‘There is time for everything. A season for everything under the sun…’

For the past decade, I have been thinking of doing some creative work around the theme of space. Mostly looking at how space is appropriated and with a particular focus on religious space. Later on, six years later, I included the additional dimensions of time and place. Today, I have been thinking about time a lot. I decided to update this note and post it. In it, I reflect on place, space and time. I look at questions of spaces, what they are and how they are used, how people’s places are defined in spaces and how people’s place in spaces change or remain the same over time.

My original interest in writing this piece was to explore how spaces and places are appropriated across time. However, throughout, I find myself going back to the question of time. ‘There is a time for everything’. 

Space

Space can be a physical location, matter, a spatial entity and, increasingly, virtual. Space can be private or public, and it can be somewhere in between these two, in liminality. The question of space has been studied over time. Some scholars are particularly concerned about the constitution, mineral content, mapping and how space is used in a sustainable way. Sociologists are concerned, among other things, about who occupies a space, how they use the space, how they live within a space, how they relate with each other within the space, and the ways in which they appropriate the spaces.

My interest in the use of space comes from how one use of space affects others. For example, the ways in which urban renewal and development projects could result in pushing the vulnerable and urban poor further out of urban areas and increasing the risk of social malaise. There is a lot to be drawn from here: the concept of gentrification, displacement, loss of livelihood, quality of urban life and social exclusion occasioned by distance from good quality education, healthcare and other social amenities and services. In international development, the question of space has become one of interest and the distinction is often made of the differences between private and public spaces and how people’s lives are affected in these spaces.

The ways in which people’s lives are affected in either public or private spaces or the spaces in between is about power and the way in which it is applied or distributed or appropriated. In this respect, people’s position in spaces are determined by their place in the existing power hierarchies and power structures.

A part of my interest is how religious spaces are used and the norms that govern them. Within the confines of sacred use of spaces, religious groups across divides have taboos related to gender, age, status, responsibility, etc., that govern which spaces can be accessed by whom. To some degree there is the question of the roles of consecration and sanctification in the ways in which spaces are utilized and the norms that govern their use and access to them. I come back to this towards the end of the note.

Place

Place refers to social location or position. It reflects both people’s location within the social structures and how they navigate these structures. Sociologists have long been concerned with social stratification, and within the milieu of space-place relations, people’s places are often defined by their social position. Place can be seen as a person’s position within a hierarchy of a social system or society or micro domains of society. People’s places within society are not static but evolve over time. In many societies, changes have occurred in people’s social positions over the last century. This includes those created by the collapse of colonialism. The acceptance of civil rights for African Americans and women’s right to vote in many places. With these and many other changes have come an elevation or lowering of people’s place or status in their respective societies. Furthermore, with technological advancement, especially the emergence of information and communication technologies, access to information has significantly changed,  and there is an increasing and unstoppable democratization of information and public spaces, thereby creating opportunities for those from the lowest strata of society to assert themselves with a lower level of effort than would have been previously required.

One area in which change is however slowest is religion, particularly on who holds power within religious groups. These have still been largely dominated by men and the perception of their calling by deities that rule and set the norms for different religions. However, even within this, the place of women has significantly changed over time, with an increasing number of women holding senior leadership roles and being ordained into the hierarchies of religious bodies. This view of place influences how religious spaces are used. In many religious groups, women continue to be prohibited from entering or playing roles in spaces considered sacred. People from certain castes continue are excluded, even forbidden from taking certain roles within some religious groups.

The illustration here applies to the stronghold of colonialism, ageism, patriarchy, class and other forms of domination that continue to limit people’s place in societies. Across many parts of the world, significant numbers of people are living in chronic poverty in the same places where people live in unimaginable opulence. This inequality is a significant and consequential aspect of human existence today. The reference to chronic poverty is intentional. Many families would see several generations of poverty and it would take extraordinary circumstances for individuals to break free. The proximity of such lows  of poverty and such highs in wealth distribution remain some of the greatest tragedies of the twenty-first century. It limits people’s agency, and severely constrains their voices, even in instances that should be considered free, such as voting in elections.

