Virtual Patriotism and the Sociology of Space

Time, place, and space are rarely neutral. While the theoretical physicist qualifies the spacetime continuum as a neutral fact, he is a social being and as such space, time, and place means more than a neutral fact to him. More than simply uncarved wood, place and time is carved, must be carved, and meaning is to be found. Thus, he enters the social space. Perhaps he works at a national space agency and comes home to a wife. Spacetime is rarely just spacetime.

Being patriotic means loyalty and pride in a space. It can easily give way to chauvinism. Am I proud of this space? Well, what is this space, this time, in spacetime? A city, a state or a city-state?

Henri Lefebvre, a sociologist of social space, writes in The Right to the City (1968):

The city predominates and yet it is no longer the City-State of antiquity. There are three different terms: society, State and city. In this urban system each city tends to constitute itself as an enclosed self-contained, self-functioning system. The city preserves the organic character of community which comes from the village and which translates itself into a corporate organization.

The State is centralized power designed to keep cities in order, with success and failure. The city is derived from villages and villagers. But what exactly is meant by city?

We therefore here propose a first definition of the city as a projection of society on the ground, that is, not only on the actual site, but […] perceived and conceived by thought […] What is inscribed and projected is not only a far order, a social whole, a mode of production, a general code, it is also a time, or rather, times, [and] rhythms. The city is heard as much as music as it is read as a discursive writing. […] the city as the ensemble of differences between cities. […] another definition, of plurality, coexistence and simultaneity in the urban of patterns, ways of living urban life (the small house, the large social housing estates, to-ownership, location, daily life and its changes for intellectuals, craftsmen, shopkeepers, workers, etc.).

A city is a living organism of thoughts, infrastructure, designated zones, dedicated spaces, and roles, of festivities and mourning. Social needs and human energy need to be channeled:

Social needs have an anthropological foundation. Opposed and complimentary, they include […] the need for certainty and adventure, that of organization of work and of play, the needs for the predictable and the unpredictable, of similarity and difference, of isolation and encounter, exchange and investments […] The human being has the need to accumulate energies and to spend them, even waste them in play. He has a need to see, to hear, to touch, to taste and the need to gather these perceptions in a ‘world’. […] the need for creative activity […] of the need for information, symbolism, the imaginary and play. Through these specified needs lives and survives a fundamental desire of which play, sexuality, physical activities such as sport, creative activity, art and knowledge are particular expressions and moments, which can more or less overcome the fragmentary division of tasks. Finally, the need of the city and urban life can only be freely expressed within a perspective which here attempts to become clearer and to open up the horizon. Would not specific urban needs be those of qualified places, places of simultaneity and encounters, places where exchange would not go through exchange value, commerce and profit? Would there not also be the need for a time for these encounters, these exchanges?

But what has become of the «historic city»?

[…] This historic city no longer has a coherent set of prescriptions, of use of time linked to symbols and to a style. This text is moving away. It takes the form of a document, or an exhibition, or a museum. The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourists, for aestheticism, avid for spectacles and the picturesque. Even for those who seek to understand it with warmth, it is gone. Yet, the urban remains in a state of dispersed and alienated actuality, as kernel and virtuality. What the eyes and analysis perceive on the ground can at best pass for the shadow of a future object in the light of a rising sun. It is impossible to envisage the reconstitution of the old city, only the construction of a new one on new foundations, on another scale and in other conditions, in another society. The prescription is: there cannot be a going back (towards the traditional city), nor a headlong flight, towards a colossal and shapeless agglomeration. In other words, for what concerns the city the object of science is not given. The past, the present, the possible cannot be separated. What is being studied is a virtual object, which thought studies, which calls for new approaches.

The world «virtual» is quite prophetic. The world is increasingly virtual.

They say there is a time and place for everything.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for a job.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for love.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for justice.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for goods.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for a home.
Where is the time and place?

Someone is looking for live assistance.
Where is the time and place?

The historical city is gone.
The new city is virtual and fragmented.

«In 2023, there were 17.3 million American digital nomads, which was a 131% increase since 2019, and the number increased to 18.1 million in 2024.» [2]

The social space is in a different place.
Virtual patriotism.

North, South, East, West,
West, South, East, North
East, South, West, North
South, North, West, East

Still, I ask, between public and private,
Where is the time and place?

Forgive me for taking up space.

[1] The Right to the City https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/henri-lefebvre-right-to-the-city

[2] Digital Nomad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nomad

Virtual Patriotism and the Sociology of Space