Spatial Turn Research Articles

Exploring the spatial turn in social work: a bibliometric and narrative analysis of the Latin American and Global North literature

ABSTRACT This article reviews the increasing amount of literature focusing on spatial issues in social work. It combines bibliometric and narrative approaches to analyse articles published between 2003 and 2022. The review focuses on publications in Latin America and the Global North, considering the issues addressed, spatial concepts through which they are understood, connections between issues discussed and between concepts used, and degrees of interaction within and between discussions in these two global regions. Informed by theoretical arguments, a search was conducted for literature using four concepts: space, place, environment and territory. After refining and screening, 395 articles were identified that utilised these spatial concepts to discuss social work. The review shows evidence of a spatial turn in social work literature across the four concepts and increasing amounts of literature in both global regions. There are differences in the extent to which each concept has been employed in Latin America and the Global North, leading to different questions and epistemological frames being used in each region. The article considers the factors in the development and circulation of knowledge about space in social work so far in these two regions and considers priorities for future research.

Book Review: Geographical Imaginations: Literature and the ‘Spatial Turn’ by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda

Book Review: Geographical Imaginations: Literature and the ‘Spatial Turn’ by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda

Temporalities in spatial narratives about war ruins in Mostar

The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies and the geographies of peace research agendas have underscored the importance of space in (post-)conflict societies. These fields, despite recognising that space and time are inseparable dimensions, often pay more attention to the former compared to the latter. To address this gap, this article explains how space relates to temporality, a concept that delves into the lived experiences of time. More specifically, I analyse how understandings of the past, present, and future shape spatial narratives about war ruins in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), where buildings targeted during the 1990s wars remain unreconstructed. Drawing on spatial narratives gathered through walks and elite interviews, I show that temporality is a crucial element of space because lived experiences of time structure individuals' perspectives on war ruins in Mostar. Four temporalities were woven into participants’ narratives: (1) narratives shaped by trauma temporalities where war ruins remind people of wartime violence and collapse past and present; (2) narratives driven by temporalities of nostalgia and opportunities that invite reflections about the future of Mostar; (3) narratives building on a temporality of commodification that sees ruins as marketable attractions for tourists; and (4) narratives framing ruins as barriers to synchronising Mostar to a temporality of modernity, characterised by notions of progress and economic development. Through these findings, I demonstrate that temporalities are a key factor in how individuals perceive space and highlight the importance of temporalities in explaining heterogeneous attitudes toward space in areas affected by violence.

Mostar in Jasmina Musabegović's Novels

This paper presents the thematologic interpretation of three novels written by Jasmina Musabegović, Skretnice, Most, and Žene, glasovi, highlighting Mostar as the author's continuous motif. The theoretical starting points are the acquisitions of the post-structural spatial turn, constructivism, women's writing, cultural memory, semiotics of space, ‘hybrid phenomenology’, and stylistics. Such an inclusivist inter-method approach dispelled formalist prejudices according to thematology, providing arguments for the representation of Mostar within the Foucaultian category of heterotopia. The interpretation of a spatial phenomenon, being Mostar in Jasmina Musabegović's novels, guided this multigenerational family trilogy in a three-stage projection encompassing the periods of human life: childhood – maturity – the third age.

The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies: contributions, limitations and opportunities for research on space–time heterogeneity

ABSTRACT The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies brought valuable insights about space in (post-)conflict contexts. Nevertheless, critiques of this literature call for further engagement with spatial heterogeneity. I suggest that analyzing space–time relationships is a promising avenue, as understandings of space are substantiated by heterogeneous temporal experiences. To capture space–time heterogeneity, I introduce the concept of ‘spatio-temporal conflicts’, which draws attention to how actors construct spatial narratives based on heterogeneous and conflicting temporalities. I illustrate the analytical usefulness of this concept by employing it to explore conflicting space–time narratives around the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in post-war Mostar.

Augmented Reality and Theatre

Abstract: The technology industry’s recent spatial turn presents new opportunities for theatre and performance in the twenty-first century. One such opportunity is augmented reality (AR), a technology that overlays digitally rendered assets onto the user’s physical space, giving the appearance that those assets populate the physical world. Through an analysis of The Builders Association’s Elements of Oz , which incorporated mobile AR into its stage production, as well as Bitter Wind , the author’s adaptation of Agamemnon for the Microsoft HoloLens headset, this essay analyzes the interpretive possibilities AR creates for theatre and performance.

