“Hägerstrand online”: A methodical template for the analysis of space-time trajectories in collaborations

Alice Melchior; Benjamin Schiemer; Gernot Grabher

doi:10.2478/rara-2019-0051

Authors

Alice Melchior Hafencity Universität Hamburg, Arbeitsgebiet Stadt- und RegionalökonomieHamburg, Deutschland
Benjamin Schiemer Johannes-Kepler-Universität Linz, Institut für OrganisationLinz, Österreich
Gernot Grabher Hafencity Universität Hamburg, Arbeitsgebiet Stadt- und RegionalökonomieHamburg, Deutschland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/rara-2019-0051

Keywords:

Hägerstrand, Time geography, Virtuality, Co-presence, Laboratory, Studio

Abstract

In economic geography, during the last years interest in various aspects of temporality increased, both in the context of short- as well as longer-term physical interaction constellations. Despite the empirical and theoretical differentiation of physical co-presence, two aspects have not been problematized in a sufficiently systematic fashion so far: first, the dichotomous understanding of physical co-presence (that is reduced to a binary differentiation of presence/absence) and, second, the conception of virtual co-presence as a deficient version of communication (that lacks the broad spectrum of sensual cues of face-to-face interaction). To overcome the insufficient conceptualization of co-presence we enrich our geographical argumentation with findings from adjacent disciplines and focus on the modification in communication contexts implied by virtualization. In particular, the intricate entanglement of offline and online interaction dynamics is challenging the established methodical and conceptual geographical approaches. In order to deal with these challenges, we seek to advance the time-geographic model of Torsten Hägerstrand by including the virtual dimension of interactions. The aim of our extension is the development of a methodical template that is suitable to conceptualize empirically space-time trajectories in physical, virtual and (physical-virtual) synthetic contexts. We illustrate our methodical-conceptual extension of the time-geographic model with empirical vignettes from the fields of art (music production in a studio) and science (pharmaceutical research in a laboratory).

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