380 Livingstone
Finally, the conversation between geographers and historians of sci-
ence was further advanced at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society in 1996. Here, Steven Shapin fastened on matters having
to do with the circulation of scientifi c knowing. Even if it were “established
beyond doubt that science is indelibly marked by the local and spatial cir-
cumstances of its making,” he insisted, there were still important issues to
address about how “transactions occur between places.” All of this was a
way of insisting that “the problem is not that geographical sensibility has
been taken too far but that it has not been taken far enough.”^7 This chal-
lenge effectively broadens the scope of the “place of science,” for it brings
into view not only how scientifi c knowledge is made in particular places
but also how it migrates from site to site, from locality to locality, from
region to region. To put it another way, it opens up to geographical pur-
view the circulation, as well as the production, side of scientifi c enterprises.
These three moments do not exhaust the scope of geographical en-
gagements with scientifi c inquiry.^8 A host of studies of particular scien-
tifi c spaces have recently become available as the particularities of place
have begun to be probed with much greater sophistication by historians
of science. At the same time, scrutiny of the signifi cance of architectural
arrangements for scientifi c pursuits has opened up intriguing questions
about links between what we might call the buildings of science and the
building of scientifi c knowledge.^9 But these three interventions are none-
theless emblematic of a growing sensitivity to the role of space in the
production and reproduction of scientifi c cultures. What follows is an
attempt to map out something of this terrain. Before turning expressly to
what I am calling “Places of Practice” and “Places of Reception,” however,
it will be profi table to refl ect a little on the nature of space itself. And to
do so, I want to make use of the idea of “the production of space” drawing
selectively on the judgments of the French philosopher and social theorist
Henri Lefebvre.THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE
What is an ideology without a space to which it refers, a space which it
describes, whose vocabulary and links it makes use of, and whose code it
embodies? What would remain of a religious ideology... if it were not
based on places and their names: church, confessional, altar, sanctuary,
tabernacle? What would remain of the Church if there were no churches?
The Christian ideology... has created the spaces which guarantee that it
endures.^10