The role of municipal ownership for urban net-zero path creation

Particularly within recent years, the rising number of city actors worldwide declaring climate emergencies and pledging commitments to carbon neutrality has sparked a spatial turn in broader sustainable transition thinking, noting the importance of the local level for governing sustainable transitions. Using a Geographical Political Economy approach, this paper critically engages with path creation theory and sustainable transitions literature to explore the potential of urban net-zero carbon transitions in a multi-scalar governance framework. The main argument is that municipal ownership across sectors has a fundamental role in sustainable transitions at the city level. This paper makes a distinct conceptual contribution to sustainable transitions literature by drawing on path creation theory to illustrate how municipal ownership is a central tenet of path creation by bringing together local actors and enabling political capacity and agency to control and strategize integrated sustainable urban pathways. Using the transport and energy sectors in Nottingham in the UK, it applies the Path Creation Framework in an urban setting to illustrate that municipal ownership stimulates a positive path creation through three main arguments. First, municipal ownership enables a positive embeddedness and historical legacy in the provision of sustainable urban energy and transport services; second, it facilitates the establishment of skills and expertise that positively reinforces urban political capacity for the pursuit of urban sustainability; and third, it stimulates the creation of innovative urban projects for sustainable and equitable pathways.

An Emerging Concentric Spatial Turn for Sustainable Systems: Beyond the Diametric Spatial Frame in Bacon’s View of Humans as Apart from and above the Natural World towards Being-Alongside Nature

An Emerging Concentric Spatial Turn for Sustainable Systems: Beyond the Diametric Spatial Frame in Bacon’s View of Humans as Apart from and above the Natural World towards Being-Alongside Nature

Towards concentric spatial systems for sustainable social development: Beyond western ethnocentric diametric spatial opposition and empty space

<p>This article outlines key features of an emerging spatial turn in education, the social sciences and humanities and its relevance to developing sustainable social systems, with a particular focus on inclusive systems. This is cognisant of UN Sustainable Goal 4 on Equitable Inclusive Education and Goal 1 on No Poverty. Offering a necessarily illustrative selection of key conceptual traditions and recent applications of spatial understandings pertinent to education and inclusion, with wider applicability, this proposed spatial turn is examined as offering critical alternatives to Western ethnocentric frames of space. This leads to contrasts between concentric spatial systems of inclusion, assumed connection and relative openness and diametric spatial systems of exclusion, splitting and mirror image oppositions in education and community spaces of relation.</p>

Poza codziennością przestrzeni. Zdrój Barbary Klickiej jako narracja sanatoryjna

This article presents a critical interpretation of Barbara Klicka’s Zdrój [ The Spa] (2019) within the framework of the Spatial Turn. The analysis examines the relationship between the subject and the medical spaces with the help of concepts like heterotopia, atopia, psychotopography as well as the author’s own concept of topopathography. The aim is to explore the impact of the designated sanatorium space on the patient’s identity.

From coordinating in space to coordinating through space: A spatial perspective on coordinating

The spatial turn in organization studies has redefined our understanding of physical space, portraying it no longer as a passive backdrop for organizational actions but as actively produced through organizational actions and as shaping organizational actions in turn. In contrast to other areas of organization studies, research on coordination has not yet harvested the potential of this spatial turn for its theorizing, still treating physical space predominantly as context. In this article we develop a spatial perspective on coordination that acknowledges how coordination practices (re)produce physical space, indirectly affecting coordination outcomes; and how spatial production might even be purposefully employed for coordinating. Building on Lefebvre’s theory of spatial production, we theorize how actors might purposefully coordinate through configurational processes of designing, enacting and shaping their collective experience of physical space. This conceptual shift from coordinating in space to coordinating through space has important implications for coordination research and practice.

Enduring Places and Excavating Memories: Biographical Narratives of Delhi in Malvika Singh’s Perpetual City (2013)

ABSTRACT This article explores the narrative and memory patterns that underlie the evolution of city biography as a genre in the Indian literary context. The late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a ‘spatial turn’, emphasising the ‘re-assertion of space’ across disciplines. This paradigmatic shift was characterised by a renewed focus on the concept of space in various fields of study. Besides, the publication of Nora’s lieux de mémoire marked the second wave of memory studies, and enabled the world to remember and reconstruct the national history tied to ‘sites’ of memory. However, in the Global South, especially in India, the memory lens did not affirm national history. This study delves into common thematic tropes within city biographies, contending that they offer narratives of resistance to mainstream city writings. Biographers draw on autobiographical memory, shaping narratives of reconstruction, marginality, and absence/presence as everyday forms of resistance. Furthermore, by analysing Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi (2013), the article posits ‘superposition’ alongside the prevalent way of approaching the city as palimpsest. This textual exploration shifts the focus from the city’s physical or represented aspects to the city biographer’s simultaneous awareness of several historical layers, presenting Delhi in a continuum marked by both ruptures and continuities.

