Edward William Soja 

Edward William Soja (/ˈsoʊdʒə/; 1940–2015) was a self-described "urbanist,"[1] a

noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA,
where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Economics.
He had a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. His early research focused on planning in Kenya, but
Soja came to be known as the world's leading spatial theorist with a distinguished career
writing on spatial formations and social justice

Soja focuses his critical postmodern analysis of space and society, or what he calls spatiality, on
the people and places of Los Angeles. In 2010 the University of Minnesota Press released his
work on spatial justice,[2] which was followed in 2014 with his My Los Angeles published by
the University of California Press.[3] He also published in the critical urban theory journal City:
analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action.[4]

Soja updated Lefebvre's concept of the spatial triad with his own concept of spatial trialectics
which includes Thirdspace, or spaces that are both real and imagined.

Soja developed a theory of Thirdspace in which "everything comes together…

subjectivity and objectivity

the abstract and the concrete

the real and the imagined

the knowable and the unimaginable

the repetitive and the differential

structure and agency

mind and body

consciousness and the unconscious

the disciplined and the transdisciplinary

everyday life and unending history

he explains, "I define Thirdspace as an-Other way of understanding and acting to change the
spatiality of human life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate to the new
scope and significance being brought about in the rebalanced trialectics

Like Lefebvre, sometimes called a mystical Marxist, Soja demonstrates leanings towards a
monadic mysticism in his Thirdspace. He formulates Thirdspace by analogy with the Aleph, a
concept of spatial infinity developed by Jorge Luis Borges

Thirdspace is a radically inclusive concept that encompasses epistemology, ontology, and

historicity in continuous movement beyond dualisms and toward "an-Other": as Soja explains,
"thirding produces what might best be called a cumulative trialectics that is radically open to
additional otherness, to a continuing expansion of spatial knowledge."[13] Thirdspace is a
transcendent concept that is constantly expanding to include "an-Other," thus enabling the
contestation and re-negotiation of boundaries and cultural identity. Soja here closely
resembles Homi K. Bhabha's Third Space Theory, in which "all forms of culture are continually in
a process of hybridity," that "displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures
of authority, new political initiatives… The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something
different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and
representation."[14]
Soja constructs Thirdspace from the spatial trialectics established by Henri Lefebvre in The
Production of Space and Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia. He synthesizes these
theories with the work of postcolonial thinkers from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to bell
hooks, Edward Said to Homi K. Bhabha.

Books-Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space 

Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space 

from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to bell hooks, Edward Said to Homi K. Bhabha

French Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), author of The Production of

Space (1974)

In 2010 the University of Minnesota Press released his work on spatial justice

ref;

1.  Soja, Edward (2003). "Writing the city spatially".  City. 7  (3): 269–
280.  doi:10.1080/1360481032000157478.  S2CID 144964310.
2. ^ Soja Edward W., 2010, Seeking Spatial Justice, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
3. ^ "My Los Angeles".  University of California Press.
4. ^ Soja, Edward (2003). "Writing the city spatially1". City.  7 (3): 269–
280.  doi:10.1080/1360481032000157478.  S2CID 144964310.
5. ^ "Professor Mustafa Dikec".  latts.fr/.
6. ^ "Walter Nicholls | Walter Nicholls".
7. ^ "UW Urban Design and Planning - Departmental Faculty".  washington.edu. Archived
from  the original on 2015-04-07.,
8. ^ "Diane Davis".
9. ^ "Dr Juan Miguel Kanai | Geography | the University of Sheffield".
10. ^ "Stefano Bloch". 11 June 2019.
11. ^ Jump up to:    Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Print. p. 57.
a b

