Spaces of dispersion (Foucault)

From Geography

When Foucault gazes out on the social world of the past, he sees not the order of (say) a mode of production determing the lines of class struggle nor the order of (say) a world view energizing everything from how the economy functions to how the most beautiful mural is painted: rather, he sees the spaces of dispersion through wihich the things under study are scattered across a landscape and are related one to another simply through their geography, the only order that is here discernible by being near to one another or far away, by being arranged in a certain way or possessed of a certain appearance thanks to their plans and architectures.

By Mike van der Linden and Paul Cuijpers

Richard Peet (1998) Blackwell publishing Modern geographical thought p. 231