sociology of space

(noun)

The sociology of space is a sub-discipline of sociology that is concerned with the spatiality of society. It examines the constitution of spaces through action, as well as the dependence of action on spatial structures.

Related Terms

  • sociology of architecture
  • urban ecology model

Examples of sociology of space in the following topics:

  • Social Interaction in Urban Areas

    • Contact with the hypothetical person that Georg Simmel calls "the stranger" changes the way urban dwellers think about intimacy, personal space, and casual interactions.
    • Contact with the hypothetical person that Georg Simmel calls "the stranger" changes the way urban dwellers think about intimacy, personal space, and casual interactions.
    • Despite the relatively recent ascent of urban sociology, sociologists have long studied the sociological implications of space.
    • The other strand of analysis asks more pointed questions about how the architecture and physical space of a city influence social interactions.
    • This second set of questions is taken up by urban planners, architects, and, in the social sciences, by individuals who study the sociology of architecture and the sociology of space.
  • New State Spaces

    • New state spaces are redefining borders, and they may not be ruled by national governments.
    • Another example of a new state space is the European Union, a confederation of 27 European states that encourages political and economic cooperation among its members.
    • Recent sociological work has argued that, with globalization, relevant political borders are changing.
    • This branch of sociology defines new state spaces as geographical spaces that are not governed simply by national governments.
    • Another example of a new state space is seen in regional and international governments such as the European Union.
  • Sociological Perspectives on Urban Life

    • Urban sociology is the sociological study of life and human interaction in metropolitan areas.
    • In other words, it is the sociological study of cities and their role in the development of society.
    • The Chicago School of Sociology is widely credited with institutionalizing urban sociology as a disciplinary sub-field through pioneering studies of urban spaces and social interactions .
    • The theory is essentially an extended metaphor that helps to explain how conflicting subgroups exist in shared urban spaces and systems.
    • The Chicago School of Sociology, developed at the University of Chicago, is credited with developing modern urban sociology as researchers worked to elucidate patterns of urban life.
  • Personal Space

    • An example of the cultural determination of personal space is how urbanites accept the psychological discomfort of someone intruding upon their personal space more readily than someone unused to urban life.
    • Living in the city alters the development of one's sense of personal space.
    • The size of one's sense of personal space is culturally determined, in addition to being dependent upon the nuanced relationship of the two interlocutors.
    • Moreover, individual sense of space has changed historically as the notions of boundaries between public and private spaces have evolved over time.
    • Sociologists study personal space precisely because of social implications of distance in regard to relationships.
  • Sociological Videos

    • The following are videos - including fiction movies, non-fiction documentaries and recorded lectures - examining topics in the field of sociology.
    • See this link for a sortable table of sociological videos: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociological_Videos
  • Two-mode factor analysis

    • Factor analysis provides an alternative method to SVD to the same goals: identifying underlying dimensions of the joint space of actor-by-event variance, and locating or scaling actors and events in that space.
    • That is, simple characterizations of the underlying dimensions (e.g.
    • With the caveat of pretty poor fit of a low-dimensional solution in mind, let's examine the scaling of actors on the first three factors (figure 17.11).
    • Figure 17.12 shows the loadings of the events.
    • Figure 17.10 Eigenvalues of two-mode factoring of California donors and initiatives
  • Forms of Sociological Practice

    • While there remains considerable debate within sociology about the best function or purpose of sociological practice, three primary approaches provide the foundational cues for contemporary sociological practice.
    • Despite the fact that each of these views has been evident within sociological practices throughout the history of the discipline (as well as within and between other academic disciplines), they have become the source of heated debates throughout the last three decades.
    • Rather than taking sides in these debates, we thus provide introductory descriptions of these three major approaches to sociological practice, and encourage students to consider the pros and cons of each approach.
  • Visualizing two-mode data

    • We've deleted isolates (initiatives that don't have donors in common and donors that don't have initiatives in common), located the points in space using Gower MDS, resized the nodes and node labels, and eliminated the arrow heads.
    • We can get some insights from this kind of visualization of a two-mode network (particularly when some kind of scaling method is used to locate the points in space).
    • And, particular donors are located in the same parts of the space as certain initiatives -- defining which issues (events) tend to go along with which actors.
    • It is exactly this kind of "going together-ness" or "correspondence" of the locations of actors and events that the numeric methods discussed below are intended to index.
    • That is, the numeric methods are efforts to capture the clustering of actors brought together by events; events brought together by the co-presence of actors; and the resulting "bundles" of actors/events.
  • The Interactionist Perspective

    • Human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols and signification, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions.
    • Evolving out of the mid-20th century "Chicago School" of urban sociology, Park created the term human ecology, which borrowed the concepts of symbiosis, invasion, succession, and dominance from the science of natural ecology.
    • Park and fellow sociologist Ernest Burgess suggested that cities were governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution evident in ecosystems.
    • Competition was created by groups fighting for urban resources, like land, which led to a division of urban space into ecological niches.
    • He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.
  • Levels of Analysis: Micro and Macro

    • One of the most famous early micro-sociological studies was, "The Cab Driver and His Fare," published in 1959 by Fred Davis.
    • Consider, for example, how front and back stage spaces are managed during a visit to the doctor.
    • As you are shown to an exam room, you are briefly ushered into a back stage space.
    • Sociological approaches are differentiated by the level of analysis.
    • Analyze how symbolic interactionism plays a role in both macro and micro sociology
Subjects
  • Accounting
  • Algebra
  • Art History
  • Biology
  • Business
  • Calculus
  • Chemistry
  • Communications
  • Economics
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Microbiology
  • Physics
  • Physiology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Statistics
  • U.S. History
  • World History
  • Writing

Except where noted, content and user contributions on this site are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 with attribution required.