12. ^ Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Print. p. 57

13. ^ Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Print. p. 61
14. ^ Rutherford, Jonathan. "The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha." Identity:
Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998. Print. P.
211 http://www.wsp-kultur.uni-bremen.de/summerschool/download%20ss%202006/The
%20Third%20Space.%20Interview%20with%20Homi%20Bhabha.pdfArchived 2009-03-
06 at the Wayback Machine
15. ^ http://www.opa-a2a.org/dissensus/wp-
content/uploads/2008/05/soja_edward_w_six_discourses_on_the_postmetropolis.pdf
2. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London:
Verso Press, 1989.
3. Scott, A.J and E.W. Soja, eds. The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the
Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996.
4. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. 1996.
5. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000.
6. "Writing the city spatially", City, November, 2003.
7. "The city and spatial justice", Justice spatiale | Spatial Justice, n° 1 September 2009.
8. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2010.
9. "Towards a regional democracy?",Métropolitiques, March 2011.
 10. "Spatial Justice and the Right to the City: an Interview with Edward Soja", Justice
spatiale | Spatial Justice, n° 3 March 2011.
11. My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanization. Berkeley:
University of California Press. 2014.

Thirdspace

The Third Space is a postcolonial sociolinguistic theory of identity and community realized

through language or education. It is attributed to Homi K. Bhabha. Third Space Theory explains
the uniqueness of each person, actor or context as a "hybrid".[1] See Edward W. Soja for a
conceptualization of the term within the social sciences and from a critical urban theory
perspective.

Origin

Third Space theory emerges from the sociocultural tradition[2] in psychology identified with Lev
Vygotsky.[3] Sociocultural approaches are concerned with the "... constitutive role of culture in
mind, i.e., on how mind develops by incorporating the community's shared artifacts accumulated
over generations".[4] Bhabha applies socioculturalism directly to the postcolonial condition, where
there are, "... unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation".[5]

Third Space theory emerges from the sociocultural tradition[2] in psychology identified
with Lev Vygotsky.[3] Sociocultural approaches are concerned with the "... constitutive role
of culture in mind, i.e., on how mind develops by incorporating the community's shared
artifacts accumulated over generations". [4] Bhabha applies socioculturalism directly to the
postcolonial condition, where there are, "... unequal and uneven forces of cultural
representation".[5]

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory views human development as a socially

mediated process in which children acquire their cultural values, beliefs,
and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with
more knowledgeable members of society. Vygotsky's theory is comprised
of concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the Zone of
Proximal Development.
E.g.-
In discourse of dissent, the Third Space has come to have two interpretations:

 that space where the oppressed plot their liberation: the whispering corners of
the tavern or the bazaar
 that space where oppressed and oppressor are able to come together, free
(maybe only momentarily) of oppression itself, embodied in their particularity. [6]
 In educational studies, Maniotes[7] examined literary Third Space in a classroom where
students' cultural capital merged with content of the curriculum as students backed up
their arguments in literature discussions. Skerrett[8] associates it with a multiliteracies
approach.[9]
 Pre-school: Third Space Theory has been applied to the prespace within which children
learn to read, bringing domestic and school literacy practices into their own constructions
of literacy.[10]
 Another contemporary construction of three "spaces" is that one space is the domestic
sphere: the family and the home;[11] a second space is the sphere of civic engagement
including school, work and other forms of public participation; and set against these is a
 Third Space where individual, sometimes professional,[12][13] and sometimes transgressive
acts are played out: where people let their "real" selves show.
 Sporting associations may be labeled as Third Space.[14] Often bars and
nightclubs are so labeled (Law 2000, 46–47). Latterly the term Third Space has been
appropriated into brand marketing where domestic spaces and workforce-engagement
spaces are set against recreational retail space: shopping malls as third spaces
(see Third place, Postrel 2006; and see also Davis 2008). Bill Thompson (2007) offers an
opposite conceptualisation of Third Space as public, civic space in the built environment
under pressure from shopping malls and corporate enterprises, transforming public
space into an extension of the market.
Third Space Theory can explain some of the complexity of poverty, social exclusion and
social inclusion, and might help predict what sort of initiatives would more effectively
ameliorate poverty and exclusion. Bonds of affinity (class, kin, location: e.g.
neighbourhood, etc.) can function as "poverty traps".[15] Third Space Theory suggests that
every person is a hybrid of their unique set of affinities (identity factors). Conditions and
locations of social and cultural exclusion have their reflection in symbolic conditions and
locations of cultural exchange. It appears to be accepted in policy that neither social
capital nor cultural capital, alone or together, are sufficient to overcome social exclusion.
Third Space Theory suggests that policies of remediation based in models of
the Other are likely to be inadequate.[citation needed]

