Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Social geographies of race: connecting race and

space

Brooke Neely & Michelle Samura

To cite this article: Brooke Neely & Michelle Samura (2011) Social geographies of
race: connecting race and space, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34:11, 1933-1952, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.2011.559262

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.559262

Published online: 01 Apr 2011.

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Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 34 No. 11 November 2011 pp. 1933
1952

Social geographies of race: connecting race

and space

Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura

(First submission October 2009; First published April 2011)

Abstract
This article examines what it means to study race from a spatial
perspective. In order to make explicit connections between spatial and
racial processes, we present an interdisciplinary snapshot of the work
being done under the banners of space and race, and offer a framework

a theory of racial space
for linking these concepts. We provide four key
characteristics of space
contested, fluid and historical, interactional and
relational, and defined by inequality and difference
that overlap with
prevalent theorizing on race and racialization. We suggest that a
framework of racial space provides a language for explaining the
persistence of racial inequality in its varied, and often subtle, forms
today, and reveals a useful analytical and practical pathway for
challenging and changing the existing racial order.

Keywords: Race; space; place; inequality; difference; interdisciplinarity.

Introduction
What about race can we understand better through the lens of space?
How is racial inequality organized spatially? How do spaces come to
be known and used in racialized terms? Over the past decade, a
growing number of scholars have begun to explore how spatial analysis
of racial processes ‘teaches us things about race we cannot know by
other means’ (Knowles 2003, p. 78). Empirical studies scattered across
the disciplinary landscape contribute to what could be considered
a growing body of research into the links between race and space (e.g.
Anderson 1995; Feld and Basso 1996; Pulido 2000; Delaney 2002;
Razack 2002; Knowles 2003; Bullard 2007; Lipsitz 2007; Woods and
McKittrick 2007; Nelson 2008; Bullard and Wright 2009). Most of the
work on race and space thus far, however, has remained clustered in

# 2011 Taylor & Francis

ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.559262
1934 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
fields such as geography, education, anthropology, law and sociology
which are not always in conversation with one another. After delving
into these disparate literatures for our own research, we longed for a
review piece that gathered the wide variety of works and tied them
together in such a way that the relationship between race and space
would become clearer and more analytically useful.
The emerging field of racial and spatial studies has highlighted for
us the fact that the ways we (ourselves and the broader intellectual
community) think about and conceptualize space mirror the analytics
we use to study race. Both race and space vary across time and
location, involve political contests over their meaning and emerge
from the interplay between materiality and culture. Also, racial and
spatial processes can be seen as co-constitutive and dialectical in
nature. In other words, racial interactions and processes (e.g. identities,
inequalities, conflicts and so on) are also about how we collectively
make and remake, over time and through ongoing contestation, the
spaces we inhabit. In turn, the making and remaking of space is also
about the making and remaking of race. What has become increas-
ingly clear is how spatial theory offers racial theory a unique lens for
examining the complex processes by which racial difference and
inequality are organized and enacted.1
The social links between race and space are not new phenomena.
Most notably, there are long-standing historical roots of the race-space
connection in the process of imperialism
racializing bodies and
groups has always been linked to the theft of land and the control of
space (Winant 2002). Indeed, domination itself, as Jennifer Nelson
recently asserted, revolves around how ‘groups marked as racially
inferior’ have been ‘defined, confined, regulated, and eradicated . . .
through the control of space’ (2008, p. 28). While the intersection of
race and space has a long history and is deeply socially embedded, we
see the need to clarify and assess this relationship in light of the
present historical moment. At a time when the term ‘post-racial’ is
used to signal a supposed decline in the significance of race, a spatial
perspective can provide a particularly useful lens and language for
locating and understanding persistent racial processes.
Through this article, we demonstrate a framework for considering
how social constructions of space illuminate social constructions of
race and vice versa. We begin with an overview of the range of ways
that space has been conceptualized and defined, primarily by
geographers, over the last several decades. Drawing on spatial studies,
we then propose a framework for linking race and space. We provide
four key characteristics of space (i.e. contested, fluid and historical,
interactional and relational, and defined by inequality and difference)
that overlap with prevalent theorizing on race and racialization. Next,
to illustrate the elements of a theory of racial space, we review
 Social geographies of race 1935
literature that makes connections between race and space through
examinations of issues such as segregation, (dis)placement, spatial
contestations and place attachments. In this section, we present an
interdisciplinary snapshot of the work being done under the banners
of race and space, with the hope of pushing this theoretical and
empirical conversation forward.2 Rather than an exhaustive review, we
offer a targeted appraisal of relevant literatures to provide access
points for others to conduct further research of their own. We
conclude by suggesting additional questions to consider and directions
for further inquiry.
To begin, we must situate contemporary scholarship on race and
space within the broader intellectual turn toward culture and identity
since the 1960s, a move that has paralleled, and in many cases been
informed by, social movements and contestations of power around the
world. With the critique of positivist models for studying social and
geographic phenomena came a call for scholars to attend to issues of
positionality, multiplicity and power. The rise of critical studies, post-
structuralism and postmodernism provided increased attention to the
entanglements of knowledge and power in the humanities and social
sciences as well as in newly formed interdisciplinary fields (i.e. feminist
studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies). In the midst of all these
theoretical shifts, scholars of space and race, often separately, wrestled
with how to re-conceptualize studies of geographic and racial
phenomena. Before addressing these theoretical overlaps in more
detail, we first turn to a discussion of the rise of contemporary critical
spatial studies.

