Geography and space
Much social theory has concerned itself with time (Gregory, 1994). There is now more attention to space – and this has arisen due partly to the difficult spatial questions raised by the globalization debate. Human geography is inherently concerned with space. Almost all definitions of the discipline incorporate the term – though in competing and variable ways (See Johnston et al., 2000). Along with human–environment interaction, spatial differentiation is often the defining core. But the way human geography conceptualizes space has varied across time and place, and geography remains characterized by many different national and regional traditions. This has led to shifting concepts of scale also. This evolution in thinking has mirrored broader paradigmatic shifts in human geography especially in the Anglo-American world. We consider space below and scale in the subsequent section.
Three views of space