Introduction

Space and Place

Inextricable from the sociality of community radio is its spatiality. Radio’s relationship to space and place has always been discursively fraught. Douglas Kahn has noted the prevalence of narratives based on “tropes of the annihilation of space and time” as well as tropes of their dilation in discussions of wireless technology since its beginning (2013). As my previous sections on community and social connectedness have indicated, though, the (never completely stable) specifics of space and place are immanent in any radio situation, particularly when terrestrial broadcasting is involved.

I derive my understandings of space and place from the broad and overlapping fields of human geographies and urban studies. In this section, I review key examples of such theories that have informed my analysis in this dissertation. These works have shaped my understanding of how radio’s spatial contours are imagined, drawn, reimagined, and redrawn over time—and, importantly, who might have access and abilities to make such determinations.