XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 13-19, 2014)

July 13 - 19, 2014

912

The Shapes of Society; Material, Environmental and Situational Constraints of Interpersonal Space (The Cross-Cultural Perspective)

WG03 Visual Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

Most of our everyday life is spent among and vis-a-vis other people, within interpersonal space. Apart from all our "higher" human features we are also material, bodily creatures, and therefore the types and qualities of relations we enter with others depend to some extent on the character of material, environmental and situational "containers" within which we act. They provide constraints, limitations as well as opportunities, facilitations for specific actions. The examples would include: landscape, urban or rural design, networks of roads, architecture of houses and apartments, setup of offices and factories, design of malls, restaurants and cafes, lecture halls and auditoriums, stadiums and arenas, parks and gardens, cars and train carriages, shape of furniture, but also the presence of other bodies - density of actors within the limited space, character of collective event taking place, closeness or openness of the situation allowing or preventing exit etc.. These material, environmental, and situational "containers" differ across cultures and civilizations. Perhaps they also differ across occupational communities, age groups, gender etc. This session hosts photographic projects which will grasp this cross-cultural variety, accompanied by interpretation of the underlying, culturally specific axio-normative rules which underlie the nature of "containers" and through that medium regulate and coordinate human action in interpersonal space. The intention is to follow the inspirations of two classical authors: Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective (e.g. Relations in Public 1971) and Edward Hall's proxemics (e.g. The Hidden Dimension, 1966), and by linking them via visual method provide new theoretical insights.