Survey 12: Society, Space, and Locality

Abstract

It is shown in this paper that the explanation of the social relations found within a particular locality is a singularly problematic exercise. Attention has to be devoted to (1) the relationship between the ‘social’, and ‘space’ and ‘time’; (2) the very nature of social relations themselves and of the ways in which they are spatially and temporally constituted; and (3) the different senses that can be given to the term ‘local’ or ‘locality’, which relate in a variety of ways to the analyses of society and space. The article is concluded with an elaboration of ten different locality effects and the suggestion that these are of greater importance than other writers have maintained.