Night Spaces

Darkness, Deterritorialization,
and Social Control
Robert Williams1
Bennett College

Although spanning the same physical area, the spaces of night differ from the spaces of daylight.
Crucially, the night impels society to establish mechanisms that take the darkness into account (e.g.,
via enhanced surveillance of vulnerable areas and the lighting of places of consumption). The night
spaces created by government policies, business strategies, or social codes of conduct seek to direct,
if not outright control, peoples actions and desires. Yet such hegemonic night spaces are themselves
contested by groups and individuals who use the darkness to pursue alternate goals, some socially
transgressive and some illegal. Accordingly, night spaces can be multiple, overlapping, and contradictory, incorporating the myriad tensions of the social processes that constitute them.
Keywords: night; social control; production of space; surveillance

Day and night: This is the stuff of quotidian existence and social norms, of imagination and literature. With the passing of one into the other, we ourselves bear witness
to the human bodys circadian rhythms and to the changes that most humans make in
their activities of labor and leisure. But night is much more than a time of the day. With
the coming of night, we also have the arrival of night spaces. Although night is a natural
phenomenon, night spaces are not. They are socially mediated. They do not exist prior
to, or apart from, human practices and the attendant social relationships that seek to
appropriate, even control, the darkness in its myriad human uses and meanings.
However, night spaces are neither uniform nor homogenous. Rather they are constituted by social struggles about what should and should not happen in certain places
during the dark of the night.
space and culture vol. 11 no. 4, november 2008 514-532
DOI: 10.1177/1206331208320117
2008 Sage Publications
514

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515

This articles point of departure is Henri Lefebvres (1974, 1991a, p. 320) reference
to night-time spaces in The Production of Space. That concept grow out of his notion
of the abstract space generated by capitalist processesspace that can be pulverized,
divided into parcels based on its exchange value, and fragmented according to technocratic rationality. Lefebvre wrote of such spaces with regard to prohibited activities,
like prostitution, which were permitted only at night in certain areas of Paris.
Space is divided up into designated (signified, specialized) areas and into areas that are
prohibited (to one group or another). It is further subdivided into spaces for work and
spaces for leisure and into daytime and nighttime spaces. The body, sex, and pleasure are
often accorded no existence, either mental or social, until after dark, when the prohibitions that obtain during the day, during normal activity, are lifted. . . . In accordance
with this division of urban space, a stark contrast occurs at dusk as the lights come on in
the areas given over to festivity, whereas the business districts are left empty and dead.
Then in a brightly illuminated night the days prohibitions give way to profitable pseudotransgressions. (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a, pp. 319-320)

This article will elaborate on and begin the task of thematizing Lefebvres brief but
evocative notion of nighttime spaces.
The essay also seeks to continue the work of Bryan Palmer (2000), who examined
the counter-hegemonic activities and values that occurred at night in his book Cultures
of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression. He indicated that academics
who are studying power have been slow to understand the significance of night as a
transgressive space and time (Palmer, 2000, p. 454). In his words,
The night can be grasped historically as both a figment of powers imaginative fears, a
dark designation illuminating the historical traumas of hegemonic regimes, and as an
actual place and space in which the ubiquitous contestations of everyday life were fought
out on a terrain that afforded slightly more opportunity for engagement by the oppressed
and the exploited. (Palmer, 2000, p. 454)

I wish to elaborate on Palmers ideas. As he argued, counter-hegemonic uses and

meanings of space emphasize how social control and attempts to create order on the
cityscape are indeed contested. However, despite his use of spatial terms (e.g., space,
place, terrain), Palmer did not use a spatial-theoretical framework. My purpose herein
is to theoretically frame night with regard to its socio-spatial mediations as well as its
uses in social control and resistance. How does the darkness of night affect the exercise
and deployment of political and societal means of control, especially in spatial terms?
The darkness of night facilitates opposition to policies or practices that seek to create
a one-dimensional society.
Night space as a concept is an attempt to interrogate the societal dimensions of
space. When doing so, we often find that space is quite variegated. Concepts of space
proliferate because the physical landscape is only one of the ways that social life is constituted. Indeed, different types of spaceslike night spacesare themselves produced
by and through the expression of social relationships of power and authority in the
first instance. By understanding the various conceptions of space, we can better grasp
not only the sometimes contradictory social behaviors that are facilitated via spatial
means but also those activities that are hindered by particular spatial practices.
This is an exploratory essay that seeks to problematize the spaces of night as a how
in addition to a where and when. As such, it reconceptualizes common phenomena,

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attempting to reinterpret everydayperhaps a fortiori, every nightactivities in terms of

spatial practices. Examples to support the theoretical generalizations are drawn primarily
from early modern history as well as from more contemporary British and U.S. cases.
The articles sections, and its central argument, will unfold as follows. First, I will
briefly sketch how society and night intertwine, both in terms of global socioeconomic
processes and the everyday rhythms of local places. Second, I will discuss the societally
destabilizing, or what can be called the deterritorializing aspects of darkness. Third,
I will examine the societal attempts to re-impose order in the darkness of night via
reterritorializing strategies. Last, I will suggest a research agenda of various topics
and issues for further study.

