Contribution To Geography
Thrift has been described as one of the world's leading human geographers and social scientists, and is credited with coining the phrase soft capitalism as well as originating 'Non-representational theory'. He has been awarded several prizes and commendations recognising his research including the Scottish Geographical Medal in 2009, and he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. Thrift sits on a number of advisory committees for the UK Government, and was a member of the ESRC Research Priorities Board. In 1982 Thrift co-founded the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space whilst serving as managing editor, since 1979, of Environment and Planning A.
Thrift's early work was most readily associated with economic geography and the effects of capitalist modes of production on spatial relations, conceptions of time, and labour markets. Latterly, and controversially for early collaborators like Richard Peet, he moved towards poststructuralism with attention to subjectivity, representation, identity and practice in western societies. His work on time, language, power, representations and the body have been influential and it has been suggested that Thrift's career reflects and in some cases spurred the substantial intellectual changes in Human Geography in the 1980s and '90s.
Most recently he has written on what he terms 'non-representational theory', which stresses performative and embodied knowledges and is a radical attempt to wrench the social sciences and humanities out of an emphasis on representation and interpretation by moving away from contemplative models of thought and action to those based on practice. Thrift has claimed that non-representational theory addresses the 'unprocessual' nature of much of social and cultural theory (this is meaningless folks!). Major themes within non-representational theory include subjectification; space as a verb; technologies of being; embodiment; and play & excess. Non-representational theory has provoked substantial debate within the field of Human Geography around the limits of the mediation of our world through language and how we might see, sense and communicate beyond it.
Thrift has also edited and authored a number of textbooks, encyclopaedias, and primers in human geography.
Read more about this topic: Nigel Thrift
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