Spatial history

[Carmelo]

Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life provided me with a very handy theoretical framework to interpret the oral histories I collected as part of my thesis project. I combined his theoretical formulations (or speculations) on how ordinary people manage to transgress or subvert social relations of oppression based on rationalization from above and surveillance with Henri Lefevre’s notion of the social production of space. I am convince that de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday should be best studied in conjunction with Lefevre’s The Production of Space, since both works extensively discuss the relationship between the ways those in power organize space(s) and spatial relationships and the ways ordinary people (the subaltern) inhabit within such regulated space(s). If you are interested in doing spatial history (as a historian, an ethnographer, or an archaeologist) these works may give you a head-start. Since Lefevre is a philosopher I will make no comments on his lack of research-based (historical, sociological, or anthropological) empirical data. Concerning de Certeau, I must remark that the lack of either historical or ethnographic data to back his statements on the nature of spatial power relations in this work make his theory a bit speculative, if not metaphysical. In this respect, the work of anthropologist-turned-to-political scientist James C. Scott provides a more tenable, empirically grounded, framework to understand the role of space as a locus for both domination and resistance.