Society and the Night

Night and day are natural phenomena. Darkness is a characteristic of the night in
many parts of the world. Although night is part of the natural world, its social uses and
meanings are not, arising as they do from social practices. In short, the darkness of
night is socially mediated.
Night has been studied in terms of what is called the nighttime economy (e.g.,
Hobbs, Lister, Hadfield, Winlow, & Hall, 2000; Hollands & Chatterton, 2003). The
nighttime economy is theoretically linked to ongoing socioeconomic changesa
Fordist style of capitalist production developing into a post-Fordist one (Harvey, 1989,
2000). In such analyses, the nighttime economy has great practical relevance because
of the increased competition that urban and other places experience as a result of the
reshuffling of industries on a global scale. As economies rise and fall, new situations
confront businesses, governments, and citizens as they each attempt, respectively, to
increase or maintain the financial bottom line, to secure sufficient resources for government services, and to protect the life chances for themselves and their families.
Under such conditions of economic uncertainty, one basic strategy of the urban blocs
of business, government, and civic leaders has been to increase the importance of the
consumption of leisure and the production of service jobs during the night. From the
previous studies, a specifically spatial dimension can be educed, linking global
processes to the local places in which people live (Massey, 1994). One common way to
theorize the localglobal interrelationship is to look at the concept of the everyday.
Studies of everyday existence often reference various aspects of the night. Lefebvre
is well known for his conception of the everyday, la quotidienne (Lefebvre, 1958, 1991b;
see also Shields, 1999; Soja, 1996). The spaces of representation, to use one of Lefebvres
terms, are where we experience life in all of its routine meaningfulness (Lefebvre, 1988,
pp. 78-80, 1974, 1991a). In his attempt to theorize how capitalist processes mediate the
lived experiences of everyday life, Lefebvre also sought to analyze where and how
resistance to oppression might emerge.
Lefebvre, employing what he called his rhythm analysis, considered that night
does not interrupt diurnal rhythms, but modifies them and especially slows them
down (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 222). Although the night does contain its own distinctive
activities (Quiet after 10 p.m.!; Lefebvre, 1996, p. 226), it also forms part of the 24-hour
day and together forms a more general cyclical rhythm. Cyclical rhythms like the
month or 24-hour day have a frequency that establishes a new beginning at the end of
the period (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 231). Cyclical rhythms implicate social organizations
that manifest themselves and their activities within the borders of time and space

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(Lefebvre, 1996, p. 222). Cyclical rhythms are different from linear rhythms like work,
which break time into repetitious intervalsunits during which tasks are accomplished with some end goal in mind (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 231). Both cyclical and linear
rhythms are, of course, experienced within everyday life.
Other scholars have studied daily rhythms and space. Tuan (1977, chapter 13)
examined how daily cycles involve places that are part of our routines: home, work,
and the paths between those places. Furthermore, as Bourdieu (1980, 1990) indicated,
the temporalspatial arrangement of everyday activities both expresses and reinforces
societal order, as every activity has an appropriate time and place throughout the day
and across seasons (see also Harvey, 1989, p. 214).
Certainly, we can say there is a unity to night and day, for it forms a cyclical rhythm.
This indeed makes sense because the nighttime is a vital dimension of daily activities.
Crucially, however, it is in the ways that the night can be distinguished from the day
that allow us to better interpret spatial practices after dark. By analyzing night as only
a part of a cycle, scholars like Lefebvre, Tuan, and Bourdieu have not fully theorized the
disruptive aspects of the darkness of night for social organization or how society can
remain problematically organized under the destabilizing conditions of darkness. We
must spatialize time of day and temporalize space if we wish to theorize nights implications for societal order and disorder, for stability and change.
We are now at the conceptual apparatus informing the idea of night spaces. It centers on the processes of territorialization: the social ways (or at least the attempts) to
impose and imprint an instrumentally rationalizing orderwith both liberating and
repressive consequenceson the interactions between people (Frankfurt Institute for
Social Research, 1972) and on the landscape (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987).
A chief presupposition of territory as conventionally conceived is the temporal stability of official authority within its boundaries during the course of the entire day.
This makes some sense because territory is presumably constant. Territory is demarcated internally (i.e., subnationally) and externally (internationally). Corollaries of the
presupposed temporal stability of territorial authority include the following: (a) The
territorys sovereignty, or the absence of a rival authority within that area, is presumably singular and indivisible; (b) political and legal authority, or the legitimate right to
make binding decisions, is omnipresent within its boundaries; and (c) all inhabitants
must subject themselves to such authoritys compulsory jurisdiction (to adapt Webers
idea of compulsory associations; Weber, 1947, p. 152). Such presumed temporal stability of authority in the span of a day is, nevertheless, problematic.
Although recognizing the challenges to a societys territoriality (e.g., Gottmann, 1973;
Sack, 1986), less scholarly attention has been directed to the significance of the above
corollaries on intra-territorial authority by time of day. Foucault, however, gives us one
basis for criticizing those corollaries. In the Enlightenment Era (and in the period of
Revolutionary France that he was discussing), there was the fear of darkened spaces
and of the pall of gloom which prevents the full visibility of things, men and truths
(Foucault, 1980, p. 153). Official and other measures were necessary to mitigate the
gloom. Foucaults observation allows us to undermine the presupposition of territorial
authority; namely, its presumed temporal stability is belied by the spatial practices of
groups (orderly and disorderly, official and unofficial) as well as by the divergent meanings of places at night (see also Bretthauer, 1999). We should be alerted to the importance
of time of day because in the dark of night, spaces are often approached and appropriated differently than during the light of day. Indeed, it is in how the night differs from
the day in meanings and uses that will help us to conceptualize the spaces of the night.

