Human Geography is the discipline focusing on the relationship between Human Being and the Environment. Theorising about this relationship has developed in waves, in which sometimes the side of the human being was emphasised, or the side of the environment was emphasised. A well known example of the latter was the period in which Environmental Determinism was en vogue. Later we shifted to a period in which the freedom of deliberate human decision making en social constructionism was fashionable. A next step was the conceptualisation of social constructions of space and place, not as deliberate actions, but rather as unintended consequences of our collective actions as exemplified in discursive structures. These ways of thinking were, of course, closely related to the societal and political situation at those times and in those places where these theories originated. Currently we experience another shift, back to emphasising more the role of the human being, especially also the non-discursive aspects of human experience of space and place. More attention is given to the material circumstances and to the embodiment of our experiences. People interact with their environment not only in a conscious and deliberate way, but also based on embodied feeling and emotions. The interaction with the environment resembles a ‘dance’ with the things and people around us. The situation in which we act, has many different meaningful dimensions, and is, therefore, better grasped by the concept of ‘Sphere’. To understand the diversity on our globe, is to understand the ‘geography of spheres’. 
However, spheres are of course not closed bubbles but partly overlapping and in direct relation with each other, and therefore there is also a ‘politics of spheres‘. Peter Sloterdijk addresses this when he conceptualises the current world of bubbles as ‘Foam’. In my recently published article in Geographica Helvetica I introduce but also criticise his rather reactionary view on these bubbly spheres.
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