An Analysis of Edward Soja's Article

1. History: Geography:
Modernity
by Edward Soja
Prepared by:
Karima Assasla

2. Edward William Soja
• Was born on May 4, 1940 in Bronx, New York - died on
November 1, 2015, Los Angeles
• He was a Postmodern political geographer and urban
theorist
• Major influences on him: Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre,
Gloria Jean Watkins
• He called for a “geographical and spatial imagination’’ in
scholarly work

3. • In this chapter, Soja gives a brief account of Michel
Foucault’s demand for a “history of space’’ and of
Marshall Berman’s description of “modernity’s embrace
of speed and simultaneity”

4. Time over Space, History over Geography
• It was a story about the long neglect of space and
geography in favor of time and history as the main
categories of analysis across the various disciplines
• The world was primarily understood through the
dynamics arising from the emplacement of social being
and becoming in the interpretive contexts of time not
space

5. * An essentially historical epistemology continued to
pervade the critical consciousness of modern social
theory.
* This enduring epistemological presence has preserved a
privileged place for the ‘historical imagination’ in defining
the very nature of critical insight and interpretation.

6. The Shift
• Michel Foucault’s announcements and writings
marked the dawning of a reassertion of space:
‘’The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch
of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in
the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and
far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed.’’(Foucault 22)

7. * A demand for a comparable critical sensibility to the
spatiality of social life
* A call for a practical theoretical consciousness that sees
the lifeworld of being creatively located not only in the
making of history BUT
ALSO in the construction of human geographies, the social
production of space, and the restless formation and
reformation of geographical landscapes

8. Modernity
• Because of the focus on time and history, the modern era
was interpreted as destroying and replacing traditions.
• Edward Soja, however, reflecting the influence of space,
reinterpreted modernity as a complex reorganization of
temporal and spatial relations change itself becomes
increasingly globally synchronous.

9. The Urge
• The use of significantly different ways of seeing time
and space together, the interplay of history and
geography, the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ dimensions of
being in the world freed from any imposition of inherent
categorical privilege
• A flexible and balanced critical theory that intertwine
and commingle the making of history with the social
production of space