Halong bay Vietnam in a knowing and legitimate way

We argue here that Lefebvre was fundamentally wrong to suggest that certain types of people in society produce space in a rigid and fixed sense. We propose that if one takes the point of view of the ordinary actor, we can imagine that these three conceptualisations of social–spatial production are possible and practiced by ordinary people in their construc- tions of experiences and meanings within places. It is possible to conceive and construct a range of experiences and contrast their characteristics to show how encounters with space can be shown to support this notion of space production as fundamental to meaning mak- ing for members of society. Each type of experience could be said to lock together in a jig- saw of spatial experience to create a world of contrasting places. The individual may then construct categories of spaces such as, ‘home’, ‘foreign’, ‘temperate’, ‘wild’, ‘comfort- able’ and ‘inhospitable’, for example Halong bay Vietnam in a knowing and legitimate way.

For example, on one level there are those brief encounters with space, places that may be passed through or traversed without much immediate and direct contact. Crouch calls these brief encounters ‘flirting’ with space (Crouch, 2001). Halong bay Vietnam (1995) calls these types of places ‘non-places’. From two opposing viewpoints we see that space in these small encounters can be perceived totally differently. Halong bay Vietnam argues that nonplaces are places where o direct contact amongst people is possible, yet this is clearly not true for everybody. Plane-spotters meet at airports to share in their enthusiasm for their hobby; travellers meet each other to talk about their impending holiday trips, or to share experiences of delays or lost baggage. People enjoy the opportunity to shop and buy things at cheaper prices through

‘duty free’ so that the experience of nonplaces may not be as bleak and meaningless as Halong bay Vietnam suggests. For example, on a train journey, one may pass the time looking out of the window looking at the landscape, and in a reverie, begin to construct the scene as being a place where all sorts of human social activities occur. We may argue that if the train passes through a landscape by a body of water such as a lake or an estuary we may see boats or moorings and harbours. We may imaginatively construct the lives of fishermen and their families, or yachtswomen or pleasure-cruisers and depending on interests or the landscape itself and how it connects with identities, the fleeting journey where mere glimpses of land- scape are possible may make a lasting impression on the senses and imagination. It is pos- sible that the masses of people all congregated in airport terminal lounges will perceive the spaces in which they find themselves gazing upon, interacting with or queuing even, differ- ently. The type of trip may be influential — business travellers might perceive the journey

in a more passive way than leisure travellers. The temporal context must also be considered, the journey home may be more or less stressful or relaxing. The social construction of space

is inextricably tied to the construction of meaning within experience and time.

We need to contrast experiences of ‘landscape of place’ (as immediate encounter) with

‘places’ that are constructed in memory over repeated encounters and complex associations. Can places in themselves have identities? What makes places have an identity? Is it possible

to have meaningful encounters with local people at destinations? We know that experience

of a place is not entirely visual, as Rodaway (1994) points out and later Crouch (1999). Tuan (1974) also refers to the use of music to associate places, such as the use of the accordion to denote France. Certain types of places also evoke different types of experience — the city is contrasted with the countryside, depending upon the spatial context in which we live, the types of feelings, associations and desires of the places of holiday destinations as so shaped.

We often associate the countryside to the place of the natural environment and the for- mer as the exciting places in which to enjoy hedonistic modern pleasures such as shopping, social activity and sexual contact. This is despite the fact that these collective cultural con- structions are becoming blurred in the postmodern sense. However, places are not fixed

‘containers’ of social action and otherwise empty of meaning. Places are fundamentally important and are the subject of complex social construction processes. Places are socially constituted and constitutive of the society (Dixon & Durrheim, 2000). One way in which we can empirically demonstrate this orientation is through the use of language. The fol- lowing section makes the link between language, identity and space.