ABSTRACT
Engaging with space as an aspect of the social usually means considering the relation in the direction society – space, i.e. thinking about space as an expression of the social. The reversed perspective is less common but entails several analytical benefits as this contribution argues. Reaching back to space as an epistemological tool, i.e. thinking with space, provides a useful heuristic, especially for current approaches assuming a relational ontology. While the social is constituted spatially, the process of constitution itself is driven by underlying tensions, structural predeterminations or a complex interplay of power relations. Those forces shaping the social are not spread out evenly but are interwoven and related. There is a spatiality to those drivers of social change, too. Considering space for social theory can and should also include thinking with space about the social to better understand such processes. The argument takes a recent empirical project – a big data approach to public health monitoring (syndromic surveillance) as a concrete example to show some benefits of the proposed heuristic of thinking with space.
