Fixed and flows: Revisiting a conceptual pair

Abstract

The article aims to revisit and discuss the conceptual pair “flows and fixed” proposed by the brazilian geographer Milton Santos in the 1970s, expanding a framework of pertinent examples and producing a valid comprehensive scheme for this conceptual system. The use of this conceptual pair in Geography and other areas of Human Sciences is still relevant nowadays, as it allows understanding both the structures and the movement of a geographical scene. In view of this, taking up the concept and expanding its possibilities and fields of application becomes relevant. In an opening session, we discuss the important perception that space contains time, developed by geographers of the early twentieth century, such as Vidal de La Blache. In the meantime, it is argued that, if the perception of time accumulated in the geographical space was a vital contribution, it is also necessary to realize that time is also present in geographical landscapes by the simple fact that they are not static, an aspect contemplated by the reciprocal complementarity of the conceptual pair fixed-flows.