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Los no lugares
Los no lugares no existían en el pasado. Son espacios propiamente contemporáneos de confluencia anónimos, donde personas en tránsito deben instalarse durante algún tiempo de espera, sea a la salida del avión, del tren o del metro que ha de llegar. Apenas permiten un furtivo cruce de miradas entre personas que nunca más se encontrarán. Los no lugares convierten a los ciudadanos en meros elementos de conjuntos que se forman y deshacen al azar y son simbólicos de la condición humana actual y más aún del futuro. El usuario mantiene con estos no lugares una relación contractual establecida por el billete de tren o de avión y no tiene en ellos más personalidad que la documentada en su tarjeta de identidad.
Atento al uso de las palabras, releyendo los lugares descritos por Chateaubriand, por Baudelaire y Benjamin, Marc Augé abre nuevas perspectivas para conceptualizar una antropología de la sobremodernidad, que podría ser también una etnología de la soledad de la condición humana contemporánea.
Atento al uso de las palabras, releyendo los lugares descritos por Chateaubriand, por Baudelaire y Benjamin, Marc Augé abre nuevas perspectivas para conceptualizar una antropología de la sobremodernidad, que podría ser también una etnología de la soledad de la condición humana contemporánea.
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1992
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About the author
Marc Augé
117 books173 followersMarc Augé is a French anthropologist. His career can be divided into three stages, reflecting shifts in both his geographical focus and theoretical development: early (African), middle (European) and late (Global). These successive stages do not involve a broadening of interest or focus as such, but rather the development of a theoretical apparatus able to meet the demands of the growing conviction that the local can no longer be understood except as a part of the complicated global whole.
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June 29, 2023
The premise of the book is interesting: non-places lack the significance to be really considered as spaces; they are spaces that are not, anthropologically, places. However, the book falls short. Auge concentrates on defining what an anthropological space is, although people with even a fairly basic knowledge of anthropology will know this. At the same time he often is vague on the concept of non-places, as a result of which I have so many doubts about the concept that I do not see it as a useful tool. When he writes of airports as non-places, I am reminded of the narrator's discussion of airports in Palahniuk's Fight Club; but then I realize that people work there, and for them it is an anthropological space. Second of all, sticking to the airport, we can easily see it as a anthropological place despite its super-modern qualities. The way airports are divided into different places, the way we interact with security, the VIP lounges and waiting rooms, etc. where interaction takes place, which is characterized by its own rules, and seems to form a place that transcends location.
Taking transit into account, when most of us take a bus, subway or fly somewhere, it is true - we do so in virtual isolation. But think of the field trip, or when a group of people travel together, e.g. annually, to an annual retreat or a business camp, which will result in a completely different way that a given space is used. Similarly the hotel room - it seems a non-place at first, but if we shift our attention to a concrete room, we may find history, e.g. a room once occupied by a well-known person in the Chelsea Hotel. The same could be said about a specific supermarket or shopping center, particularly when it is not used as a place to engage in consumer activity, but a social space. Think of mall rats, who are just there, the young people who redefine these spaces by using them as places to go out for a date. In this context it may make such space seem more like places than a historic tourist attraction, which is approached in the post-/hyper-modern way Auge discusses. Furthermore, the assumption that one is anonymous in such non-spaces, an individual without links to the community seems either myopic or deemphasizing the way a space is used by those visiting it. Even more problematically, this raises questions of the existence of non-places prior to super-modernity. I also have an issue with his view that entering non-places takes away our identity (in the social sense), and we only are identified when entering or exiting a non-place. This argument completely falls apart if you use cash rather than a check or credit card (an issue Auge adroitly avoids, which is problematic in light of the view that we are always observed and never anonymous in a 'panopticonic' world). When one visits a supermarket, or anything else that is deemed a non-place, and meets a colleague, friend, etc. this stops applying. We can say that Auge mentions that the traveler he discusses (and, by extension shopper, or anyone else in a non-place) is alone. However, this is problematic: the same rule seems to apply to many pre-super-modern spaces. This beckons at the old conundrum of the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it: if I visit a supermarket, and no one is there to identify me, have I visited the supermarket? Barring the question of self-consciousness (I identified myself in the supermarket), which Auge does by separating an individual from a society, this is not, again, limited only to super-modernity, but to a broader question of how society functions (also think of taboo places that existed, had an anthropological role as myths, but were not ventured into).
Auge is not reckless in his argument, and he mentions (mentions, whereas it should be emphasized) that the status of a non-place is fluid, preparing for such contingencies, but he never seems to give them any thought, as a result of which he creates the impression of being dismissive of them. Furthermore, he draws very heavily on the work of Michel de Certeau, which he simply places in the context of what he calls 'the three excesses of super-modernity', which undermines the originality of his discussion.
Auge tries to place the notion of non-places in the area of politics. This is risky, and I consider it ill-advised. First of all, he sees the status of a non-place as fluid. If it is for this quality that he believes such places are e.g. targets of terrorist attacks (a very problematic statement in this day and age) or lead to the strengthening of nationalist politics, which aim to give places their significance. But if we take his entire argument into account, it seems that they are actually protesting (in his context, as it seems that recent history invalidated parts of this hypothesis) against the way a place is used.
Tentatively I think that the book suffers from comparisons to other anthropological texts, while ignoring western historicity and being vague about a number of differences. I think that it is possible to find examples of non-places in times preceding super-modernity. How does a modern day supermarket differ from a marketplace of 400 years ago? Is a modern mom and pop store a non-place? How does a a modern day passenger differ from a traveler, and why is a 'traditional' train a place, whereas the TGV is not? Auge's text never offers us any insight into these questions, even if he employs them in his text, such as the traveler/passenger or SNCF/TGV dichotomies. By doing so in a seemingly arbitrary manner, he seems to be undermining his own argument.
The book left me nonplussed, but the fact that I wrote such a long (and likely rambling) review shows that it has the potential to challenge certain assumptions, and definitely is thought provoking, despite of its shortcomings.
Taking transit into account, when most of us take a bus, subway or fly somewhere, it is true - we do so in virtual isolation. But think of the field trip, or when a group of people travel together, e.g. annually, to an annual retreat or a business camp, which will result in a completely different way that a given space is used. Similarly the hotel room - it seems a non-place at first, but if we shift our attention to a concrete room, we may find history, e.g. a room once occupied by a well-known person in the Chelsea Hotel. The same could be said about a specific supermarket or shopping center, particularly when it is not used as a place to engage in consumer activity, but a social space. Think of mall rats, who are just there, the young people who redefine these spaces by using them as places to go out for a date. In this context it may make such space seem more like places than a historic tourist attraction, which is approached in the post-/hyper-modern way Auge discusses. Furthermore, the assumption that one is anonymous in such non-spaces, an individual without links to the community seems either myopic or deemphasizing the way a space is used by those visiting it. Even more problematically, this raises questions of the existence of non-places prior to super-modernity. I also have an issue with his view that entering non-places takes away our identity (in the social sense), and we only are identified when entering or exiting a non-place. This argument completely falls apart if you use cash rather than a check or credit card (an issue Auge adroitly avoids, which is problematic in light of the view that we are always observed and never anonymous in a 'panopticonic' world). When one visits a supermarket, or anything else that is deemed a non-place, and meets a colleague, friend, etc. this stops applying. We can say that Auge mentions that the traveler he discusses (and, by extension shopper, or anyone else in a non-place) is alone. However, this is problematic: the same rule seems to apply to many pre-super-modern spaces. This beckons at the old conundrum of the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it: if I visit a supermarket, and no one is there to identify me, have I visited the supermarket? Barring the question of self-consciousness (I identified myself in the supermarket), which Auge does by separating an individual from a society, this is not, again, limited only to super-modernity, but to a broader question of how society functions (also think of taboo places that existed, had an anthropological role as myths, but were not ventured into).
Auge is not reckless in his argument, and he mentions (mentions, whereas it should be emphasized) that the status of a non-place is fluid, preparing for such contingencies, but he never seems to give them any thought, as a result of which he creates the impression of being dismissive of them. Furthermore, he draws very heavily on the work of Michel de Certeau, which he simply places in the context of what he calls 'the three excesses of super-modernity', which undermines the originality of his discussion.
Auge tries to place the notion of non-places in the area of politics. This is risky, and I consider it ill-advised. First of all, he sees the status of a non-place as fluid. If it is for this quality that he believes such places are e.g. targets of terrorist attacks (a very problematic statement in this day and age) or lead to the strengthening of nationalist politics, which aim to give places their significance. But if we take his entire argument into account, it seems that they are actually protesting (in his context, as it seems that recent history invalidated parts of this hypothesis) against the way a place is used.
Tentatively I think that the book suffers from comparisons to other anthropological texts, while ignoring western historicity and being vague about a number of differences. I think that it is possible to find examples of non-places in times preceding super-modernity. How does a modern day supermarket differ from a marketplace of 400 years ago? Is a modern mom and pop store a non-place? How does a a modern day passenger differ from a traveler, and why is a 'traditional' train a place, whereas the TGV is not? Auge's text never offers us any insight into these questions, even if he employs them in his text, such as the traveler/passenger or SNCF/TGV dichotomies. By doing so in a seemingly arbitrary manner, he seems to be undermining his own argument.