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Night and Deterritorialization

Because of its transgressive meanings and societally harmful uses, darkness threatens to deterritorialize the rationalizing order of society. Darkness serves to deterritorialize society when it obscures, obstructs, or otherwise hinders the deployment of the
strategies, techniques, and technologies that enforce the rationalizing order of society,
thereby allowing potentially transgressive behaviors to occur under a veil of
anonymity.
The deterritorialization during the nighttime is not to deny the deterritorialization
that occurs across the entire 24-hour day, particularly whenever official and unofficial
boundaries are broken. However, the crucial difference by time of day is that darkness
provides various opportunities for transgressionsopportunities not typically available during the daylight hours. Accordingly, night for humans is associated with certain activities and possibilities, whether they entail criminal acts, a rendezvous for
lovers, nonconventional behaviors, organizing for rebellion, or even for some, a time
when evil incarnate walks the earth.
A major mechanism of social control is surveillance in various forms, ranging from
cameras and observation posts to patrols through the streets. Such technologies and
techniques are usually employed by official personnel. Vision in Western culture is
privileged. An ocular centrism typifies us, for we are diurnally sighted creatures, relying on our eyes as much as possible (Classen, 1997; Jay, 1993; Sui, 2000). The gaze is a
technique of control precisely because our actions are observed. The gaze directed at
those who are aware of it can enforce compliance with norms (at least with most
humans most of the time). But even if we are not being watched now, there is always
the possibility of being observed. We thus may learn, or have learned, to shape our
behavior accordingly. As George Orwell (1949, 1961) wrote, Big Brother is [or might
be, one could add] watching you (p. 1). Foucault called the normalizing gaze panopticism to refer to the surveillanceof each toward everyone elsethat pervades
everyday life and helps, as one of the mechanisms of social control, to reinforce conventionality (Foucault, 1975, 1978; also see Foucault, 1980, chapter 8).
So-called appropriate social behavior can be internalized via various mechanisms
to generate a power over people (see, e.g., Bachrach & Botwinick, 1992; Barnes,
1993; Lukes, 1974). Adapted from the work of Antonio Gramsci, hegemony is a widely
used concept, holding that certain values and worldviews dominate to the detriment
or exclusion of others (Harris, 1992). As our choices would already be made for us,
we do not have to think; we only need to act properly. Social codes of conduct also
would guide behavior in the dark of night. Unofficial rules are sometimes very immediate and harsh: You better not be around here after sundown. If the internalization
(or interiorization) of social codes is not complete, then surveillance and panopticist
strategies and technologies can assist (Foucault, 1980). Official laws thus can be
enforced. For example, prohibitions against cruising up and down certain streets at
night, or even curfews stretching across wide areas, might be put into effect. Power
over as wielded by governments need not be illegitimate insofar as the policies have
resulted from compliance with legal procedures. However, as many radical critiques
have argued, the legitimacy of a politys actions need not necessarily be just according
to alternate worldviews. Indeed, implied within the concept of hegemony is that there
might exist other values and viewpoints that should be included within the range of
acceptable behaviors. Such mark the possibility of the formation and expansion of
counter-hegemonies.

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The scholarly literature on the gaze often presupposes that the gazewith its normalizing effectsis the same both during the nighttime and the daytime (see passim,
e.g., Foucault, 1980; Kirby, 1996; Rose, 1993). Certainly the potential to be observed
also holds at night, especially with new night-deployable technologies. Yet the night
nonetheless provides opportunities to avoid being seenopportunities that can be
used as the basis for societally transgressive behaviors. Darkness breaks down social
borders, because social codes of conduct (so vital for territorial order) can be more easily broken when we are wrapped in the night. The potential for different and nonnormalized behaviors is present. Thus, we must be aware of how the conditions of the
deployment of the gaze will vary by time of day and, therefore, how this affects the
(spatial) exercise of control and authority within society.
Although society, territory, and rationalizing order are tightly connected, they are
not seamlessly interwoven. Several examples of the deterritorialization that takes place
at night can be mentioned. Night is famous or infamous for being a time for criminal
acts. Because such acts, as with all human acts, have a spatial manifestation, there are
spaces where various types of crime occur more than othersas a study of crime data
would corroborate (e.g., Hobbs et al., 2000). Melbin (1978), in his book Night as
Frontier, argued that night offered parallels with the U.S. notion of the Wild West,
especially in terms of unruly behavior (yet Melbin also observed that there were examples of assistance and friendliness extended to strangers). We should also note that
although some criminal acts may occur at night and thereby contribute to disordering
society, not all disorderly actions at night are criminal or dangerous.
Historically, some European cities, especially Paris during the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, experienced periods of lantern smashing by their residents (Schivelbusch,
1988, pp. 97-114). Destroying such light sources challenged the social order not only
for mischievous or criminal purposes but also for rebellion against governmental
authority. Regarding the social unrest in Paris in 1830, Schivelbusch wrote of the creation in effect of what could be called the night spaces of resistance: Lantern smashing
erected a wall of darkness, so to speak, protecting an area from incursion by government
forces (Schivelbusch, 1988, p. 106).
Let me provide other examples of the so-called disorderlybut not necessarily
revolutionarydimensions of the night. As a case in point, we find subcultures in
evidence at night. Subcultures express different conceptions of what it means to be a
human being, flouting normality and conventionality in the darkness. Subcultures at
night include those selling or seeking the illicit and those in hot pursuit of a good time
through the flow of liquor and the pulsing rhythms of the dance floor. During the
1920s and early 1930s, Greenwich Village in New York City offered night spaces where
sexual and racial nonconformity were celebrated, avant-garde theaters proliferated,
and prohibition on alcoholic beverages was violated (Caldwell, 2005, pp. 233-236).
More recently, all night raves, with their electronic music and easily accessible alcohol, can take place outside of buildings and accordingly might disrupt the neighbors
for miles around (Dutta, 2006; Plans for New All-Night Raves, 2006). Similarly, there
have been legislative attempts to keep children off the streets at night in various
American cities (Baldwin, 2002). Controlling the subcultural dimensions of night,
hence, has long been a goal of many communities and local governments.
To cite an example related to the spatial manifestation of sexuality at night, consider
the following variation in public space by time of day as it pertains to hetero-normative
coding:

