The experience of space and time
Ch. 12 (Introduction,
pp. 201-210) presents an overview of the argument that the experience of modernity is bound up with a specific experience of space and time. Harvey argues that space and time are commonly naturalized,
treated by people as if they were self-evident or obvious (201-3). Of course, this is an aspect of ideology, and masks the real social and psychological factors producing specific concepts of space and time. Time and space are produced through material processes and practices, Harvey argues, and because capitalism is a continuously revolutionary mode of production, it follows that it should revolutionize the production of space and time as well as material production (204-5). However, Harvey argues that time has typically been privileged over space in theory, and he proposes as reconceptualization of their relationship. Space becomes predominant in theory under certain social conditions, however, such as conditions of nationalistic feeling and/or war, particularly when space is mythologized. (208-9)
Ch. 13 (Individual spaces and times in social life,
pp. 211-225) continues the argument by presenting an overview of twentieth-century theoretical approaches to these topics. Harvey synthesizes de Certeau's, Bourdieu's, Lefebvre's, and Foucault's concepts of space (among others), finding commonalities in the production of space through social practices and outlining a set of arguments about how spatial production occurs, largely after Lefebvre's three dimensions of space (material and spatial practices,
representations of space,
spaces of representation
). This schematic emphasizes the mutually determinative character of Lefebvre's spatial dimensionality. Drawing on Georges Gurvitch's 1964 outline of the variety of ways that time is experienced socially, Harvey argues that neither space nor time can be understood outside the context of social action.
Ch. 14 (Time and space as sources of social power,
pp. 226-239) traces some examples of this theoretical position by posing two basic questions: (1) How are the social processes that produce the objective
qualities of space and time to be understood? and (2) How are spatial and temporal practices used and modified by these social practices? Harvey traces a connection between time, space, and money, arguing that money (as a measure of value) is based on time spent by a worker in production, and that the concept of time as value was discovered in the medieval period through the exploration of space. Thus, increasing reliance upon money as determinant of value alters concepts of space and time (226-8). Contrapositively, alterations in the production of space and time are advantageous to capitalists. (229) Harvey then traces examples of changes in production of time (230-2) and space (232-4) as capitalist strategies to increase profit by devaluing labor, and traces examples of capital-labor struggles in which control over space and/or time have been dominant issues (235-9).
Chapter 15 (Time and space of the Enlightenment project,
pp. 240-259) traces the changes in the production of time and space from the medieval period through the Enlightenment. For medievals under feudalism, space was sensuous and direct, and individual locations were situated in an unknown, weakly grasped
cosmology; medieval maps emphasize the sensory qualities of space rather than the rational and objective qualities (240-2). The Renaissance instituted a number of changes that affected the production of space -- artistic perspectivism; mathematical developments; rationalized, objective
and functional
mapping according to a Ptolemaic system; Newtonian optics. Rationalization and abstractification of time also occurred during this period due to the increased availability of mechanical timekeeping devices. (242-7) These changes in the production of time and space opened up theoretical possibilities for the domination of space (via rationally planned social theories) and time (via an increased temporal sense regarding the possibilities of the future), especially for the nascent bourgeoisie. Because space and time encode and provide for the reproduction of social relations, changes in their representation imply changes in the sociopolitical order as well. (247-52) It is on this basis that modernist critiques of space and time become relevant. Harvey takes de Certeau's arguments as generally representative of the problems of Enlightenment space and time: insofar as the map is a totalizing device,
it homogenizes and reifies the diverse forms of spatiality that are actually produced in the area that it represents. Moreover, it converts the real fluidity of experience in the represented area into a fixed representation, thereby doing violence to it, causing the alienation of the occupants of the space from the representation of it (252-3). Following Lefebvre, Harvey notes several problems with the strategy of conquering space through abstractification (cartographically) and fragmentation (by dividing it up into alienable land parcels): (1) principles of pulverization need to be established; (2) production of space
is made into an explicit political-economic problem; (3) abstraction
of space obscures the social relations that produced the concept of space in the first place; (4) homogenized
space undercuts conceptions of place
-as-meaningful location. Finally, and most importantly, (5) space can only be conquered by producing space-as-concept -- but there are inherent contradictions in this proposition. (255-9) The production of mechanisms to dominate space necessarily result in the production of new conceptions of space. Harvey argues that the experience of space and time throughout the post-medieval period is dominated by a phenomenon that he calls time-space compression,
a fundamental tendency to revolutionize the production of time and space to the point that the representation of the world that we make to ourselves is fundamentally altered (240).
