The Unmappable

This article contributes to current discussions of the spatial inspired by complexity theories that emphasize the multiple and relational qualities of space. It introduces the concept of vagueness and “vague objects” and relates these to spatial theory through the intersubjective theory of Alfred Schutz. The author argues that a consideration of vagueness, especially as constructed in Schutz’s version of intersubjectivity, can provide insights (outside complexity theorizations) into the continuous and multivalent nature of social space and the relationships between spatial experience, practice, representation, and power. Keywords: Vagueness, Space, Schutz, Power, Lefebvre, Phenomenology, Habermas.

Environment and Planning A, 2006

Space, place, and complexity sciencè Complexity' has been among the stronger currents in scientific thought during the last two or three decades. More so than many previous shifts in scientific thinking, the turn towards complexity has been promoted in media beyond the academy. There is a considerable history of titles equally at home on academic bookshelves or accompanying an overpriced coffee in the corner bookshop, among them Chaos (Gleick, 1987), Complexity (Waldrop, 1992), Emergence (Holland, 1998), and, more recently, Six Degrees (Watts, 2003). Even the inglorious end of complexity has been alleged in the popular science literature (Horgan, 1995). Such widespread coverage rightly engenders scepticism about the usefulness of`complexity' and any shift in thinking substantial enough to be frequently accompanied by the word paradigm' deserves to be critically examined. In that spirit this issue of Environment and Planning A interrogates complexity science from the perspective of the spatial sciences. Thrift, describing the geographic diffusion of complexity ideas, suggests that distinct, but interconnected networks of science, business, and`New Age' philosophy (among others) have been important in promoting complexity as a way of framing a diverse range of problems (Thrift, 1999). Thrift also suggests a second meaning to the`geography of complexity' insofar as it``is a body of theory that is preternaturally spatial'' (page 32). He also notes that``links between geography and complexity were made in the 1970s'' (page 32) but that the turn to Marxian and other approaches in geography around that time contributed to the general discrediting of the quantitative approaches that were the context for links between complexity and geography. This accident of timing reduced the impact of those links, confining research to a small group of scholars primarily concerned with issues in modelling. Modelling remains a central activity at the intersection of complexity science and spatial science (O'Sullivan, 2004), but it is clear that its relevance is now much wider given the resurgence of quantitative research in geography and allied growth in fields including sociology, political science, and anthropology. We are hopeful that this theme issue, along with a`sister' theme issue of Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design (volume 32, issue 6) can reestablish those early links for a wider audience. We wholeheartedly endorse the notion that complexity constitutes a body of thought that is inherently spatial. Before expanding on that view, the more immediate origins of this project should be made clear. These theme issues arose out of successful sessions on``Geographical Perspectives on Complexity Theory and Complex Systems'' at consecutive annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles (2002) and New Orleans (2003). The latter sessions were split between detailed expositions of complex dynamic models of spatial phenomena and more theoretically oriented presentations on the deep links between complexity and geography. While the more modelling-oriented presentations suggested a theme issue of Environment and Planning B, we felt that it was also important to explore the broader, theoretical linkages more thoroughly than had been possible in the conference presentations. Accordingly, papers exploring epistemological and ontological aspects of complexity with respect to space and place were invited, both from session participants and from Guest editorial

Journal of environmental psychology, 2006

In this paper, we focus on the question of the nature of place and how orderliness arises in places. The development of the psychology of place is briefly reviewed emphasizing the contribution of a phenomenological perspective. This review allows us to identify a central problem in the development of ideas of place in environmental psychology, namely the problem of sociality. The sociality problem is that current conceptualizations of place do not explain how places become known and understood intersubjectively. Current conceptualizations emphasize individual understanding without explaining how places can become known collectively. We propose a resolution to this problem by drawing upon a strand of phenomenology which has not usually been foregrounded in psychology-the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. Schutz's programme for social science and in particular how he addressed the problem of intersubjective understanding is outlined. Schutz's perspective emphasizes the 'We-relationship' and its mutual co-construction through interaction and in particular language use; places as 'typifications' form an integral part of this co-construction. Drawing on work undertaken in discursive psychology, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology we then illustrate how this programme could be implemented in environmental psychology with a particular focus on how collective understandings of place can arise and how the genesis of this collective understanding can be empirically studied. r

urbanismo.arq.br, 2003

Social and cultural observers have recently observed a world of increasing complexity – a problem posed mainly by the growing production of possibility of information and communication, mobility and connectivity in a “world on the move”. However, questions regarding the connection between social complexity and space seem still unexplored. On the one hand, the society-space debate has not addressed the spatiality of bodily-mediated communication as a key dimension of social reproduction. On the other hand, descriptions of an increasing social complexity also seem to evade the spatiality of communication and, by extension, have ignored the role of space in the production of complexity. This article puts the work of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann under a geographical perspective in order to argue, firstly, that the problem of space in the communicative sociation of practice and the problem of increasing social complexity are in fact deeply inter-related; secondly, that this relation includes space as an active part of the way societies deal with their own complexity. The article is a speculation on the role of the urbanisation of space beyond a crucial element in the sociation of practice – as an active means to what Luhmann calls “reduction of social complexity,” a major problem faced by contemporary societies.

Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2020

It is easy to think of space as something outside and alien to us, as that which in its extension stands in contrast to the interiority of mind, feelings, point of view and other seemingly intangible aspects of subjectivity as regularly conceived in Western culture. In this essay, I challenge this dualistic and inward sense of subjectivity, demonstrating how integral space and spatial experience are to the very possibility and formation of ourselves as subjects-i.e., beings with a point of view on others as well as on ourselves-and as agents-i.e., persons with choosing and meaning-making capacities. 1 Indeed, I show that how we exist varies with how we inhabit space. I am particularly interested here in how our agency is contained by space, but not in the sense in which water is in a pitcher. Rather than a limiting object, space is the extended situation in and through which our sense of self and choice becomes possible in the first place. This study of the interwoven character of personhood and spatiality coalesces with contemporary discussions of agency as interpersonal, situational, and, thus, ultimately heteronomous. Recognizing the constitutive spatial structures of our agency matters because these structures-precisely because of their heteronomy-can oppress the very agency they also constitute. In other words, there are existentially healthy and unhealthy forms of spatial containment that variably support or restrict the range and plasticity of our agency, and a failure to notice the importance of spatial experience leaves this aspect of our reality susceptible to neglect and abuse.

This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Space and Spatiality in Theory' which was held at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, DC, April 2010. In the article, the panel map out some of the challenges for thinking, writing and performing spaces in the 21st century, reflecting upon the emergence of new ways of theorizing space and spatiality, the relationship between writing, action and spacing, and the emergence of distinctive spatialized ontologies (e.g. 'movement-space') which appear to reflect epistemological and technological shifts in how our worlds are thought, produced and inhabited. The panellists stress the importance of recognizing the partial nature of Anglophone theoretical approaches, and they argue for more situated and modest theories. They also reflect upon the importance of a wide range of disciplinary knowledges and practices to their thinking on the spatialities of the world, from philosophy and the natural sciences to art and poetry.

Vision, Possibility, Virtuality, 2022

Both Christian Norberg-Schulz and Kenneth Frampton have written on Martin Heidegger's views on building and dwelling from which they seem to have been influenced. However, upon close scrutiny, their views seem to differ from Heidegger's when it comes to place and the way place comes to be. For as Heidegger indicates through his famous example of the bridge in "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" the location, the place "comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge." It seems that human made things emerge as events in Heidegger's view and influence the world on their own right and in a constructivist way. Human made things, works, seem to stand outside all relations, as claimed in "The Origin of the Work of Art" setting up a world, setting forth the earth and letting the truth take place as a happening and becoming, a founding that ultimately comes from Nothing, in the sense that it never comes from the ordinary and the traditional. Schulz, on the contrary, seems to claim that it is not the building that brings the place into existence. The place is already there when the building starts to be erected and "its detail explains the environment and makes its character manifest." (Christian Norberg-Schulz, “The Phenomenon of Place” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. An Anthology of Architectural Theory,ed. Kate Nesbitt, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 413) By place Schulz means “a totality made up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture and color” (ibid. p. 414). A place is given as a character and an atmosphere. Things like buildings make this character and atmosphere manifest to the extent they express it. Likewise, Kenneth Frampton, introduces the distinctions between architecture and building, industrialized construction and demanding craftsmanship, autonomous architectural practice and place-making and loss of rapport with nature and an architecture that is life fulfilling (Kenneth Frampton, “On Reading Heidegger” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. An Anthology of Architectural Theory, ed. Kate Nesbitt, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 442-446). The purpose of these distinctions is to qualify Heidegger’s constructivism and unquestioned espousal of building as place generator. Although not stated clearly, Schulz’s and Frampton’s views on place are more intricate but less challenging than Heidegger’s radical constructivist visions.

Book chapter in U. Gehmann & M. Reiche (eds). Real Virtuality: About the Destruction and Multiplication of World, pp. 243-272. Transcript Verlag: Germany, 2014

Increasingly, the virtual became reality by hybridization of the world as we knew it: the process that went on in recent years is one of a technically assisted hybridization of both space and self, the »old« world is becoming virtualized and functionalized to a degree never experienced before. For the first time in human history, we have reached a threshold where we have not only to re-assert but to redefine ourselves, as regards our fundamental terms of understanding what the world means for us, our base of existence, and now an assemblage of mixed realities; and connected, what being human means. READ ONLINE: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/chunk_detail_seite.php?doi=10.14361/transcript.9783839426081.243

Environment, Space, Place, 2021

This article correlates the physical composition of the built environment with social interactions and human relationships. The resulting framework draws on an embodied cognitive position through interdisciplinary knowledge with priority given to architectural theory and cognitive linguistics. This approach does not address idiosyncratic, phenomenological descriptions of experiences of place but the potential relationship of human bodies through situated semantics suggested by spatial composition. In this article we ask how the physical arrangement of a space can provide information for analyzing the probable social relations such as positions of hierarchy, power, and authority. We identify two theoretical models, namely latent embodied cognitive operations and space as a situated concept, which can be used to correlate physical arrangements with social meaning.

Space is a product of semiosis. It is a condition pertinent to an organism’s semiotic freedom, which is articulated by the organism as a consequence of its capacity to manipulate the world in the course of its unfolding interaction with its environment. Spatial configuration is thus the result of agency inherent in the organism-in-its-environment. Space, a consequence of social cohesion, is effected through constraints and processes of enaction which are semiotic. These processes are productive and offer architects a novel means by which to configure space, which they should embrace to articulate the nature of inhabitation. The model presented identifies activity as the essential building block to the generation of form. Modelled as a form of artificial life, swarm-like components, referred to as ‘actants’, represent discrete activities and self-configure according to differences in the environment they detect, to form a body-of-swarms. Thus, depicting the spatiality of being.