The book left me nonplussed, but the fact that I wrote such a long (and likely rambling) review shows that it has the potential to challenge certain assumptions, and definitely is thought provoking, despite of its shortcomings.
Read
April 4, 2012Augé, like any number of other "theorists," is almost more of a belle-lettrist than a philosopher or social scientist. These theorists who seem to prioritize elegant writing over systematic knowledge are sometimes brilliant (Benjamin, Barthes) and sometimes blithering (Baudrillard, Certeau). I'm not quite sure which Augé is.
First of all, his definition of "non-places" strikes me as pretty suspect an deeply rooted in some of the more discreditable brands of mid-century structuralist thought. However, a number of ideas he expresses are provocative, even fascinating. I just find it somewhat bothersome that he-- as an anthropological and geographic investigator-- chooses to write his arguments through spiderwebs of Jesuitical axioms and the structure of myth rather than groundwork and legwork. As a connoisseur of spatial thought, I would compare this to Bachelard's Poetics of Space; both are totally fascinating, and almost completely inapplicable, but thought-provoking reads.
First of all, his definition of "non-places" strikes me as pretty suspect an deeply rooted in some of the more discreditable brands of mid-century structuralist thought. However, a number of ideas he expresses are provocative, even fascinating. I just find it somewhat bothersome that he-- as an anthropological and geographic investigator-- chooses to write his arguments through spiderwebs of Jesuitical axioms and the structure of myth rather than groundwork and legwork. As a connoisseur of spatial thought, I would compare this to Bachelard's Poetics of Space; both are totally fascinating, and almost completely inapplicable, but thought-provoking reads.
January 17, 2009
A marvellous discussion of supermodernity, but I'm a little skeptical of the notion of non-spaces. It seems to me that all places are potentially non-places, and all spaces that are framed as non-places in this book are potentially anthropological places too. My friend gave the most amazing example when we were discussing this: an airport is not a non-place for a person who works at the airport and goes there every day. Therefore this is a very loose definition, and to be fair Augé does acknowledge the fluidity of these definitions to a certain extent, but I still feel as though it doesn't suffice to give these loose definitions and leave it at that. I would have expected two or three more chapters in which he'd actually do something with these notions; that would have made this book a much better read.
Read
November 12, 2024I didn't get it, everytime I started to feel like I was finally getting it the next sentence would make me go "nope". Possibly because I didn't vibe with the translation. Could also just be my usual struggle with any anthropology title with the term introduction in it, somehow these always seems to get me on the struggle bus. Will revisit this review when I get my hands on a french copy.
No rating.
No rating.
June 24, 2016
I luoghi antropologici creano un sociale organico, i nonluoghi creano una contrattualità solitaria.
Libro breve ma denso, a tratti addirittura ostico, involuto. Antropologia con tratti esistenzialistici, pervasa da una sensazione di palpabile angoscia, basata sul dato incontrovertibile che la modernità (o surmodernità, come la definisce lui) è sovrabbondante, di una sovrabbondanza isterica e deleteria (strade, svincoli, ipermercati, mezzi di trasporto, i non luoghi, i luoghi di passaggio, di passaggio veloce: treni, metrò, autostrade, aerei, oppure nonluoghi cablati: il web, le comunicazione via cellulari, tv, satelliti di passaggio e interscambio acorporeo) di una sovrabbondanza straniante.
Siamo in contatto con molte più persone di quanto non lo fossero i nostri nonni, i nostri genitori, ma i nostri rapporti sono più superficiali, ci sfioriamo senza toccarci in un mondo espanso, in perenne fuga da un centro (anche esistenziale) che cambia sempre. In questo mondo sostanzialmente liquido (irresistibile il parallelo con l'altro grande sociologo dei nostri tempi: Zygmunt Bauman) espanso fino all'incredibile, dove i luoghi fisici sono, almeno in teoria, più facilmente raggiungibili che in tutti gli altri tempi della Storia, siamo incredibilmente più bloccati: dal tempo (che fugge e a cui occorre dare un senso), dallo sfiorarsi veloce che impone invece un bisogno di fermarsi e toccarsi davvero, di interagire davvero, di esistere davvero. La lezione profonda che ho tratto da questo libricino è che i non luoghi oggi abbondano, ma siamo noi, con la nostra presenza emotiva, con la nostra partecipazione non solo intellettuale ma anche sentimentale, siano noi che possiamo renderli luoghi veri, vivi, riparo dell'essere e dell'esistenza, non semplici zone di passaggio o di interscambio fatuo e superficiale. Sono sempre gli esseri umani, con la loro umanità, a fare la differenza, in ogni tempo.
Libro breve ma denso, a tratti addirittura ostico, involuto. Antropologia con tratti esistenzialistici, pervasa da una sensazione di palpabile angoscia, basata sul dato incontrovertibile che la modernità (o surmodernità, come la definisce lui) è sovrabbondante, di una sovrabbondanza isterica e deleteria (strade, svincoli, ipermercati, mezzi di trasporto, i non luoghi, i luoghi di passaggio, di passaggio veloce: treni, metrò, autostrade, aerei, oppure nonluoghi cablati: il web, le comunicazione via cellulari, tv, satelliti di passaggio e interscambio acorporeo) di una sovrabbondanza straniante.
Siamo in contatto con molte più persone di quanto non lo fossero i nostri nonni, i nostri genitori, ma i nostri rapporti sono più superficiali, ci sfioriamo senza toccarci in un mondo espanso, in perenne fuga da un centro (anche esistenziale) che cambia sempre. In questo mondo sostanzialmente liquido (irresistibile il parallelo con l'altro grande sociologo dei nostri tempi: Zygmunt Bauman) espanso fino all'incredibile, dove i luoghi fisici sono, almeno in teoria, più facilmente raggiungibili che in tutti gli altri tempi della Storia, siamo incredibilmente più bloccati: dal tempo (che fugge e a cui occorre dare un senso), dallo sfiorarsi veloce che impone invece un bisogno di fermarsi e toccarsi davvero, di interagire davvero, di esistere davvero. La lezione profonda che ho tratto da questo libricino è che i non luoghi oggi abbondano, ma siamo noi, con la nostra presenza emotiva, con la nostra partecipazione non solo intellettuale ma anche sentimentale, siano noi che possiamo renderli luoghi veri, vivi, riparo dell'essere e dell'esistenza, non semplici zone di passaggio o di interscambio fatuo e superficiale. Sono sempre gli esseri umani, con la loro umanità, a fare la differenza, in ogni tempo.
January 14, 2017
Tedioso coñazo infumable, escrito de la forma más farragosa posible para que el lector tenga la sensación de estar avanzando por una piscina de puré de guisantes. Una orgía de citas encadenadas y embebidas unas en otras y rodeadas por docenas de explicaciones conceptuales redactadas de la forma más complicada permitida por la gramática, todo ello traducido de forma descuidada. Un libro escrito para que otros filósofos digan que lo han leido y le chupen el trasero o pongan a parir a su autor dependiendo de si su director de tesis se lleva bien o mal con él. Dicho esto, resumámoslo dentro de lo posible.
Desde que tengo memoria me han fascinado los lugares impersonales. Nada me satisfacía más que cenar en un área de servicio de la autopista regresando de alguna reunión en un pueblo remoto e improbable de la Cataluña profunda. Primero porque lo pagaba mi empresa, pero sobre todo por el hecho de encontrarme en tránsito; la íntima satisfacción producida por la ilusión de estar yendo a algún sitio que provocan esta clase de lugares.
Los no-lugares de Marc Augé (que los toma de Michel de Certeau, un jesuíta que ya había palmado cuando se publicó este libro) son esta clase de lugares impersonales y uniformizadores. Se define el no-lugar como oposición al "lugar antropológico", es decir el espacio físico donde se lleva a cabo un estudio etnológico. La relación del ser humano con el espacio físico que ocupa es una de las principales tareas de la antropología; los no-lugares no permiten dicha tarea porque son espacios sin pasado, explícitamente utilitarios, en las que una pléyade de identidades se disuelven en el anonimato en el ratito que permanecen allí. Un usuario de un aeropuerto es un número, cuya identidad es importante exclusivamente a la hora de subirse al avión o de pagar el juguete que le ha comprado a su hijo porque se siente culpable por no pasar suficiente tiempo con él.
En esta categoría de no-lugares se incluyen los aeropuertos como ejemplo arquetípico, pero también las estaciones de ferrocarril, las autopistas, los hoteles de grandes cadenas internacionales o los supermercados, pero también los "lugares imaginarios" como son Tahití, Marrakech o Nueva York para alguien que sólo los ha visto en el escaparate de una agencia de viajes.