Critical spatial studies

A brief background
With the emergence of human geography in the 1970s, scholars began
to theorize the meanings embedded in social space (Tuan 1974, 1977;
Relph 1976; Buttimer and Seamon 1980). They studied the ways
human beings identify with and develop attachments to particular
locations. In this work, scholars wrestled with the theoretical defini-
tions of space and place, often conceptualizing space as the general
environment of social life and place as the meaning and interaction
applied to or made in space. For Yi-Fu Tuan, the first major
geographer to examine human engagement with space and place,
‘undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and
endow it with value’ (1977, p. 6).
Also in the 1970s, critical Marxist geographers began challenging
human geographers to think about the underlying power relations that
inform the meanings and attachments people ascribe to particular
1936 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
places (see, for example, Harvey 1973, 1989, 1996; Lefebvre 1978,
1991; Soja 1989, 1996; Massey 1993, 1994). Reflecting this general
theoretical shift, Henri Lefebvre (1991) uses Marxist theory to develop
a framework for studying spatial processes that makes necessary
linkages between culture and political economy, with spatiality being
an important element of economic and social reproduction. He writes,
‘One of the consistent ways to limit the economic and political rights
of groups has been to constrain social reproduction by limiting access
to space’ (1991, p. 22). In other words, relations of power intersect
with and may force the movement or placement of people; they also
inform the knowledge produced within and about particular spaces.
Similarly, Doreen Massey cautions against the de-politicization or
neutralization of space by some scholars and contends that space is, in
fact, ‘a complex web of relations of domination and subordination, of
solidarity and cooperation’ (1993, p. 81). These frameworks emphasize
how the workings of knowledge and power are key to understanding
spatial processes.
Over time scholars have debated the early theoretical conceptions of
space and place by arguing that space is actually the meaningful
embodiment of place (Casey 1996) or that place is ‘a particular
constellation of social relations’ in space (Massey 1994, p. 154). Others
have chosen to embrace the ambiguity of these terms (Harvey 1996).
David Harvey emphasizes the benefits of ‘the multiple layers of
meaning’ embedded in the concept of place, arguing that these layers
‘reveal a great deal about social, political, and spatial practices in
interrelation with each other over time’ (1996, p. 208).3 In addition to
specific conceptual definitions, scholars grapple with what constitutes
the spatial realm. In the 1970s, while bringing power into the
conversation on space, Marxist geographers also critiqued positivistic
spatial theories that separated the ‘spatial’ realm from social processes.
They argued these theories tended to explain spatial organization only
in terms of spatial factors. Instead, critical scholars argued, ‘so-called
spatial relations and spatial processes were actually social relations
taking a particular geographical form . . . space is constituted through
social relations and material social practices’ (Massey 1993, p. 70).
They embraced the aphorism ‘space is a social construct’. Then in the
1980s, new ideas emerged about the relationship between the social
and the spatial, with some scholars arguing that space is more than a
social construct. They argued that space is not simply a setting, but
rather it plays an active role in the construction and organization of
social life. The main point to take from these theoretical debates is that
social and spatial processes are deeply connected and continually
interact with and influence one another.
 Social geographies of race 1937
Key space scholarship
In order to better understand the infusion of knowledge and power
into discussions of space and place, let us take a deeper look at the
work of two prominent critical geographers
David Harvey and
Doreen Massey
who each cast a critical global light on spatial
theory, focusing on the politics and inequalities imbued in the local
and global processes of space and place. Harvey examines place
through the lens of global materialism, in which places and place
attachments are continually influenced by the mobility of global
capital. He focuses on ‘the political economy of place construction
under capitalism’ (1996, p. 295), emphasizing how capitalism yields
places riddled with inequality. Responding to postmodern assertions
that the significance of place is waning,4 Harvey argues that the
globalized world has not necessarily obscured the meaning of place,
