CRDM 701
Week 8 - Jon
This week's readings, particularly the Myers and Merrifield texts, helped me to think about connections between space and the individual. Specifically, I've always been interested in the variety of answers to the question that Myers explores: "Where are you from?". For example, I come from a mid-sized town (Concord) outside of a large city (Charlotte), and I have noticed in the past that people from Concord are more likely to answer the above question with "Charlotte" than with the the town that is listed as their street address, Concord. Why do they "defer" to the larger city? Are they simply trying to avoid having to explain the location of the smaller town, thus naming a space that is more likely to be known by the audience? Or is there something more hip, powerful, cool, or even acceptable about attaching one's self to an urban environment? Or is such a decision less about the larger city as it is about severing all ties from the smaller location? Importantly, substituting "Charlotte" for "Concord" has become much less prevalent after the city's growth in population and tourism in the past ten years. Is the city now "important" enough to be declared a space that one calls home?
Myers cites Schlegoff's discussion of flexibility within the "scale of the formulation"; "Any place can be described in broader or narrower terms, as a child writes his or her address in a book, from street address up through town and nation to the universe" (p. 322). The substitution of one town for another is slightly different from Schlegoff's formulation of scale -- Yes, Charlotte is larger than Concord, but, at the same time, the cities have separate boundaries. One could suggest a regional scale, something like indicating one's home is the "Charlotte area"; however, this does not seem the same as saying one is simply and plainly from "Charlotte." Charlotte has such a strong influence on the area that, indeed, the regional scale may be implied, but, still, substituting a regional scale the majority of the time for the local is interesting.
Myers introduces Proshensky's notion of "place identity" to explore how individuals interpret their surroundings. He goes on to suggest that place "is productive in conversation because it can lead on to more talk, further meanings, and practices" (p. 324). Thus, another explanation for the substitution of a larger city for one smaller is not to limit conversation, as I discussed above, but to spur it on. Just the mention of a large city, even one's that the audience for the conversation may not have visited, create rich meanings fostered from media outlets. Even looking at a map, one can observe the placement of significance on large cities over small ones -- big, exclamatory dots in a sea of small, quiet ones.
But why might one provide an "alternative geographical identity"? Within Myers's study, there are two such instances and are explained as follows: "Both revisions are occasioned by something in the ongoing talk; the identity as Brummie is relevant to the focus group introduction, and the identity as Jamaican/American is relevant to an argument about where one could live" (p. 332). Thus, context and audience are vital.
Lefebvre's spatial triad of representations of space, representational space, and spatial practices is useful for exploring some of the questions I posed at the beginning of this entry. Representations of space refers to "conceptualized space, to the space constructed by assorted professionals and technocrats. . . invariably, ideology, power, and knowledge are embedded in this representation" (p. 174). The degree to which skyscrapers like, say, the Bank of America building, a company which many claim to "own" Charlotte, embodies ideology, power, and knowledge is unquestionable. Moreover, the lived space, that of "everyday experience," and spatial practices seem to channel into Charlotte, a hub of shopping, sports, food, highways, and social networks. And, that which is missed while being physically present in the larger, dominant space is pumped into regional and local televisions through news broadcasts. Therefore, an individual can sleep in one town but metaphorically "live" and work in another. I believe that Lefebvre's triad provides some insight into why one would defer to the larger, dominant space.
Lastly, I am interested in seeing how "hyper-space biased communication" impacts the way that individuals view themselves in the world. The three spatial ambiguities cited by Jansson, Andre, and Falkheimer, mobility, cultural convergence, and interactivity, provide some interesting questions regarding individuals and their space. Will the first response to a question like "Where are you from?" ever be in a digital context rather than the physical? Will we ever be "from" a message board or online world that we frequent or will the digital always be supplementary to the physical? What about the opposite scenario -- what happens when someone asks you where you are from on a message board or online environment? Will your response be geographic or digital? What about in an online world like WoW? Is your "home" in the game primary or secondary to your physical home outside of cyberspace?
Posted at 02:04PM Oct 17, 2007 by jtburr in Week 8 | Comments[0]
Week 8 - Nick
This weeks readings on space were very interesting from a theoretical standpoint. Merrifield's review of the work of Lefebvre sets up perhaps the best theoretical framework for conceptualizing space. Of course, I have read part of the book Merrifield cites quite frequently, the Production of Space (POS is a rather unfortunate abbreviation to have chosen to use, so I will not run with it). Lefebvre's work is instrumental in understanding how we work with space. I especially take to the notion that space is concieved, percieved, and lived. Lefebvre took the view that capitalist societies get stuck in the concieved part, but the other two are vitally more important even though all three are necessary for the understanding of space as a whole. The fact that his work was by and large put off to the side for so long seems a bit tragic, considering that the production of space is the construction of our lives.
Myer's study on the simple act of identifying oneself by where one is from perhaps segues with Lefebvre, although not in a major way. Stretching it a little, we see that people tend to have many ways of dealing with the question depending on who they are speaking to. The construction of identity that goes on here would be impossible without the produced spatial meaning inherrant in cities. This can be seen in how meaningless identification through place becomes when the conversant has no familiarity with the place. The space is produced, and in turn produces the people, and thus when you say you are from somewhere to someone who recognizes the place, they have some understanding of how you were produced and what you may be like. This falls within Lefebvre's framework of how space is perceived. Jansson and Falkheimer's work further corrobrates this framework of space by discussing what many others have said on the subject. They really bring in the communicative element in the production of space, however, by discussing how others say space is mediated, communicated, and produced through such communication.
Although it seems at first that space may not be such a huge part of search engine use, it is to a certain extent. What are search engines if not a different form of mapping the internet? They are crossroads at which people come to find their direction. Yet this space is concieved every bit as much as other spaces. Indeed, considering how commercial such spaces have become, we might presume that Lefebve would have the same criticisms of the space concieved by search engines as he did other forms of urban space. The lived space of the internet is not necessarily the first twenty entries that come up when you do a search on Google or Yahoo or Excite. Yet those twenty might affect our perception of the space. Perhaps we should guard against the concieved part of the triad dominating on the internet as much as it does in a capatilistic society. Of course, it may already dominate, in which case it would behoove us to understand how that is working in the digital environment.
Posted at 01:43PM Oct 17, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 8 | Comments[0]
Week 8 - Christin
The readings this week all have to do with the concept of space, which especially given the growing trend toward ubiquitous computing (I?ll point you again to the Popular Mechanics video of the coffee table computer from Microsoft, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html). The readings tended to concentrate more on geographical space, but I wonder how our conceptions of space will change when we?re surrounded by computers that are connecting us to all of these other physical locations throughout the world. Will we still treat Raleigh, North Carolina as the same place when anywhere we go we?re surrounded by images of, say for example, European castles? Or will everywhere suddenly become, to borrow a term from our own Adriana de Souza e Silva, a hybrid space?
Myers discusses the different responses to the question ?where are you from?? and what those responses mean in terms of identity. He says that, ?References to place project further possibilities for talk, evaluating and defending, telling stories, and arguing. So references to place are important, not just for finding out about places, but also for finding identities in talk.? (321) What?s interesting to me and that I didn?t see him drawing connections with is not just the discussion of where you as an individual comes from but also where you family ? parents and grandparents ? come from. I can say that I was born and raise in New York, but if I say that I was born and raised in New York by Italian immigrants suddenly that takes on an entirely different meaning. My identity becomes tied not only to where I was born or lived but as well to where my parents and, in some cases, grandparents lived.
Merrifield describes how, ??in Lefebvre?s hands, space becomes redescribed not as a dead, inert thing or object, but as organic and fluid and alive; it has a pulse, it palpitates, it flows and collides with other spaces.? (171) I love this description not just because of what it says but because of how it?s said. Later, Merrifield describes how space must be built; I would argue it must be born and grow much like a child would. It must have parents who conceive of it, it must grow, be nurtured, and be shaped by those around it, and finally it will reach adulthood able to reproduce itself.
