Relationship Between Space And Power

Place makes memories cohere in complex ways. People’s experiences of the urban landscape intertwine the sense of place and the politics of space,” writes architectural historian Dolores Hayden. Hayden’s work is concerned with how some identities are hidden when we represent or talk about place through certain narratives, or fail to talk about the histories of places at all. In this selection from her book The Power of Place, she unearths racialized, classed, and gendered accounts of place in order to reveal how those in privileged positions can bury the truth of occupation and inhabitance in historical geographies at various scales. In one example, Hayden describes how Chinese migrants built much of the US railroad system in the 19th century,

The crown depicted the Indians as intractable, only to find that settlers resorted to violence against the Indians precisely because of their supposed intractability. Indigenous peoples, for their part, fought among themselves and against advancing settlers. All groups sought to “territorialize” their societies to secure themselves against competitors. In the final chapters, Langfur extends and qualifies this complicated story. In the later eighteenth century, settler pressures grew, stressing crown policies and threatening indigenous social orders, until all-out war broke out after 1808. For Langfur this was no Manichean battle between European invaders and indigenous victims. To a dominant narrative of violence he juxtaposes a “parallel history of cooperation” among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, and he concludes that war itself must be understood in terms of “the relationship of cooperative enemies.”

Unfortunately, Rachel Price’s narrow-minded attitude remains stagnant into late adulthood. The Equatorial where Rachel’s “proudest achievement[s]” lie alludes to the imaginary line that divides up the world, establishing how Rachel’s accomplishments lie on a unjust foundation (462). Fittingly, her “own little world” (462) is upheld by her “standards of white supremacy” (28).The word “world” suggests to the reader the illustration of a European explorer charting the globe for unknown lands to redeem as his own. It frames the painting of colonialism and segregation to the reader, as Rachel “can run [her world] exactly however [she] please”, further alluding to the image of a white colonist dictating and exploiting the lives of “local boys” and “punish [them] with a firm hand” (462). Rachel’s self-appointed responsibility of policing her African staff with violence only gives more weight to her internalized ignorance, prolonged by her stay in the Congo and unwavered by the years. Unlike her siblings’ change of heart over the years, Rachel’s exposure to Africa only reiterates her initial belief of how “these people here can’t decide anything for themselves” (480), suggesting how she sees them as lesser than her, as a docile child who remains incapable of assertion. All in all, Rachel’s unfazed ignorance

The possesion of land has proved to greatly amplify and draw out several different stereotypes and conflicts between societies in the world 's history. From Many different accounts all over the world today there has always been a dispute over land. However other disputes shadow in that of the colonial New England settlers and the Native Americans, both virtually revolving their lives around this concept of land distribution. For the settlers it meant wealth and prosperity, for the natives it meant staying alive. William Cronon 's book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, illustrates the differences between these two separate societies and describes what life was like during the period of exploration and settlement in the New World. There are several other facts or opinions that one could take away from this passage, but the three main points are differences in the Colonist and Native conceptions of property, as well as how cultural stereotypes and eventual conflict emerged from mutual understanding of the land and use of property by each group.

Geography shapes who we are and our conceptualization of the world. Where we are situated in space determines who we are and how we interact with it. In his book, Race, Place and the Law, David Delaney takes on geopolitics, the actions or practices intended to shape what spatial relationship look like, the spatial conditions of social life. He discusses how every person has a geography of experience, that is, an individual way they negotiate a space. This means the same spaces can be negotiated differently. Overall, he talks about the different intersections between race, place and the law. More specifically, how black and white americans have been distributed in space and the function of legal practice in this process. He draws on court cases

To summarize briefly Banner illustrates the intercultural power relationships between the non-natives’ and Native Americans in helping us understand how land ownership changed so dramatically in the early 17th century to the present. In most of his chapters Banner argues about how the first English

The book, Wisdom Sits In Places, is an anthropological study carried out by Doctor Keith Basso based. on his own field work with the people of the Western Apache over thirty years. The book is consolidated of four opulent essays, each one focusing on a member of the Apache Tribe who share the different significance of places within their culture. Their concepts of wisdom, history, morals, and storytelling, which are interlaced within a place. These essays allow us to understand Basso as he expands awareness of the relationships people maintain with places and spaces.