but has actually pushed people to stake reactionary claims to place in
exclusionary ways. Important in his conception of place is the
opposition between fixed places (at least in the minds of inhabitants)
and mobile capital. In the face of a global political economy, people
work to ‘protect’ their place in the world. From Harvey’s perspective,
place remains a dominant social construction, a reaction to global
capitalism that reinforces global inequalities.
Building upon Harvey’s framework, Massey (1994) agrees that
global capital’s effect on place is significant, but she argues for a more
comprehensive understanding of the ways placement maintains
inequality, namely that places are raced and gendered (though she
does more explicit theorizing on the gendering of place). Global
processes of racism and patriarchy also create an environment in which
some people are able to move freely and others are forced to move or
to stay put. Social power plays an important role in how people move
in the world and how they connect to place. Unlike Harvey, Massey
does not see all place identifications as reactionary. People may
actually need a sense of rootedness, she argues, and the global
movement of the postmodern world does not necessarily instil anxiety.
Advocating instead a progressive or global sense of place, Massey
asserts that, even though places often have exclusionary and proble-
matic singular identities, historical narratives and clearly defined
boundaries, they can be better understood as a point of meeting, a
process of intersections with permeable boundaries, multiple and
conflicted identities and distinctiveness forged through local and
global social relations.
We can see in Harvey’s and Massey’s work the influence of post-
1960s theories of culture and identity, with intensified focus on the
how space is entangled with processes of knowledge and power. This
critical turn in geography has also informed discussions of space and
1938 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
place in other disciplines (Giddens 1984; Logan and Molotch 1987;
Agnew and Duncan 1989; Blomley 1989, 1994; Friedland and Boden
1994; Basso 1996; Gieryn 2000; Blomley, Delaney and Ford 2001; Low
and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003; Butler 2009). Recently, scholars in
American studies have engaged with this discussion over the con-
temporary significance of place (Buell 2006; Deloria 2006; Halttunen
2006), focusing both on the need for more spatialized studies within
the humanities, particularly through a multi-centred, progressive and
narrative-based approach (Halttunen 2006) and on the need to think
more about how a progressive sense of place can be dismissive of
people’s experience of place loss, whether as a result of colonization,
migration or natural disasters (Deloria 2006). This cross-disciplinary
theoretical dialogue speaks to a broader interest in and turn towards
space and place.5 Indeed, a number of scholars engaged in racial
research have also recognized and addressed the spatial dimensions of
race and racism (e.g. Massey 1994; Feld and Basso 1996; Kobayashi
and Peake 2000; Tickamyer 2000; Delaney 2002; Razack 2002;
Knowles 2003; Lipsitz 2007; Dwyer and Bressey 2008). The degree
to which they engage explicitly with the links between space and race
varies, but their work provides a solid foundation for more explicit
theorization of race-space connections.

Key characteristics of space

As a way to further distill the theoretical discussion above and to
illustrate the connections between race and space more clearly, we
draw upon existing theoretical debates to outline specifically what we
mean when we talk about space. Doreen Massey (1994) recommends
that researchers be explicit in their reasons for using terms such as
‘space’ or ‘spatial’ because meanings differ between authors even as
they often assume that their meaning of space is apparent and
uncontested. In light of the definitions discussed above, we have
distilled four central characteristics of space. Space is 1) contested, 2)
fluid and historical, 3) relational and interactional, and 4) infused with
difference and inequality (Figure 1).
First, spatial theorists emphasize how the meanings and uses of
space are not neutral or universal, and argue that social actors engage
in political struggles over how to define and use spaces. Low and
Lawrence-Zúñiga offer a useful definition for thinking about the
politics of space. They describe contested spaces as ‘geographic
locations where conflicts in the form of opposition, confrontation,
subversion, and/or resistance engage actors whose social positions are
defined by differential control of resources and access to power’ (2003,
 Social geographies of race 1939
Figure 1. Key characteristics of space

