging in Guangzhou, with regard to the relationship between Mandarin Chinese and the Cantonese language, as well as the urban migrant population in the city. We argue that some of these discourses have hinted an essentialist and "authentic" sense of place that is rejected by Massey. And we also criticize that such a place-base narrative is at the stake of producing exclusionary and oppressive place politics that might victimize the already marginalized urban migrant population in the city.