Third Space-Homi Bhabha

The Third Space acts as an ambiguous area that develops when two or more individuals/cultures
interact (compare this to urbanist Edward W. Soja's conceptualization of Thirdspace). It
"challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force,
authenticated by the originary past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People." This
ambivalent area of discourse, which serves as a site for the discursive conditions of enunciation,
"displaces the narrative of the Western written in homogeneous, serial time."[10] It does so through
the "disruptive temporality of enunciation." Bhabha claims that "cultural statements and systems
are constructed in this contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation."[10] As a result, the
hierarchical claims to the innate originality or purity of cultures are invalid. Enunciation implies
that culture has no fixity and even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized,
and read anew.

Third Space-Randall Packer

The Third Space Network is an artist-driven Internet platform for staging creative
dialogue, live performance and activist projects: empowerment through the act of
becoming our own broadcast media. A project of Randall Packer, the Third Space
Network explores the Internet as a theater of the future, a place for live artistic
experimentation, activism and social change.
E SOJA-
E. Soja (1996) proposes a different way of thinking about space and spatiality. First and second spaces are two
different, and possibly conflicting, spatial groupings where people interact physically and socially: such as home
(everyday knowledge) and school (academic knowledge). Third spaces are the in-between, or hybrid, spaces,
where the first and second spaces work together to generate a new third space. ‘Soja is anxious to avoid the
common dualities of the social and the individual, culture/nature, production/reproduction, the real versus the
imagined, (which pervade geographical analysis, arguing “there is always another way”’ Wharf (2006) PHG 30,
819). Linehan and Gruffudd (2004) TIBG 29, 1 apply the term to the tented camps set up in inter-war Wales for
retraining miners (‘isolated from their wives and families, and separated from the rural society around them’);
and, in a cheeky usage, Starbucks propose their premises as ‘third space experience: the place between work
and home’. See Moje et al. (2004) Reading Res. Qt. 39, 1 on third space in an educational context.
The Third Space: Cultural Identity Today

The Third Space: Cultural Identity Today | 2008 | Amherst College

February 28 - June 8, 2008

This exhibition considers cultural identity in a global society. It explores the effects of
displacement, alienation, exile, diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity, and
cosmopolitanism. The title The Third Space is taken from the work of the influential
cultural and post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha; it refers to the interstices between
colliding cultures, a liminal space “which gives rise to something different, something
new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.” In
this “in-between” space, new cultural identities are formed, reformed, and constantly in a
state of becoming. Artists at work in “the third space” speak of a creative edge that
derives from the condition of being in a place that simultaneously is and is not one’s
home. Organized by Carol Solomon Kiefer, Curator of European Art at the Mead, the
exhibition consists of fifteen works by nine artists. Included are pieces from the
permanent collection and loans in a range of artistic media – video, photography,
painting, and installation.

The Third Space: Cultural Identity Today is part of a year-long interdisciplinary initiative
at Amherst College on the theme of “Art and Identity in the Global Community.” Two of
the artists in the show, Indonesian Entang Wiharso and Ghanaian-German Daniel Kojo,
are resident Amherst College Copeland Fellows for the 2007-2008 academic
year. French-Algerian Zoulikha Bouabdellah is resident Amherst College visiting artist
for the spring semester. The other artists in the exhibition are Moroccan Lalla Essaydi,
Palestinian Mona Hatoum, Vietnamese-American Dinh Q. Lê, Iranian-American Shirin
Neshat, Nigerian-Cuban-American Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Native
American Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.The exhibition is generously supported by the Hall
and Kate Peterson Fund, the Templeton Photography Fund, and the Amherst Arts
Series Fund.

What is Third Space

What is Third Space | IGI Global (igi-global.com)
1.

‘Third space’ can be defined as the intersection where new knowledge and discourses emerge from
the blending and merger of understanding and experiences from a child’s home, community, and peer
network with the more formalized learning encountered in schooling. In the digital world, ‘third space’
thinking can be conceived of as the intersections created by online and offline play
experiences. Learn more in: It Is Real Colouring?: Mapping Children's Im/Material Thinking in a Digital
World

2.

