ABSTRACT
Abstract. Although concepts of space and time are sodally constructed, they operate with the full force of objective fact and playa key role in processes of sodal reproduction. Conceptions of space and time are inevitably, therefore, contested as part and parcel of processes of sodal change, no matter whether that change is superimposed from without (as in imperialist domination) or generated from within (as in the conflict between environmentalist and economic standards of dedsion making). A study of the historical geography of concepts of space and time suggests that the roots of the sodal construction of these concepts Iie in the mode of production and its characteristic sodal relations. In particular, the revolutionary qualities of a capitalistic mode of production, marked by strong currents of technological change and rapid economic growth and development, have been assodated with powerful revolutions in the sodal conceptions of space and time. The implications of these revolutions, implying as they do the "annihilation of space by time" and the general speed-up and acceleration of turnover time of capital, are traced in the fields of culture and politics, aesthetic theory and, finally, brought home within the disdpline of geography as both a problem and a stimulus for rethinking the role of the geographical imagination in contemporary sodallife. Key Words: aesthetics, capitalism, geography, geopolitics, historical materialism, place, sodal change, sodal reproduction, sodal space, sodal theory, sodal time.
