Global local glocal - reflecting on the area of world social science seems to be above all a
matter of space. In these spatial dichotomies the global has no location and locations seem
beyond this world. Discourses about world social science thought not only distinguish social
thought along spaces where they are created. Space has become an attribute of thinking when
social scientists reflect on the world of social thought: Southern Western and Northern
knowledge the location in which thoughts are created is not only a hint about the address of
a thinker but about the theoretical perspective through which social science thinkers look at
social reality. Social thoughts are imagined as imprisoned in the spatial context in which they
are created and social science thinkers are imagined as representatives of spaces whether
these are defined politically culturally or in any other context in which their thoughts must
be rooted as if the product of human minds was nothing but a voicing of the nature of spaces.
And should we imagine the world social science arena the encounter of all these spatially
bound thoughts as the encounter of many parochial knowledges that never manage to arrive at
shared thoughts unless they already share the same spatial context? Why should we then at all
meet each other? This book discusses examples of spatially constructed knowledges and the
struggles these knowledges encounter as they seek to meet one another and escape from the mind
prison of their spatial contexts. Or does the world social science arena after all only prove
that the 'Western' dogma of contextualizing social thought is a dead end road for social
thought - everywhere?
