SACK The Power of Place and Space

American Geographical Society
The Power of Place and Space

Author(s): Robert D. Sack
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 326-329
Published by: American Geographical Society
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THE POWER OF PLACE AND SPACE
ROBERT D. SACK
Everyone assumes that being in one place rather than another makes a
difference, as does being near rather than far. This means that geographic
place and space affect everyone. Until recently, much of geography has
ignored these effects. Rather, it has examined place, space, and landscape as
though they were outcomes of processes. Geographers have asked what made
a place or an area what it is and why things are as they are. But they have
paid little attention to the effect of landscape or location on people. Yet they
are reminded of these effects every day in choosing to be one place rather
than another. Geographers have taken up these issues in new proclamations
such as "place matters" or the "power of place and space," as well as in new,
complex concepts about spatiality, territoriality, and a general sense that
space and place as well as nature and culture are mutually constitutive.
To proclaim geography's importance this way is one thing, but to un-
derstand what is meant is another. The self-evident powers of space and
place are really complex and elusive. In this brief space I can touch on only
some of the complexities. What does it mean to say that geographic place
and space have such powers? How can they help produce anything? How
can they be causes? I do so primarily by focusing on place, which is the
more accessible concept, and then include space.
Consider an outdoor social history museum. It is a place that attempts to
display how life was lived in some specified period and place in the past.
Museum visitors are subject to a series of rules about what they are and are
not permitted to touch, where they may walk, what they may eat, when
they may enter, and when they must leave. Another set of rules applies to
museum employees. And yet other rules apply to what artifacts should and
should not be exhibited in this place and where. The museum could not
exist without such rules, which receive authority from the force of custom
and from local, state, and federal laws and statutes. Rules about what is and
is not to be in place-territorial rules or territoriality-pertain not only to
the museum but also to every place that can be imagined, from streets and
roads, which stipulate types of vehicles and their speeds; to houses, which
define residents, guests, and strangers; to factories and offices, which define
and arrange workers, managers, and owners; to cities and states, which define
citizens.
Territorial rules about what is in or out of place pervade and structure
lives and provide specific examples of how place has power. It may appear
in these cases that the power of place is secondary to social power, in that
the latter seems to impart the power to place. This is not the case, as the
* DR. SACKis a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis-

consin 53706.
Copyright ? 1993 by the American GeographicalSociety of New York

GEOGRAPHICALRECORD 327
theory of territoriality reveals, precisely because the various forms of social

power cannot exist without these territorial rules. Territorialand social rules
are mutually constitutive, which is the concrete meaning of the new, often
overused term spatiality.
Yet another set of issues arises when these territorial rules are initiated,
in part because of thoughts about what would happen if they did not exist.
The museum has specific hours and regulations for the conduct of visitors
because of what someone in authority imagined would occur if people were
at liberty to enter and leave at will. The same could be said for all other
places. There are rules about conduct in classrooms and access to them and
rules about behavior in streets and citizenship in nations, because of what
is imagined would be the case if there were no such rules.
Imagining behavior in the absence of such rules leads to the second way
in which place or space has power, for it emphasizes that people and objects
interact in space and that there could be laws of behavior which govern
these interactions. It forces the building of models of how distance and the
relative locations of people and things affect behavior. This line of thinking
leads, in other words, to the familiar geographical enterprise of spatial anal-
ysis, with its central-place models, the von Thiinen model, and gravity and
potential models, all of which emphasize that space has an effect on inter-
action and that this effect is most clearly expressed as a function of distance.
Notice here that the specific place does not have power but rather that it
resides in the spatial relations, especially the distances, among things. Think-
ing of the world this way is similar to how the natural sciences see the effects
of space, which is central to all their theories. This approach makes it appear
as though humans too, deep down in some sort of natural state that is
unrestrained by territorial rules, would be affected by space and distance in
the same way that atoms and planets are.
Thinking of and modeling human spatial interactions this way are es-
sential, but this sense of the effect of distance or space does not stand on its
own. Rather, just as territorial rules about in or out of place are employed
because of what people think would be the natural state of spatial interac-
tions, the natural state does not and cannot exist because the groups of things
that are interacting, the cities and the travelers, and the routes through which
they interact, the highways and telephone lines, can occur only because rules
are already in places about how cities, with their streets and stores, and the
highways and telephone poles and wires connecting them are supposed to
be treated. Cities exist because their jurisdictions are recognized; stores exist
because property rights are maintained; and highways and telephone poles
function because rules exist prohibiting people from walking or camping on
highways and from using telephone poles for fuel. That is to say, the natural
sense of spatial interaction presupposes territorial rules of place, just as these
rules presuppose the natural state. Each offers a different but dependent
sense in which space or place has an effect.