This child analogy can then connect to the Falkheimer and Jansson article. Here, the authors describe the concepts of space in connection to media. Specifically, I was interested in their discussion of mobile media. On page 12 they state, ?and as technologies become more portable, they also become more closely attached to the moving body ? through headsets, earphones, palm pilots, laptops, etc.? If space can move like a child can move, then this would allow us to attach technology to a space so that it becomes part of both the definition of and embodiment of that space.
So I may have just gone on about a metaphor some of you disagree with, so I?ll be interested to hear in class what you all think about it.
Posted at 11:10AM Oct 17, 2007 by caphelps in Week 8 | Comments[0]
Week 8 - Kathy
Myers (2006) suggests that ?researchers should look at how people talk about place before they try to categorise what participants say about it? (p. 121), saying that references to place are important to finding ?identities in talk?. His discussion of the question ?where are you from? was particularly interesting to me, having just relocated from a place I had lived all my life. It was interesting to reflect on the flexibility of formulation, which for me starts at ?around Philly? (sometimes I have even had to explain that ?Philly? means Philadelphia) and gets as specific as ?West Chester?. When I find myself in conversations with others from the area I am from, I have realized that my ?place? has grown to include places which I would before consider to be ?far away? (more than 30 minutes).
Merrifield?s (2000) discussion of Lefebvre?s Spatiology and the Production of Space (POS) looks at the ways that space is actively produced, not as objective but ?organic and fluid and alive; it has a pulse, it palpitates, it flows and collides with other spaces? (p. 171). The idea of space as fluid accounts for how my concept of a place called ?home? has grown to include an area much larger than the street I grew up on, the apartment I lived in before I moved here, and the places that I used to go. That space has changed now that I have a new perspective from being in a new place ? as Merrifield summarizes Lefebvre - ?To change life is to change space; to change space is to change life? (p.173).
Jansson and Falkheimer (2006) argue that Lefebvre?s model, which looks at the relationships between the production of space and the production of communication, ?must be regarded as a cornerstone for future investigations of the geographies of communication? (p.?). Moving forward, Lefebvre?s triad in POS - representations of space, representational space, and spatial practices ? seem to have a lot of promise for looking at virtual space. Representation of space as ?space constructed by assorted professionals and technocrats? (p. 174) can be understood in terms of the Internet as everything from the technologies (PCs , infrastructure backbones) to the policies and regulations (tiered net, CFAA) that initially inform the use and limits of that space. Representational space (lived space) is experiential, and Merrifield notes that ordered space attempts to ?intervene in, rationalize, and ultimately usurp? this lived space. An example of this is the free P2P MP3 distribution model being usurped by Apple?s iTunes, which legitimized the form by bringing it back into ordered space. Lastly, spatial practices which shape reality and include the interactions that link places can be seen in personalized ?web portals? where individuals can manage virtual spaces from the stock market to the daily horoscope. Maybe these spatial practices can also be seen in portable technologies designed to receive email and manage schedules as well as store personal photos and music, such as the iPhone.
The implications that place and space have on our identities and the ways we communicate are clearly complicated by technology and globalization. In his discussion of social space in the modern episteme, Wise (1997) discusses the collapsing of time and space. Following Lefebvre?s idea that changing space changes life, and changing life changes space, I wonder how changes in the ways that time and space are collapsed in representations of space and representational space ? such as tiered Internet - affect communication in virtual space?
Before closing, I wanted to mention that I was also very intrigued by the readings on cartography, and feel like this blog post could have gone in a completely different direction. I am looking forward to our discussion and reading this week?s posts!
Also - for updates on my project check out my project blog - http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/broadbandcasting
Posted at 10:42PM Oct 15, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 8 | Comments[0]