Spatial Entrepreneurs

Actors and Practices of Space-Making Under the Global Condition

Steffi Marung, Ursula Rao, Steffi Marung, Ursula Rao

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9783110639674
• eBook ISBN: 9783110686449
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

As essential components of globalization, the study of practices and processes of space formation promotes a nuanced understanding of globalization. How do people create spaces for social action under the global condition, especially since the nineteenth century, when global interconnectedness increased rapidly? We explore the problem through specific case studies. Anthropologists, historians, geographers, sociologists, global studies scholars, and cultural studies scholars examine the agency of, e.g., members and staff of African regional organizations, Indian migrant workers, female GDR activists, Soviet planning experts, or US novelists. By studying elites as well as middle-class and micro-entrepreneurs – i.e. more and less influential actors – we encourage reflection on the relationship between power and space and examine how spatial entrepreneurs attempt to influence the shaping of space and their spatial literacy. The analysis aims at a better understanding of the different globalization projects, their crisis-like clashes, and the resulting conflictual development of spatial orders.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Between Empirical Messiness and Theoretical Ambition: Introducing Interdisciplinary Conversations on Actors and Practices of Space-Making Under the Global Condition
• 2 “Through Impenetrable Thicket and Swamps”: Negotiating US National Space in Popular Narratives about the Florida Frontier
• 3 National Forms with Economic Content? Gosplan’s Expertise on Territorializing the Soviet State, 1921–1930
• 4 Tracing Female Spatial Entrepreneurs: SWAPO Women’s Council, the Democratic Women’s Union, and Their Women’s Sewing Centre in Tsumeb, Namibia, 1990–1992
• 5 Routinizing Digital Banking: Kiosks as New Spaces of Social Action in Contemporary India
• 6 Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Programme: Principles of the Art of Organizing Socioecological Transformation by Philanthropic Means
• 7 Understanding Complex, Collective Actors at African Regional Organizations: AU and ECOWAS Intervention in The Gambia
• 8 Scaled Regulatory Regimes under the Global Condition: An Example from Organ Transplantation
• List of Abbreviations
• Index