Around the world in my flat
by prudence on 16-Jul-2010
This is not a particularly original thought. In fact, it owes itself to Doreen Massey, who spoke of our need for "a global sense of the local, a global sense of place". But having spent the last two days completely within four walls (not crook, just busy), it was borne in on me with renewed force.
In just 24 hours, my life can touch many continents. It can be through tuna from Thailand, pasta from Italy, clothes from China, or newsfeeds from US, UK, Australia, and Southeast Asia. It can be through research, which is currently focusing me on Myanmar, as is my bedside reading (Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of Green Ghosts -- itself the story of a journey). But the list goes on. My Facebook friends come from Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, NZ, Fiji, UK, Egypt, India, Tajikistan, and Australia, and they're currently resident in yet more places, like Norway and Syria and Dubai. So my FB pages are full of pictures from their homelands or their travels, and conversations with their friends in their languages. Around me are appliances from companies headquartered in Denmark or South Korea or -- wow, turns out Breville started out right here in Melbourne. Then there are the various memorabilia we've hauled back from various trips -- the carved lady from Cote d'Ivoire or the camelbone painting from Iran (both much more tasteful than they sound, by the way). My screen-saver software is currently showing a photo we took of a Dutch colonial building in the Riau Islands. My books connect me to the places I bought them, as well as the places they were written, and the places they write about. Then if I look out of the window, I can see the South Melbourne Town Hall, built for the new colony of migrants from Europe, and the showroom of Mercedes-Benz, which originated in Germany, but now manufacturers and/or assembles cars in a host of countries all round the world. And I can see the container ships in Port Phillip bay that are going pretty much everywhere...
No, I'm not psyching myself up for life in a resthome -- "don't need to go anywhere, dear, it's all on the television" -- but I am intrigued by the multiple geographies in our lives. As well as inhabiting a physical locality, we inhabit what Massey calls an "activity space", the network of links, activities, relationships, and locations within which each individual operates. People's activity spaces are, and always have been, bigger than they tend to realize. Which is why, as well as a global sense of the local, it's important to have a global sense of the individual.
Wherever I am, I'm global.
Sources:
-- Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
-- Massey, D. (1995). The Conceptualization of Place. In D. Massey & P. Jess (Eds.), A Place in the World? Places, Culture and Globalization (pp. 45-85). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-- Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage Publications.
In just 24 hours, my life can touch many continents. It can be through tuna from Thailand, pasta from Italy, clothes from China, or newsfeeds from US, UK, Australia, and Southeast Asia. It can be through research, which is currently focusing me on Myanmar, as is my bedside reading (Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of Green Ghosts -- itself the story of a journey). But the list goes on. My Facebook friends come from Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, NZ, Fiji, UK, Egypt, India, Tajikistan, and Australia, and they're currently resident in yet more places, like Norway and Syria and Dubai. So my FB pages are full of pictures from their homelands or their travels, and conversations with their friends in their languages. Around me are appliances from companies headquartered in Denmark or South Korea or -- wow, turns out Breville started out right here in Melbourne. Then there are the various memorabilia we've hauled back from various trips -- the carved lady from Cote d'Ivoire or the camelbone painting from Iran (both much more tasteful than they sound, by the way). My screen-saver software is currently showing a photo we took of a Dutch colonial building in the Riau Islands. My books connect me to the places I bought them, as well as the places they were written, and the places they write about. Then if I look out of the window, I can see the South Melbourne Town Hall, built for the new colony of migrants from Europe, and the showroom of Mercedes-Benz, which originated in Germany, but now manufacturers and/or assembles cars in a host of countries all round the world. And I can see the container ships in Port Phillip bay that are going pretty much everywhere...
No, I'm not psyching myself up for life in a resthome -- "don't need to go anywhere, dear, it's all on the television" -- but I am intrigued by the multiple geographies in our lives. As well as inhabiting a physical locality, we inhabit what Massey calls an "activity space", the network of links, activities, relationships, and locations within which each individual operates. People's activity spaces are, and always have been, bigger than they tend to realize. Which is why, as well as a global sense of the local, it's important to have a global sense of the individual.
Wherever I am, I'm global.
Sources:
-- Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
-- Massey, D. (1995). The Conceptualization of Place. In D. Massey & P. Jess (Eds.), A Place in the World? Places, Culture and Globalization (pp. 45-85). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-- Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage Publications.