Space and Culture

Culture

http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/2693-new-cell-discovery-could-advance-understanding-of-cancer

Culture as reification is perhaps a relatively new theme for us. Reification is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it refers to the life of objects, in the straightforward empirical sense of ‘objects coming to life’ when they are engaged in action. However, at the same time, reification is often identified as a fallacy of misplaced concreteness: one abstracts generic qualities from particular object-relations and holds them ‘for real’. However when taken as this doubling, ‘theorizing culture as reification’ begets a critical edge which, despite its duplicity, leads to questioning everything that exists in terms of valuation.

Objectification, the making of objects, is what makes it possible for us to speak of ‘culture’ in the first place. It is always important to look at the smaller things, because they are more meaningful than the larger more abstract concepts. Culture as such an abstraction means very little, but when we look at distinctive cultures, they already become more complex. Cultures of bacteria, for example in yoghurt, are immensely complex in comparison with the sociological concept of culture as ‘shared meaning’. Bacteria expand through reproduction, which is a social activity, and this expansion is also referred to as ‘cultivation’. Although cultivation often entails an intentional connotation of deliberate, careful action, this is not an essential requirement. Cultivation can also happen spontaneously, and moreover, through imitations. In the end, intentionality makes not such a major difference to objectification as such; it is just one particular venue for imitation, alongside many others.

… Joost

http://www.google.com/

… And …

“And”, the word that connects, is the real problem for space and culture. And is what enables both the possibility of spatialization, as the virtual-material creation of a relational presence, as well as the possibility for ‘objectification’, as the creation of flows of repetitions of presence, as that which returns and therefore appears to ‘last’ over time.

These are perhaps somewhat strange remarks, for, after more than 15 years of the journal, we should already know what space and culture is about. However things have changed. The world is not the same anymore. Until recently, it was beyond doubt that for us, culture had something to do with ‘everyday life’ as well as ‘meaning’. It was also clear that we engaged with a notion of ’social spatialization’ as a common, everyday pratice.

The special place of the everyday is not in question; however, we want to invite you to think in a more radical empirical way about what everydayness is, and therefore what ‘social spatialization’ could be in relation to what we still call ‘culture’, but perhaps within a radically different analytical ethos. Following Gabriel Tarde, we need to acknowledge that the notion of ‘ordinary everydayness’ is constituted by repetitions. Only through repetitions can we become aware of ‘ordinariness’ (as patterns of repetitions). Repetition is of course already inscribed in the very word everyday.

The everyday is, in the first instance, conceptualized as space. The repetition of specific actions, which constitutes ordinariness, is spatially manifest because it is a frequency: it makes “time” visible. This thus means that the temporal inscription of the everyday, as intervals marking the frequency of repetitions, is that which enables the very possibility of thinking space.

…Joost