The framework of cultural space (original) (raw)

2008

The metaphor of time is both linear and spatial. It places temporal events into the disparate categories of the past, present, and the future. This static model of time cannot account for the dynamics of cultural space. A better model of time and space can be found in the writings of Michel Foucault. In the archeology of knowledge, Foucault proposes that the relationship of time to space is uniquely connected. Layers of space accrue over time resulting in a laminated or stratified space. The model presented in this essay takes this metaphor one step further. It argues that time is embedded in space; the present is embedded in the past. In the sociology of everyday life, one understands the present because it is embedded in the past. There are rituals, social scenarios, and social practices that constitute the practical knowledge that underlies everyday social interaction. The present and the past encounter each other in the co-present. It is here where one accepts the past in the co...

The Sedimentation Theory of Cultural Time and Space: The Present is Embedded in the Past

Linear time is a metaphor based on the concept of E uclidean space (St. Clair, 2006). One of the difficulties associated with this concep t of time is that although it incorporates change as movement from one steady-state to another, it cannot account for the process that motivates that change of time within the same cultural space. A more insightful model of temporal and spatial chang e can be found in the metaphor of the "Archeology of Knowledge" (Foucault, 1969). A modification of this metaphor can be found in the sedimentation theory of time in spa ce which envisions time as the accumulation of social practices layered in cultura l space. It is argued that the present is embedded in the cultural past. The dynamics of change in a cultural space occurs in the co-present, a place where the reconstructed past is linked with the co-present. It is in this co-present space that the social construction of cultural space takes place. Some events are retained and defined as belo...

Space and Time as variables of Social Phenomena

Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault are two of many social theorists who studied space and time as influences of social interaction and human agency. Many theorists have observed that different settings generate different social norms, which in turn dictates how a person acts in that setting. Giddens’ and Foucault’s approaches to space and time differ in that Giddens focuses on the micro aspects of socialization while Foucault emphasizes macro level changes in social power over time. For both, space is essential in maintaining societal cohesion, though Giddens delves further into the role of the social actor, while Foucault examines how space is used to prevent social deviance. Further, Giddens and Foucault engage with human agency, overlapping in ideas about the degree context influences micro social behaviour. In this essay, I will compare and contrast Anthony Giddens’ and Michel Foucault’s conceptions of space and time within social phenomena and explain how both conceive of space as a technique to maintain social order

Time and the Production of Space in Sociology

Sociologia & Antropologia, 11(2), 2021

Nearly fifty years ago, in 1974, Henri Lefebvre (2000a) became a forerunner for drawing sociologists' attention to the theoretical possibilities implicit in the simultaneous inquiry of the macro-and micro-social processes involved in (re-) generating space, which he defined as a "set of relations" between "things (ob

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