While often eluding the attention of the everyman, ‘space’ has been a longstanding concern of geographers (and of great interest to scholars from many other parts of the academy). ‘Space’ has been variously treated as absolute, relative, and relational; as a container or backdrop; as a social, aesthetic, and material construct or production; as marked by geographies of power and social difference; as an experiential or perceptual realm; as represented and not representable; as topographical and topological; and as fixed and in constant flux.

Now, this new title from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Geography series provides the first authoritative reference work to enable users to make sense of space and spatiality in geography, and in related disciplines. Edited by Peter Merriman, a prominent cultural geographer and author of Mobility, Space and Culture (Routledge 2012), Space is a four-volume collection of classic and cutting-edge contributions.

The gathered works in Volume I explicate the philosophical and scientific foundations of contemporary thinking about space and spatiality, while the second volume examines the production of social, economic, and political spaces—tracing, for example, the emergence of social space in sociology and geography; Marxist writings on the socio-political production of capitalist spaces; studies of the spatialities of power; and different approaches to the emergence and constitution of spatial structures, networks, and relations. Volume III brings together important pieces on inhabitation, dwelling, and spaces of embodiment, identity, and difference.

The final volume in the collection focuses on the vibrant and dynamic spatialities of the world, including poststructuralist examinations of how space is practised, performed, and in process; literature on the vibrant materiality, hybridity, and technological production of spaces; and a selection of major works which explore the cultural representation and articulation of spaces.

With comprehensive introductions which situate the assembled materials in their historical and intellectual context, Space is an essential reference work for scholars and students concerned with the intersection of theories of space and place with questions of culture, politics, society, economics, power, identity, difference, and materiality.