EL concepto de no-lugar resulta muy atractivo, pero o bien se queda muy corto o bien sobrepasa con creces su propósito original. Los aeropuertos son impersonales para el que pasa por allí camino de otro sitio, pero para los trabajadores del lugar suele ser una especie de catedral. Cada aeropuerto tiene sus particularidades y de hecho en la última década y pico los administradores de muchos de ellos se han esforzado en diferenciarse de alguna manera, en aportarle al viajero algo más que un Starbucks y cintas transportadoras. La existencia de tiendas libres de impuestos donde se vende principalmente alcohol, tabaco, bombones, perfumes y juguetes para niños dice mucho más del ser humano aeroportuario de lo que parece sugerir Augé.
Por otro lado, consideramos que una gasolinera o una habitación de hotel son completamente impersonales porque únicamente vemos el final del proceso. La forma en la que están colocados los Donuts y los chicles junto a la caja de la gasolinera son el resultado de cientos de horas de estudio por parte de mentes brillantes. La distribución y la decoración de la habitación de un hotel cualquiera son producto de sesudas investigaciones (y de las limitaciones impuestas por el espacio disponible, claro). Se puede alegar que la despersonalización del lugar y el absoluto desarraigo de los usuarios hacia él es lo que los convierte en no-lugar (no hay relación entre un pasajero de Vueling y el A320 que le transporta más allá de la puramente contractual, que dura lo que dura el vuelo), pero en ese caso el concepto de no-lugar como centro de concentración de anonimatos debe expandirse sobremanera hasta abarcar cualquier lugar cuya génesis se encuentre más allá de los límites del barrio donde se ubica. Es decir, un Starbucks, cualquier discoteca, la playa como destino genérico, un polígono industrial o casi cualquier ejemplo imaginable.
En resumen: leer esto ha sido un puto suplicio y encima no estoy de acuerdo con el autor. Ha sido mi primera experiencia leyendo filósofos franceses contemporáneos y espero que sea la última. Copón ya.
Desde que tengo memoria me han fascinado los lugares impersonales. Nada me satisfacía más que cenar en un área de servicio de la autopista regresando de alguna reunión en un pueblo remoto e improbable de la Cataluña profunda. Primero porque lo pagaba mi empresa, pero sobre todo por el hecho de encontrarme en tránsito; la íntima satisfacción producida por la ilusión de estar yendo a algún sitio que provocan esta clase de lugares.
Los no-lugares de Marc Augé (que los toma de Michel de Certeau, un jesuíta que ya había palmado cuando se publicó este libro) son esta clase de lugares impersonales y uniformizadores. Se define el no-lugar como oposición al "lugar antropológico", es decir el espacio físico donde se lleva a cabo un estudio etnológico. La relación del ser humano con el espacio físico que ocupa es una de las principales tareas de la antropología; los no-lugares no permiten dicha tarea porque son espacios sin pasado, explícitamente utilitarios, en las que una pléyade de identidades se disuelven en el anonimato en el ratito que permanecen allí. Un usuario de un aeropuerto es un número, cuya identidad es importante exclusivamente a la hora de subirse al avión o de pagar el juguete que le ha comprado a su hijo porque se siente culpable por no pasar suficiente tiempo con él.
En esta categoría de no-lugares se incluyen los aeropuertos como ejemplo arquetípico, pero también las estaciones de ferrocarril, las autopistas, los hoteles de grandes cadenas internacionales o los supermercados, pero también los "lugares imaginarios" como son Tahití, Marrakech o Nueva York para alguien que sólo los ha visto en el escaparate de una agencia de viajes.
EL concepto de no-lugar resulta muy atractivo, pero o bien se queda muy corto o bien sobrepasa con creces su propósito original. Los aeropuertos son impersonales para el que pasa por allí camino de otro sitio, pero para los trabajadores del lugar suele ser una especie de catedral. Cada aeropuerto tiene sus particularidades y de hecho en la última década y pico los administradores de muchos de ellos se han esforzado en diferenciarse de alguna manera, en aportarle al viajero algo más que un Starbucks y cintas transportadoras. La existencia de tiendas libres de impuestos donde se vende principalmente alcohol, tabaco, bombones, perfumes y juguetes para niños dice mucho más del ser humano aeroportuario de lo que parece sugerir Augé.
Por otro lado, consideramos que una gasolinera o una habitación de hotel son completamente impersonales porque únicamente vemos el final del proceso. La forma en la que están colocados los Donuts y los chicles junto a la caja de la gasolinera son el resultado de cientos de horas de estudio por parte de mentes brillantes. La distribución y la decoración de la habitación de un hotel cualquiera son producto de sesudas investigaciones (y de las limitaciones impuestas por el espacio disponible, claro). Se puede alegar que la despersonalización del lugar y el absoluto desarraigo de los usuarios hacia él es lo que los convierte en no-lugar (no hay relación entre un pasajero de Vueling y el A320 que le transporta más allá de la puramente contractual, que dura lo que dura el vuelo), pero en ese caso el concepto de no-lugar como centro de concentración de anonimatos debe expandirse sobremanera hasta abarcar cualquier lugar cuya génesis se encuentre más allá de los límites del barrio donde se ubica. Es decir, un Starbucks, cualquier discoteca, la playa como destino genérico, un polígono industrial o casi cualquier ejemplo imaginable.
En resumen: leer esto ha sido un puto suplicio y encima no estoy de acuerdo con el autor. Ha sido mi primera experiencia leyendo filósofos franceses contemporáneos y espero que sea la última. Copón ya.
January 25, 2023
me ha encantado. creo que leer sobre los no-lugares puede ser una manera en la que poder reconfigurar aquellos espacios por los que transitamos y pasamos día a día sin ser ni estar, propiamente
May 28, 2014
bunch of babbling and non-sense
April 10, 2016
think he should craft aphoristic tweets instead of creating something as odd as a "non-place". the thesis of this book does not make sense, especially when expanded into novella length. irrelevant examples and digressions enter, leading me to imagine the subtle purpose is for pretentious meandering.
July 12, 2020
Korisnik nemesta pronalazi svoj identitet tek u trenutku carinske kontrole, naplate drumarine na autoputu ili plaćanja kupljene robe u samoposluzi. U međuvremenu se podvrgava istim pravilima kao svi ostali: beleži iste poruke, odgovara na iste zahteve. Prostor nemesta ne stvara ni lični identitet ni međusobne odnose, već isključivo samoću i sličnost. (98)
April 14, 2012
A little gem of a meditation on the distinction between "anthropological places" formed by social bonds and collective history, and "non-places" of atomized, individual travel and consumption. This is the non-silly vein of French theory, grounded, urbane, a delight to read, crammed with provocative concepts presented in a graceful style.
Quite wonderful.
Quite wonderful.
August 5, 2020
Gerokai apardo vietos mitologiją, kuria daugybė humanitarų, nuo istorikų iki antropologų dar šventai tiki. Vietoje "įsivietinimo" (toks smarkiai sudievintas terminas lietuvių humanitarikoj) daug dažnesnės ir įdomesnės dabar yra pereinamos, laikinos erdvės, dar ne savos vietos, arba jau ne savos vietos. Įvairiems kultūros tyrinėtojams turėtų būti stalo knyga, bet kažin ar tų laikų sulauksim :)
September 7, 2021
أين أنت حين تكون في الطريق السريع أو في محطة قطار أو في مطار أو في طائرة، أو في فندق أو في موت تجاري أو في مخيم لاجئين؟ أنت في فضاء السرعة والعبور والمؤقت.
أنت لست في مكان وإنما في «اللامكان». المكان، في معناه الأنثروبولوجي، لا يكون مكانا إلا بما ينتج ويثبت فيه من رموز ومعاني، عبر المسارات والعلاقات والأفعال والأحاديث، وما ينبعث فيها من احتمالات.
كل مكان لا هوية له ثابتة، لا تنسج فيه العلاقات ولا تستمر لا ملامح تاريخية له، هو واحد من هذه «اللاأمكنة» التي أنتجتها «الحداثة المفرطة» وجعلتها من سمات هذا العصر.
الحداثة المفرطة» فرضت على أشكال الوعي الفردي أن يختبر تجارب جديدة من العزلة ترتبط، مباشرة، بظهور «اللاأمكنة» وانتشارها. هذه «اللاأمكنة» هي نقيض السكن والإقامة: من يرتادها هو، فيها، وحيد و مشابه للآخرين، في الوقت نفسه . لا يمكنه إخفاء هويته، فيها، إلا بإظهار ما يثبتها (جواز سفر، بطاقة مصرفية، إلخ...). هو، معها، في علاقة تعاقد عابر ينتهي بخروجه منها.
إن المؤلف -وهو أحد أشهر الأنثروبولوجيين المهتمين بالحياة اليومية المعاصرة- يفتح، في هذا الكتاب، آفاقا جديدة لأنثروبولوجيا «الحداثة المفرطة» التي يتوقع أن توجه الباحثين إلى دراسة نمط جديد من الفردانية ومن عزلة الإنسان المعاصر.
