space of flows...

SPACE OF FLOWS/SPACE OF PLACE
"Social space is a social product - the space produced in a certain manner serves as a tool of thought and action. It is not only a means of production but also a means of control, and hence of domination/power."

"Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa."

- Lefebvre
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Definition (FROM WIKIPEDIA OF MANUEL CASTELLS)
Traditionally we find a prevalent idea of space being a passive form, while time is considered a separate and active entity. Castells makes the argument that space should not be disconnected from time. He asserts that space is a dynamic entity related to time, and rejects the concept that it will disappear as to create a global city. Space is defined by this idea as "the material support of time-sharing social practices". He goes on to define the space of flows as "the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows" (147).

In 2001, he wrote: “the space of flows...links up distant locales around shared functions and meanings on the basis of electronic circuits and fast transportation corridors, while isolating and subduing the logic of experience embodied in the space of places.” (Informationalism and the Network Society. In: Himanen, Pekka 2001. The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. New York, Random House pp. 155-178)
Practical Definition
As with most abstractions, the true meaning and usefulness of this conceptualization can be elusive to casual readers. It might be helpful to step through Castells’ definitions in order to come to a conclusion on what he's getting at. Castells is defining space as the physical support of the way we live in time. The space and time we are used to, he refers to “real world time”, as a space of places. This is because it lacks three elements central to a space of flows:
8. It lacks a proper medium through which to flow,
9. And the proper items to flow through it;
10. It lacks nodes through which these things flow through and circulate (Stadler, 3).
11. Castells wants to conceptualize a world wherein human action and interaction occurs by dynamic movement and distance can also be completely dynamic rather than static (2).
12. This is his space of flows. It involves the medium of telecommunications technology, time sensitive and continuous data that runs (flows) across it,
13. And nodes of circuitry and computer systems all over the world.
14. This movement brings people together into a continuous and real time arena that seems to be to be differentiated from the idea of a global village by the fact that interacting groups are enhanced by their position in time, rather than that position disappearing altogether.
The (social) production of space. (From Wikipedia)
Lefebvre dedicated a great deal of his philosophical writings to understanding the importance of (the production of) space in what he called the reproduction of social relations of production. This idea is the central argument in the book The Survival of Capitalism, written as a sort of prelude to La production de l’espace (1974) (The Production of Space). These works have deeply influenced current urban theory, mainly within human geography, as seen in the current work of authors such as David Harvey and Edward Soja. Lefebvre is widely recognized as a Marxist thinker who was responsible for widening considerably the scope of Marxist theory, embracing everyday life and the contemporary meanings and implications of the ever-expanding reach of the urban in the western world throughout the 20th century.