Communicative Constructions and the Refiguration of Spaces: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

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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 non-verbal 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 Christmann is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Technische Universität 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 Universität 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 Culture, Communication, and Creativity: Reframing the Relations of Media, Knowledge, and Innovation in Society.

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