SPACE

- Contested
- Fluid and historical
- Relational and interactional
- Difference and inequality

p. 18). Second, these contestations, in turn, cause the meanings and

uses of spaces to change over time. Space has come to be seen not as a
fixed cultural thing, but rather as a multi-vocal, fluid process (Rodman
1992; Massey 1994; Lippard 1997). Spaces are always changing and
contested (Seamon 1980; de Certeau 1984; Pred 1984; Soja 1989), and
they are largely created and maintained through performative,
embodied experience (Thrift 1996; Rose 1999). Third, the fluidity of
space plays out through relational and interactional processes. It is
comprised of interlocked, ‘stretched-out social relations’ (Massey
1994) and possesses ‘the simultaneous coexistence of social interrela-
tions and interactions at all spatial scales, from the most local level to
the most global’ (Massey 1993, p. 80). This also involves social actors
(individuals, groups, institutions) who create, disrupt and recreate
spatial meanings through interaction with one another. Finally, the
political struggles over space play out through structures of difference
and inequality that define and organize spaces according to dominant
interests (see, for example, Harvey 1996; Tickamyer 2000). The
meanings and uses of space have much to do with defining who
does and who does not have the power to define and control space.
These characteristics reflect current intellectual understandings of
space across the disciplines, and, in our view, provide a useful
framework with which to engage the overlaps between spatial and
racial studies.
1940 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
Connecting space and race
With these spatial characteristics in mind, we believe critical spatial
theory has a lot to offer racial studies. One of the strengths of critical
spatial theory is how it addresses power on individual and structural
levels. Massey argues that, ‘since social relations are bearers of power,
what is at issue is a geography of power relations in which spatial form is
an important element in the constitution of power itself’ (Massey 1994,
p. 22). While a number of spatial theorists address socially constructed
categories of difference and oppression, they focus primarily on class
structures and the intersections of economic and political power. More
specifically, these scholars focus on the inequality of material resources
and the subsequent social inequalities that play out in everyday
interactions as well as at larger structural levels. Their work on the
ways that spaces reinforce power structures is useful for analysing the
current racial order because it provides a way to address social relations
and social structures in their material and intangible forms. Using
spatial frameworks, we can see space as one element of the creation and
maintenance of social inequality. Space is also often a more tangible
manifestation of systemic racial inequalities
think of residential
segregation, global displacement and land theft.
Perhaps the most explicit theorization of race-space connections to
date has been done by Caroline Knowles. In her work on the social
analysis of race, Knowles argues that an adequate study of race and
racism must attend to ‘the spatial dimensions of race-making’ (2003,
p. 78)
a spatial analysis of racial processes ‘teaches us things about
race we cannot know by other means’ (p. 78). In fact, Knowles
contributes a particularly insightful definition of space related
specifically to race-making. She writes:

Space is an active archive of the social processes and social

relationships composing racial orders. Active because it is not just
a monument, accumulated through a racial past and present

although it is also that
it is active in the sense that it interacts
with people and their activities as an ongoing set of possibilities in
which race is fabricated. (Knowles 2003, p. 80)

Similar to the work of spatial scholars like Doreen Massey (1994) and
Lucy Lippard (1997) who discuss the layers or hybridity of places,
Knowles’ active archive attends to the sociality and the history
enmeshed in space. This concept also recognizes the dialectical process
of space and race-making, in which multiple actors with collective and
conflicting narratives and interests create racialized spaces, just as
space and race act (through people) back upon identity and social
formations.
 Social geographies of race 1941
Knowles outlines four ways through which racial and spatial
processes intersect: 1) the contestations over our built environment;
2) the everyday embodied and performed social lives of people; 3) the
movement (placement and displacement) of people; and 4) the social
relationships engaged in by individuals and groups. Her framework
allows us to understand how race and space interact in the architecture
of the social world, in the lived experience of people, and in
the structures and institutions that shape social life. We build upon
these connections between race and space, along with the others
discussed in previous sections, to develop a framework
a theory of
racial space
that may help us better understand and more clearly
articulate the ways in which race and space operate.