In Derek Walcott’s From in a Green Night: A Far Cry from Africa, the author explains and dives into the topic of colonialism and self-reflection through his own experiences of being trapped between his Kenyan and British descent. Similar to Fanon’s concept of complicity, Walcott also understands both sides of the story in an unbiased manner. In his poem, he uses imagery to describe the violent past in which Kenyans and British people have committed to each other, the ‘savage’ nature of humans during colonization, and his own internal speech where he himself is confused of his cultural and social identity. This paper will explore the core concepts of Walcott’s writing and further explain it through Fanon’s lens to amplify the meaning of the poem.

In 1770, the British discovered the land of Indigenous and then they disgorged people who was socially excluded and brought along with their culture, knowledge, social order, nation of poverty and most important, their racial prejudice(Miller 1985, p7). The construction of race started with the claim of Terra-Nullius, the land was ‘waste and unoccupied’ (Reynolds 2003). By recognising the land as Terra-Nullius mean that they not considered Indigenous as a ‘fully human’, not recognised their culture, the ownership of land at that time. They failed to attempt to deal with the native, and start the invasion of the land. During the time, the Indigenous society was completely disrupted by the invasion and dispossession, and illness and death on Indigenous society started due to the lack of immunity of European disease (Stanner 1977).

This chapter in Africans and Their History by Joseph Harris presents some of the roots of the stereotypes and myths about Africa in the past and for the most part are still held today. Harris discusses how the “greats” of history, geography, and literature starting a path of devaluation of Africans that writers after their time followed. Harris also denounced the language that these “greats” used to describe and talk about Africans. He asserts that this language inherently painted Africans as inferior and subhuman.

Henri Lefebvre (1991) asserted that the production of space concerns the “performances of power through (as cited in Aitken & Dixon, 2006, p. 332). Space is power. Large spaces between the rich and the poor in the buying area underline the performance of space. The representation of space is much more crowded for the poor as shown in the Piazza Vittorio. Gonzaga (2017) would call this the “cinematographic unconscious of slum voyeurism” (p. 102). Representational spaces are filled up with the power of the government and the rich. The scene of the linen being brought up in the warehouse of linen characterizes society’s gross inequality, suggesting that the rich steals from the poor the most. Depicting the poor as they are illustrates the spaces denied to them. If they are concentrated in any space, it is the space of neglect and impoverishment.

This article focus on the definition of power what is power, examining the phenomenon of powerful and the powerless. This will help my essay in explaining that power is not owned, one can’t simply own power but it is rather given.

In this essay I shall compare James Scott’s theory of power and resistance with Michel Foucault’s, as in what similarities do they share in their structure of theories; and contrast the difference as in their understanding of power, position they take to look for/into power, exercise of power and resistance in response. By contrasting the two approaches on the subject of power and resistance, I shall argue, if one wish to look for the powerful and the weak, Scott’s approach is the go to. But for now, I find Foucault’s idea more plausible that we are surrounded by or inescapable from power, and that by any means, are not necessarily forced to submission; rather as freedom the same time.

The desire to conquer land that was previously unexplored has existed throughout history. This desire forced many indigenous societies, who were usually dominated technologically, to adapt to the teachings and overall system of the ‘superior’ conqueror nation with destruction as the only alternative. This causes a major impact on how a certain society functions, even after seeking independence from the foreigners. The rise and fall of indigenous societies can be analyzed through various media. Chinua Achebe is a novelist specializing in African literature, and this essay deals with the themes regarding colonialism in one of his many novels. In

Dominant media produces films using generalized, and distorted images of Africa to create the idea of a dark continent in need colonial help, due to native civilization’s inability to live in a functional society. Mountains of the Moon, follows Richard Burton and John Speke, two explorers in search of the Nile. Set in pre-colonial times, this movie constructs images of Africa, perpetuating African’s inability to live in developed societies, and shows their natural inclination to appease British explorers. The Kitchen Toto, tells the story of Mwangi, who becomes a British officer’s kitchen Toto after his father is killed for opposing the clandestine independence movement. This movie shapes inaccurate images of African independence movements, showing those who are not under colonial rule as threatening, malicious, problematic, and incompetent of leadership. A Good Man in Africa tells the story of a British Diplomat, Morgan Leafy, who lives in Kinjanja, a nation recently freed from British rule. This film portrays Africa’s dependence on neocolonial rule through the Kinjanja’s fait, which rests in the hands of Dr Alex Murray, the man who is in the way of Adekunle’s exploitive building project. These three films represent ho western cultures imagination has evoked stock narratives, creating artificial Africas, in dominant media and films, leading to falsified images expanding from pre-colonialism to twentieth century neocolonialism.