Andrew Light, Department of Philosophy, The University of Montana Jonathan M. Smith, Department of Geography, Texas A&M University
Associate Editors: Yoko Arisaka, University of San Francisco; Jean-Marc Besse, College International de Philosophie Paris; Edward Dimendberg, University of California Press; Thomas Heyd, University of Victoria; Eric Katz, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Jonathan Maskit, Denison University; Don Mitchell, University of Colorado; Rupert Read, University of East Anglia; Richard Schein, University of Kentucky; Joanne Sharp, University of Glasgow
Volume III: The Meaning of Place, forthcoming, December 1998.
Volume IV: Aesthetics of Everyday Life, submission deadline: September 15, 1998.
Volume V: Moral and Political Dimensions of Urbanism, submission deadline: September 15, 1999.
See page 251 for submission guidelines.
Sponsored by the Society for Philosophy and Geography
Editorial Board
Albert Borgmann, philosophy, The University of Montana
Augustin Berque, Ecole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
J. Baird Callicott, philosophy, University of North Texas
Edward S. Casey, philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook
Denis Cosgrove, geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
Arthur Danto, philosophy, Columbia University
James Duncan, geography, Cambridge University
Avner De-Shalit, political science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
J. Nicholas Entrikin, geography, UCLA
Andrew Feenberg, philosophy, San Diego State University
Mark Gottdiner, sociology, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
Derek Gregory, geography, University of British Columbia
David Harvey, geography, Johns Hopkins University
Kathleen Marie Higgins, philosophy, University of Texas, Austin Nuala Johnson, geography, The Queens University of Belfast
Bernd Magnus, philosophy and humanities, University of California, Riverside
Thomas McCarthy, philosophy, Northwestern University
Bryan Norton, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Carole Pateman, political science, UCLA
John Pickles, geography, University of Kentucky
Moishe Postone, history, University of Chicago
Juval Portugali, geography, Tel Aviv University
David Seamon, architecture, Kansas State University
Neil Smith, geography, Rutgers University
James Wescoat, Jr., geography, University of Colorado
Iris Marion Young, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
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Copyright 1998 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Henri Lefebvre on Abstract Space copyright 1998 by Edward Dimendberg Antinomies of Space and Nature in Henri Lefebvres The Production of Space copyright 1998 by Neil Smith
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Table of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
The present volume was supported by The University of Montana Foundation Excellence Fund. We are very grateful to President George M. Dennison of The University of Montana for his support of this annual in particular, and the encouragement of a rigorous research climate at The University of Montana in general. We would also like to specially thank James A. Flightner, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Montana, for his exceptional support of this publication, including his provision of equipment, office space, and administrative leadership. We would like to thank the Departments of Philosophy at The University of Montana and the University of Alberta, the Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Risk Management at the University of Alberta, and the Geography Department at Texas A&M University for additional support throughout the year. At Rowman & Littefield we thank Christa Acampora (now at the University of Maine), Robin Adler, Deirdre Mul-lervy, and Jonathan Sisk for their continued work on this annual. A special thanks to David Roberts of the Philosophy Department at The University of Montana who this past year took the position of Editorial Assistant. His efforts have been crucial in the completion of this volume.
As always, we are grateful to our referees who provided comments on the numerous manuscripts that were submitted to this issue. In addition to our Associate Editors, and many members of the Editorial Board, we wish to thank the following scholars for serving as manuscript referees: Laurel Bowman, Robert Burch, Stephen Frenkel, Matthew Gandy, Eric Higgs, Joel Kovel, Steve Moore, Francis Sitwell, and Gary Varner.
Introduction: Geography, Philosophy, and Public Space
Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith
Brook Farm was a utopian commune in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, which lasted from 1841 to 1847 and served as the setting for Nathaniel Hawthornes novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852). In the novel, Hawthorne describes the disillusionment of the transcendentalist communist Miles Coverdale. Dispiriting toil in the communal field moved Coverdale to groan that the heavy clods were never etherialized into thought, but the tillers thoughts, on the contrary, were fast becoming cloddish. Philosophy and Geography is founded on a belief that this is a creative tension, that thoughts are not necessarily degraded by the company of clods, that earth and ideas are miscible matters, that geography without philosophy is rather too willing to accept earth as it presently appears, that philosophy without geography is rather too eager to transcend earth and its mire of finitude, limits, and interdependence.
This creative tension is present in this volume on public space, where abstract ideas about the nature of the public mingle with accounts of concrete spaces with which they have been implicated. We begin this introduction with an overview of some of the broad trends and concerns that make the idea and the reality of public space such a timely topic.
The Public Sphere
Many of the articles in this volume make use of some concept of the public sphere, that is, public discussion and criticism of the state, or what Habermas described as a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed,