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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 3, 2004
Latest Update: June 3, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Spatial Analysis in Social Theory

What do we mean by spatial analysis in social theory? Well, that space matters, that for the whole past century we tended to subordinate space to time and to see space as merely a stage on which we humans were the actors. Postmodernism, with many of the challenges it has brought to our "knowingness," has made us recognize that things are not so simple. This is particularly important as we analyze stratification and its meaning, and urban development and its meaning. Robert P. Fairbanks, II, of the University of Pennsylvania, gives an excellent summary of David Gordon's work as an explanation of the importance of spatial analysis to social work and social science research.

Social Work and EcologyCritical Social Work, Spring 2003. Volume 3, No. 1.

Critical Social Work, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 2003, © Critical Social Work, 2003. ISSN 1543-9372.

David Gordon’s work stands as an early exemplar of the class struggle perspective of spatial organization. Gordon posited that conflict between labor and capital has produced historically distinct stages in the spatial formation of cities. He claims that just as capitalist strategies are developed to control workers at the site of production, capitalist spatial forms were also developed to maintain control over both production and reproduction processes (1978). More specifically, Gordon explored how processes such as suburbanization not only resulted in a more isolated and thus controllable working class, but also weakened the power of inner city residents to hold capital accountable for the deteriorating and unhealthy working conditions for which it was responsible. Later, when capital learned that a dense spatial concentration of working class persons was more conducive to labor militancy, individual industrialists began to move factories to the suburbs. Subsequently, with production and the working class now decentralized to the outlying areas of cities, corporations began to separate their administrative functions from the production process and to relocate their headquarters downtown near banks, law offices, and advertising agencies. As such, Gordon concluded that central business districts and their towering skyscrapers embody the centralization of economic power in spatial form (1978).

From Fairbanks, A Theoretical Primer on Space, 131-154.