ABSTRACT
Humanists are acutely aware of the social and political construction of space and its unique expression as place. Space is not simply the setting for historical action. It is a significant product and determinant of change and the medium for the development of culture: ‘space is not an empty dimension along which social groupings become structured’, sociologist Anthony Giddens notes, ‘but has to be considered in terms of its involvement in the constitution of systems of interaction’ (364). All spaces contain embedded stories based on what has happened there. These stories are both individual and collective, and each of them link geography (space) and history (time). More importantly, they all reflect the values and cultural codes present in the various political and social arrangements that provide structure to society. In this sense, then, the meaning of space, especially as place or landscape, is always being constructed through the various contests that occur over power, or as Michel de Certeau reminds us, ‘space occurs as the effect … of conflictual programs or contractual proximities’ (117). There is nothing new in this argument – the earliest maps reveal the power arrangements of past societies – but humanities scholarship increasingly reflects what in fact may be the greatest legacy of postmodernism, the recognition that our understanding of the world itself is socially constructed.