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Because public space is used, occupied and controlled by different groups at different
times . . . lesbians are able to anticipate who is likely to be in a particular place at a particular time. Therefore some women are careful to express their lesbian identity only in public places at specific times. For example several women interviewed feel able to walk through
the town centre at night holding hands with a partner because they anticipate they are
unlikely to meet anyone they know but they would not do this on a Saturday morning when
family, friends and colleagues are likely to be out shopping. (Valentine, 1993, p. 244)

Night spaces thus include a range of social behavior often deemed by mainstream society to be suspicious and threatening and as a result, subcultural.
The darkness at night facilitates counter-hegemonic practices by marginalized
groups. Subcultures can be marginalized spatially and normatively, but as such, there
still might be hope for social critique via a geography of resistance (e.g., Pile & Keith,
1997; Shields, 1997). Being socially marginalized is not synonymous with being intellectually disconnected. Indeed, as some theorists hold (Gregory, 1994; hooks, 1990),
marginalization can permit crucial insights into the oppressive relations of society. One
is not bound in any essentialist sense to the hegemonic mode of practice and discourse.
Those margins incorporate the spatial expression of counter-hegemony, or what
Lefebvre called counter-spaces (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a, p. 382). Differences endure or
arise on the margins of the homogenized realm, wrote Lefebvre (1974, 1991a, p. 373).
The leisure spaces of club life are one such type of counter-space for Lefebvre.
Although helping to reproduce capitalism, the leisure spaces also express modes of
existence other than that of the oppressive routinization of work: They evoke joy and
stimulate the out-of-the-ordinary (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a, p. 385). The differences
could include the potential for resistance to hegemonic values and social norms, such
as opposition to the linear rhythms of work or perhaps the expression of human joy
that is not commodified.
Accordingly, marginalized groups can use the opportunities of darkness to exercise
their reflective agency (i.e., their capacity to conceive of other social ends and to implement them). Spaces of resistance emerge from the alternative practices found in popular expressions of human community. A space of resistance is also a space of
representation (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a), spaces where we express our thoughts, ideas,
dreams, hopes, despair, and anguish. It is the spaces of representation that Lefebvre
believed held an emancipatory potential. Ideally, communities might come together at
night to reestablish human bonds in an attempt to controvert the domination of lived
space by technocratic and commodified practices. A recent phenomenon exemplifies
this: In addition to the pulsating music, rave parties are characterized by a set of values ostensibly in effect throughout the events: peace, love, unity, respect, or PLUR
(Diettinger, 2004). From some perspectives, the occurrences of drug use at raves can
complicate the counter-hegemonic potential of the events.
The potential to resist during the darkness of night, of course, will not necessarily
lead to challenges to the status quo. Nevertheless, transgressions against the expected
and the traditional can be liberating to the extent that socially just values inform the
actions. In such circumstances, we can speak of spaces of resistance as attempts to
reconfigure a segment of society according to progressive values.
Lefebvre has not been alone in examining the spatially creative aspects of night.
Cresswell (1998), for example, examined the officially permitted and the unofficially
appropriated discourses in a city at night. Officially sanctioned and legally permissible
activities included advertising and billboards. But it was also at night that unofficial
discourses occurred (e.g., graffiti spray-painted on walls), challenging the built
environment and its order. Such a perspective also walks in the tradition of Michel de

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Certeau. For de Certeau, people create, or write, their city in their everyday actions/
practices, thereby resisting the omnipresent, entangling oppressions that some believed
(like Foucault) were pervasive throughout society and social relationships (de Certeau,
1984, chapter 7; also see Harvey, 1989, pp. 213-214).
Although spanning the same area, the spaces of night differ in certain vital ways
from the spaces of daylight. Indeed, the night spaces of a city change the social practices and meanings of the physical landscapea landscape that otherwise contains the
same features throughout the 24-hour daily cycle (Bretthauer, 1999). Diurnally sighted
humans cannot see into the night with the same normalizing gaze unless other means
are implemented (e.g., patrols, in situ guards, and technologies like motion sensing,
infrared, and night vision devices). All of those means will be integral to the reterritorializing efforts of society, the topic of the next section.

Reterritorializing the Night

Yet as is often obvious, the deterritorializing possibilities of the darkness have
prompted varied private and public responses. Crucially, the night impels governments, businesses, and citizens to establish means and metrics that take the darkness
into account. The goal of governmental and commercial actors is to reterritorialize
space with the intent to reinforce some semblance of conventional order and regularity in the darkness.
The urban planning of government agencies uses technocratic methods and mappable representations of space so as to, hopefully, make the city run more efficiently and
safely (Davis, 1992; Knox, 1993, Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a). For their part, businesses can
order night by depicting it in commercial terms. Night is the right time for consuming
their product (Cresswell, 1998). Advertisements trumpet just what we need, and where
we need to be, to make it through the night. Indeed, in such leisure spaces we find,
as Lefebvre claimed, that capitalism perpetuates itself (albeit with its own contradictions) via reproducing the relations of production in those very activities that help us
to recover for our next working day (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a, p. 381). Moreover, both the
local state and businesses often work together. Several case studies exemplify the cooperation between corporations and local governments (see, e.g., Chatterton & Hollands,
2002; Hollands & Chatterton, 2003, and the reports on two British cities, Bristol and
Leeds: Aubrey, Hollands & Chatterton, n.d.; Hollands, Chatterton, Byrnes, & Reed,
n.d.). Popular responses can differ in their goals: Some wish to establish security, such
as through neighborhood watches and gated communities (Ellin, 1997). Others reassert
the right to be where one wants in public spaces, arguing that public space should be
equally accessible and safe for all at night (e.g., Take Back the Night marches).
In this section, I will discuss the reterritorializing modalities as well as the attendant
technologies (and techniques) used to implement the modalities. In addition, I will outline the dynamics of night spaces in terms of deterritorialization and reterritorialization.
RETERRITORIALIZING MODALITIES

