In Chapter Four of Spatial Stories written by Michel de Certeau, he identifies the differences and connections between the concepts of “places” and “spaces”, the distinction between “maps” and “tours”, and he describes the process of marking out boundaries.
From my perspective, a place in the writer’s article is a physical location in which things are ordered by a certain rule. It turns in to spaces when travelers or walkers give special meaning to this place. To be more exact, when people are acting in a certain place, the place could be called “anthropological spaces”.
As for “maps” and “tours”, the writer describes them as two kinds of descriptions that people give to their living space. For the former one, the writer thinks it is more about the locations of certain spaces, or in his words, the “citation of the places”. When people are describing a story of a journey or “predicting” the movement of a traveler, they are doing the “tour”-type description.
Boundaries, in most situations, do not exist physically as a line to separate two areas. In the text, the writer views it as space “in-between”. In this space, two bodies or regions interact with each other.
Name: Shun Ying, Zhuang
UID: 3035702827
A good reflection on Certeau’s writing notion of spaces and places, written with great clarity. You have demonstrated an understanding that the seeming physicality of places and spaces is in fact boundless and constantly recontextualized. Well done!