This book focuses on eight spatial scales (body, home, community, institutions, the street, the city, rural and nation). Each of these spaces represents the intersection of a range of connections, interrelations and movements of different people who have very different ways of participating in, understanding or belonging to them. Each chapter therefore explores how social identities (gender, race, class, sexuality) and relations are constructed in, and through these spaces, and how the meanings and uses of these spaces are contested by their different occupants. Questions of homogeneity and difference, control and disorder, and social and exclusion run throughout the text.

Topics covered include: body modification, homelessness, neighbourhood and cyber communities, the workplace, fear of crime, policing, gentrification, whiteness, leisure activities, citizenship and nationalism. Guides to further reading, and essay questions are provided at the end of each chapter. A glossary defining key words and a guide to how to do a project in social geography are both included at the end of the book.