Toward a theory of racial space

With their theory of racial formation, Omi and Winant (1994 [1986])
call attention to the shifting meanings of race across time and space
and to the political and state ‘projects’ that define what race means
and determine how race is used to control and exploit humans beings.
Similar to conceptualizations in spatial theories, the theory of racial
formation engages with the contested, historical and interactional
processes that make and remake race. While race may be a durable
concept in society, it must be understood not as a fixed thing, but as a
fluid and contested ‘complex of social meanings’ that have tangible
material effects (Omi and Winant 1994 [1986], p. 55). Racial formation
theory connects the ideological realm to the social and political realms,
and it posits that these connections are on-going historical, political
and dialectical processes between materiality and culture. Recognizing
the analytical overlaps between spatial theories and racial theories
allows us to think more clearly about the spatialization of race and the
racialization of space (Lipsitz 2007). As a way to make connections
both visually and conceptually between space and race, we offer
Figure 2.
We suggest that a spatial approach to examining issues of race is
particularly useful since the primary characteristics of space are shared
by the primary characteristics of race. Building on race-space
connections being made by Knowles and the work of others on which
we will elaborate in this section, we have distilled four characteristics
of space that possess crucial analytical overlaps with conceptualiza-
tions of race.
First, both race and space involve political struggles over their
meanings. Conflicts over resources and access to space, that is, how a
particular space should be known and used, may play out as conflicts
along racial lines. For example, we can see racialized political strug-
gles over space in New Orleans which the redevelopment projects and
1942 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
Figure 2. Racial space

SPACE RACE

- Contested
- Fluid and historical
- Relational and interactional
- Difference and inequality

