ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that physical space has an effect on human beings who simultaneously construct space by perceiving, imagining, appropriating, creating, and transforming it. The interplay between these two processes should be observed in a longue durée perspective. I will first show how, throughout human history, five typical forms of this interaction have developed and overlap with one another: migration (since 70,000 BC), empire-building (since 4000 BC), land-based feudalism (since the 9th century), colonialism (since 1492), and nation-building and geopolitics (since the 19th century). The analysis reveals that social and especially power structures mediate how physical space shapes society. Based on this finding, the second part of the argument illustrates that the effect of the materiality of space on human societies has been concealed, first in modern society and subsequently in social-scientific discourses specifically. These in turn hide power structures concerning spatial control and overestimate globality. Finally, I will demonstrate that this invisibility is accompanied by a return of the material force of spaces in the age of the “Anthropocene.”
