ANTH 557
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SPACE
Course description
Consideration of anthropological, archaeological, and related disciplinary perspectives on space,
place, landscape, the built environment, and architecture. Coursework encompasses critical review of
major theoretical literature and case studies of ancient and modern societies. Prerequisite: Graduate
student standing. 1 unit
Course concept
Human society exists in a spatial context. We tangibly and cognitively construct space: physical
space, social space, sacred space, economic space, political space, cyber space, and so on. In turn, the
space we have thought and/or erected into existence affects our daily lives in multiple ways: it
stimulates, constrains, relaxes and orders our individual actions and social interactions.
In human society there is no such thing as natural, neutral space. All space is conceptualized. For
instance, there is a universally perceived opposition between the space of society and the space
beyond society. But every society has its own unique cultural signature in terms of how it organizes
and analyzes space. That is why the study of space is vital to anthropology (and to its application to
ancient societies through archaeology). Yet, until recently, scholars have not thought systematically
and comprehensively about space.
The development of an academic discourse about space has proceeded independently from and has
been influenced by the major philosophical/intellectual currents known as phenomenology,
structuralism, postmodernism and poststructuralism. In this course we review key publications
representing these diverse schools. We examine the history of critical thinking about space within
anthropology and archaeology and in related disciplines such as geography and architecture. We
study how anthropologists, archaeologists, and other scholars have applied spatial ideas to particular
case studies. We evaluate how well theory and practice have worked together and we try to formulate
new theoretical positions and practical problems that can be enriched by a study of space.
Organization of the course
This is a tightly structured graduate seminar. The professor will present an introductory lecture to
each topic on the syllabus and all students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the
required readings in a discussion led by assigned students. What are the author’s objectives in
writing the piece? What are the principal arguments made? Does the author make a convincing
argument ? why? why not? (strengths, deficiencies) What are the theoretical, empirical and other
contributions of the piece to the study of space as conceived for this course? Can the readings
help/be applied to your research? why? why not?
Requirements
To facilitate in-class discussion, students will come to class with a statement of at least two ideas or
quotes from each reading that merit discussion. If you are more comfortable, you are welcome to
write out your comments and to read your comments. You are expected to participate in discussions.
Therefore, as you read, you should consider the themes and questions of the readings and how they
relate to each other, comparing and contrasting the perspectives. (50%)
Students will write a term paper of 15-20 double-spaced pages using a 12-point font, one-inch
margins all sides. You must follow the formatting of your discipline as it appears in one of the major
journals. You may use figures if helpful. Here is the topic of the term paper. Write a critical
historiography of the treatment of space (space, place, landscape, architecture -- what we’ll have
been talking about all semester) for your particular research area. For instance, if you are specializing
in Mississipian archaeology, your paper would deal with Mississippian archaeology informed by
relevant North American archaeology. If you are interested in the slums of Río de Janeiro, your paper
will critique the treatment of space in urban studies. If your topic is tourism, then review how space
has been applied in tourism studies. Your paper should reflect your control of the relevant literature
we’ve read in this course as well as the relevant area literature. The paper is due one week after the
course ends. (50%)
COURSE SCHEDULE
TOPIC 1: Introduction to concepts of space, place, landscape, built environment, architecture.
The emergence of social space as an intellectual paradigm.
required readings
review in The New York Times of The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking
The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre: chapter 1 (Blackwell, 1991)
Lawrence, Denise and Setha Low: “The built environment and spatial form” in Annual Reviews in
Anthropology 19: 453-505
Crang and Thrift: “Introduction” to Thinking Space, edited by Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift
(Routledge, 2000)
“Introductory Essay” by Denis Cosgrove in Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (University
of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
“The Idea of Landscape” selected pages from Chapter 1 in Denis Cosgrove’s Social Formation and
Symbolic Landscape(University of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
John Urry: “Social relations, space and time” in Social Relations and Spatial Structures, edited by
Derek Gregory and John Urry (Macmillan, 1985)
recommended
Allan Pred: selected pages from “The social becomes the spatial...” in Social Relations and Spatial
Structures, edited by Derek Gregory and John Urry (Macmillan, 1985)
TOPIC 2: Postmodern perspectives on space.
required readings
Dianne Harris: “The postmodernization of landscape” in Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, vol. 58, no. 3, 1999
selection from Anne Friedberg’s Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (University of
California Press, 1994)
Foucault: selections in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach
(Routledge, 1997)
Jameson: selections in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach
(Routledge, 1997)
one page summary of Kenneth Frampton’s “Introduction” in his book Tectonics
Fred S. Matter: “Critical regionalism from a desert dweller’s perspective”
Baudrillard: selections in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil
Leach (Routledge, 1997)
TOPIC 3: Place, meaning. Phenomenological perspectives on space.