environmental justice concerns post-Hurricane Katrina (Bullard and

Wright 2009; Woods 2009) and the oppositional place-making
practices of local residents in the Ninth Ward (Breunlin and Regis
2006). We can see contestations over both space and race in a number
of other conflicts over housing and urban space as well as in struggles
over land and its development, particularly surrounding people’s sense
of belonging, entitlement and ownership. For example, in Jennifer
Nelson’s (2008) study of Africville, Nova Scotia, she charts the
evolving use of this space
from slum to razed community to public
park to protest site
and illustrates the crucial connections between
racism and the contestation of this space. A similar example can be
found in the history of wilderness preservation in the United States, a
practice that has run into opposition from Native nations, who were
displaced as a result of the development of national parks and forests
and who argue against the idea of carving out particular areas of land
for ‘preservation’ (Spence 1999). And Clyde Woods and Katherine
McKittrick (2007) highlight the radical possibilities of black geogra-
phies, specifically the oppositional place-making imaginaries and
practices employed by subaltern actors.
Racialized contestations over space also occur frequently in the
realm of education. For example, students’ sense of belonging in
different campus spaces may be closely related to the racial make-up of
the student population or even to practices that maintain and
reproduce certain relations of power (Samura 2010). In a multi-
campus study of racial diversity, Duster and colleagues explored how
students engage in inter- and intra-racial interactions by mapping
areas of campus in which there were ‘clear demarcations of racial and
 Social geographies of race 1943
ethnic ‘‘spaces,’’ areas where one or another group dominates in terms
of who ‘‘hangs out there’’ or where other groups ‘‘vote with their feet’’
regarding spatial domination’ (1991, p. 7). They concluded that it
would be useful for future research to explore, to a much greater
extent, where these explicitly racial spaces are and how they are
created and maintained.
In addition to being contested, race and space are also fluid and
historical. Their meanings shift and change over time and within
different contexts. Knowles’ (2003) idea of space as an active archive is
particularly useful for thinking about the fluidity of spatial and racial
meanings. Highlighting the complexities of spaces, Knowles provides a
striking example of an instance in which layers of meaning accumulate
over time. She discusses the site of a nightclub that, years ago, was
used to hold slaves before they were transported out of Africa, and
asks how we should understand a location that is simultaneously
a place of entertainment and a former slave castle. Similarly, a variety
of social institutions (e.g. education and military) with a history of
racial exclusion are now commonly understood to be key spaces for
upward mobility of racial minorities. These examples illustrate how
the meanings and uses of race and space change across time. Such an
approach to space unpacks the multiple layers of meanings embedded
in what may be considered a fixed location.
In addition to the shifting meanings of race and space, we can also
trace the trajectory of their relationship over time. Douglass Massey
and Nancy Denton (1993) highlight the long history of racism and
spatial organization with their study of racialized residential segrega-
tion. By charting the rise of the black ghetto in US cities during the
first half of the twentieth century, they detail the ways black
Americans have been isolated spatially into urban ghettos over time.
Similarly, Sherene Razack discusses the spatial dimensions of what she
terms ‘white settler societies’ (2002), or nations developed through
colonial settlement. She argues that studying the history and
contemporary conditions of white settler societies requires that
we consider the connections between racial and spatial processes,
especially since ‘legal and social practices . . . reproduce racial hierar-
chies’ (p. 17) through space. Clyde Woods’ (1998) work on the
Mississippi Delta also calls our attention to the spatial dimensions
of historical inequality and injustice. Mapping the socio-historical
critique embedded within the blues, he illuminates the resistance
strategies employed by African Americans against the plantation
system, and explains how the theft of Native nations land and black
people’s labour created a lasting socio-spatial structure in the
Mississippi Delta. Woods and others illustrate the fluidity of meaning
in and historical development of racialized spaces.
1944 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
Third, space and race are interactional and relational. Meanings of
space and race are continuously made and remade through interac-
tions between groups and individuals at both the macro- and micro-
levels. Moreover, meanings of race and space are always created and
recreated in relationship to an ‘other’ (Said 1979). Said’s concept of
‘imagined geographies’ helps us understand the spatial dimensions of
imperialism more specifically. Within Said’s framework, the imperial
centre maps a body of racialized discourses onto the periphery in ways
that maintain geographic and social hierarchies. Here we can see how
space and race involve ‘other-ing’ processes that establish and
maintain particular racial and spatial positioning.
Implicitly engaging with the connections between race and space,
Cheryl Harris (1993) highlights the relational nature of race and space
when she uses the notion of property to explain the benefits of
whiteness. Within Harris’s framework, whiteness carries a privileged
sense of belonging and entitlement to space and is fundamentally
defined by exclusion and subjugation. The places whites control
materially and symbolically require the unjust (dis)placement of
people of colour
the reservation system and urban ghettoization
are just two examples of this. Therefore, the maintenance of white
property and the sense of entitlement that accompanies white identity
cannot be divorced from the historically systemic exclusion of people
of colour. From this perspective, white supremacy relies on (dis)place-
ment, on both an abstract and a concrete level.
Also offering an important look at the relationality of race and
space, Kay Anderson (1995) traces the development and changes in
