In The condition of postmodernity, David Harvey hypothesizes that what many call posmodernism or posfordism doesn’t imply a rupture with the past, but tendencies that accelerate the conditions that were already present in the modernism/fordism. More likely, what we have is a capitalism that has accomplished the combination of techonologic advance and the dismantling of the Welfare State which allows impressively the rotation of capital and managing the timings of workers and consumers. None of this is entirely new: the marxist theory had analyzed time as one of the main functions when securing the capitalist’s profits. And many before had theorised about the uses of space not only as a representation, but also as a form of legitimation of the domination. Harvey contributes by establishing the relations between the space-time understanding which allows a higher rotation of capital and the changes in the cultural sphere -which is usually known as posmodernity. Harvey is more than interested in taking a strong idea of determination; what is usually resumed in Engels words: “at the end, the determination is economic”.

But what’s interesting is that this whole idea of capitalism rentability coming from the use of the capitalist’s time and space has recently moved from the industrial production to the services field. And you can see this very well in tourism market. The earnings of the actors that provide services are clearly related to the ability to manage the tourist’s spaces and times.

On the side of space, we have the conformation of enclaves. It’s about specific areas of the city, dedicated to tourism. Not always they’re separated from working zones; in the last years, there’s a tedency to mix them, as Shannon O’Halloran analyzes in a work that can be found at Blog de Viajes (spanish only). The central point: to keep tourists from leaving a determined area, which guarantees a bigger profit to those who offer services there. In Buenos Aires, for example, a very characteristic enclave is Caminito, at La Boca, Buenos Aires. There, tourists are told not to away too far. The reason: the area is dangerous and they could be robbed if they leave the enclave. This is reinforced by the fact that there’s a strong presence of policemen in the recommended area: so if you leave, you are practically on your own, not a single policeman is there. One would have to be very naive not to see that here’s a strategy destined to manipulate the movement of the tourist and place it at the service of the tourism industry. And there are similar examples everywhere in the world. I’m not saying enclaves are inventions; most of the times they’re locations of historical and social based importance. But cannot oversee that the tourism market and the government make strong efforts to give these locations even higher importance.

Few key elements in the communications field have received such a low critical review as the notion of space. This point is surprising. There are several contributions that invite to a reconceptualization of what we understand by this concept, and that come from contributions made by Edward Hall and his proxemic theory; or the analytical developments of Foucalt, Certeau and Bourdieu’s work. Despite all this genealogy, the space is still understood, almost, related to common sense, as a mere scenery where things happen. The important thing, from the communications perspective, is to analyze what type of representations are built in the interaction between people, as if the environment were the same in every culture.

A good example of how notions of space, geography and political economics can be thought is the classic book of David Harvey, The condition of posmodernity. For the author, posmodernity implies a new form of conceptualizing the space-time experience, that, even when it doesn’t imply a radical rupture with modernism, it has new elements to be analyzed.

Direct communicatin has been a field that, traditionally, communication careers in Argentina have neglected, focusing in hyperobserving the media. Despite, quotidian life was a relevant object of study from multiple authors, some as different as Gramsci, de Certeau, Goffman or Garfinkel.

In tourism, the space is highly regulated to guarantee certain behaviors and discourage others. What it’s looking for is that visitors spend as much money as possible, stay for a while and then leave. And any legislation clearly establishes maximum stay periods in their countries, after which a person loses his tourist status.

There are many tight links between the forms of contruction of space and time, worth to be developed in further entries.