Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
enduring significance of place. Not surprisingly, the emergence of the relational
ontology of the self and identity has been accompanied by relational ontologies of
place and space, in which space as formed by contingent, rapidly changing,
interconnected sets of networks in which relational connections among locales
rather than their absolute positionality is the dominant characteristic (Massey
2005 ; Murdoch 2006 ; Jones 2009 ). Cheap, instantaneous, and ubiquitous digital
communications have made the notion of place as a discreet, bounded entity
increasingly problematic by allowing people to be in several places simulta-
neously. As a result, Cosgrove ( 2008 , p. 47) notes that today, ''Places and land-
scapes are no longer thought of by geographers simply as bounded containers, but
as constellations of connections that form, reform and disperse in space and over
time.'' In contrast to the frozen geometries of positivism, relational space thus
portrays geographies as fluid, mutable, and ever-changing. Digital media are
central to these new geographies of networks (Abrams and Hall 2006 ). This view
is compatible with the DeleuzeGuattarian ''flat ontology,'' or in geographic terms,
spatialities unmired by the obfuscating effects of scale (Marston et al. 2005 ).
Relational space has also been injected into discourses of globalization, which
exhibits a ''fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropy, capillary character that is never
captured by the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structures,
or systems'' (Paasi 2004 , p. 541).
References
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