Modalities involve strategies to effect the reordering of space in the dark at night.
That is, modalities seek to implement the goals of reterritorialization as an explicit set
of spatial practices and discourses. Also, they seek to re/establish social codes of conduct (what to do where at night). In brief, with the modalities, one tries to create an

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expectation of safety and security by re/asserting social order on the landscape at

night. I will delineate three modalities: channeling, marginalization, and exclusion.
The modality of channeling directs activities and desires into the socially appropriate places. Channeling typically involves the technologies of illumination and
advertising as well as those discourses stipulating the appropriate places to be at night.
Illumination has been a vital tool to hold back the dark of the night (Body-Gendrot,
2000, pp. 59-60, 246-247; Herbert, 1997; Koskela, 2003). Indeed, the use of electric
lights in early 20th-century cities signified to many that the night had been vanquished
by technological progress (Nye, 1997). Some roadways and pathways are illuminated
after dark, helping us to travel to places, like home, work, and spots of consumption,
but crucially they also permit surveillance as part of the securing of our persons and
property. Spatially variable configurations of street lights establish a hierarchy:
Commercial streets are more illuminated than side streets, and streets with higher traffic densities or with mixed modes of transportation are more lit than others (Jakle,
2001, chapter 5). Furthermore, floodlights create an illuminated zone to better locate
bodies crossing the barrier of light. Prisons for convicts (and the fortresses that are
our homes for the night) also use lights in that way. Thus, by re/asserting the eye(s) of
power via illuminating technologies and surveillance, the darkness is undergoing
reterritorialization.
The modality of channeling also would include the intentional focusing of the consuming gaze so as to continually make and remake us into desiring machines
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1980, 1987). Our desires are ignitedas are the intentions of advertisersby lighted billboards and places of entertainment. The technologies of illumination aid the channeling modality in the task of attracting attention and stimulating
desire (Nye, 1997, p. 88). Lighting extends the time of consumption into the dusk and
darkness of the night. Some stores quite garishly illuminate their places of business, yet
what can draw attention can be economically rational: The brighter the lights or the
more vivid the hues, the better to attract potential customers. Gaudy neon points the
way to conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption. Even after the stores are closed,
the illumination and advertising reminds us, should we chance to look, that their
brands exist and that the consumption places are still there, ready for us on the dawning of the next business day. Businesses, especially in highly competitive times, cannot
afford to let us forget them or their particular brands even for a moment (e.g.,
Chatterton & Hollands, 2002). The neon and halogen lighting creates distinctive, often
memorable, spaces in the night. Las Vegas is a glaring example.
Channeling as a reterritorializing modality also occurs in terms of the social and
political codes of night and day. Although the material relations of production require
an infrastructure and its human workers, the social codes of night typically refer to
home and to leisure activities. The messages conveyed are oriented to various groupings, like families, professionals, age cohorts, and those with common interests and
activities. Thus, channeling constitutes night spaces by directing our intentions and
desires toward particular places.
The second modality of reterritorialization, the modality of marginalization, creates and reinforces subordinate places for the so-called demi-monde. Its effect is to
categorize groupings of people as somehow socially inferior, dangerous, or bothand
thereby to spatially segregate them from other parts of the city (Cullen & Pretes, 2000).
Lefebvre is useful to consider here. Lefebvre (1974, 1991a) wrote of the spatial strategy
of classification that distributes the various social strata and classes (other than the
one that exercises hegemony) across the available territory, keeping them separate

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and prohibiting all contacts (p. 375). Historically, pre-industrial Europe used curfew
and nighttime patrols to keep people in their places in the darkness. An infamous
example of marginalization is to be found in Renaissance Venice: at night, Jewish people were confined and thereby segregated within their particular neighborhoods called
ghettoes (Ekirch, 2005, chapter 3).
Nowadays more common techniques of marginalization include official zoning
laws and informal social codes. Zoning ordinances exemplify one institutional technique to marginalize via Lefebvres notion of classification. Promulgated by local governments, zoning ordinances are conscious attempts to organize the places within
space. They have long been employed to control the uses of space in a city (BodyGendrot, 2000, p. 31). By prohibiting certain businesses or dwellings in certain areas
(e.g., dance clubs and bars), the city presumably can minimize the undesirable elements, especially at night. By allowing other businesses or dwellings (e.g., via gentrification) to build or become established, then the city can prompt re/development
along certain, presumably safer or more wholesome lines. In addition, the revitalization of declining city centers might require special zoning so as to intentionally attract
tourists, suburbanites, and affluent city-dwelling professionals (Papayanis, 2000).
However, the consequences of such zoning can lead to the marginalization of people
and the destruction of communities. Gentrification, for example, can cause the prices
of real estate to increase, generating a ripple effect as the cost of rented housing and
apartments, often occupied by long-time residents, also increases (Smith, 1996). Those
residents, often with fixed or low incomes, would face pressure to move to other, more
affordable dwellings.
Enforcing informal codes of behavior is another technique to implement the
modality of marginalization. Such informal codes can be animated by a prejudicial
classification of persons by race, ethnicity, and/or gender (among others). To use
only one example from among a myriad of African American experiences, the author
Richard Wright (1937) wrote,
Negroes who have lived South know the dread of being caught alone upon the streets in
white neighborhoods after the sun has set. In such a simple situation as this the plight of the
Negro in America is graphically symbolized. Although white strangers may be in these neighborhoods trying to get home, they can pass unmolested. But the color of a Negros skin
makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target.

