ABSTRACT
These processes of social differentiation and unequalization do not, however, occur ‘naturally’. They are a product of how power and resources – which may be both real (money, cars, homes) and symbolic (a question of how people think, and what they take for granted) – are struggled over and manipulated. Moreover, these struggles do not occur on the head of a pin. They take place. Just as history is relevant to an understanding of the present, so geography matters: in accounts of how people identify themselves; in narratives on the way they experience and reference others; in explaining why certain social characteristics are salient and others are understated, in particular places and at certain times. To illustrate this, the following pages provide an overview of the different ways in which Human Geographers have attempted to understand the links between the structuring of society and the materiality and meaning of space. These (three) ways are summarized in Table 2.1. Their strengths are discussed in the text; some limitations are flagged in Table 2.2.
