Space vs. Place

I first came across the philosophical space/place distinction in a reference to Michel de Certeau’s axiom, translated from the French: “Space is practiced place.” «L’espace est le lieu pratiqué.» (1984) While trying to locate the exact French phrase, I saw many examples of «le lieu» swapped for «l’espace». But in English I so often hear trite phrases like “safe space” and “sacred space,” and I know that cartesian space is a post-enlightenment invention. As another example, we have Saxon “instead of” and Norman “in lieu of,” both meaning in place of. So, while I think that de Certeau clearly made the correct distinction for European languages, it is odd to note how Eastern scholars like Arjun Appadurai and Yi-Fu Tuan have flipped the space/place distinction, thereby making more of place than space.

It could be arbitrary. Or, it could be cosmological. In the Germanic languages, we have obvious toponyms like Norwich, Hallstatt, Uppsala, Trondheim, etc. But the literal signification is nil. Only in “the old city” do we refer to hall and heim for directions. By contrast, when I lived in Jordan, I was told by an American expat to pay attention to landmarks, because the locals supposedly navigate by them in a way that we road-and-route trekkers do not. I found this to be true (although, maybe we were just lost and trying to understand a foreign place).

Arjun Appadurai’s (1995) concept of the “production of locality” is about “transforming spaces into places” (1996, 183). He explicitly credited de Certeau for making the distinction. I suppose a postcolonial geography inverts things.

Yi-Fu Tuan, an influential “human geographer” (funny title imo), wrote a 1977 book arguing that place is space made meaningful. While both Tuan and de Certeau’s books were published by UMinn Press, and while the latter doesn’t reference the former, because of the distinct English vs. French milieus I don’t think we have here a case of appropriation. Instead, what I see is Tuan the geographer taking space for granted, and de Certeau the Derridean deconstructionist doing the opposite.

The Greek and Latin etymologies aren’t too helpful. Plateia (πλατεία) -> piazza, plaza, platz, etc. Spatium -> espacio, l’espace, and space. Space has been uniquely used to refer to timespans in English. But in Arabic, I don’t think the distinction is salient – مكان (makaan) refers to both space and place, and it comes from the root for being and entities. The related word كون refers to the universe, all of God’s creation, the geography of which might be less human and more divine than I’m used to. Overall, I’m left thinking that we all have peculiar ideas of locality.