Research Trends || Space and Place
Over the last forty years or so, increasing attention has been placed on scholarship of space and place, ranging from sociology, anthropology, and cultural geography to theology, philosophy, and cultural studies. Through these various fields, we know, for example, that space and place are inextricably imbricated in the cultural expressions, beliefs, values, and practices that constitute identity (e.g., de Certeau 2002; Said 1979; Soja 1994). In other words, space and place are parts of the contextual information in communication, and, therefore, are part of the rhetorical situation for writers in instructional labs (Bemer 2010).
In my cultural rhetorics scholarship and in my space- and place-anchored pedagogy, I draw primarily from cultural theorists and cultural geographers whose frameworks incorporate the social construction and interactions of space and place through everyday practices. Philosopher Michel de Certeau (1984), for example, argued that “space is a practiced place” (117). In other words, place is a distinct location or group of positions that imply stability. Space, however, is completely dependent on the context of relationships and actualizing processes. A place becomes space through movement and action. In de Certeau’s example, the street (place) becomes a space through the action of walkers. De Certeau claims that the activity of pedestrians, who may choose to walk on or off a given path, may turn left or turn right, or engage in other such actions, transforms the street from a place “geometrically defined by urban planning” into a space useful to the pedestrian. De Certeau further differentiates space from place explaining, “Space is composed of intersections of mobile elements” (117). Inherent in de Certeau’s conceptions of space and place as everyday human activity—wherein we make and remake our environment each time we engage and move—is that this give-and-take between motion and use is intimately connected to always-unstable relations of power.
Social theorist Edward Soja (1989) contributed to scholarship of the relations among space, place, power, and social interactions, arguing that “the organization and meaning of space is a product of social translations, transformations, and experience” (80). Soja used the term “spatiality” to suggest the contingent and transformative ways that material conditions of place and space affect our lived experiences, but also allow for pushing back on those material conditions (see also Foucault 1972). For Soja, there is an “essential connection between spatiality and being” (119). Also focusing on the social interactions of space and place, Diana Oblinger (2006) described space as a “change agent,” positing that it can “bring people together; it can encourage exploration, collaboration, and discussion. Or, space can carry an unspoken message of silence and disconnectedness” (1.1).
The active, material, historical, and multisensory character of space and place affect not only our social interactions and ways of knowing, but also our ability to learn in environments designed for education. The qualities of space and place that bear on human activity and knowledge-making are perhaps even more poignant in hybrid spaces, such as instructional computer labs where students must interact with both physical materialities of space and place and also with virtual or digital materialities.