‘Global space…is not an isotropic surface of sameness’ (Jackson (1996) TIBG 21, 3). Doel and Hubbard in A. Mayr et al. (2002) argue that a world city is a ‘bounded place plugged into a global space of flows’. ‘Neoliberal policies create a global space in which finance capital can range freely in search of ever-increasing profit’ (Peet (2007) 5th Int. Conf. Critical Geog.). Weyland (in A. Oncu and P. Weyland, eds 1997) finds that ‘the global (highly paid) corporate and managerial labour force which sustains the “public” multinational business space epitomizing globalism is itself reproduced by the presence of a female “privatized” global space, often shored up by (unpaid) corporate wives as well as (lowly paid) foreign maids’.

G. Ó Tuathail (1996) notes the early modern horizontal organization of space associated with ideas of state sovereignty and the emerging state system; ‘such a “chess-board” vision of global space made it possible to authorise and strategize new campaigns of geopolitical pre-eminence’ (Hughes (2007) Geog. Compass 1, 5).