Space is Money

At school we all hated geography. History teachers were always glamorous and exciting; their tweed jackets and cravats suggested hidden knowledge. Geography teachers always seemed to be part-time games teachers and brought their robust approach back into the class room. This link between geography and sports mysteriously persists in my children's schools. Perhaps it is something to do with the physical.

Whatever our school-era prejudices the time has come when we have to tangle with geography, because whether we are thinking about climate change or globalisation issues of place and space are of key importance in building a sustainable future. For an idea of the excellent work being done by radical geographers listen again to the essay from the esteemed Doreen Massey offered as part of the Today programme for new year's day. (Douglas Coker has kindly made a transcript of this that is posted below.)

The presenters of the Today programme were a bunch of listeners who feel that geography does not receive its due weight. You might characterise this complaint as the victory of history over geography in the classroom or the dominance in our culture of time over space. We are obsessed by a fear of growing old, by failing to make our mark before it is too late, by accumulating money and prestige as quickly as possible. Even fame itself is marked out in intervals of 15 minutes.

In another post you will notice my revulsion from the capitalist mantra that time is money. This is the pernicious nonsense that was brought to us by the factory system where profits were maximised by making as many widgets as possible as quickly as possible. It is the thinking that has led to the loss of joy in work, the loss of quality in what we make and is leading to the death of the planet. It also distracts us from the fact that, in reality, space is money since if we owned land to live on and grow our food on we would have no need to sell ourselves, or as it is euphemistically described, our time, in order to survive.

It is a difficult but interesting exercise to try to think yourself out of the era of clock time, which is relatively short-lived in terms of our human history. Barely more than 300 years ago time was governed by the seasons. Most people worked on the land and could not afford artificial light and so the amount of activity differed hugely depending on the time of year. Time itself was related to significant agricultural or astronomical processes. It was experienced and observed rather than being measured. As clock time has torn us away from this natural relationship with the planet so we can start to rebuild that connection by undermining our obsessive grasp of the 'timepiece' and substituting an awareness of the natural cycle of the year. We can do this in community through celebrating the annual festivals of time, such as the winter and summer solstices, and those of the seasons, such as the midwinter festival that has just passed and the spring festivals that will be with us as the light returns.

So, how about that for a new year resolution? Every time you find yourself being driven by our culture's obsession with time try to rethink the problem in terms of space instead? Or perhaps try throwing away your watch? Or not wearing it on Sunday? Why not make 2007 the year you thought more about space and less about time?

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