REAFFIRMATION OF THE VIEW OF SPACE IN THE GLOBALIZATION ERA: THEORIES AND PRACTICE OF POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES
YIN Jie1,2, ZHANG Jing-xiang1, LUO Xiao-long1
1. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;
2. Department of Urban Planning and Design, College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Abstract：Space, as a core concept in the research of human geography, has experienced an important transformation in the era of globalization. This paper rethink the concept of space through a trinity study in the postmodernism, the contemporary practice of urban and regional reconstruction and the advanced theories of human geography. Postmodernism is a movement since 1960's in the humanities characterized as denial of objective truth and global cultural narrative. Contrary to modern approaches, postmodernism emphasizes diversification, heterogeneity, variability and localization. The origin of the rise of postmodernism lies in all economic, political and social restructuring processes caused by the globalization. The first global shift takes place in production. Global production networks emerged and created structures which are "discontinuously territorial". As hubs of economic activities, cities and city-regions are connected with each other through threads of flows. New urban and regional spaces forms due to these connections. This is the second global shift, space shift. Finally, the third shift occurs in the state area. New governance networks are founded on the new urban and regional spaces to manage the economic, social and political relationships among them. Generally, globalization arouses urban and regional space recombination and governance restructuring all over the world. The postmodern space conception as a social-spatial dialectic can be seen in all principal theories of human geography after the quantitative revolution. Actually, new regional geography, new regionalism, new cultural geography, and the recent discussions about scale, relationship and governance consider that things should be studied within their specific context. Therefore, in the sense of research paradigm, they are all postmodern geographies. This paper reaffirms that the space concept in the globalization era should be a social-spatial dialectic as an image of real-world, just as the postmodernism reveals. Recognizing the postmodern concept of space is a foundation for conducting researching on contemporary human geography.
殷洁, 张京祥, 罗小龙. 重申全球化时代的空间观:后现代地理学的理论与实践[J]. 人文地理, 2010, 25(4): 12-17.
YIN Jie, ZHANG Jing-xiang, LUO Xiao-long. REAFFIRMATION OF THE VIEW OF SPACE IN THE GLOBALIZATION ERA: THEORIES AND PRACTICE OF POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2010, 25(4): 12-17.
