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Night Spaces

Darkness, Deterritorialization, and Social Control

Bennett College

Although spanning the same physical area, the spaces of night differ from the spaces of daylight. Crucially, the night impels society to establish mechanisms that take the darkness into account (e.g., via enhanced surveillance of vulnerable areas and the lighting of places of consumption). The night spaces created by government policies, business strategies, or social codes of conduct seek to direct, if not outright control, people's actions and desires. Yet such hegemonic night spaces are themselves contested by groups and individuals who use the darkness to pursue alternate goals, some socially transgressive and some illegal. Accordingly, night spaces can be multiple, overlapping, and contradictory, incorporating the myriad tensions of the social processes that constitute them.

Key Words: night • social control • production of space • surveillance

Space and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 4, 514-532 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331208320117


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