Such revolutionary understanding of space became the reason of forming new disciplines, such as social geography, represented by D. Harvey, M. Davis, E. Soja and significantly widening the thematic cover of anthropology and cultural theory. As Low and Lawrence-Zuniga argue in this respect, since the 1990s, the most significant change for anthropology is found in the acknowledgement that space is an essential component of sociocultural theory.
Based on the vast progress in the new discipline present research paper defends the thesis that places are socially constructed in the course of human interaction, daily experience and practice. The construction of place and space are crucially dependent on social hierarchy, order and inequality, as well as discursive struggles in society. Transformation of societies inevitably results in changes of understanding place and space.
Place and Space as Anthropologically and Socially Constructed
In examining how place is created through social interaction one should outline basic conceptual approaches and currents, existing in modern literature. Based on methodological starting points and thematic focuses they may be divided into two autonomous groups 1. critical sociological approach (represented by critical geography and structural sociology of Bourdieu) 2. cultural and psychological approach.
Psychological approach, represented by Malpas and Cross, mainly focuses on the role of living experience in constructing the place and space. Sense of place is a psychological and cultural variable, reflecting the living relationship of a person to the territory, where heshe lives and universality of hisher community.
The approach originates from Heideggers philosophy of Dasein, reflecting a spatial-temporal relation, characterizing human existence. According to Heidegger, a human being is temporally finite and spatially limited, which results in that human existence, is foremost dependent on space and place. Moreover, stemming from Heideggers conservative philosophy of sedentary, true human existence is based on hisher deep emotional ties with native community, forming attitudes to space and time. Crosss interpretation of sense of place is significantly based on described approach. Cross analytically divides sense of place into two basic dimensions relationship to place and community attachment The first aspect, relationship to place, consists of the ways that people relate to places, or the types of bonds we have with places. The second aspect, community attachment, consists of the depth and types of attachments to one particular place. Relationship to place has several basic modes, including biographical, spiritual, ideological,narrative, commodified and dependent.
Community attachment is formulated by Cross as the mode of personal relation to a given community being a combination of people and places. Cross outlines the following modes of community attachment cohesive rootedness, divided rootedness, place alienation, relativity, and placelessness.
Basic concepts and definitions used by Cross and psychological approach to place construction certify to the fact that it promotes subjectivist understanding of place and space production. In this perspective, space and place production is a result of psychological experience or sense of place.
Human relations here are mediated by history, ideology, language, local traditions, which are already interiorized in individual psychology through family, school etc. However, such an approach is very helpful for analyzing local communities, located predominantly in agricultural areas, it fails to account about the role of hierarchy, social inequality and economic order in constructing place and space in large urban areas.
Malpas topographical approach to place construction also focuses on phenomenology and hermeneutics of living experience, originating from Heidegger. Malpas promotes externalist concept of self, in which it is not a priori constructed as Kant argued, but is determined by living relationship to place. Place is a point where subjectivity, language, society and culture intersect to form a living experience, understood in phenomenological terms. As Malpas argues, the land around us is a reflection not only of our practically and technological capacities, but also of our culture and society of our very needs, our hopes, our preoccupations and dreams. Phenomenological methodology, driving Malpas approach, leads him to a definition of space and place as a living world in Husserlian terms. As in the case with Cross, Malpas focuses on subjectivity as the primary instance through which place is constructed.
Caseys arguments concerning the role of human interactions in place and space construction is based on the presumption that space and place are the sin-qua-non contexts of human relations, in which they develop in time. As in the case with classical philosophers, who considered space to be the basis for movement, Casey inverts the thesis to argue that society can not reproduce in the way other, than through spatial relations Whatever is true for space and time, this much is true for place we are immersed in it and could not do without it. To be at allto exist in any wayis to be somewhere, and to be somewhere is to be in some kind of place. Place is as requisite as the air we breathe, the ground on which we stand, the bodies we have. We are surrounded by places. We walk over and through them. We live in places, relate to others in them, die in them. Nothing we do is unplaced. Low and Lawrence, following phenomenological approach, contend that space and place is central to the formation of human identity identity is defined by historical social structures that inscribe the body and naturalize existence in the world.
According to these authors, place and space are produced through human practice, which gives places a human face and reflects social relations, history and culture. Such relationship is the most evident in human activities, directed at changing natural landscapes architecture, design, infrastructural projects etc. New social space, reflected in them, constructs our daily experience through functional use of space in walking, driving on highways, using trains, visiting buildings etc.
As soon as a place is socially appropriated it becomes the domain where social relations transform into cultural symbols, modes of behavior etc. This is particularly evident in the reflection of gender relations in architecture. For instance, New York skyscrapers are traditionally associated with masculinity and male chauvinism.
As Low and Lawrence-Zuniga argue, house is a place, constructed by social relations par excellence the house is a frequently recognized gendered space because of its centrality as an object. the centrality of the royal compound as the primeval house as its role in the productive and reproductive activities of society.
The perception of place and space as socially constructed is evident in modern critical geography and sociology of space. Bourdieus analysis is very exemplary in this respect. His famous analysis of Kabyles houses shows that houses are the place where social distinctions, gender roles and habituses are reproduced. Houses planning in Kabyles societies reflects the differentiation of gender roles women are hostesses, who maintain comfort and watch children, while men engage in social intercourses through hunting, making social contracts etc.
In this way, places have their own discursive language, which reflects social and gender hierarchy in society. According to Bourdieu, space is the realm, where class and group distinctions are reproduced. Social inequality is reflected in spatial inequality. For instance, marginalized population lives in areas with poor infrastructure, while rich groups live in comfort buildings with luxury communications.
Harvey further analyzes such situation, focusing on neoliberalism implications for spatial and place inequality. For instance, in Space of Capital, he argues that capitalism reproduction is premised on spatial-temporal fix mechanism, which allows capitalists to offshore their productions in the case of crisis or rate of profit fall. In this way, social relations are directly linked to place and space. Spatial inequalities are reproduced not only at local urban level, but world-wide through inequalities between developed and underdeveloped countries. The former have a privileged access to space and more capacities for reconstructing in it for their purposes, whereas underdeveloped societies become the hostage of space due to their inability to transform it to meet the goals of social welfare and progress.
Such situation is vividly described by Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums, where he shows that marginalized place is the living experience of millions of Third World workers, who live in slums without access to sanitation and water. Hence, their practice of everyday life is embedded in space, reflecting their social marginalization and exploitation.
Present research paper showed that place and space are socially and culturally constructed. This is equally true for individual and communal experience. The representatives of psychological approach to place and space construction research it through the prism of individual and community living experience, mediated by biography, ideology, language, culture etc. In this perspective the place is a phenomenological category, explaining human relations with his communitys past and future place is the domain, where daily experience and practice occur. Critical sociological approach represented by Davis, Harvey, Bourdieu and others focuses on space and place as a reflection of class and gender inequalities in societies. Space, being appropriated by economy, becomes the hostage of those power relations, which produce it.
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