A hybrid or liminal space that can be transformative. Learn more in: Familismo and Nontraditional

Educational Possibilities in Third Space

3.
A social setting or space that both suspends the hierarchical frameworks historically imposed by
formal institutions and establishes new frameworks for shared learning that draws on the motives and
experiences of all participants. Learn more in: Learners' Voices: Navigational Play as Metacognitive
Integration

4.

Third space, as defined by researchers like Kris Gutierrez (1999) AU33: The in-text citation
"Kris Gutierrez (1999)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the
reference to the list, or delete the citation. , is a zone of transformation that is generated when
teachers and students socialize together in and through language, integrating everyday and academic
knowledge. It offers more inclusive and participatory forms of education by merging learning and
knowledge, connecting the home, community and school. Third Space is the intersection of students’
everyday experiences and identities within a learning environment that values students’ home and
community knowledge and experience. Learn more in: Reclaiming the Multilingual Narrative of
Children in the Borderlands Using a Critical Integration Approach: A Case Study Highlighting
Multilingual Capital in the Curriculum and Classroom

5.

This term refers to a psychological space that learners progressively build when they become
increasingly aware of the L2 culture, and develop a broader perspective and openness to different
cultural elements, and in the process a more critical perspective of their own culture. When L2
learners find themselves mediating between two languages, two cultures and two worlds, they will
have reached this “third place” that is essential to develop sophisticated translingual and transcultural
competences. Learn more in: Web 2.0 Technologies and Foreign Language Teaching

6.

The in-between, or hybrid, spaces, where the first and second spaces work together to generate a
new one. Also known as the imaginary and subjectivity. Learn more in: The Transborderization of
Neoliberalism: In the Trenches of Cultural and Linguistic Equity for Social and Educational
Transformation

7.

A neutral, hybrid classroom space where diverse expressions of literacy and traditional forms are
acquired apart from the power issues which characterize the teaching of traditional literacy. Learn
more in: Constructing a Third Space: Positioning Students' Out-of-School Literacies in the Classroom

8.

An abstract, in-between place, in which the migrants, refugees and exilic people who have uprooted
themselves from their native lands and struggles to put roots in his/her host country, exist. Bhabha
who coined the term states that third space: “gives rise to something different, something new and
unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.” Learn more in:
Engendering Orientalism: Fatih Akin's Head-On and The Edge of Heaven

9.

It is a unique space of meaning-making that emerges through conflict, difference, and disagreement

to create a new understanding or identity. It explains the uniqueness of each actor or context as a
“hybrid.” Learn more in: Becoming Teacher Researchers: Using English Learners' Linguistic Capital to
Socially Re-Organize Learning

10.

The context in which the literacy behaviours in which students engaged in their homes and
communities meet with academic/school requirements of the classroom. Learn more in: Fostering
True Literacy in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Bridging the Cultures of Home and School
11.

A poststructuralist sociolinguistic theory of identity and community realized through language or

education. Third Space theory explains the uniqueness of each person, actor or context as a
“hybrid.” Learn more in: Empowering Multilingual Learners Through Critical Liberating Literacy
Practices in English-Dominated Speech Communities

12.

A blended space comprised of both online and offline activities. Learn more in: Religious Use of
Mobile Phones

Third space- postcolonial sociolinguistic theory

Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy
of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and
exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a critical theory analysis of
the history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European) imperial power.

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including
cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on
language. It differs from sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on
society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic
anthropology.

Homi Bhabha -
THIRD SPACE is a place, where hybrid identifications are possible. A place, where dialogues
between cultures evolve. A place, where new things come into existence.

Borders can separate cultures and societies. But what if we see them as meeting zones?

In today ‘s globalized world, cultures are blending increasingly. What are the chances and the
challenges of hybrid cultures?

Throughout three portraits, four young women give an insight into their hybrid worlds. All of them
are influenced by different cultures. They express their thoughts and emotions through dance, poetry
or fashion.