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Concepts of Space
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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2020
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Space, in the dictionary, is “a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied” and “the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.” Those of us who are social scientists may recognize Henri Lefebvre's unitary theory of space in the dictionary definition, which seeks to capture physical, mental, and social “fields” constituting space: spatial practices, representations of space, and representational space (such as the opening and closing of airports, requiring that people queue for temperature scans, constructing stadiums and choosing names for them). If anything, the spread of coronavirus disease at the present moment draws the significance of space and tensions between different concepts of space to our immediate attention.
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References
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13 Haqqi quote Ramadan, p. 40, citing Marilyn Booth, "The Experience of a Generation," Index on Censorship 16, 9 (1987), p. 20.
14 At the time France's penal code permitted release of an individual who survived two successive guillotine malfunctions; Zabana's execution was technically illegal, since his torturers killed him after the second malfunction of the apparatus.
15 In another iteration, this incident is evoked by the initial autopsy, and subsequent independent autopsy, on the occasion of George Floyd's death in June 2020.
16 Lambert, Weaponized Architecture.
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25 Called Place de l'Hôpital and later Place de la Perle by the French and, today, Place el-Sheikh Abdelkader.
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