Racial discrimination obviously occurs during the daylight hours; yet as the Wright
quotation indicates, with the coming of darkness, the same places accessed during the
daytime become off limits. The reterritorializing modality of marginalization hence
can transform the same places by time of day.
The modality of exclusion is the third modality of reterritorialization. It creates
superordinate places of security or consumption, even within marginalized areas. Like
marginalization, the modality of exclusion is a type of spatial segregation, but here the
goal is to be walled in, erecting barriers to create a protected enclave. This modality has
a long history. Numerous pre-industrial cities and towns in Europe closed their gates
at night to protect the residents from external threats (Ekirch, 2005, chapter 3).
In human history, the geographies of fear in a city have generated an architecture of
fear (Ellin, 1997). People, especially those able to afford it, stimulate demands for a
built environment to secure themselves from the dangers of urban life, including those
lurking in the dark. Today some people lock themselves away in defensible spaces

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(Body-Gendrot, 2000, p. 32)buildings with lights flooding the area and guards
posted (or their technological surrogates, alarm systems) and dwellings that are their
own personal spaces of the night. Gated communities extend the idea of protection
from one home to an entire neighborhood (Sibley, 1998).
The modality of exclusion can employ a particular technology of domination:
namely, access control. Deleuze (1992) wrote of the societies of control wherein
access points are controlled, rather than bodies physically positioned in time and
space. Modulation, as he termed it, rather than disciplining, becomes an important
way to exert power for the purposes of social control in (post)modern societies. The
development of technologies during the centuries has enabled access control to extend
beyond the tactic of humans standing watch at city gates. Electronic systems and key
cards are increasingly common ways to monitor and control those entrances requiring
proper clearanceclearance that already has been given by virtue of possessing the key
card or pass code. Although such technologies of access control can be used during
daylight hours, their nighttime deployment is quite typical. Housing complexes, with
their gates open during the day, can close those same gates at dusk, thereby constructing night spaces of exclusion.
But barriers creating exclusion are not necessarily or only found in concrete walls
or high fences. Some speak-easies of Prohibition-era New York City charged high
prices for their illegal alcoholic beverages, thereby creating night spaces of leisure that
were accessible mostly to the financially secure classes (Caldwell, 2005, chapter 8).
There are other types of exclusionary techniques, including the use of bouncers at
nightclubs (Rigakos, 2004). By vetting the undesirable persons at the door, bouncers
seek to create a particular partying environment, made all the more enticing because
of its social exclusiveness.
Five interrelated aspects of the modalities of reterritorialization should be listed.
First, in practice, the modalities can involve both the formal policies of governments
and corporations and also the informal norms of communities and individuals.
Officially sanctioned laws can reinforce unofficial attitudes and behaviors and vice
versa. Laws intended to control groups deemed unequal and inferior can arise from the
racist, elitist, sexist, and/or homophobic attitudes of societally powerful groups.
Second, the modalities of reterritorialization can reinforce each other and thereby
increase the probability that social control techniques will be more effective. For example, the modalities of marginalization and exclusion often coexist in gated communities (and both modalities can use the same technologies and techniques, such as key
cards and classificatory systems). Racial segregation in countries like the United States
and the Republic of South Africa provides other examples of the mutually reinforcing
modalities of reterritorialization. Furthermore, zones of social exclusivity and elite status can develop amid racially and economically segregated areas, producing cityscapes
of the super-rich and the very poor, much like the Los Angeles studied by Mike Davis
(1992) in City of Quartz.
Third, the modalities can be contradictory. For example, the modality of marginalization may deprive businesses of possible customersbusinesses otherwise relatively
secure in their spaces of exclusion. In addition, the channeling of activities and desires
to one ensemble of places of consumption might deny other areas those consumers
and customers. Spatial differentiation might thereby be evident in the resulting
cityscape: once-bustling bars and restaurants now destitute because of the larger,
newer set of nighttime attractions down the (probably well-lit) street.

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N i g h t S p a c e s 525

Fourth, the modalities are themselves problematic and unstable, perhaps yielding
other problems not controlled by policies designed to create pacified night spaces.
Indeed, not all night spaces that are created by government or business actions will be
rendered orderly for the law-abiding citizen to traverse or inhabit. In attempting to
reterritorialize social spaces at night, the police may leave some areas more or less on
their own, thereby permitting what Lefebvre called pseudo-transgressionsservices
and products that are otherwise coded as illegal or immoral (Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a,
pp. 319-320). Hobbs et al. (2000) called such areas liminal zones in the nighttime
economy, zones that local governments seekoften ineffectivelyto control.
Fifth, the modalities of reterritorialization are contestable and are contested by individuals, groups, or organizations, as the next subsection will set forth in terms of a theoretical dynamic of night spaces.
THE DYNAMICS OF NIGHT SPACES:
DETERRITORIALIZATION AND RETERRITORIALIZATION