Vancouver’s Chinatown, highlighting the ways Chinatowns have
operated as a tool of the state in the service of European hegemony.
She argues that we cannot disentangle the ideological formations of
race from the material production and practices of space. In fact,
spatial manifestations of racial ideas often serve to naturalize racial
inequalities. She writes, ‘The idea of a Chinese race became objectified
in space . . . and through that nexus it was given a local referent in the
minds of Europeans, became a social fact, and aided its own
reproduction’ (p. 31).
Within the fields of urban planning, rural studies and even
landscape architecture scholars reveal how racial identities become
closely linked to particular spaces. Eric Heikkila (2001) argues that
spaces such as ‘the ghetto’ and ‘the inner city’ are spatial manifesta-
tions of a racial phenomenon because they are spatial forms of racial
other-ing. And, while urban spaces have been more explicitly marked
and studied as racial spaces, rural spaces have remained under-studied
as far as race is concerned. Some scholars argue that this is because
rural space is associated with whiteness, and is therefore unmarked
racial space (Hoelscher 2003; McCarthy and Hague 2004; Vanderbeck
 Social geographies of race 1945
2006). They show, for example, how representations of whiteness in
Vermont serve to maintain white privilege (Vanderbeck 2006), and
how the collective narratives of the West reinforce white supremacy
(Hoelscher 2003; McCarthy and Hague 2004). All these studies
illustrate the relational nature of race and space.
Finally, space and race are defined by inequality and difference. In
fact, power relations are often inscribed into material spaces and
played out through racial interactions. Kevin Durrheim and Jon
Dixon’s (2001) study of race and space in South Africa provides a
telling example of this. They illustrate how rhetoric about beach spaces
was used in South Africa as a tool of racial exclusion after apartheid
ended. Other examples of racial inequality and difference playing out
through space include environmental racism, disputes over citizenship
status, neighbourhood racial segregation and even decolonization
projects and new forms of colonialism that stem from outsourcing or
international trade.
David Delaney suggests we look at the ‘local geographies of race’
(2001) when addressing racial segregation in the United States. He
argues we must consider both the legal and the spatial processes at
work. These frameworks may be applied more generally to under-
standing how groups of colour are systematically spatially organized
in ways that undermine their well-being. For example, Laura Pulido
(2000) finds racial inequalities and the maintenance of white privilege
in the management of toxic waste in Los Angeles, and Susan Smith
(1993) uncovers the racialization of urban neighbourhoods in London.
All these scholars engage with the ways in which race and racism are
embedded in the social geographies we inhabit.
In a special issue of The Professional Geographer, a group of
geographers recently wrote about the intersection of racial and spatial
processes, calling on geographers to engage with the whiteness of their
discipline and the racialization of the spaces they study (see, for
example, Delaney 2002; Gilmore 2002; Pulido 2002). These scholars
emphasize the dominance of white spatial imaginaries (Dwyer 1997;
Kobayashi and Peake 2000; Pulido 2000; Lipsitz 2007), and they
challenge geographers’ complicity in the privileging of whiteness
(McGuinness 2000; Pulido 2000, 2002; Delaney 2002; Gilmore
2002). They help us to see the symbolic and material ways in which
racism is embedded in the spatiality of social life, and within the
contested places in which we live. In other words, they highlight the
ways the analytics of race and space help us to see things we might not
otherwise see.
In this section, we have outlined four characteristics for making
sense of the relationship between race and space, highlighting how
race and space are defined by 1) contestation, 2) fluidity and
historicity, 3) interactions and relationality and 4) difference and
1946 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
inequality. Obviously these four characteristics are not mutually
exclusive. There is significant overlap among them, and often all
four characteristics are simultaneously occurring. Additionally, we
should give attention to both explicitly racial spaces, that is spaces in
which we would expect to see racial processes occurring, and less
expected racial spaces. In doing so, we check and challenge our
assumptions about how racialization and racism currently operate.
Today, race continues to matter but in ways different from any other
time. Although overt forms of racial discrimination that were once legal
are no longer commonly accepted, racial inequality remains a defining
feature of social life in the twenty-first century. In this supposedly ‘post-
racial’ moment, locating processes of racialization and even talking
about how race and racism continue to operate can be tricky. For
example, how can we understand the continued, even increased, racial
segregation in schools in the United States more than fifty years after
the formal discriminatory practices were deemed unconstitutional
(Brown v. Board of Education, 1955)? In response to dilemmas such
as these, we can, as Lipsitz argues, ‘disassemble the fatal links that
connect race, place, and power’ (2007, p. 5), by envisioning and
employing ‘new kinds of spaces and spatial imaginaries’ (p. 11). Our
framework for racial space offers an effective way of thinking and
talking about the critical connections among power, space and race.
A theory of racial space posits that space matters to race because, as
the four characteristics are shared by both space and race, what is
viewed as purely a matter of space is also a matter of race. Integrating
these concepts theoretically allows us to see how contested racial
processes are enacted through claims to, and organization of, social
space. Linking race and space explicitly helps us understand how the
fluid and historical nature of racial formation plays out around on-
going negotiations over the meanings and uses of space. This
conceptual marriage highlights how the definitions and meanings of
race and space are enacted and embodied social processes. A race-
space framework also illustrates how the processes of difference and
inequality converge around the organization of both race and space.

