The duplicity of space: germanic ‘raum’ and swedish ‘rum’ in english language geographical discourse

Abstract

The modern definition of geography as the science of ‘space’ derives in important measure, it will be argued, from the Germanic concept of Raum. The implications of the importation of this concept into English are masked, however, by its translation as ‘space’, an English word with very different connotations from the German Raum. Whereas the English space is conceptually distinct from place, Raum has a double meaning, combining elements of both space and place. This doubleness becomes duplicitous when Raum is transmogrified into the English space, thereby blurring the distinction; allowing space to appropriate the meaning of place. The problem is further complicated by the fact that this process of transmogrification occurred largely via contact with Swedish geography–in which rum is cognate to the German Raum. Geography, this essay concludes, would do well to apply the same reflexive critique to its concept of space as it has applied, with great success, to landscape, a Germanic concept that can also refer to both place and space.

Hägerstrand as historian: innovation, diffusion and the processual landscape

“…A third is landscape, which both in analytical retrospect and to Hägerstrand himself ultimately stood out as a central concern in his reflections on history. Landscape was to him not constrained to abstract 'space' but rather akin to the German Raum, rum in Swedish (cf Olwig, 2002), which combined the extended 'space' with a smaller life place, which was co-inhabited by humans, non-human life forms and human innovations, none of which could be meaningfully understood without some kind of history.…”

Place versus Space: From Points, Lines and Polygons in GIS to Place-Based Representations Reflecting Language and Culture

“…A typical translation of this word as "space" is problematic. Likewise, place is an English word with very different connotations from the German Raum [85]. Raum may refer to the common English notion of space as a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.…”

“…This notion of space, as represented by the grid of the map, was foundational to the Renaissance artistic construction of perspective and landscape painting. In another sense, however, Raum also refers to the sort of enclosed room-like area that is demarcated, for example, by the territories of historically constituted places [85]. Raum is therefore associated with the term Landschaft and is, therefore, concerned with space as well as with the place [85].…”

Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space

“…This, of course, is literally what happens when Rådhuspladsen is transgressed by demonstrators, or revelers, emptying it of commercial activity, and transforming it into a place for free play where activities not normally tolerated in the space of the city can be accepted and sometimes even encouraged. Rådhuspladsen thereby ceases to be a lieu, and becomes a milieu, the environing "room" that holds a place for such activities to occur (on the distinction between room and space see Olwig, 2002a). These places, furthermore, are linked through the direction of the process of transgression into the larger anthropological space of a "landscape."…”

“…The illusion is thus generated that somehow all phenomena can be scaled in space, thereby implying that there is a common denominator between the local location and the global. Such a common denominator, of course, obliterates difference, including the difference between space and room -a key element in both fascist and modernist ideology (Olwig, 2002a). The space of the city hall tower's linear mark thus becomes coequal to the room of the zero that lies before it, thus obliterating the distinction between a place that is to be held empty and a building site, thus justifying the architect's building of the bus terminal on a portion of its space.…”