A policy instruments palette for spatial quality: lessons from Dutch flood risk management

ABSTRACT Worldwide, more integrated and spatially embedded forms of flood risk management have been advocated. In the Netherlands, this ‘spatial turn’ can be associated with a quest for spatial quality, i.e. making use of existing landscape values to create more liveable, aesthetic and sustainable flood risk management solutions. Reflecting on Dutch flood risk management practice, this paper inventorizes which policy instruments are currently used to strengthen spatial quality, and how involved actors view these instruments. We present empirical insights on common concerns, standpoints and dilemmas from the Dutch Flood Protection Programme (DFPP), a large-scale reinforcement operation to climate-proof the Netherlands’ main flood defences by 2050. Spatial quality here remains a rather ambiguous policy objective, lacking a legally binding framework. Using the NATO-policy instruments’ typology as a starting point, and based on a co-learning process between science and practice, we present an instruments palette that can be used to strengthen spatial quality in flood risk management. Our findings reveal that the DFPP makes use of rather ‘soft’ policy instruments. The actual achievement of spatial quality goals seems to depend largely on the combined project team competencies, guidance and support provided by responsible water authorities, and commitment of other project partners.

К вопросу пространства и места в дизайне городской среды

The paper hinges primarily on the problem of the object’s spatial foundations in the design of urban environ-ment. In order to clarify the concepts of “space” and “place” the content analysis of works reflecting the spatial turn in the field of sociology, culturology, cultural geography and urbanism is carried out. Space and place are considered as concepts of modernism and postmodernism design culture, as well as objects of modern archi-tectural and design practice and the main concepts of new urbanism. Based on the conducted analysis, the environment as an object of design is concretized as a concept of “place” – a space that is filled with meaning, semantics, emotional and sensory experiences, and has vital value. This work proposes a theoretical model of an object in the design of urban environment, which possesses the potential of connecting the sociocultural space of the city with the morphology, semantics and phenomenology of the place.

Assessing Narrative Space: From Setting to Narrative Environments

Abstract This essay addresses the insufficient attention paid in narrative theory to the reformulated concept of space resulting from the spatial turn in the analysis of narrative space. To address this lack of attention, the essay proposes the concept of “narrative environments” as a new lens for conceiving of narrative space that distinguishes it from setting. Narrative environments are the formal narrative expression of space: the combined social contextualization and historicization and environmental imaginings that have historically produced that space and are called forth in the narrative to build narrative space and its interactions with other narrative components. These are distinguished from “setting” in that the latter has been interpreted as textually self-sufficient, not relying on social and cultural knowledge. The article reviews recent debates on narrative space and their branching into the fields of critical geography and ecocriticism in order to bring the reenvisioned concept of space resulting from the spatial turn into the discussion. The functioning of this new perspective on space is illustrated through the analysis of island and ocean space and its narrative effects in J. M. Coetzee's Foe.

Hybrid Social Spaces and the Individualisation of Religious Experience in the Global North: Spatial Aspects of Religiosity in Postmodern Society

This paper interprets the changing traits of religiosity in modern and postmodern societies from the perspective of spatial turn. The analysis examines the impact of social experience and action on spatial structure and how changes in spatial structure have influenced individual actions and experiences over the past decade, with a specific emphasis on the relationship to transcendence. The analysis explores the impact of the interaction of social spaces and actions on religiosity, in order to provide new insights into the interpretation of religious phenomena through a novel approach to the study of religion. It focuses on the consequences of individualisation, hybridisation, and globalisation, and analyses how these transformations are shaping contemporary religiosity in the global north. The paper argues that spatial structural changes are reinforcing more individualised forms of religiosity, often separated from traditional institutionalised religiosity. This gives greater scope to subject-organised ‘patchwork religiosity’, which inevitably reinforces a new kind of religious syncretism. The reflection unravels the spatial aspects of this transformation in a novel way.

