Space, Place and Scale: Human Geography and Spatial History in<i>Past and Present</i>

Abstract

Just as, in Nigel Thrift's words, space is the 'fundamental stuff of human geography', time, one might add, is the 'stuff' of history. 1 While this separation seems neat, historians tend to study time and place as parallel concepts; when they merge, spatial history (and historical geography) follows. Important within spatial history are the concepts of 'place' (that is, physical spaces that people naturalize through patterns, behaviour and communications) and 'scale' (the representation of any area, as produced and defined by social process, from the smallest unit, the body, to the largest, the universe). 2 This article presents how authors within Past and Present have studied space, place and scale. It emphasizes that spatial history can serve as methodology, approach and object. It contributes to a small but growing pool of articles outlining the historiography of spatial history. By examining spatial history in Past and Present (a journal with an explicitly social character) I show that, while the study of human geography turned away from social concerns from the 1940s to the 1960s, it was concern with social history that made the space of Past and Present a place for spatial studies. Further, the linguistic turn and postmodernism opened * This article stems from support I received from the Past and