required readings
my summary points on Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience
selections from Place and Placelessness by E. Relph (Pion, London, 1976)
Nadia Lovell’s “Introduction” for her edited volume, Locality and Belonging (Routledge, 1998)
Margaret Rodman: “Empowering place: multilocality and multivocality” in American
Anthropologist, vol. 94 (1992)
Setha M. Low and Irwin Altman: “Place attachment” in Place Attachment, edited by Irwin Altman
and Setha M. Low (Plenum, 1992)
Heidegger: selections in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach
(Routledge, 1997)
selected pages in Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Existence, Space & Architecture (Praeger, 1971)
definition of poetics
Bachelard: selections in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach
(Routledge, 1997)
chapter 1 in Christopher Tilley’s A Phenomenology of Landscape (Berg, 1994)
recommended
Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local (The New Press, 1997) – also see Hine’s review
review of Tony Hiss’ The Experience of Place
“No ‘there’ there. Why cyberspace isn’t anyplace” in The Atlantic Monthly, August 2000
TOPIC 4: Mapping space. Scale.
required readings
Cosgrove’s introduction in Mappings, edited by Denis Cosgrove (Reaktion, 1999)
J. B. Harley: “Maps, knowledge, power” in The Iconography of Landscape, edited by Denis
Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
table of contents and introduction in The Power of Maps by Denis Wood (Guilford Press, 1992)
James Corner: “The agency of mapping: speculation, critique and invention” in Mappings, edited by
Denis Cosgrove (Reaktion, London, 1999)
Helaine Silverman’s chapter 1, “To be human is to dwell” in her book Ancient Nasca Settlement and
Society (University of Iowa Press, 2002)
Thomas Bassett: “Indigenous mapmaking in intertropical Africa” in Cartography in the Traditional
African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies (The History of Cartography, Volume
Two, Book Three), edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis, pp. 24-48. (University of
Chicago Press, 1998)
selection from Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines (Viking Penguin 1987)
Nicholas Lemann: “Atlas shrugs” in The New Yorker, April 9, 2001
Philip Nobel: “Maps gain in clarity but lose a bit of art” in The New York Times, February 17, 2001
recommended book:
Matthew H. Edney’s Mapping An Empire. The Geographical Construction of British India, 17651843 (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
quote from Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia
TOPIC 5: Architecture.
required readings
Martin Locock: “Meaningful architecture” in Meaningful Architecture: Social Interpretations of
Buildings, edited by Martin Locock (Avebury, 1994)
Mike Parker Pearson and Colin Richards: “Ordering the world...” in Architecture and Order.
Approaches to Social Space, edited by Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (Routledge,
1994)
Carol J. Burns: “On site” in Drawing/Building/Text: Essays in Architectural Theory , edited by
Andrea Kahn (Princeton University Press, 1991)
Pierre Bourdieu: “The Berber house” reprinted in Rules and Meanings. The Anthropology of
Everyday Knowledge (Penguin, 1973)
Clark Cunningham: “Order in the Atoni house” reprinted in Right & Left, edited by Rodney
Needham. (The University of Chicago Press, 1973)
Christopher Evans: “Megalithic follies” in Journal of Material Culture 5 (3): 347-366 (2000)
Lynette Russell and Ian McNiven: “Monumental colonialism” in Journal of Material Culture 3 (3):
283-299
recommended
“House to palace, village to state: scaling up architecture and ideology” by Susan Kus and Victor
Raharijaona (2000) American Anthropologist 102 (1): 98-113
TOPIC 6: Space of identity, gender, ethnicity, nation, the “Other.” Transnational/global space.
required readings
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson: “Beyond ‘culture’: space, identity and the politics of difference”
Cultural Anthropology , vol. 7, no. 1 (1992)
Saskia Sassen: “Whose city is it? Globalization and the formation of new claims” in Cities and
Citizenship, edited by James Holston (Duke University Press, 1999)
James Clifford: “Diasporas” in Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, by
James Clifford. (Harvard University Press, 1997)
chapter 4 in Edward Soja’s Thirdspace (Blackwell, 1996) pages on postcolonial critique
“Introduction” by Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu and Wong Chong Thai in Postcolonial Space(s)
(Princeton Architectural Press, 1997)
Arjun Appadurai: “The production of locality” in his book, Modernity At Large (U. of Minn., 1996)
Robert B. Riley: “Gender, landscape, culture: sorting out some questions” in Landscape Journal vol.
13, no. 2 (1994)
Peter Jackson: “Chapter 5: Gender and sexuality” in Maps of Meaning (Routledge, 1989)
chapter 4 in Edward Soja’s Thirdspace (Blackwell, 1996) pages on feminist critique
Setha Low: “The edge and the center: gated communities and the discourse of urban fear” in
American Anthropologist 103 (1): 45-58. (2001)
recommended book
Jane M. Jacobs’ Edge of Empire. Postcolonialism and the City (Routledge, 1996)
TOPIC 7: Public space. Contested space.
required readings
Walter Benjamin: “Paris, capital of the nineteenth century” in The Arcades Project, by Walter
Benjamin (Belknap-Harvard University Press, 1999)
Michel de Certeau: “Spatial practices. Walking in the city” in The Practice of Everyday Life by
Michel de Certeau (University of California Press, 1984)
section called “Segregation, surveillance, and the disappearance of the public sphere” in The
Theming of America by Mark Gottdiener (Westview, 1997)
chapter 6 in Setha Low’s On the Plaza (University of Texas Press, 2000)
Hilda Kuper: “The language of sites in the politics of space” American Anthropologist, vol. 74
(1972)
Barbara Bender: “Stonehenge - contested landscapes” in Landscape. Politics and Perspectives, edited
by Barbara Bender (Berg, 1993)
Vera Zolberg: “Museums as contested sites of remembrance: the Enola Gay affair” in Theorizing
Museums. Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World, edited by Sharon Macdonald
and Gordon Fyfe (Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review, 1998)
TOPIC 8: The space of tourism.
required readings
John Urry: “Time and space in the consumption of place” in Consuming Places by John Urry
(Routledge, 1995)
Chris Rojek and John Urry: “Transformations of travel and theory” in Touring Cultures.
