Temporal ecologies: multiple times, multiple spaces, and complicating space times

Abstract

It has become rightly de rigeur for critical geography to talk of spacetime as linked together. What the papers gathered here also show is that this handy linking into one term is, if useful and important, also, in some ways, a chaotic conceptualisation. In one sense this is because space and time interact in a multitude of ways—whose complex patterning this theme issue does so much to illustrate. In a rather deeper sense it is because the terms space and time actually convey many different senses. The question this collection of papers raises is what kind of ‘time’ is seen interacting with what kind of ‘space’ when we talk of spatiotemporal geographies. What kinds of times, what kinds of spaces, and what resulting timespaces do we see in these critical geographies? The timing and placing of events often reveal issues of power and inequality for sure. But I want to suggest we can see in these papers how power is etched into the kinds of times and spaces that organise events and through which events unfold. If it is commonplace to follow Lefebvre’s (1991, page 334) argument that social confl ict and power are not just a matter of social relations and contradictions in space but of space, then the same must apply to time and by extension the forms of timespace.