ABSTRACT
The use of binary categories in everyday language, and in turn in the discipline of Geography, is so widespread, and their common sense meaning so embedded in our lives, that we often take them for granted. This, perhaps, is not surprising. Binary categories such as public/private and global/local appear to offer the possibility of describing and analysing the world In a way which appeals to ideas of stability, completeness and authority. They seem neat and are easily understood, in some part because they often draw on elements of the dualistic thinking embedded in the structures of Western thought (see Box 3.4). For geographers, however, one of the most important things about binary categories is the ways in which these relate to the central geographical concepts of space and place.
