Is There Space for “Real Space” in British Civilisation Studies?

Abstract

This paper starts from two premises. First, interdisciplinary studies are those in which researchers draw on several academic disciplines with different research paradigms in such a way that they are faced with the challenge of crossing subject boundaries in order to create new knowledge and theory. Second, a “spatial turn” has been identified across the field of humanities and social sciences. Based on these premises, British civilisation studies - as an interdisciplinary domain - can be expected to have undergone a spatial turn and to have engaged with the paradigms of human geography on space. Using a sample of articles published in previous issues of the French Journal of British Studies, this article points to the socio-spatial dialectic of British civilisation studies in France. It then goes on to examine the terms on which research in British civilisation studies has engaged with human geography over the last 20 years. It is argued that alongside a spatial turn, the cultural turn in both human geography and British civilisation studies has played an important role in framing how researchers have addressed the dialectical relationship between space and society. One consequence of this has been that - rather than viewing space as a structure created by society - researchers all too frequently merely represent space as a context for society. In the conclusions it is argued that British civilisation studies’ long standing concern with the dynamic processes of social, economic and political relations may lead researchers to address space in relation to these processes and – in turn - to develop a geographical imagination.