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Space as method

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  • Yimin Zhao

Abstract

Great urban transformations are diffusing across the global South, removing the original landscape of urban margins to make of them a new urban frontier. These processes raise questions of both validity and legitimacy for ethnographic practice, requiring critical reflection on both spatiality and method in fieldwork at the urban margins. This paper draws on fieldwork experience in Beijing’s green belts, which could also be labelled the city’s urban margin or frontier, to reflect on the space-time of encounter in the field. I aim to demonstrate how space foregrounds not only our bodily experiences but also ethnographic investigations of the daily life, and hence becomes a method. Beijing’s green belts symbolise a historical–geographical conjuncture (a moment) emerging in its urban metamorphosis. Traditional endeavours (immanent in various spatial metaphors) to identify field sites as reified entities are invalidated over the course of the space-time encounter, requiring a relational spatial ontology to register such dynamics. The use in fieldwork of DiDi Hitch, a mobile app for taxi-hailing and hitchhiking, reveals the spatiotemporal construction of self–other relations needing recognition via the dialectics of the encounter. In this relational framework, an encounter is never a priori but a negotiation of a here and now between different trajectories and stories as individuals are thrown together in socially constructed space and time.

Suggested Citation

  • Yimin Zhao, 2017. "Space as method," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 190-206, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cityxx:v:21:y:2017:i:2:p:190-206
    DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2017.1353342
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    Cited by:

    1. Marquart, Heike & Schlink, Uwe & Ueberham, Maximilian, 2020. "The planned and the perceived city: A comparison of cyclists' and decision-makers' views on cycling quality," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    2. Gao, Xinghua & Yin, Baoli & Li, Hong & Liu, Yang, 2021. "TT-M FE method for a 2D nonlinear time distributed-order and space fractional diffusion equation," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 117-137.
    3. Yaxin Hou & Cao Wen & Hong Li & Yang Liu & Zhichao Fang & Yining Yang, 2020. "Some Second-Order σ Schemes Combined with an H 1 -Galerkin MFE Method for a Nonlinear Distributed-Order Sub-Diffusion Equation," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Li, Meng & Wei, Yifan & Niu, Binqian & Zhao, Yong-Liang, 2022. "Fast L2-1σ Galerkin FEMs for generalized nonlinear coupled Schrödinger equations with Caputo derivatives," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 416(C).
    5. Kai Liu & Yu Liang & Hong S. He & Wen J. Wang & Chao Huang & Shengwei Zong & Lei Wang & Jiangtao Xiao & Haibo Du, 2018. "Long-Term Impacts of China’s New Commercial Harvest Exclusion Policy on Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in the Temperate Forests of Northeast China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, April.
    6. Hao, Zhaopeng & Lin, Guang & Zhang, Zhongqiang, 2020. "Error estimates of a spectral Petrov–Galerkin method for two-sided fractional reaction–diffusion equations," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 374(C).
    7. Seongwoo Jeon & Hyunjung Hong & Sungdae Kang, 2018. "Simulation of Urban Growth and Urban Living Environment with Release of the Green Belt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-21, September.
    8. Zhao, Zhihui & Li, Hong & Wang, Jing, 2021. "The study of a continuous Galerkin method for Sobolev equation with space-time variable coefficients," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 401(C).
    9. Satti Wagistina & Dyah Rina Syafitri & Julaika Sri Lestari & Khoirunnisa Hafidha Amanatinismi & Dicky Setiawan & Santica Ramadhani, 2022. "Service Area Network Analysis for Location Planning of Microbusiness and Local Franchise in Urban Area: A Case Study in Malang City, East Java Provence, Indonesia," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-23, April.

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