Social Space and Physical Space: Pierre Bourdieu's Field Theory as a Model for the Social Dynamics of the Built Environment

Abstract

The notion of social space or field is a central but under-studied category in the philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. The present study of social space is introduced with a contextual account of spatial models in the social sciences prior to Bourdieu that highlights the aptitude for relational spatial models to capture complex social phenomena. It then demonstrates how social space, as an empirically robust and epistemologically intuitive social-scientific model, facilitates the objective representation as well as the subjective understanding of social phenomena. The central thesis is that Bourdieu's reflexive sociology operates in large part by a multiform engagement with the (intuitive or conceptual, but always constructed) apprehension of space, an interpretation that suggests the integration of both physical and social spaces in a unified explanatory framework. A dialectical understanding of the relations between social space and physical space, drawn from the logic of Bourdieu's social theory, is argued for. This philosophical extension of Bourdieu's work is then applied to phenomena in which the reproduction of structures in social space is carried out in and through physical space, and vice versa. Two case studies, the first of office tower districts in contemporary cities and the second of deconstructionist architecture, reveal interactions between social organization and the built environment. The case studies, taken together, also demonstrate the virtue, inherent to a Bourdieuian approach, of explaining both the trends of relative stability and the instances of radical change that are observed in social phenomena.