Replacing old spatial empires of the mind: Rethinking space and place through network spatiality

Abstract

The main argument in this article is that reconceptualising space and place provides comparative education researchers with new and exciting possibilities for our research. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first, we review a set of meta-narratives that we call spatial empires of the mind about the changing relationship between time, space and place from pre-modern to modern and globalised times. In the second section we provide our critique of these spatial metanarratives, and in the third we review some of the ideas associated with new spatial thinking based on relational character and productive functions of space and place. The fourth section offers some thoughts about how space has been taken up in comparative education.Finally we assert that social network analysis provides comparative education researchers with one way to spatialise our thinking about how educational policies, processes and practices are produced and get taken up across disparate locations, without falling back into binary thinking about place and space.