While many consider the invention of the concept of ‘stomach infrastructure’ in Nigeria to be something of a misnomer, I do strongly believe that it reflects the impact of this kind of inequality, in which people, who largely remain at the level of subsistence, only see their benefit as being in the momentary gratification gained during election time. While constitutions grant them full citizenship, their real place in their own societies define how they exercise that citizenship. This and others are the types of consequences that the misalignment between people’s defined and real places in society can create for effective enforcement of rights and the attainment of justice.

Time

Time is a specific moment in a continuum of events. Time is also a continuum moving from antiquity to the present and the future. Time can be both historical and contemporary. Time can occur in the present, as in the past as well as in the future. Many disciplines have attempted to organize, appropriate, imagine and conceptualize time in relation to evolution, history, human life and so on. For example, psychologists have suggested that the life of a person can be segmented in stages from when they are born to when they die. Time is reflected in the evolution of human and animal life and matter broadly. Our experience of time is determined by the events that occur around us.

Time as evolutionary is central to this note. A person’s development as a physical being is interspersed by time, from the time of their conception to when they become full beings. The period between their birth and their attainment of adulthood and old age are also interspersed by time during which many consequential physical, social, psychological and cultural changes occur in their lives and those of the societies in which they exist. With time, the societies in which people live evolve or remain stagnant in beliefs and practices, which impact on the lives of the person concerned. However, even this can be blocked by policies, beliefs and ideas of how societies should be. In this respect, time as an evolutionary concept is also political. Throughout history, societies have experienced significant changes, due largely to new technologies. However, there remain societies which have resisted change, thereby remaining ‘stuck in time’. Many examples abound in today’s world. Societies where even access to mobile phones, that is taken for granted in most places, continues to be a challenge.

One arena, where time remains fixed in many respects, is religion. Religious texts written centuries ago continue to serve as the grundnorm, despite many changes in the societies in which these groups function. The same can be said of laws that continue to exist despite significant shifts in the societies they are meant to govern. To some degree that level of stability is necessary to maintain consistency. However, in many cases, the lack of change is out of synch with contemporary realities and therefore creates an anomaly when such laws are applied. Examples of this abound in many domains of life and countries around the world.

On place, space and time intersection

All of the above lead me here. What are the relationships between space, place and time? How are spaces appropriated over time? What value is assigned to people’s place within spaces? What meanings do spaces have at different times? I come back to how people’s places are defined within religion and link to how spaces are used.

The two sites to illustrate this are schools and religious gatherings. I have always been fascinated by how these spaces are appropriated at different times within the same period and across time. In particular, I have been interested in this topic from the perspective of consecration and sanctification. Take for instance, a school building that is used as a church. Strict gender roles, in some groups, prohibit women being admitted to the altars or inner parts of shrines. For the groups where occasional gatherings are held, this implies that, even when a public space, such as a classroom or a school theatre, is used for the religious gathering, this tradition is upheld, meaning that the prohibited group remains prohibited. However, on a different day, the same space would have no such restrictions, and women, or any other prohibited group, would be free to play any roles in the same classroom or theatre space. I have always found the shifts in power and access at different points in time fascinating.

Going back to the topics of consecration and sanctification are the ways in which sacred spaces are being repurposed elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe. In some locations, spaces that used to serve as churches are being repurposed to serve as offices for charities, shops, seasonal markets and other such uses. At the point in which this repurposing is done, they cease to hold the sacred functions and the norms which govern their use and different people’s places within them evolve. I have been interested in this change from a comparative perspective in which more spaces in Nigeria are being dedicated to religious purposes, while this is changing elsewhere in the world. There is a lot to unpack here, particularly when the colonial introduction of religion into Nigeria is considered as a factor.

The point here is therefore that space place and time interact in many important ways that are consequential for societies. They are critical for how to position arguments for how societies should and do change. Without understanding the effect of place and time on how societies change, many axes of progress may be blocked. Perhaps, it is useful that add here that it is a prime reason that the understanding of history is relevant to understand which combinations of these three have led to major structural changes and innovations that have redefining the boundaries of societies have evolved. Without an understanding of the space, place and time interaction we may be groping in the dark.