328 THE GEOGRAPHICALREVIEW
To this dialectic can be added a third and equally important sense in

which space or place has an effect. Let us return to the museum example.
On the one hand, it contains territorial rules because of what people think
might happen in the natural state of spatial interaction if these and other
rules were lifted. On the other hand, there is no real natural state in which
all rules could be absent because they are required for the existence of the
very things with and through which humans interact.
The awareness of this interdependence of in or out of place and spatial
interaction leads to questioning the meaning of any landscape. Is the place
natural, genuine, and authentic or constructed, staged, and nonauthentic?
Does this museum really re-create a past as it actually was, or is this an
attempt by some persons to impose their conception of history? Does the
museum reveal or disguise the past?How should the landscape be interpreted?
Questioning the meaning of the landscape raises the general problem of
surface and depth or appearance and reality. Is the site real, or is the real
something beneath the surface? This questioning of surface and depth, ap-
pearance and reality, is the third means by which place and space have an
effect. It comes from an awareness of the first two, but it also becomes a
force that is as important as they are and that in turn affects them. If some
persons contend that the museum is not reconstructing the real past, then
they will also argue for a change in this landscape, a new type of exhibit,
or even an alternative museum. In each case, this change in place, initiated
by the third effect of questioning surface and depth, must again involve the
first two effects-spatial interaction and territorial in or out of place. These
in turn initiate once more the question of appearance and reality, surface
and depth.
Each of the three factors describes how place or space has basic effects
that reach to the deepest levels. In or out of place refers to territorial control
as constitutive of social relations and power. Spatial interaction refers to the
role of space in natural science causality and its application to human be-
havior. Surface and depth, or appearance and reality, refers to the role of
space and place in problematizing meaning. Each of the three is implicated
in the others. So not only is geography constitutive of natural causes, social
power, and meaning, but also space and place draw together the respective
realms of the natural, the social, and the intellectual, which is the concrete
meaning of the term mutually constitutive. Integrating these diverse realms
is another and combining effect of space and place-one that helps explain
the capacious qualities of geography.
There remains the question of distinguishing between these related effects
of space and place and the role of humans as agents. What is the connection
between people and these geographical factors? The answer is complex, and
I can only hint at some of its parts. The argument has been that place and
space are constitutive of nature, social relations, and meaning. Just as these
elements are part of place, so too can they be found in the self: people are

GEOGRAPHICALRECORD 329
natural beings, social beings, and intellectual beings. How these are connected
by the self depends on how they are connected by the places the person
occupies. People are always in a place, and places constrain and enable. If a
person is locked in solitary confinement without contact with nature, society,
or intellectual stimulus, personal sense of self disintegrates. Sanity and per-
sonality need the stimulation of nature, society, and meaning to give them
form. Not only can place help mold or destroy the self, it can also liberate
it. A person who craves intellectual stimulation may find life at a university
positively explosive. But place depends on people, who construct and or-
ganize it. In these complex ways, self and place are themselves mutually
constitutive.
All of these are means by which place, space, and geography exert power
that is basic to every human thought and activity. Exploring these connec-
tions reveals how all people are geographical beings. Examining the impli-
cations of this idea shows that there is no limit to the scope and power of
geography.
FURTHER READING
Entrikin, J. N. 1991. The betweenness of place: toward a geography of modernity. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Sack, R. D. 1986. Human territoriality: its theory and history. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
. 1992. Place, modernity, and the consumer's world: a relational framework for geographical
analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Soja, E. 1989. Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory. New York:
Verso.
Tuan, Y.-F. 1991. A view of geography. GeographicalReview 81:99-107.
. 1991. Language and the making of place: a narrative-descriptive approach. Annals, Asso-
ciation of American Geographers81:684-696.


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American Geographical Society

The Power of Place and Space

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 20:23:21 PM

* DR. SACKis a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis-

Copyright ? 1993 by the American GeographicalSociety of New York

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 20:23:21 PM

theory of territoriality reveals, precisely because the various forms of social

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 20:23:21 PM

To this dialectic can be added a third and equally important sense in

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 20:23:21 PM

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 20:23:21 PM

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