أنت لست في مكان وإنما في «اللامكان». المكان، في معناه الأنثروبولوجي، لا يكون مكانا إلا بما ينتج ويثبت فيه من رموز ومعاني، عبر المسارات والعلاقات والأفعال والأحاديث، وما ينبعث فيها من احتمالات.
كل مكان لا هوية له ثابتة، لا تنسج فيه العلاقات ولا تستمر لا ملامح تاريخية له، هو واحد من هذه «اللاأمكنة» التي أنتجتها «الحداثة المفرطة» وجعلتها من سمات هذا العصر.
الحداثة المفرطة» فرضت على أشكال الوعي الفردي أن يختبر تجارب جديدة من العزلة ترتبط، مباشرة، بظهور «اللاأمكنة» وانتشارها. هذه «اللاأمكنة» هي نقيض السكن والإقامة: من يرتادها هو، فيها، وحيد و مشابه للآخرين، في الوقت نفسه . لا يمكنه إخفاء هويته، فيها، إلا بإظهار ما يثبتها (جواز سفر، بطاقة مصرفية، إلخ...). هو، معها، في علاقة تعاقد عابر ينتهي بخروجه منها.
إن المؤلف -وهو أحد أشهر الأنثروبولوجيين المهتمين بالحياة اليومية المعاصرة- يفتح، في هذا الكتاب، آفاقا جديدة لأنثروبولوجيا «الحداثة المفرطة» التي يتوقع أن توجه الباحثين إلى دراسة نمط جديد من الفردانية ومن عزلة الإنسان المعاصر.
September 2, 2024
It took me 93 hours to fly from East Asia to Northeast America, with stops I planned and didn’t plan to make. Most of those sleepless hours that filled my journey from home to home were spent either on a plane or at an airport: Beijing, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and finally, Burlington in Vermont. Of the 36 hours in LA, only a handful were shared with friends and family. The rest were lost in the Byzantine LAX-it — the notorious ground transportation transit around LAX airport made worse by the new constructions that look ominously toward the 2028 Summer Olympics — and the infamously jammed I-10 that exerted a big toll on my Uber rides. The second leg from LA to Vermont was stretched by 300% thanks to Hurricane Debby and the poor management of the airlines. The canceled flights sent all exhausted passengers to shock, angst, frenzy searching for a hotel room connected with the airport through wet and dark motorways, and nervous waiting for the next possible flight, while our checked bags, the only thing bearing a material recognition of our identities besides the coldly thin and textual ID and credit cards, were withheld in an unreachable corner with much needed medicines and clothes for the unrequested overnight stay.
These spaces and hours account for the quintessential experience of what the French anthropologist Marc Augé calls “non-places” that constitute “supermodernity.” Antithetical to “anthropological places” that “create the organically social” and localized network through relational and historical construction of inter-positional dynamics, non-places annihilate all of these and instead execute a mandate of “solitary contractuality.” The alienating and temporarily liberating sensation produced by non-places derives from anonymity to which the passenger, supermarket customer, hotel occupant, slot machine player, or mall wanderer accedes. It is bookended by momentary experience of ID checks, at the security, customs, touchless pay machine, frontdesk, ticket stand, or toll booth. In and through these wordless, symbol-based, and abstract communication, circulation, and consumption, the “world thus surrender[s] to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral” and it in turn gives “the transitory occupant the illusion of being part of some grand global scheme: a fugitive glimpse of a utopian city-world” (The Guardian review).
Excess of information, image, and space. No exit. Supermodernity turns everything, every body, into a spectacle on a big screen that encapsulates all of us. Augé reminds us that “the screens of the planet daily carry a mixture of images (news, advertising and fiction) of which neither the presentation nor the purpose is identical, at least in principle, but which assemble before our eyes a universe that is relatively homogeneous in its diversity.”
Modernity features the juxtaposition of distant and distinct places, or elements of them, still differentiating the metropolis/the near from the frontier/the elsewhere, and allowing the present and the past — the chimney and the church spike, in an anthropologist’s eye — to coexist as lived reality. But supermodernity enforces an acceleration of history: “We barely have time to reach maturity before our past has become history, our individual histories belong to history writ large.” What has become of history in the “overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of references” of supermodernity? Empirically, history is “seen,” not lived, in the liminal space of an abstract reference that instigates in the prospective spectator a brief entertaining imagination. It exists on the billboards that stand tall on the side of intercity artery roads that reorganize and decentralize a town or city’s traffic, in street names and the travel catalog of magazines, to evoke not an embodied connection but a leisurely fantasy, nostalgia, and melancholy. It is flattened, though with careful designs, into a “business card” the city-world sends out to passersby as they move through the frontier of its territory, not yet even thinking about a visit.
The heterogeneity of history is as much about space as about time. The contemporary age finds itself in the parallel between the disappearance of “route describers” of premodern maps into “an ‘inventory’ of geographical knowledge” and the homogenization of temporalities into a “perpetual present” of window shopping. “History and exoticism play the same role in it as the ‘quotations’ in a written text.” This haunting paradigmatic shift from history to ahistory, modernity to supermodernity, entails a methodological change in anthropology. Not only is the “ideal” isolated area of study replaced by a hyper-connected, interdependent world in fragments, but the contemporary human-space relationship inscribed on non-places, always already mediated through a screen, has sent to crisis the socio-spatial foundation upon which to gauge the positional representativeness of the “average man.” It is the doing of anonymity, and the solitude that comes with it.
Turning toward the individual/self, Augé finds intriguing paradoxes compared to the traditional anthropological person, the average man born, or “assigned to” live, in a constrained place. He puts it very straightforwardly, “There will be no individualization
(no right to anonymity) without identity checks.” As consumers of “screen food” (my phrase) whether at home, on the road, or in a mall, we are addressed by the environ of supermodernity both individually — its instructions, directions, and admonitions directed unambiguously towards each of us — but to non-places and the power and authority of them, there is no ontological differentiation between us. We are average not because of our relative position within a given society, in relation to, say, the elite; but our average status is “defined as the user of the road, retail or banking system.” We are not equal, but the same, not in spite of, but because of the difference supermodernity permits us to possess is no more and no less than the excess of information. Homo economicus. Or, “do as others do to be yourself.”
There is negativity, even pessimism, in the definition of non-places and supermodernity. Does that mean the end of anthropology, of aesthetics, and of creativity? Not anthropology, because the ethnologists are compelled to find new ways to observe, document, and represent the milieu of working and being where the exterior and interior, the global and local, the lived and virtual, the frontier and the near are folded into and constitute each other. They need to understand the large-scale architectural space of non-places not as is, but perceive it as occupying a time between no longer and not yet (or not ever), a present whose spatial grandeur is the retrospect of future ruins. Just look at the abandoned malls, finished or semi-finished, slowly rotting on the side of motorways. Even whole cities planned to divert traffic and investment from the overly burdened capitals become ghost towns. Or high-tech industries, from IT to game, that overhire highly educated youths, only to lay them off before many have had a chance to establish a life and rid their debts. Their office spaces within an architecture and in relation to their city may have rehearsed part of this scenario before the employees noticed. Here, the anthropologist’s job is to see and listen to that rehearsal, not to forebode a catastrophe of a particular industry, but to illustrate the network of supermodernity so that those with proper tools and powers can set up policies to cushion the economic assault.
There is some perverse beauty about non-places. From films to video games to music and sculpture, art makers and writers capture the unspoken sense of solitude brought to us by the common fate of supermodernity, reinventing nostalgia and rewriting life upon existing or foreseen ruins. To create has ceased to be making something new, but “resisting the apparent obviousness of current events,” playing with time in spaces of no exit, and handling the hauntological agency of liminality.
These spaces and hours account for the quintessential experience of what the French anthropologist Marc Augé calls “non-places” that constitute “supermodernity.” Antithetical to “anthropological places” that “create the organically social” and localized network through relational and historical construction of inter-positional dynamics, non-places annihilate all of these and instead execute a mandate of “solitary contractuality.” The alienating and temporarily liberating sensation produced by non-places derives from anonymity to which the passenger, supermarket customer, hotel occupant, slot machine player, or mall wanderer accedes. It is bookended by momentary experience of ID checks, at the security, customs, touchless pay machine, frontdesk, ticket stand, or toll booth. In and through these wordless, symbol-based, and abstract communication, circulation, and consumption, the “world thus surrender[s] to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral” and it in turn gives “the transitory occupant the illusion of being part of some grand global scheme: a fugitive glimpse of a utopian city-world” (The Guardian review).
Excess of information, image, and space. No exit. Supermodernity turns everything, every body, into a spectacle on a big screen that encapsulates all of us. Augé reminds us that “the screens of the planet daily carry a mixture of images (news, advertising and fiction) of which neither the presentation nor the purpose is identical, at least in principle, but which assemble before our eyes a universe that is relatively homogeneous in its diversity.”