Chapter 16 (Time-space compression and the rise of modernism as a cultural force,
pp. 260-283) traces the development of the modernist period to the mid-nineteenth century and the revolutions of 1848. Harvey argues that these revolutions were responses to the British depression of 1846-7, the first unequivocal crisis that can be assigned to capitalist overaccumulation. This crisis precipitated a new round of time-space compression, initially developing as a crisis in aesthetic representation of time (Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Zola, e.g.) that was itself a response to the respatialization accompanying technological advances (railway, telegraph, enhanced steamship travel) and the burgeoning age of imperialism that remapped the globe in terms of the spaces of domination of the advanced capitalist countries. (260-5) These new representations of time (and space) encountered another crisis of representation at the time of World War I, when increasing fragmentation (Fordist rationalization of production, simultaneous worldwide radio transmission, increasing market interdependence) produced new aesthetic responses constituting high modernism
(Joyce, Proust, Stein, Picasso and other cubists) (266-70). Harvey argues that this set of new aesthetic responses encapsulated these changes in the mode of production (of goods and of culture), but resulted in tensions between interpretations based on nationalism/space/Being and interpretations based on internationalism/time/Becoming. One method of resolving these contradictions was the aestheticizing of politics, particularly through mythologicization. Ultimately, this culminated in the aetheticized, mythologizing politics of fascism, which represents modernism's inability to contain the contradictions (270-83) Postmodernism, for Harvey, is a response to these new rounds of contradictions.
Chapter 17 (Time-space compression and the postmodern condition,
pp. 284-307) argues that the cultural phenomenon postmodernity
is a response to the round of time-space compression associated with the transition from Fordist capitalism to the regime of flexible accumulation. Postmodern compression of time is associated with an acceleration in the turnover of capital (via credit, electronic and plastic money, etc.) and an acceleration in consumption. (285) The turnover of capital has largely been accelerated by increased volatility of fashion (in the broad sense of the word) and increased production of disposable products. The increase in disposability also affects basic social relationships (producing a throwaway society
). (286) The increase in volatility produces a business climate in which long-range planning is increasingly difficult; methods of capitalist response to this phenomenon involve seeking very short-range capital turnover or attempting to intervene actively in the production of volatility. Notably, the acceleration in consumption is also associated with the rise of image as a commodity produced by the capitalist, especially (but not exclusively) in the role that advertising plays in production and consumption. (287-8) This increased ability to produce images more or less at will is exemplified in the rise of personal image consultants and the production of class & other group identity on the basis of images. (288-9) The image, as commodity, entails special systems of production, including specialists producing it, and has a very rapid turnover time. One result of all of this increased volatility and turnover speed in the system has been to cause capitalists to attempt to buffer themselves against these factors through a variety of economic means (futures markets, government debt securitization, insurance schemes, etc.). All of this leads to deeper questions of identity for individuals living under this regime of accumulation, which explains the aesthetic concern with the search for identity and the revival of basic institutions
(family, community, etc.) and emphasis on historical roots. (290-2) Spatial adjustments to this new regime of accumulation have also fundamentally altered the production of space. It costs substantially less to ship commodities widely, and some forms of communication, such as satellite telephone, not only collapse space entirely by making everyone equally distant but have no cost increase based on distance. Media presents all events as of equal ontological status regardless of their actual provenance. Ironically, the effect of the collapse of space has been an increased attention to the specific qualities of various places, especially as capital becomes increasingly mobile. Differences in labour markets, especially, are relevant as space collapses. (293-6) These changes in time and space are linked to changes in the representation of value via money, which is increasingly immaterial -- linked neither actual production nor to any material base -- and, since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of international exchange, highly volatile. As money has become more volatile, so has inflation. (296-7) The increased rates of inflation have rendered money useless as a store of value for the future and led to more speculative forms of investment -- art, stock speculation, etc. Money's breakdown as symbol of value both reflects and reinforces the postmodern phenomenon of time-space compression, and this crisis in representation is affected by the rise of the image as commodity in the postmodern system of production. (299) This is exemplified by the changes in the distribution of commodities, which present post-1970 consumers with a vastly increased selection of commodities from across the globe, which Harvey analyzes by looking at food availability in markets and restaurants. This increased eclecticism in commodities feeds the postmodern sense of eclecticism in general, in which all options become equivalent consumer choices. (299-301) One implication of this change is an increase in the sense of place in the production of group identity, especially in the increase in 'identity politics,' as the sense of history collapses under the barrage of representations of 'history as commodity.' (303) This points toward one indication that our mental maps
are lagging behind the material changes in the system of production: the collapse of history and emphasis on place provides a useful interpretive scheme for geopolitical events since the transition to flexible accumulation. (305-6)
Chapter 18 (Time and space in the postmodern cinema,
pp.308-323) analyzes two films -- Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Wim Wenders's Himmel über Berlin (called Wings of Desire in English translation), finding traces of postmodern time-space compression and its resulting changes in consciousness in the production of these films as cultural artifacts.