Night spaces, hence, are the outcome of social conflicts that are expressed temporalspatially; and in their dialectical turn, night spaces can structure those and other
conflicts through providing the context and resources for various actions. They can
embody hegemonic norms of behaviors deemed proper and respectable: where to be
and what to do during particular periods. Accordingly, night spaces are also gendered,
classed, racialized, and sexualized, creating felicitous and hostile spaces that affect
the behavior and life chances of oppressed groups and peoples (Bachelard, 1958,
1969, pp. xxxv-xxxvi).
The night spaces created by government policy or business strategy are attempts to
exert physical control over peoples actions and a power over that frames their
desires, common sense, and life chances. The social codes of conduct at night are often
unwritten and perhaps unofficial but, nonetheless, exercise some influence over
human behavior and perceptions. The creation of hegemonic night spaces, however,
will be met with countervailing pressures from different social groups, like youth
subcultures or criminalsgroups wielding other forms of power that embody the
capacity to conceive and to achieve different ends. Presumably safe places, for example, might be met with acts or fashions articulating youthful exuberance and countercultural behaviors. The resulting contrapuntal spaces of the night deterritorialize the
societal order in real or imagined ways. They threaten to destabilize societal order
because, within the enveloping darkness, the social boundaries that both constrain
un/acceptable behavior and maintain the inside and outside of places are weakened.
Where the new uses and imaginaries of spaces at night are progressive (i.e., allowing for more participation and inclusion of hitherto oppressed groups and based on
egalitarian and liberatory values), then the groups are creating new counter-spaces
(Lefebvre, 1974, 1991a, p. 382). Such transgressive night spaces are provocative: When
social anxiety is enhanced, official policies are formulated and implemented, which in
turn might lead to more transgressions in the same or other areas, further heightening
fears . . . and so might continue the production of the spaces of the night.
Let me illustrate the reterritorialization process with an example. In the Wisconsin
city of Madison, Halloween celebrations called Freakfests have become an annual
event during the past several decades, attracting tens of thousands of local residents
and visitors. In the past few years, the celebrations have also witnessed mass arrests, the
use of pepper spray on revelers, and some property damage (Channel 3000, 2004).

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Although not officially sponsoring the event, the city government of Madison, in
conjunction with local businesses and a student organization at the University of
WisconsinMadison, wanted to avoid the conditions that led to the arrests and property damage during previous Freakfests and also to rebrand the festivity in a more
positive way (Halloween Action Committee, 2006; Heidmann, 2006; Madison,
Wisconsin City Government, 2006). For the 2006 festivities, the traditionally used
downtown streets were cordoned by barriers and staffed entrances. Tickets were
required for entry by 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 28. Glass bottles and containers
were not allowed. Surveillance cameras operated augmenting the more than 200 police
officers on duty. In response to the official efforts, a small local organization formed
(Knutsen, 2006a). Calling itself CRASH Madison (Coalition for Reclaiming Area
Streets on Halloween), it wished to protest being forced to pay to walk or cross our
own fenced-off streets [which] is an affront to everything Madison stands for and to
provide resources and information about the festivities to keep people safe and
happy (CRASH Madison, n.d.). During the recent Freakfest, this organization sent
text messages to cell phones and other portable electronic devices, covering a range of
useful information on the activities (Knutsen, 2006b). Despite more than 200 arrests
and a few other incidents, the 2006 event was considered a success by local government
officials (Joyce, 2006; Malecek, 2006; Sensenbrenner & Elbow, 2006). Employing the
terminology of this article, we can indicate that the Halloween activities in Madison
were reterritorialized via a process of exclusion, whereas the streets outside the cordon
and entrances were correspondingly marginalized. Simultaneously, the citys arrangements channeled peoples movements and activities both into and within the exclusionary zone. A more detailed study of future Freakfests is warranted, especially with
regard to the attempt by a small local organization to provide an unofficial news source
for celebrants. Those actions seemingly constitute the establishment of alternative spatial practices in contradistinction toor perhaps, some might say, as a complement
tothe efforts of the city government.
Night spaces emerge from the contrasting, but mutually constitutive, processes of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization described above. In short, conflicts about
how to appropriate the uses and meanings of the dark generate night spaces. They can
be multiple, overlapping, and contradictory, incorporating the myriad tensions of the
social processes that constitute them.

Where to From Here? A Research Agenda

In this exploratory discussion, I have sketched night spaces in broad terms. Night
spaces organize and mediate the societal meanings and uses of the darkness: where to
be with whom, and why, as well as what to do and how to do it during the when of
darkness. To build on previous works that have analyzed night and society, I propose
the following sets of thematic questions for further study.
THEME 1: NIGHT SPACES, MEANING, AND PRACTICE

How are meanings generated from the spatialization of time and the temporalization of space, especially at night? In particular, what are the social codes of conduct at
different times and places? How are such social codes officially and unofficially created? For example, how does the distinction between public and private spheres play

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N i g h t S p a c e s 527

out in the darkness? The publicness of space often varies by time of day. Who can be
where and when will change during a 24-hour time period. Case studies can provide a
multitude of information. In early modern Europe, for example, social codes evoked
different interpretations for women in the street by time of day. The same spaces
elicited a different meaning at night: Except for midwives, it was deemed dishonorable
for women to travel the streets at night (Ekirch, 2005, chapter 3). Inquiries into the
spatio-temporalized production of meanings, furthermore, can build on research that
has examined how illumination in the early 20th century allowed for more social and
political activities to be implemented at night (Jakle, 2001, chapter 6). This theme also
allows us to ask: Currently, who can be on the brightly lit streets in the evening and late
at night? In the nighttime cities of today, does a woman walking alone elicit different
reactions than a group of women or else a man and woman traveling together? Do
class, race, or age differentials affect the expectations of others? For one answer to that
question, one needs only to read June Jordans (1980) Poem about My Rights:
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I cant
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I cant do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin [].
THEME 2: THE RETERRITORIALIZING MODALITIES