Modernity features the juxtaposition of distant and distinct places, or elements of them, still differentiating the metropolis/the near from the frontier/the elsewhere, and allowing the present and the past — the chimney and the church spike, in an anthropologist’s eye — to coexist as lived reality. But supermodernity enforces an acceleration of history: “We barely have time to reach maturity before our past has become history, our individual histories belong to history writ large.” What has become of history in the “overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of references” of supermodernity? Empirically, history is “seen,” not lived, in the liminal space of an abstract reference that instigates in the prospective spectator a brief entertaining imagination. It exists on the billboards that stand tall on the side of intercity artery roads that reorganize and decentralize a town or city’s traffic, in street names and the travel catalog of magazines, to evoke not an embodied connection but a leisurely fantasy, nostalgia, and melancholy. It is flattened, though with careful designs, into a “business card” the city-world sends out to passersby as they move through the frontier of its territory, not yet even thinking about a visit.
The heterogeneity of history is as much about space as about time. The contemporary age finds itself in the parallel between the disappearance of “route describers” of premodern maps into “an ‘inventory’ of geographical knowledge” and the homogenization of temporalities into a “perpetual present” of window shopping. “History and exoticism play the same role in it as the ‘quotations’ in a written text.” This haunting paradigmatic shift from history to ahistory, modernity to supermodernity, entails a methodological change in anthropology. Not only is the “ideal” isolated area of study replaced by a hyper-connected, interdependent world in fragments, but the contemporary human-space relationship inscribed on non-places, always already mediated through a screen, has sent to crisis the socio-spatial foundation upon which to gauge the positional representativeness of the “average man.” It is the doing of anonymity, and the solitude that comes with it.
Turning toward the individual/self, Augé finds intriguing paradoxes compared to the traditional anthropological person, the average man born, or “assigned to” live, in a constrained place. He puts it very straightforwardly, “There will be no individualization
(no right to anonymity) without identity checks.” As consumers of “screen food” (my phrase) whether at home, on the road, or in a mall, we are addressed by the environ of supermodernity both individually — its instructions, directions, and admonitions directed unambiguously towards each of us — but to non-places and the power and authority of them, there is no ontological differentiation between us. We are average not because of our relative position within a given society, in relation to, say, the elite; but our average status is “defined as the user of the road, retail or banking system.” We are not equal, but the same, not in spite of, but because of the difference supermodernity permits us to possess is no more and no less than the excess of information. Homo economicus. Or, “do as others do to be yourself.”
There is negativity, even pessimism, in the definition of non-places and supermodernity. Does that mean the end of anthropology, of aesthetics, and of creativity? Not anthropology, because the ethnologists are compelled to find new ways to observe, document, and represent the milieu of working and being where the exterior and interior, the global and local, the lived and virtual, the frontier and the near are folded into and constitute each other. They need to understand the large-scale architectural space of non-places not as is, but perceive it as occupying a time between no longer and not yet (or not ever), a present whose spatial grandeur is the retrospect of future ruins. Just look at the abandoned malls, finished or semi-finished, slowly rotting on the side of motorways. Even whole cities planned to divert traffic and investment from the overly burdened capitals become ghost towns. Or high-tech industries, from IT to game, that overhire highly educated youths, only to lay them off before many have had a chance to establish a life and rid their debts. Their office spaces within an architecture and in relation to their city may have rehearsed part of this scenario before the employees noticed. Here, the anthropologist’s job is to see and listen to that rehearsal, not to forebode a catastrophe of a particular industry, but to illustrate the network of supermodernity so that those with proper tools and powers can set up policies to cushion the economic assault.
There is some perverse beauty about non-places. From films to video games to music and sculpture, art makers and writers capture the unspoken sense of solitude brought to us by the common fate of supermodernity, reinventing nostalgia and rewriting life upon existing or foreseen ruins. To create has ceased to be making something new, but “resisting the apparent obviousness of current events,” playing with time in spaces of no exit, and handling the hauntological agency of liminality.
August 29, 2025
A super-interesting if also super-dense text analysing supermodernity, which Augé demonstrates as a force that turns history into a spectacle by providing us access to an excess of information – events, spaces, and people – which in turn divorces us from our immediate context. This state of hyper-connectivity is almost paradoxically atomising, and the increased focus on individual points of references and individual meaning-making creates room for end/mindless consumption. This consumption, Augé writes, is facilitated by the proliferation of 'non-places', which unlike anthropological spaces are formed neither by social connection nor collective history, but shaped rather by the language of advertising.
Today, we spend an increasingly large amount of time in 'non-places': airports, hotel rooms, elevators, motorways, trains, and phone screens are all by and large just nodes connecting us to the centers of consumption that megacities are (no wonder then that the quality and development of 'non-places' attests to the quality of the megacity). And within the megacity, history – and actual historical anthropological places – also become objects of consumption.
Augé posits that these 'non-places' – both overbearingly familiar and claustrophobically alien – suspend us in a state of never being home, if home is where we come to rest. In putting us to unrest (my words), they further create a new experience of solitude and a purported anonymity, though by and large such anonymity is only granted once we prove our identity (e.g. with a passport or credit card). Further, supermodernity also recreates the individual as the 'average person'. The language of 'non-places' addresses, instructs and directs us all unambiguously, but in this address it also redefines us merely as users of these 'non-places'; not equal but the same, nothing more and nothing less.
Of course, it is not all consumption; for those who work there, the airport, the hotel and the supermarket check-out are all anthropological places. Augé addresses this in his updated introduction by highlighting that 'non-places' are fluid, and that there are no 'pure' places or 'non-places'. I found this caveat a bit difficult to reconcile with, but that's probably because the book's top-heavy topology and accumulation of theory to ground an argument presented at the very close makes it difficult to recall.
Overall, this is an absorbing theory that points us to the increasing sameness of things, adds a layer of analysis the end of originality/creativity/history and the rise of spectacle, and points us to the need for doing anthropology – and architecture – differently. However, it feels incomplete for not attempting to also understand how supermodernity and 'non-places' came to be, without grounding in a materialist analysis, and without any proper beginnings of a call-to-action.
Today, we spend an increasingly large amount of time in 'non-places': airports, hotel rooms, elevators, motorways, trains, and phone screens are all by and large just nodes connecting us to the centers of consumption that megacities are (no wonder then that the quality and development of 'non-places' attests to the quality of the megacity). And within the megacity, history – and actual historical anthropological places – also become objects of consumption.
Augé posits that these 'non-places' – both overbearingly familiar and claustrophobically alien – suspend us in a state of never being home, if home is where we come to rest. In putting us to unrest (my words), they further create a new experience of solitude and a purported anonymity, though by and large such anonymity is only granted once we prove our identity (e.g. with a passport or credit card). Further, supermodernity also recreates the individual as the 'average person'. The language of 'non-places' addresses, instructs and directs us all unambiguously, but in this address it also redefines us merely as users of these 'non-places'; not equal but the same, nothing more and nothing less.
Of course, it is not all consumption; for those who work there, the airport, the hotel and the supermarket check-out are all anthropological places. Augé addresses this in his updated introduction by highlighting that 'non-places' are fluid, and that there are no 'pure' places or 'non-places'. I found this caveat a bit difficult to reconcile with, but that's probably because the book's top-heavy topology and accumulation of theory to ground an argument presented at the very close makes it difficult to recall.
Overall, this is an absorbing theory that points us to the increasing sameness of things, adds a layer of analysis the end of originality/creativity/history and the rise of spectacle, and points us to the need for doing anthropology – and architecture – differently. However, it feels incomplete for not attempting to also understand how supermodernity and 'non-places' came to be, without grounding in a materialist analysis, and without any proper beginnings of a call-to-action.
January 16, 2024
This book brims with the kind of academic abstractions so theoretical as to be neither certifiable nor falsifiable, and it often kinda feels like really dense spitballing rather than the culmination of fieldwork, but I don’t really have the wherewithal to demonstrate any of that. The vocabulary isn’t all that difficult, but words seem to take on secret new grad school definitions when I can barely make out a demonstrative referent or I feel like I’m missing a hidden glossary.
Here’s a typifying snippet:
“Cultures ‘work’ like green timber, and (for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons) never constitute finished totalities; while individuals, however simple we imagine them to be, are never quite simple enough to become detached from the order that assigns them a position: they express its totality only from a certain angle.”
I can just glimpse what this overwrought excerpt might be saying, which, like every other muddy analogy in the book, is in the middle of a MUCH longer paragraph. But what about this supposedly concretizing metaphor— what are the some of the specifically ‘extrinsic reasons’ that ‘green timber’ does not ‘constitute a totality’? I haven’t the foggiest fucking idea. Is he referencing the green lumber fallacy? Is he aware of the connotative distinctions between timber and lumber? Does he prefer the look of cedar to green-treated pine? Is he looking to gain low-maintenance space for entertaining by adding a deck to his backyard?
Regardless, I’m okay with the basic decipherable premise that non-spaces are public places that people pass through for reasons other than socializing— elevators, airports, subways and other public transit, even digital hypermarkets; figuring out how to practice anthropology in these places is a new frontier. But the thrust of any kind of coherent structuralist argument beyond that is lost on me.
