Gabriela B. Christmann - Communicative Constructions and the Refiguration of Spaces

Through a variety of empirical studies, this volume offers fresh insights into the manner in which different forms of communicative action transform urban space. With attention to the methodological questions that arise from the attempt to study such changes empirically, it offers new theoretical foundations for understanding the social construction and reconstruction of spaces through communicative action. Seeing communicative action as the basic element in the social construction of reality and conceptualizing communication not only in terms of the use of language and texts, but as involving any kind of objectification, such as technologies, bodies and nonverbal signs, it considers the roles of both direct and mediatized (or digitized) communication. An examination of the conceptualization of the communicative (re-)construction of spaces and the means by which this change might be empirically investigated, this book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the notion of refiguration as a means by which to understand the transformation of contemporary societies. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, and geographers with interests in social construction and urban space.

Gabriela B. Christmann is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Technische Universitt Berlin and Head of the Research Department Dynamics of Communication, Knowledge and Spatial Development at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Germany.

Hubert Knoblauch is Professor of Sociology at the Technische Universitt Berlin, Germany. He is the author of PowerPoint, Communication, and the Knowledge Society, the co-author of Videography: Introduction to Interpretive Videoanalysis of Social Situations, and the co-editor of Social Constructivism as Paradigm? and the author of the monograph The Communicative Construction of Reality.

Martina Lw is Professor of Sociology at the Technische Universitt Berlin, Germany. She is the author of The Sociology of Space and co-editor of Spatial Sociology: Relational Space after the Turn.

Based on the premise that what is social always takes on a spatial form, this series explores the changes wrought in the relations of human-beings to spaces and their spatial practices by current social transformations, conflicts, crises and uncertainties. Welcoming studies from disciplines across the social sciences, such as sociology, geography and urban studies, books in the series consider the ways in which people (re-)negotiate and (re-)construct spatial orders according to a common pattern of refiguration, a process that often involves conflict and is frequently shaped by phenomena such as mediatization, translocalisation and polycontexturalisation.

Series Editors

Titles in the series

Spatial Transformations

Kaleidoscopic Perspectives on the Refiguration of Spaces

Edited by Angela Million, Christian Haid, Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Nina Baur

Communicative Constructions and the Refiguration of Spaces

Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

Edited by Gabriela Christmann, Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Lw

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/The-Refiguration-of-Space/book-series/ROS

Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

Edited byGabriela B. Christmann, Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Lw

First published 2022

by Routledge

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2022 selection and editorial matter, Gabriela Christmann, Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Lw; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Gabriela Christmann, Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Lw to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Christmann, Gabriela B., editor. | Knoblauch, Hubert, editor. | Low, Martina, editor.

Title: Communicative constructions and the refiguration of spaces :theoretical approaches and empirical studies/Gabriela Christmann,Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Low.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. |Series: The refiguration of space | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021034022 (print) | LCCN 2021034023 (ebook) |ISBN 9780367419974 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032163345 (paperback) |ISBN 9780367817183 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Public spaces. | Communication in human geography. |Spatial behavior. | Space perception. | UrbanizationSocial aspects. | CommunicationSocial aspects.

Classification: LCC HT185 .C655 2022 (print) |LCC HT185 (ebook) | DDC 307.76dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034022

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034023

ISBN: 978-0-367-41997-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-03-216334-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-81718-3 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780367817183

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by Newgen Publishing UK