In their review of Spatializing Culture by Setha Low, Mercedes Caravaca Barroso underscores the book’s pivotal contribution to reorienting anthropological inquiry towards the spatialities of culture. Low offers a compelling synthesis of social production and social construction of space, bridging the material and symbolic dimensions of urban life. The work proposes an expanded ethnographic methodology that incorporates embodied spatial practices, movement, sensory data, and the political dimensions of emplacement, arguing that culture is not merely enacted in space but actively constituted through it. Caravaca highlights how Low's approach transcends disciplinary silos, blending phenomenology, critical theory, and urban anthropology to offer a dynamic framework for studying cities not as static backdrops but as contested terrains of meaning, identity, and power. The book is structured as both a theoretical exposition and a methodological guide, with case studies ranging from gated communities to public parks, illustrating how ethnography must move through and with space. Particularly salient is Low’s insistence that the ethnographer's body is not a passive recording instrument but a site of epistemic co-production, enabling a more nuanced reading of urban affect and spatial justice. Caravaca notes that Spatializing Culture functions as a critical intervention in debates on urban neoliberalism, privatisation, and spatial exclusion, offering tools to analyse how power circulates through the built environment and bodily experience. This work is indispensable for scholars seeking to understand space not as a container but as a relational and politicised field of cultural production.
Caravaca Barroso, M. (2020) ‘Reseña de Setha Low (2019). Spatializing Culture. The Ethnography of Space and Place’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 10(2), pp. 141–143.
