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| POCKETS OF LOCAL ORDER AND ITS APPLICATION IN HUMAN ACTIVITY RESEARCH |
| Kajsa Ellegård1, ZHANG Xue2, ZHANG Yan3, CHAI Yan-wei2 |
1. School of Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Linköping 58183, Sweden;
2. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;
3. Institute of Beijing Studies, Beijing Union University, Beijing 100101, China |
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Abstract Pockets of Local Order(POLO) is one of the most important concepts in time-geography, which were put forward by Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand in English since 1970s. It elaborated the complexity of human activities and its underlining of social rules. Hägerstrand thought that the temporal rhythm and spatial pattern of human activity is not entirely haphazard. There must be certain rules to follow. That is the "local order". In order to carry out any project smoothly, actors need to occupy space and to consume certain amount of time which are sufficiently free from encroachment. That is the "space-time pocket", where a local order can be maintained. It depicted how different resources were arranged and stored up to fulfil the projects. So in his view, researchers should first designate a meaningful geographical district with a definite spatial boarder, and then observe the orders operating in it and how different actors perform in the same diorama. This article aims to introduce these new developments of POLO. With existing case studies, this article tries to show how local orders at different geographical and temporal scales nested together to impact on individual and organizational projects and paths. We introduced the examples of local order in the valley where Hägerstrand lived in during his childhood and the relation between daily household programmes and the local order of the factory viewed in a long-term perspective to show the orders at macro scale. And by analyzing the elementary events in milking cows and the resources used for performing the activities for milking, and when and in what order they are used, we try to explain the local orders at micro scale.
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Received: 01 March 2016
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2016, Vol. 31 