Tbh, I recall laboring over and being stymied by books like these in 400-level classes and have been suspicious of them ever since. I’m obviously not original in complaining about pedagogical jargon. Satirizing it was an old chestnut by the time Calvin & Hobbes did it with Dick & Jane. In the parts of this book where theory becomes legible, there are some mildly thought-provoking ethnological passages (‘the most recent migration forms the founding myth of a society’) and some cute little aphorisms in here (‘the first frontier is always the horizon’), but I don’t really see how this reading is super essential, let alone how it necessitates this second edition thirty years on, unless Augé has so completely cornered this half-acre of human understanding that there is no other work on the topic.
Probably like most of the people who have this edition, I got this book from my Verso book club subscription, and I am trying to work through the giant backlog of ebooks they give out every month. This one really slowed me down.
Here’s a typifying snippet:
“Cultures ‘work’ like green timber, and (for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons) never constitute finished totalities; while individuals, however simple we imagine them to be, are never quite simple enough to become detached from the order that assigns them a position: they express its totality only from a certain angle.”
I can just glimpse what this overwrought excerpt might be saying, which, like every other muddy analogy in the book, is in the middle of a MUCH longer paragraph. But what about this supposedly concretizing metaphor— what are the some of the specifically ‘extrinsic reasons’ that ‘green timber’ does not ‘constitute a totality’? I haven’t the foggiest fucking idea. Is he referencing the green lumber fallacy? Is he aware of the connotative distinctions between timber and lumber? Does he prefer the look of cedar to green-treated pine? Is he looking to gain low-maintenance space for entertaining by adding a deck to his backyard?
Regardless, I’m okay with the basic decipherable premise that non-spaces are public places that people pass through for reasons other than socializing— elevators, airports, subways and other public transit, even digital hypermarkets; figuring out how to practice anthropology in these places is a new frontier. But the thrust of any kind of coherent structuralist argument beyond that is lost on me.
Tbh, I recall laboring over and being stymied by books like these in 400-level classes and have been suspicious of them ever since. I’m obviously not original in complaining about pedagogical jargon. Satirizing it was an old chestnut by the time Calvin & Hobbes did it with Dick & Jane. In the parts of this book where theory becomes legible, there are some mildly thought-provoking ethnological passages (‘the most recent migration forms the founding myth of a society’) and some cute little aphorisms in here (‘the first frontier is always the horizon’), but I don’t really see how this reading is super essential, let alone how it necessitates this second edition thirty years on, unless Augé has so completely cornered this half-acre of human understanding that there is no other work on the topic.
Probably like most of the people who have this edition, I got this book from my Verso book club subscription, and I am trying to work through the giant backlog of ebooks they give out every month. This one really slowed me down.
July 31, 2025
One of the most clear and interesting approaches to modern society and space.
May 4, 2024
My fault for not knowing going in that it would take an anthropological lens of "liminal spaces", and in that regard I found the text rather challenging (likely due to my unfamiliarity with the field) in spite of its brief length. I'd wager that anyone interested in this due to its subject matter will feel the same if not an anthropologist, but even so it's well worth pushing through because all the anthropology-specific technics Augé frontloads serve to make the back-half of the text dense and weighted (despite the 'liminality' of its topic) with analysis in a way that much of the popular literature of "liminal spaces" falls deeply short of. Non-Places is then perhaps the first truly edifying work on said topic I have come across, which is all the more impressive given it was first published in 1995; youtube video essays have a long way to go.
March 4, 2018
اللا أمكنة مفهوم يحاول من خلاله مارك أوجيه التفرقة بين المكان الانثروبولوجي الذي يتميز بأنه هوياتي وعلائقي وتاريخي الذي يشتبك مع الأفراد الموجودين داخل حدوده ويدخل في علاقة جدليه معهم بحيث يتمايز ثقافيا واجتماعيا عن غيره مما يجعله صالح كموضوع للإثنولوجي وبين اللأمكنة المعقمة من التاريخ (حسب تعبير المسيري) التي تشئ الأفراد وتطمس هويتهم الفردية حيث لا تهتم بهم إلا أثناء الخروج أو الدخول منها مثل المطارات والمولات والطرق السريعة والتي على عكس المكان الانثروبولوجي التي يتواصل ذاتيا من الأنسان فإنها تلجأ لوسيط كشاشات التلفاز او لو حة الاعلانات من أجل توصيل التعليمات والارشادات لروادها بلغة بسيطة وسطحية
الكتاب جيد ويحتاج قراءة ثانية حيث لا أزعم أني فهمته بالكامل
الكتاب جيد ويحتاج قراءة ثانية حيث لا أزعم أني فهمته بالكامل
October 8, 2025
Augé escribe como un turista.
Menos mal que tenemos a Briggite Vasallo para recordarnos que “sí que hay personas que permanecen en esos “no lugares”, personas que no tienen la posibilidad o el privilegio de pasar por ellos de forma rápida y transitoria”. Para las trabajadores de los hoteles, los aeropuertos o los supermercados estos espacios son lugares de socialización, son su cotidianeidad y son los turistas y los privilegiados los que tienen esa vision de estos espacios como algo transitorio. O los aeropuertos, ¿cómo negar que crean identidades y son centrales en las historias de vida de las personas obligadas a emigrar?
Sumado a lo que dice mi amigo Miroslaw Aleksander en los comentarios.
“This beckons at the old conundrum of the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it: if I visit a supermarket, and no one is there to identify me, have I visited the supermarket? Barring the question of self-consciousness (I identified myself in the supermarket), which Auge does by separating an individual from a society, this is not, again, limited only to super-modernity, but to a broader question of how society functions (also think of taboo places that existed, had an anthropological role as myths, but were not ventured into)”.
“Auge tries to place the notion of non-places in the area of politics. This is risky, and I consider it ill-advised. First of all, he sees the status of a non-place as fluid. If it is for this quality that he believes such places (…) lead to the strengthening of nationalist politics, which aim to give places their significance. But if we take his entire argument into account, it seems that they are actually protesting (in his context, as it seems that recent history invalidated parts of this hypothesis) against the way a place is used”.
Tiene cosas buenas tho “Espectadores de sí mismos, turistas de lo íntimo, no podrían imputar a la nostalgia o a las fantasías de la memoria los cambios de los que da testimonio objetivamente el espacio en el cual continúan viviendo y que no es más el espacio en el que vivían.”
“El lenguaje político es naturalmente espacial”.
“¿qué es lo que he venido a hacer aquí?", introducen entre el viajero-espectador y el espacio del paisaje que él recorre o contempla una ruptura que le impide ver allí un lugar, reencontrarse en él plenamente, aun si trata de colmar ese vacío con las informaciones múltiples y detalladas que le proponen las guías turísticas...o los relatos de viajes.”
“El viaje (aquel del cual el etnólogo desconfía hasta el punto de "odiarlo") construye una relación ficticia entre mirada y paisaje”.
“Las radios privadas hacen la publicidad de los grandes supermercados; los grandes supermercados la de las radios privadas. Las estaciones de servicio de los lugares de vacaciones ofrecen viajes a los Estados Unidos y la radio nos lo informa. Las revistas de las compañías aéreas hacen la publicidad de los hoteles que hacen la publicidad de las compañías aéreas... y lo interesante es que todos los consumidores de espacio se encuentran así atrapados en los ecos y las imágenes”.
Menos mal que tenemos a Briggite Vasallo para recordarnos que “sí que hay personas que permanecen en esos “no lugares”, personas que no tienen la posibilidad o el privilegio de pasar por ellos de forma rápida y transitoria”. Para las trabajadores de los hoteles, los aeropuertos o los supermercados estos espacios son lugares de socialización, son su cotidianeidad y son los turistas y los privilegiados los que tienen esa vision de estos espacios como algo transitorio. O los aeropuertos, ¿cómo negar que crean identidades y son centrales en las historias de vida de las personas obligadas a emigrar?
Sumado a lo que dice mi amigo Miroslaw Aleksander en los comentarios.
“This beckons at the old conundrum of the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it: if I visit a supermarket, and no one is there to identify me, have I visited the supermarket? Barring the question of self-consciousness (I identified myself in the supermarket), which Auge does by separating an individual from a society, this is not, again, limited only to super-modernity, but to a broader question of how society functions (also think of taboo places that existed, had an anthropological role as myths, but were not ventured into)”.
“Auge tries to place the notion of non-places in the area of politics. This is risky, and I consider it ill-advised. First of all, he sees the status of a non-place as fluid. If it is for this quality that he believes such places (…) lead to the strengthening of nationalist politics, which aim to give places their significance. But if we take his entire argument into account, it seems that they are actually protesting (in his context, as it seems that recent history invalidated parts of this hypothesis) against the way a place is used”.
Tiene cosas buenas tho “Espectadores de sí mismos, turistas de lo íntimo, no podrían imputar a la nostalgia o a las fantasías de la memoria los cambios de los que da testimonio objetivamente el espacio en el cual continúan viviendo y que no es más el espacio en el que vivían.”
