The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks, and Positionality

Abstract

Discussions of the spatiality of globalization have largely focused on placebased attributes that fix globalization locally, on globalization as the construction of scale, and on networks as a distinctive feature of contemporary globalization. By contrast, position within the global economy is frequently regarded as anachronistic in a shrinking, networked world. A critical review of how place, scale, and networks are used as metaphors for the spatiality of globalization suggests that space/time still matters. Positionality (position in relational space/time within the global economy) is conceptualized as both shaping and shaped by the trajectories of globalization and as influencing the conditions of possibility of places in a globalizing world. The wormhole is invoked as a way of describing the concrete geographies of positionality and their non-Euclidean relationship to the Earth's surface. The inclusion of positionality challenges the simplicity of pro-and antiglobalization narratives and can change how we think about globalization and devise strategies to alter its trajectory.

A Critical Comment on the Taylor Approach for Measuring World City Interlock Linkages

“…Several such studies have been conducted, mostly on the international scale (Snyder and Kick 1979;Smith and White 1992;Sacks, Ventresca, and Uzzi 2001;Kick and Davis 2001) but increasingly also on interurban scales- Mitchelson and Wheeler (1994) using Federal Express shipment data, and Smith and Timberlake (1995;2001;2002) using airline passenger data.…”

The Positioned Construction of Water Values: Pluralism, Positionality and Praxis

“…The notion of positionality is not restricted to the study of the how the human body relates to its environment, but it becomes a sociological statement that helps to explain political, ideological and ethical phenomena: instead of the 'accomplished positionality' of the feminists, Kozin (2008) argues that positionality is an epistemic achievement that functions 'in experience' (rather than 'from experience'). Among geographers, Sheppard (2002) reinstates the more spatial meaning of positionality (somehow minimised by the feminist writers), insofar as entities are positioned with respect to one another within space/time.…”

Edgeless and eccentric cities or new peripheries?

“…Chalas' idea (2010) of urban aggregation leads us to Lefebvre's (1969) extension of the urban fabric or extensive urbanisation (Monte-Mór, 2003) that converges towards the idea of a space occupied in a scattered way by agglomerations of different sorts that establish different types of interactions at many scales and levels (Limonad, 2002(Limonad, , 2010, regardless of their size, dimension, position of centrality (Sheppard, 2002) and even of the accessibility and proximity levels among them.…”