Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Īn overview of the nature of social change that emphasizes the spatial unevenness of propensity to change, or inertia, which itself has multiple origins.ĭodgshon, Robert A. Society in Time and Space: A Geographical Perspective on Change. Available online by subscription.ĭodgshon, Robert A. This essay offers a long-term conceptual overview of the processes that generate spatial change, noting a succession of five different systems that generated time-space compression at ever-larger spatial scales. “Geographical Change: A Study in Marching Time or the March of Time?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 5.2 (1987): 173–193. The introduction is priceless for its succinct and elegant synopsis of the concept.ĭodgshon, Robert A.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.ĭesigned as an introductory human geography textbook, this volume contains numerous essays that demonstrate time-space compression through the analysis of transnational corporations, tourism, global cities, and international flows of pollution. A Shrinking World? Global Unevenness and Inequality. Finally, Warf 2011 presents several pedagogic strategies for teaching the subject in the classroom.Īllen, John, and Chris Hamnett, eds. Gleick 1999, a short monograph aimed at a popular audience, contains numerous insightful anecdotes about how time-space compression is linked to the rhythms of everyday life.
Kirsch 1995 ties the process to modern trends in social theory, including the perceptual dimensions of space. Giddens 1984, on the theory of structuration, contains what the author labels time-space distanciation as a fundamental part of the process by which societies become differentially stretched over the earth’s surface. Allen and Hamnett 1995 has an especially useful introduction. Dodgshon 1987, Dodgshon 1998, and Dodgshon 1999 depict the process as part of the long-term evolution of society. While there are relatively few works that are concerned only with time-space compression, a number of authors have offered good introductions and overviews. More recently, cultural theorists, historians, and others interested in the perception of space have invoked the notion to understand the sense of disorientation that often accompanies periods of major technological change. In the 1970s and 1980s, Marxists, led by David Harvey, recast the process not simply as a set of technological advancements but as part of the general process of capitalist commodity production and capital accumulation, particularly the reduction in the turnover time of capital. In geography, the topic was long an integral part of the work of those who study transportation and communications systems. Time-space compression refers to the set of processes that cause the relative distances between places (i.e., as measured in terms of travel time or cost) to contract, effectively making such places grow “closer.” The idea of a “shrinking world” is not new and, in the face of rapid advances in travel, such as the jet airplane, and communications (especially the Internet), has entered into the public geographical imagination.
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