Social Construction of Place

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Social Construction of Place
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The Social Construction of Urban Places

• Discuss the idea of place the different elements
  that make up place and how we socially construct
  place (create meaning to place)
• Look at how the different elements that make up
  place fit into the structuration theory
• A model of how structuration theory fits into the
  idea of urban place

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Place in our language
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• Number of Elements in Construction of Place
• Places are constructed in our memories and
  affections through repeated encounters and
  complex associations
• Places are dependent on perspective
  (Betweenness of Place)

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Elements in Construction of Place

• Insideness
• Places have meaning in direct proportion to the
  degree that people feel inside a place
• here instead of there
• enclosed rather than exposed
• secure rather than threatened

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Elements in Construction of Place

• Outsideness
• The other is usually defined in a exclusionary
  and stereotypical way
• Territoriality has been defined as a spatial
  strategy to make instruments of power
• This self-define ones self in relation to the
  other
• Other is the people and places outside the
  boundaries (real and perceived) that we establish

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Elements in Construction of Place Dwelling

• A Belief that there is an Existential imperative
  for people to define themselves in relation to
  the material world
• we define ourselves spatially
• creation of space provides us with roots, homes,
  localities
• we become biographies of that creation
• defining space is dependent upon the idea of
  dwelling, that is, the basic capacity to
  achieve a form of spiritual unity between humans
  and the material world
• through repeated experience and complex
  associations, our capacity for dwelling allows
  us to construct places to give them meanings

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Placeless(ness)

• is believed to occur when the deepening and
  multiple layering of the meanings associated with
  sense of place is subverted
• such things as telecommunications technology,
  mass production and mass values are thought to
  produce a loss of place diversity
• what is authentic is thought to be replaced by
  the inauthentic placeless i.e. commercial
  strips suburbs
• BUT ! while there may be a situation of
  homogeneity, others believe that other places are
  gained
• Depends on what view you take for example
  placelessness has been associated with the view
  of the preservationist

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Cultural Grammar

• construction of place cannot take place
  independently of cultural grammar
• are social norms that codify the social
  construction of places
• our territoriality and our sense of dwelling
  are informed by broadly shared notions of
• Social distance
  
• Rules on how to behave
• Forms of social organization
• Conceptions of worth and value

Relationship between social structures and
Insiders
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Place

• is text which can be read for layers of inner
  meaning
• is context (setting) within which human behaviour
  takes place, that
• structures the daily routines of economic and
  social life
• structures people life paths, providing both
  opportunities and constructs
• provides an arena for knowledge and experience
• provides a site for processes of socialization
  and social reproduction
• provides an arena for contesting social norms

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Urban Life-World

• the social reality of the city is not a given
• Life-World is the culturally defined
  spatial-temporal setting of everyday life the
  (the routine patterns of everyday life)
• it is the taken-for-granted pattern and setting
  for everyday living in the urban life-world that
  is not an object of conscious attention and
  feeling

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Structure of Feeling

• otherwise known as sense of place
• the shared meanings that are derived from the
  lived experience of everyday experiences
  (inter-subjectivity) give rise to structure of
  feeling
• Intersubjectivity is created in the
  routinization of the individual and social
  practice in time and space that occurs in the
  Theory of Structuration (Giddens)

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Contextual Theory Temporality, Spatiality and
Social Life

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Notions and Concepts of Time-Geography
Bundles Routine patterns that are an important
precondition for the development of
inter-subjectivity
Several Individual Paths People with similar
constraints are thrown together in bundles of
time-space activity Knox and Pinch. 2000 p. 262
Individual Path Carlstein et al. 1971 p. 164
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Structuration Theory (Anthony Giddens)

• And approach to social theory concerned with the
  intersections between knowledgeable and capable
  human agents and wider institutions and
  structures
• Definitions
• Agents human actors who determine the outcome
  of any social interaction
• Institutions phenomenal forms of structures
  e.g. state apparatus
• Structures long-term deep-seated social
  practices which govern daily life e.g. law,
  family, language
• Dualism between agency and structure is important
  part of the theory
• (act through a world of rules which our actions
  makes, breaks, renews we are creatures of the
  rules)
• this theory tries to overcome these dualisms
• Theory Principles
• We are all actors (ordinary citizens, business
  leaders)
• We are all part of the dualism
• structures enables our behaviour
• behaviour itself reinforces, and sometimes
  changes, these structures
• Structures
• may act as constraints on individual action

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Structuration Theory

• A theory that attempts to bridge the divide
  between voluntarist and determinist theories.
• One important aspect is that it increases the
  role of a agent is knowledgeable.
• Place is created by knowledgeable agents
  operating within a specific structure that both
  enables and constrain action. Routine practices
  create meanings and occupy a place in our world
  between the subconscious and the conscious.
• Time space routinization contributes to social
  integration and the development of social systems
  and structures amoung people in specific
  locations.
• Social structures and systems also develop across
  broader spans of time and space through system
  integration which takes place through time-space
  distanciation.

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Model of Structuration of Urban TheoryUrban
Spaces and Places Constantly in a State of
Becoming
Recursivity recurrent social practices-
everyday activities
Social Integration development of social systems
and structures amoung agents in particular
locales)
Agents
System of Interaction
unanticipated
of space
All human action involves acknowledged or
unacknowledged conditions which evoke change
Language specific to place
Structure
Sociospatial Development Involves space-time
distanciation
Knox and Pinch .2000 p. 263
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Places are Always Becoming

• Place is an historical contingent process in
  which practice and structure become one through
  the intertwining of recursive individual and
  social practices and structured relations of
  power.
• At the same time place involves processes
  (personality development, socialization, language
  acquisition) through which individual biographies
  and collective ways of life also become one
  another.