Transformations of Travel and Theory, edited by Chris Rojek and John Urry (Routledge, 1997)
John F. Sears: “Introduction” in Sacred Places. American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth
Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 1989)
recommended reading
Derek Gregory: “Colonial nostalgia and cultures of travel: spaces of constructed visibility in Egypt”
in Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage, edited by Nezar AlSayyad (Routledge, 2001)
TOPIC 9: Themed space.
required readings
Mark Gottdiener: “Looking at themed environments” in The Theming of America by Mark
Gottdiener (Westview, 1997)
Charter of the New Urbanism: table of contents, foreward, introduction
“Pleasantville. Can Disney reinvent the burbs?” by Kurt Anderson in The New Yorker (September
6, 1999)
The New York Times Magazine: “Disney discovers real life” (December 14, 1997)
“Mall tourists”
Ann Anagnost: “The nationscape: movement in the field of vision” in Positions 1 (3): 585-606
(Duke University Press)
TOPIC 10: Sacred space and time.
required readings
Basso
hierophany
Yi-Fu Tuan: one page from Topophilia
Susan M. Kus: “The social representation of space...” in Archaeological Hammers and Theories
edited by James A. Keene and Arthur S. Moore (Academic Press, 1981)
John C. Barrett: “Chronologies of landscape” in The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape,
edited by Peter J. Ucko and Robert Layton (Routledge 1999)
Tim Ingold: “The temporality of the landscape” in World Archaeology, vol. 25, no. 2 (1993)
“Epilogue: Landscapes Reviewed” (on pilgrimage -- as performance of space) in Pilgrimage. Past
and Present in the World Religions by Simon Coleman and John Elsner. (Harvard University Press,
1995)
David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal: “Introduction” in American Sacred Space, edited by
David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (Indiana University Press, 1995)
Rowland A. Sherrill: “American sacred space and the contest of history” in American Sacred Space,
Howard Morphy: “Landscape and the reproduction of the ancestral past” in The Anthropology of
Landscape. Perspectives on Place and Space, edited by Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995)
recommended book
Edward Tabor Linenthal: Sacred Ground. Americans and Their Battlefields (University of Illinois
Press, 1993)
TOPIC 11: Space of death and commemoration.
required readings
Blanche Linden-Ward: “Strange but genteel pleasure grounds: tourist and leisure uses of nineteenthcentury rural cemeteries” in Cemeteries and Gravemarkers. Voices of American Culture, edited by
Richard E. Meyer (Utah State University Press, 1992)
David Charles Sloane: excerpts from his book, The Last Great Necessity. Cemeteries in American
History (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991)
Richard E. Meyer: “Strangers in a strange land: ethnic cemeteries in America” in Ethnicity and the
American Cemetery, edited by Richard E. Meyer (Bowling greet State University Popular Press,
1993)
Michel Ragon: “The cemetery as museum” in The Space of Death by Michel Ragon (University
Press of Virginia, 1983)
Helaine Silverman: “Narratives of identity and history in modern cemeteries of Lima, Peru” in The
Space and Place of Death, edited by Helaine Silverman and David B. Small (AP3A, no. 11, 2002)
Michel Ragon: “War memorials” in The Space of Death by Michel Ragon (University Press of
Virginia, 1983)
John R. Gillis: “Memory and identity...” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity,
edited by John R. Gillis (Princeton University Press, 1994)
Sharon Küchler: “Landscape as memory...” in Landscape. Politics and Perspectives, edited by
Barbara Bender (Berg, 1993)
Rudy J. Koshar: “Building pasts....” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, edited by
John R. Gillis (Princeton University Press, 1994)
John Bodnar: “Public memory...” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, edited by
John R. Gillis (Princeton University Press, 1994)
Daniel J. Sherman: “Art, commerce, and the production of memory” in Commemorations. The
Politics of National Identity, edited by John R. Gillis (Princeton University Press, 1994)
James Loewen: excerpts from Lies Across America. What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. (The New
Press, 1999)
Benedict Anderson: “Cartoons and monuments” in Political Power and Communications in
Indonesia, edited by Karl D. Jackson and Lucian W. Pye (University of California Press, 1978)
recommended readings
Helaine Silverman: “Introduction. The space and place of death” in The Space and Place of Death
edited by Helaine Silverman and David B. Small (AP3A, number 11, 2002)
TOPIC 12: Selections of relevant videos for the course.
TOPIC 13 : student presentations.