Meanings
thirdspace1
plural thirdspaces
- alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of Thirdspace.
In other words, we have marginalized 'counterspaces', resisting dominant (firstspace or secondspace) orders - thirdspace, the space of radical openness, of creativity, of activism, of social struggle (Soja, 1996).
2008, Chris Steyaert, Daniel Hjorth, Entrepreneurship As Social Change, →ISBN2 more examples
The different pulls on what rural spaces represent and the legitimacies and illegitimacies of presences within rural landscapes brings us back to the key notion of a socially produced space and Soja's 'perils and possibilities' of real-and-imaginary lived thirdspace.
2006, Sarah Neal, Julian Agyeman, The New Countryside?:, →ISBN, page 14Both the Greeks and Philip are "out of place" in Jerusalem -- their firstspace location -- but "in their place" by being in Jesus' space. Jesus' firstspace location resturctures the followers' location. His firstspace location will continue to restructure the believers' space, climaxing at the cross as the thirdspace location of liberation.
2016, Peter Claver Ajer, The Death of Jesus and the Politics of Place in the Gospel of John, →ISBN, page 109
Thirdspace2
plural Thirdspaces · alternative thirdspace
- countableuncountableSpace as both a perceived and conceptualized phenomenon, both a physical locality and its meaning.
The Occupy movement existed as a Thirdspace phenomenon -- even though its practitioners created their own Firstspace configurations of objects and their own Secondspace meanings and representations.
2016, Gabriella Gelardini, Harold Attridge, Hebrews in Contexts, →ISBN, page 1842 more examples
Over the past decade, the most creative explorations of Thirdspace, and hence the most accomplished expansions in the scope of the geographical imagination, have come from the broadly defined field of critical cultural studies.
2002, Alan Read, Architecturally Speaking, →ISBN, page 22Aspects of Firstspace and Secondspace are selectively and creatively combined in Thirdspace, a fully lived space. The spatial specificity of urbanism is of special interest to him and is realized as Thirdspace, which forms simultaneities of the real and the imagined, of the actual and the virtual, and of the locus of individual and collective experience and agency.
2017, Mimi Levy Lipis, Symbolic Houses in Judaism, →ISBN
Origin
Coined by E.W. Soja as third + space
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
thirdspace. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thirdspace
“thirdspace.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thirdspace. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “thirdspace,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thirdspace.
Source: thirdspace on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.