Implications of racial space and directions for future research

If, as Massey suggests, ‘social change and spatial change are integral
to each other’ (Massey 1994, p. 23), then thinking about race through
the lens of space not only helps us locate and understand racial
processes, it also allows us to recognize possibilities for changing
existing power structures and see how people are already engaged in
these resistance activities. Looking at racial phenomena through a
spatial lens allows us to take a step back and consider the larger,
structural workings at hand. This lens enables us to explore the less
 Social geographies of race 1947
visible and un-articulated links between race and space at the micro-
and macro-levels as well as in discursive practices. We can see how
racial positioning, access, achievement and engagement are all about
racial politics and the struggles to maintain or resist the existent racial
hierarchies. Racial space also provides a language with which both
researchers and lay people can talk about the discrete ways race still
operates in everyday interactions as well as the subtle forms of racism
that are overlooked or ignored because many people consider race less
important today. Put simply, we argue that a spatial perspective reveals
another analytical and practical pathway through which the racial
order can shift and be changed.
We began this article by arguing for more explicit articulations of
the relationship between race and space. With the goal of highlighting
key analytical overlaps between racial and spatial work, we traced the
theoretical contributions to race-space research through disciplines
such as geography, American studies, ethnic studies, sociology and
education. We explored the ways some scholars have drawn on a
spatial perspective to explore issues of race. And we offered a theory of
racial space for making sense of the connections between race and
space. Now, where should we as race scholars go from here? What are
the avenues for further research? While this article pushes the
conversation forward, we now need more empirical and theoretical
work that fleshes out both the on-the-ground processes of and the
analytical overlaps between race and space. We see many possible
directions for this work.
To begin, we see great potential in revisiting existing work on race
and space through the lens of racial space. For scholars of space,
incorporating racial studies may help uncover particular power
dynamics or processes of inequality. Alternatively, for scholars of
race, drawing on a spatial lens may reveal another dimension through
which race is organized and enacted. Looking forward, we see
possibilities for new empirical work that takes as its starting point the
significant intersections between racial and spatial processes. Whether
this work addresses contemporary urban racial displacement, historical
analyses of racial exclusion, boundary negotiation in postcolonial
spaces or any other pressing racial issues, we believe the characteristics
of racial space help illuminate social processes that would otherwise
remain less visible. We can also imagine studies that ask broader
questions such as: What social relations and social identities are being
re/produced in and through social and physical spaces? How do social
relations and spatial processes affect one another?
This framework for racial space can also be mapped onto analyses
of other lines of difference and inequality. Thinking about inter-
sectionality with respect to spatial relationships may help us see the
multiple and complicated social processes at work. Other identities
1948 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
and social locations (e.g. gender and class formations) are negotiated
in and through space, as well as in and through race. Finally, we hope
this article spurs further discussion and research, and we look forward
to seeing what transpires from this theoretical conversation.

Acknowledgements
We are extremely grateful for the generous support and feedback from
Howard Winant, Eve Darian-Smith, and George Lipsitz as we
developed our ideas on how race and space are connected and why
these connections matter. We would also like to thank Annalise Glauz-
Todrank and members of UC Santa Barbara’s Law and Society
graduate student seminar who offered candid feedback on our drafts.

Notes
1. Likewise, the analytics of space can be mapped onto a range of other social concepts

e.g. gender, sexuality, class and so on
as some feminist scholars have done (Massey 1994;
McDowell 1999; Domash and Seager 2001).
2. Because we offer this essay primarily to an audience of race scholars, we have chosen to
limit our discussion of how we are conceptualizing race. We do, however, want to state
upfront that we draw primarily on Omi and Winant’s (1994 [1986] theory of ‘racial
formation’ to understand and examine multi-level, shifting meanings of race and the
centrality of power in theories of race. Our work is also informed by scholars who make the
case that race and racism remain enduring features of the socio-political landscape in
the United States and argue that a sustained, critical scholarship on the material and
symbolic dimensions of race is needed (Omi and Winant 1994 [1986]; Lipsitz 1998; Feagin
2000, 2006; Bonilla-Silva 2003).
3. Scholars do not always clearly distinguish between the terms ‘space’ and ‘place,’ and we
do not intend to resolve the ambiguity of this distinction in this article. However, as David
Harvey suggests (1996), the tricky and confounding nature of these concepts may actually
allow for further theoretical possibilities. For more discussion of the distinction between
space and place, see Keith and Pile (1993), Knowles (2003) and Cresswell (2004).
4. Another realm of spatial studies emerged with the rise of postmodern theory, with
many scholars arguing that the significance of place has dwindled in the face of
contemporary global capitalism and its attendant time-space compressions, e.g. strip malls,
airports, Disneyland. For more on this, see, for example, Harvey (1989) and Soja (1989).
5. This broader turn also includes spatial approaches, such as mathematical modelling, to
examine concrete usage of physical environments. While we do not cover them in this article,
we believe these approaches have the potential to significantly inform efforts to critically link
race and space. For example, GIS can be a useful tool for analysing environmental hazards,
racial segregation and so on.

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BROOKE NEELY* is a doctoral candidate in the Department of

Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa
Barbara, CA 93106, USA. Email: neelybe@umail.ucsb.edu
1952 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura
MICHELLE SAMURA,* PhD, is Academic Coordinator for the
University of California Center for New Racial Studies and a research
fellow in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
ADDRESS: 2201 North Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara,
CA 93106-2150, USA.
Email: michellesamura@newracialstudies.ucsb.edu

* The authors contributed equally to this article.