relational effects

"Proponents of Actor Network Theory (ANT) such as John Law (2002) and geographers such as Nigel Thrift (1996) have long argued that there are two basic approaches to space. One sees space as a container pre-existing the entities within it, and can be recognised as the projection familiar to Euclid, Descartes and what - for lack of a better word - could be termed as "the common sense opinion". Space here plays the role of a referential context - each entity within it is a priori defined byits reference to the spatial context - serving as an absolute determinant of the relations performed within. In other words,space is viewed as always primary to any relations that might be observed. The second approach in turn, sees space as a performative effect of the relations between entities... the relational attachments between entities perform the space, not vice versa. While the first projection sees space as a static referential context, the second sees space as a dynamic relational effect." Teodor Mitew