How are the reterritorializing modalities of marginalization, exclusion, and channeling expressed in actual situations? Case studies are needed of their operation and
contradictions. Many events, celebrations, and festivities can be suggested; three areas
for future research will be mentioned here. First, what are the ongoing efforts to
address the issues raised by the raves and rave subculture in various countries? How
have local governments responded to the rave subculture and the spaces created by the
all-night celebration of pounding electronic rhythms (e.g., Plans for New All-Night
Raves, 2006)? Second, the nighttime cruising of city streets in the United States by
young adults in cars has led to city ordinances against cruisingin effect, creating
night spaces where youths riding in cars, even those on business-related trips, are often
viewed with suspicion in some areas of the city (De Len, 2005; Diedrich, 2006;
Gofman, 2004). Third other studies can investigate the extent to which the reterritorializing modalities generate or otherwise reinforce patriarchal, capitalist, racist, and
hetero-normative relations. For example, the marginalization modality might lead to
business activities in which the peripheralized population becomes the exotic others
who are experienced as entertainment during nighttime excursions into the bars
located in their community. During the 1920s, the Harlem section of New York City
provides a well-known case (Caldwell, 2005, pp. 236-239; Lewis, 1981).
THEME 3: NIGHT SPACES AND HOMOGENIZATION

Are night spaces becoming more homogenized? Do pressures to accelerate production and consumption of goods and services in an increasingly interconnected and
competitive world influence cityscapes in similar ways (especially regarding the larger

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cities and those considered as global cities)? Two sets of related questions come to
mind. First, are the night spaces of major cities (becoming) more alike in terms of the
similarity of their places for the consumption of leisure? For example, what are the
resultsespecially with regard to the nightof socioeconomic pressures to revitalize
otherwise moribund downtown areas? Are city centers and downtowns coming to
resemble one another as regards the types of businesses offering products and services
(e.g., via corporate chains and franchises)? As a case in point, consider the waterfront
areas of cities that provide nightlife, dining, and shopping for both tourists and local
citizens. Arguably, the photographic images of these waterfronts in various cities disclose striking resemblances: Vancouver, Shanghai, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro,
Liverpool, Cape Town, and Amsterdam, among others. Despite differences in language,
locale, and culture, are our experiences at night structured in similar ways by a comparable set of standardized activities and opportunities (see Enzensberger, 1958,
1996)? If so, then such comparative studies could provide a counterbalance to rather
one-sided marketing materials. Indeed, the much-vaunted idea of consumer sovereignty extols individual choice, yet any notable structural similarities in waterfront
areas may lead some to assert that our personal choices are less about creating our
own destinies and more about buying (or buying into) the world that others, like
corporations and governments, have constructed for profit.
A second facet related to the (possible) homogenization of night spaces can be
posed: How do the new security technologies affect human behavior and activities? In
our complexly connected world of actual bomb attacks and reported threats of attacks,
festivities at night have been increasingly surveilled, such as New Years Eve activities in
various major world cities (e.g., Associated Press, 2004; CBS News, 2003; Cho &
McShane, 2004). Does such intensive surveillance produce normalized behaviorthat
is, behavior circumscribed in ways that do not ostensibly arouse suspicion?
THEME 4: NIGHT SPACES AND RESISTANCE

In what ways are some night spaces also Lefebvrian counter-spaces? Are the transgressive practices and their attendant value systems manifested as emancipatory spaces
of resistance? How do subcultures conceive and experience space during darkness? For
example, Take Back the Night marches have been widely documented in various
cities (e.g., Dimacje, 2004; Reclaim the Night, n.d.). Further inquiries might examine
the extent to which de Certeaus (1984) concept of city walking applies to the dynamics of such events. In traveling the same streets as the perpetrators of past crimes, the
marchers protest violence against women in general and the insecurity of women at
night in particular. Of course, not all marches at night are subversive of the established
social relations. Some are designed to fight other battles and are not intended to create
new, socially liberatory spaces at night. For example, Light the Night Walks have
become a way for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to both raise money and promote awareness of the diseases (see its Web site at www.lightthenight.org). Despite that
major difference, what similarities and dissimilarities exist between such nighttime
activities as Take Back the Night marches and Light the Night walks?
Another dimension of the fourth research theme centers on the potential difficulties involved in organizing resistance at night. Are specialized techniques or procedures
necessary? Which transgressive or liberatory uses of the night arise more or less spontaneously and which ones require more planning? Although organized marches are
typically planned, other actions can occur in response to the situation at hand. For

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example, the so-called Stonewall Riots took place in 1969 as an unplanned response to
New York City police efforts to target gays and lesbians in the Greenwich Village section of the city. In what ways might resistance be hindered or otherwise influenced by
any requisite planning?

Final Remarks
The suggested research themes scarcely cover the numerous examples that can be
investigated and the plentitude of data that can be collected. This article sketched a
conceptual apparatus of night spaces and the theoretical dynamics of de/reterritorialization, all in an attempt to further Lefebvres idea of nighttime spaces and to update
it for a new millennium. Indeed, in a globalizing world where hypermobile capital
flows and advanced computer technologies both enhance and destabilize life chances,
night is becoming more like day but not fully. For those studying oppression, and
indeed for those contesting it, night is no time for repose; darkness must also be a space
for our theoretical energies and our practical insights.

Note
1. Dr. Robert W. Williams teaches Political Science, including courses in political and social
theory, at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC. Email: <rwilliams@bennett.edu>

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