“El lenguaje político es naturalmente espacial”.
“¿qué es lo que he venido a hacer aquí?", introducen entre el viajero-espectador y el espacio del paisaje que él recorre o contempla una ruptura que le impide ver allí un lugar, reencontrarse en él plenamente, aun si trata de colmar ese vacío con las informaciones múltiples y detalladas que le proponen las guías turísticas...o los relatos de viajes.”
“El viaje (aquel del cual el etnólogo desconfía hasta el punto de "odiarlo") construye una relación ficticia entre mirada y paisaje”.
“Las radios privadas hacen la publicidad de los grandes supermercados; los grandes supermercados la de las radios privadas. Las estaciones de servicio de los lugares de vacaciones ofrecen viajes a los Estados Unidos y la radio nos lo informa. Las revistas de las compañías aéreas hacen la publicidad de los hoteles que hacen la publicidad de las compañías aéreas... y lo interesante es que todos los consumidores de espacio se encuentran así atrapados en los ecos y las imágenes”.
April 30, 2025
Ich habe lange darüber nachgedacht, was mich an diesem Buch so unfassbar sauer gemacht hat und warum ich jede Sekunde des Lesens gehasst habe: Augé bringt in jedem einzelnen Satz so unfassbar viele vage Begriffe (Mensch, Technologie, das Außen, Zeit, Konzeption, Eklektizismus) unter, dass man bei jedem Begriff rätselraten muss, was er konkret meinte, damit man weiterlesen kann. Das ist nach einer Weile so unfassbar anstrengend, weil man daraud angewiesen ist, jedes Wort korrekt interpretiert zu haben, und das ist in etwa so gut machbar wie Kaffeesatzlesen. Ich habe nichts gegen komplexe Bücher und lange Sätze, aber ich hasse vage Sprache, und das hier ist wirklich das Allerschlimmste. Der dahinterliegende Gedanke ist interessant und anregend, aber niemand sollte sich dafür diesem Buch ausliefern müssen.
December 15, 2021
Marc Augé’s now classic analysis in Non-Places merits regular revisiting, in part because of its clarity and in part because of its careful distinguishing of its concepts. It’s not in any way novel to note that social theory has been marked by a spatial turn, and especially so in the 1990s with the growing awareness of analysts such as David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre and Ed Soja and a growing engagement with spatially oriented post-colonial analyses, such as Gloria Anzaldua’s, linked to notions of borderlands and third space. Some of this work developed relatively novel insights within a wider post- tendency in social theory, in other settings these analysts developed ideas that had been emerging in disciplines such as geography where Yi-Fu Tuan’s notions of placelessness were explored in the context of late capitalism.
Augé’s work remains important in part because he sets up a set of distinctions between history and anthropology as exploring the Other – in time and place, so that anthropology grapples with the Other now, in a distinction he sees as emphasising the near and the elsewhere. The distinction he sets up is not just between place and no-place, but between anthropological place and non-place, where his reading of anthropology is paradoxical. “’Anthropological place’ is formed by individual identities, through complicities of language, local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how; non-place creates the shared identity of passengers, customers and Sunday drivers.” (p101) The paradox of this anthropological place is that discipline’s tendency, as Augé notes, to treat its individuals as representative of all their people – hence the recurrent use of the definite article (as in the Nuer – to invoke Evans-Pritchard).
It’s the particularity and ‘anthropological place’ that Augé highlights in this contrast, where his non-place (and its collective identify of ‘passengers, customers and Sunday drivers’) is marked by three forms of excess – as he calls is an overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of referents. These excesses then produce places where individuality and specificity is suspended from the point of entry to the cash register, departure gate or TGV terminal.
It is very much an essay, exploring ideas alluding to De Certeau (often) and some of the classics of anthropology (Marcel Mauss, for instance, and his uncle Emile Durkheim) but intriguingly missing other spatial analysts – Lefebvre among them – and for all its engagements with ideas of the time, sticking clearly to binary logic in building its case (which may explain in part the absence of Lefebvre). As an essay, it is provocative, sowing the seeds of ideas and notions, rather than developing a fully worked through theoretical rethinking. His notion of supermodernity also suggests some discomfort with the powerful postmodern theorising of the early 1990s.
As with any good essay, I’m left with problems, questions, musings – especially as to ways these ideas might have an impact on the ways we think about the conventional objects of anthropology – those colonised Others – in late capitalist, supermodernity with it tendency to the uniformity of identity. Re-visiting after 25 years and in new political and cultural contexts reminds me of the power of a good provocation.
The point is not to condemn supermodernity – this is no jeremiad – or to lament, but to define these new places, to suggest that not only are these spaces becoming more prevalent (a visit to almost any sports stadium will reinforce that) but that we may need to re-think some of our approaches to scholarship and scholarly practice if we want to engage with and make more sense of them. It’s well worth the return.
Augé’s work remains important in part because he sets up a set of distinctions between history and anthropology as exploring the Other – in time and place, so that anthropology grapples with the Other now, in a distinction he sees as emphasising the near and the elsewhere. The distinction he sets up is not just between place and no-place, but between anthropological place and non-place, where his reading of anthropology is paradoxical. “’Anthropological place’ is formed by individual identities, through complicities of language, local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how; non-place creates the shared identity of passengers, customers and Sunday drivers.” (p101) The paradox of this anthropological place is that discipline’s tendency, as Augé notes, to treat its individuals as representative of all their people – hence the recurrent use of the definite article (as in the Nuer – to invoke Evans-Pritchard).
It’s the particularity and ‘anthropological place’ that Augé highlights in this contrast, where his non-place (and its collective identify of ‘passengers, customers and Sunday drivers’) is marked by three forms of excess – as he calls is an overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of referents. These excesses then produce places where individuality and specificity is suspended from the point of entry to the cash register, departure gate or TGV terminal.
It is very much an essay, exploring ideas alluding to De Certeau (often) and some of the classics of anthropology (Marcel Mauss, for instance, and his uncle Emile Durkheim) but intriguingly missing other spatial analysts – Lefebvre among them – and for all its engagements with ideas of the time, sticking clearly to binary logic in building its case (which may explain in part the absence of Lefebvre). As an essay, it is provocative, sowing the seeds of ideas and notions, rather than developing a fully worked through theoretical rethinking. His notion of supermodernity also suggests some discomfort with the powerful postmodern theorising of the early 1990s.
As with any good essay, I’m left with problems, questions, musings – especially as to ways these ideas might have an impact on the ways we think about the conventional objects of anthropology – those colonised Others – in late capitalist, supermodernity with it tendency to the uniformity of identity. Re-visiting after 25 years and in new political and cultural contexts reminds me of the power of a good provocation.
The point is not to condemn supermodernity – this is no jeremiad – or to lament, but to define these new places, to suggest that not only are these spaces becoming more prevalent (a visit to almost any sports stadium will reinforce that) but that we may need to re-think some of our approaches to scholarship and scholarly practice if we want to engage with and make more sense of them. It’s well worth the return.
March 3, 2015
Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity is fascinating. His book is useful because it offers a theoretical framework for understanding why we think of some places the way we do, in particular there is a description of places that can put us in contact with a social structure, because there is a very close, consubstantial link between space and social organization.
At the same time, he noticed the proliferation, in the contemporary world, of spaces in which no lasting social relations are established (transit spaces, spaces people pass through), he suggested calling those spaces non-places to suggest that in those contexts there were a total absence of symbolic ties, and evident social deficits.
''Clearly the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have these spaces. Although the two sets of relations overlap to a large extent, and in any case officially (individuals travel, make purchases, relax), they are still not confused with one another; for non-places mediate a whole mass of relations, with the self and with others, which are only indirectly connected with their purposes. As anthropological places create the organically, so non-places create solitary contractuality.''
''If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relation, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. The hypothesis advanced here is that supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position. A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hospital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhuman conditions (hotels chains and squats […]''
At the same time, he noticed the proliferation, in the contemporary world, of spaces in which no lasting social relations are established (transit spaces, spaces people pass through), he suggested calling those spaces non-places to suggest that in those contexts there were a total absence of symbolic ties, and evident social deficits.
''Clearly the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have these spaces. Although the two sets of relations overlap to a large extent, and in any case officially (individuals travel, make purchases, relax), they are still not confused with one another; for non-places mediate a whole mass of relations, with the self and with others, which are only indirectly connected with their purposes. As anthropological places create the organically, so non-places create solitary contractuality.''
''If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relation, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. The hypothesis advanced here is that supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position. A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hospital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhuman conditions (hotels chains and squats […]''
September 11, 2024
The important point of this book is that we are spending ever increasing amounts of time in non-places. A non-place is somewhere like a motorway, supermarket, or car park, these places or non-places are characterised by being non-personal, often transactional, of no historic importance, and instil a sense of solitude to those using them. This is in direct contrast to a ‘place’ such as a market, park, or bar, which inherently instils a sense of community to those that use them. This idea if properly fleshed out could lead to a very engaging read. Unfortunately, the majority of this book focuses on defining the meaning of anthropological ‘place’, which while defining it is necessary to intelligibly understand what is meant by ‘space’, ‘place’, and ‘non-place’ so much time is spent languishing over this definition that it leaves you feeling like you are reading a non-book.
