A Review of Setha Low, Prostranstvennoe voploshchenie kultury: etnografiya prostranstva i mesta [Russian translation by N. Protsenko of Setha Low, Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place. London; New York: Routledge, 2016, XII+264 p.]. Moscow: NLO, 2024, 398 p.

Abstract

Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place brings together all the strands of the intellectual career of one of the most renowned urban anthropologists, Setha Low. In this monograph, the author carries out careful work on creating a conceptual framework for research on space and place, showing both the intellectual genesis of various theoretical perspectives and their application modes to fieldwork materials. Low defines “spatializing culture” as an interconnected system of perspectives that considers the theories of social production and social construction of space, embodiment, discourse, affect, and translocality. In 2024, the NLO published a translation of Low’s book, providing an occasion to return to this book and the methods it proposes for the analysis of space and place, city and citizens from different angles. The review seeks to examine Low’s theoretical reflections as a symptom of the conceptual polarisation of space studies and as a statement in a discussion about the disciplinary specifics of anthropology.