The transformation of space to place
Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies
Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.
Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.
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Seen by: and 348 moreA Tale of Two Castles: An anthropological investigation of castles as constructed places with changing senses through the contextualization and analysis of le Château d’Angers, le Château de Josselin, and their intertwined human histories.
A Senior Thesis in Anthropology, submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College in April of 2011.