October 29, 2012
Even at 119 pages, the book seems too long for the idea. Most of what is original in the argument comes together in the last quarter, and while it features some interesting embroideries (the textual character of non-places, for example), even that isn't exactly mind-blowingly new stuff.
Of course, the problem might be that I'm just not that concerned with the intra-disciplinary crises of anthropology.
Of course, the problem might be that I'm just not that concerned with the intra-disciplinary crises of anthropology.
February 3, 2019
I thought this was so fun!!!
February 10, 2022
An assigned reading for one of my classes, it reflects on the consequences homogenization can have when applied to the design process of architecture.
November 3, 2025
els rumors són certs i l'annie ernaux va moldre el pebre: aquest llibre és un flopot. van trobar el cul mort del marc augé quan visità 1. el carrer major de lleida 2. el meridià de greenwich a l'ap-2 entre lleida i saragossa 3. el caminant de sidamon a l'a-2. els dos últims són llocs de trànsit, sense relació amb el passat, als quals ens aproximem de forma distant i verbalment declarativa, per tant, no haurien de ser llocs antropològics, però....no tenen una història i una iconografia de per si sols, potser? el meridià no ens situa en un tot antropològic com diu augé que feia la modernitat mentre cita baudelaire?? i en el cas del carrer major: el seu nom és una dixi d'un emplaçament històric (vegeu les palles que es fa augé amb els carrers que se diuen tipo «plaça de l'ajuntament»), però no s'ha convertit en un lloc de pas, amb uns horaris acotats, limitats a interaccions merament comercials??
el que més me fa patir tossis és que si l'oposició dels llocs antropològics als no-llocs no xucla ni mulla, com deu ser la hipermodernitat?? i bueno ja quan parla de l'«home promig» i el relaciona amb els no-llocs....caragola meua estigmatitza més la classe obrera i tracta-la més de lumpen si vols <3
tota aquesta anàlisi feta des del punt de vista de l'antropologia i l'etnologia sense adoptar un punt de vista molt més material centrat en la relació entre l'espai (noció q l'Augé critica per «abstracta», jo dic que perquè ell és pedant) i els mitjans de producció i els llocs de consum és bastant absurda. sí que l'oposició lloc-no lloc obre reflexions interessants i més si l'unim a «l'estrabisme metodològic» (una cosa quina puta merda de nom per dir que has d'estar atent a dues coses alhora???) de l'etnologia que exposa a l'epíleg. amb tot, trobo que els passatges que cita de michel de certeau i de chateaubriand sobre l'espai són més interessants que res del que diu ell.
per mi la conclusió és que tot lloc sí que és antropològic pel sol fet que pot generar història tant col·lectiva com individual: els aeroports no tenen història de l'11-s ençà?? l'estació d'atocha no té història?? els trens de renfe que fan tard cada dia plens de gom a gom no són la història d'un descontentament col·lectiu i prejudicis individuals?? etc etc els barris de cases barates d'arreu de l'estat espanyol no estan també desposseïts de relació amb el passat segons augé i no són història potser??
sí que tinc ganes, però, de llegir més sobre la hipermodernitat. trobo que obre la porta a idees interessants com el tema de la sobreestimulació i tal. si segons ell la hipermodernitat és coses passant absolutament tota l'estona i l'individu sentint que la seua història personal va lligada a la col·lectiva, com ajuntem això a l'alienació de tanta gent?? o del sorgiment de tantes ganes de convertir la teua vida en una narració plena de simbolismes que ens krissegem de la màniga?? que complicat i jo ja m'he cansat d'escriure, mireu el programa de la núria moliner a 3cat d'arquitectura.
només hi afegeixo que als no-llocs els mar i cels hi fan cruising els mar i cels i els mar i cels son com les paneroles sobrevisquent el meteorit dels dinosaures. i els mar i cels estanejant els trens també trenquen això dels no-llocs, n'hi ha que fan viatges per agafar segons quins trens a posta i ara que han obert la botiga de tmb a sagrada família espera't!!!
el que més me fa patir tossis és que si l'oposició dels llocs antropològics als no-llocs no xucla ni mulla, com deu ser la hipermodernitat?? i bueno ja quan parla de l'«home promig» i el relaciona amb els no-llocs....caragola meua estigmatitza més la classe obrera i tracta-la més de lumpen si vols <3
tota aquesta anàlisi feta des del punt de vista de l'antropologia i l'etnologia sense adoptar un punt de vista molt més material centrat en la relació entre l'espai (noció q l'Augé critica per «abstracta», jo dic que perquè ell és pedant) i els mitjans de producció i els llocs de consum és bastant absurda. sí que l'oposició lloc-no lloc obre reflexions interessants i més si l'unim a «l'estrabisme metodològic» (una cosa quina puta merda de nom per dir que has d'estar atent a dues coses alhora???) de l'etnologia que exposa a l'epíleg. amb tot, trobo que els passatges que cita de michel de certeau i de chateaubriand sobre l'espai són més interessants que res del que diu ell.
per mi la conclusió és que tot lloc sí que és antropològic pel sol fet que pot generar història tant col·lectiva com individual: els aeroports no tenen història de l'11-s ençà?? l'estació d'atocha no té història?? els trens de renfe que fan tard cada dia plens de gom a gom no són la història d'un descontentament col·lectiu i prejudicis individuals?? etc etc els barris de cases barates d'arreu de l'estat espanyol no estan també desposseïts de relació amb el passat segons augé i no són història potser??
sí que tinc ganes, però, de llegir més sobre la hipermodernitat. trobo que obre la porta a idees interessants com el tema de la sobreestimulació i tal. si segons ell la hipermodernitat és coses passant absolutament tota l'estona i l'individu sentint que la seua història personal va lligada a la col·lectiva, com ajuntem això a l'alienació de tanta gent?? o del sorgiment de tantes ganes de convertir la teua vida en una narració plena de simbolismes que ens krissegem de la màniga?? que complicat i jo ja m'he cansat d'escriure, mireu el programa de la núria moliner a 3cat d'arquitectura.
només hi afegeixo que als no-llocs els mar i cels hi fan cruising els mar i cels i els mar i cels son com les paneroles sobrevisquent el meteorit dels dinosaures. i els mar i cels estanejant els trens també trenquen això dels no-llocs, n'hi ha que fan viatges per agafar segons quins trens a posta i ara que han obert la botiga de tmb a sagrada família espera't!!!
December 20, 2021
"What he is confronted with, finally, is an image of himself, but in truth it is a pretty strange image. The only face to be seen, the only voice to be heard, in the silent dialogue he holds with the landscape-text addressed to him along with others, are his own: the face and voice of a solitude made all the more baffling by the fact that it echoes millions of others [...] The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations only solitude and similitude."
Soothing to encounter by mere accident a book, which captures the feelings of confusion and uneasiness that overcame me when first entering the artificially lit tunnels of the London Underground. Flowing through the motions of the mechanical ballet of anonymous masses during rush hour, who only directed by signposts follow each others movement without paying attention to the other, but in sync, the conceptualization of non-places allowed me to move past semi-accurate reflections of Tube culture as hypercapitalist soulless bullshit, simultaneously reinforcing my silly small-town-woman reflections and putting some perspective into my thinking. An honest relief to a restless mind trying to make sense of the 'urban condition' she finds herself in ((:
Soothing to encounter by mere accident a book, which captures the feelings of confusion and uneasiness that overcame me when first entering the artificially lit tunnels of the London Underground. Flowing through the motions of the mechanical ballet of anonymous masses during rush hour, who only directed by signposts follow each others movement without paying attention to the other, but in sync, the conceptualization of non-places allowed me to move past semi-accurate reflections of Tube culture as hypercapitalist soulless bullshit, simultaneously reinforcing my silly small-town-woman reflections and putting some perspective into my thinking. An honest relief to a restless mind trying to make sense of the 'urban condition' she finds herself in ((:
January 6, 2023
Texto rebuscado podría decir.
Los no lugares, viniendo de la rama de la arquitectura, es un termino conocido para mi y es lo que me llamo la atención este libro.
Me gusta mucho como el autor, describe estos no-espacios desde la perspectiva antropología y social, pero lo veo muy rebuscado a la hora de redactarlo.
Interesante análisis que hace el autor, lo recomiendo, pero ten paciencia al leerlo.
Los no lugares, viniendo de la rama de la arquitectura, es un termino conocido para mi y es lo que me llamo la atención este libro.
Me gusta mucho como el autor, describe estos no-espacios desde la perspectiva antropología y social, pero lo veo muy rebuscado a la hora de redactarlo.
Interesante análisis que hace el autor, lo recomiendo, pero ten paciencia al leerlo.
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