Úvod / Zkraje „okraje“

Title in English Introduction / From the begenning of ‘the edge’
Authors

OSMAN Robert POSPÍŠILOVÁ Lucie

Year of publication 2019
Type Chapter of a book
Citation
Description The chapter is an introduction to the book Geography by ‘the Edge’: Everyday Spatiotemporal Experiences. The main aim of the introductory section is twofold: to present the book’s intention and to provide a common theoretical framework for the chapters. Throughout the section, we gradually respond to three elementary questions—‘Why experiences?’, ‘Why spatiotemporal?’, and ‘Why (by) the edge?’—that stem from the title of the book as well as explain why it is important to study differentiated, heterogeneous spatiotemporal experiences and why we consider it marginal in the current Czechoslovakian geographical context. The book (and thus the introductory part as well) focuses on experiences because current Czechoslovakian geographical production works mainly with one conception of space: so-called abstract space. Abstract space does not correspond to our spatial experience, yet it is the norm that suppresses other conceptions of space. By paying attention to different conception of space, to living space, we intend to demonstrate that abstract space is only one of many representations of space and no more valuable than other conceptions of space. The abstract conception of space deals with space as homogenous and universal, while living space is heterogeneous and differentiated as with lived experiences. Similarly, we describe two conceptions of time—an abstract and a living time. Because lived experience is never only temporal or spatial but always spatiotemporal, the chapter then describes how the temporal and spatial dimension of experience combine into unique chronotopes/time-spaces. Because these living time-spaces or lived spatiotemporal experiences are considered marginal in the current geographical context, we use them as a perspective from which we would like to respond to the duality of ‘core’ and ‘marginal’ geography and weaken it.

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