Religion and lived space: A geographical reading of La Religion de près

Spatial approaches to religion have grown significantly in recent years and offer original perspectives for understanding new religious realities in the context of secularized countries. This article is an opportunity to show the richness of this “spatial turn” through an analysis of the theoretical tools developed by the French anthropologist Albert Piette in his work La religion de près: l’activité religieuse en train de se faire. Although this work, which has a connection to actor-network theory, does not deal directly with space, it exhibits a geographical sensibility that we will reveal. We show that these tools can be used to demonstrate a complex geography of contemporary religion—in particular the existence of a socio-spatial dialectic—and illustrate their fruitfulness with the case of an ethnographic study of two Quebec evangelical churches.

Synthesis of Optimal Control of Spacecraft Angular Momentum for Spatial Turn Taking into Account Energy Costs Using Quaternions

Background: In this paper, we propose solving the specific original problem of control synthesis of spacecraft attitude. Optimization of the control program is made with the use of a new criterion of quality that combines energy costs and duration of reorientation under restrictions on control (the presence of a time factor limits the duration of slew maneuver). Methods: The construction of optimal control for angular momentum change is based on the quaternion method and L.S. Pontryagin maximum principle. An analytical solution to the problem was obtained on the base of a differential equation relating the orientation quaternion and angular momentum of a spacecraft. Results: Key properties of the optimal solution are formulated in analytical form; the features of optimal motion are studied in detail. The control law is formulated in the form of explicit dependence between control and phase variables. In a case when the controlling torque is limited by the given restriction (at the beginning and end of a turn), analytical formulas have been written for the duration of braking and acceleration. Main relations which determine optimal values of parameters of the algorithm for control of angular momentum are given. Examples and results of mathematical modeling of spacecraft motion formed by optimal control were given. This data in addition to the theoretical descriptions illustrates the process of reorientation in evident form and demonstrates the practical feasibility of a designed method for control of angular momentum during spatial turn. Conclusion: The designed optimal algorithm of control of spacecraft motion improves the efficiency of spacecraft attitude system, and originates more economical performance of spacecraft during flight on orbit.

Beyond the Grey Zone: The Production of Space in Eastern European Neo-Avantgarde

The spatial metaphor that dominates the historical overviews dedicated to neo-avantgarde art of Eastern Europe from the last decades of state socialism is the “grey zone”—a metaphor deeply rooted in the dichotomies of Cold War discourses, which understood the “socialist space” as being roughly split between an “official” and an “unofficial”/underground/hidden space of dissent. However, the grey zone metaphor fails to account for the diverse, complex, and nuanced ways in which unconventional art practices from the region engaged with a wide range of spaces, from the institutional (and official) ones to spaces of everyday life, delocalized spaces of a likeminded artistic community, and to the space of the image understood outside of the confined territory of traditional practices. By engaging a theoretical perspective drawn from the so-called “spatial turn” in the post-colonial discourse, I will try to argue that the “species of spaces” (Kemp-Welch) defining the neo-avantgarde art practices in the region were not conquering but were producing cultural and socially relevant spaces while blurring/widening the conventional boundaries of art’s territory, and that this complexity cannot be understood by relying on the binary terminology of the geopolitical discourses of the Cold War.

McCluskieganj In the Spatial Turn: Rethinking Anglo-Indian Diaspora and Spatial Marginalization

Nestled in the secluded terrains of Jharkhand, McCluskieganj stands as a poignant testament to the enigmatic confluence of Anglo-Indian memory and space. Its genesis during the pre-independence era marked an epoch when the quest for a 'promised land' became an urgent yearning within the Anglo-Indian community. However, the allure and lustre surrounding this haven have gradually waned with the passage of time and the handover of governance. The plight of the Anglo-Indians, once beset by myriad social and cultural marginalities, metamorphosed into a distinctly spatial odyssey. Amidst this transformative landscape, a dichotomy emerged: the inexorable pull of metropolitan hubs captivated the younger echelons of the community, while the elders remained tethered to the essence of a place they called 'home'. Within this characterization, the geographical context emerges as an indispensable facet in understanding the Anglo-Indian narrative in McCluskieganj. Any discourse on the disposition of the Anglo-Indians within this enclave remains inherently incomplete without an acknowledgment of the inextricable bond between the community's essence and the geographical expanse of McCluskieganj.
 This study endeavours to explore the intricate tapestry of McCluskieganj, delving into the symbiotic relationship between the shifting sands of space and the dynamic evolution of Anglo-Indian identity. Through a prism that interlaces academic inquiry with the lyrical essence of human experience, it seeks to illuminate the spatial chapters within the larger narrative of Anglo-Indian existence, embodying a convergence of history, belonging, and the ethereal essence of place.