Space Case

Space has becoming an interesting topic in the society and cultural studies. It can be associated with many other cultural contents. Different concepts and cognition of space reflect and affect interpersonal feeling, emotion and people’s communication. The Baker (2003) argued that ‘space is a construction and material manifestation of social relations that reveals cultural assumptions and practices’，according to him, space is a kind of reflection of social relations which shows practices and conventions of certain culture. This essay will analyze this claim. A definition of space will be given at first, then it will focus on taking spatial cognition between China and America, two different races and countries as an example, then will concisely analyse the association between the gender and the space, illustrate how the social construction of space be gendered.

Preceding opinion in the modern theory defined the space as static traversed by the historical movement (Baker, 2003). Actually, the space is relationally defined rather than an absolute thing. As Massey (1994) suggests, space is dynamic, and it was defined as a social constructed and made up by changing social relations. This can be reflected between different races and different gender.

For the most part, different spatial cognitions exist between eastern and western countries such as China and America. Their different cognitions on space and features are presented here in terms of arrangement of setting and speaking distance. As for Chinese cognition of space, it is considered as the integral physical body including movement and existent in the universe and spatial infiniteness and finiteness. In the process of recognizing society, nature and man themselves, people in China emphasize tian ren he yi which means man lives as an integral part of nature. So people tend to consider things as integrity to part and emphasize benevolence, collectivism and harmonious relationship. With this culture of spatial cognition, Chinese people seem to be closer with others than American in speaking distance and communication. In America spatial orientation and cognition are dominated by its own value system such as freedom, self-reliance, equality and individualism. Therefore, space is regarded as an unmovable, absolute, independent and finite physical body under which social relations are established. On the other hand, their special cognition of space is also determined by the geographical position and social situation. Because America is large in the geographical space but with small population, people in America usually demand and expect a large personal space. The intimate distance, as a key element of speaking distance is only for close friends contacting, a mother nursing, comforting her body or a couple making love and relatives conversing (Alock & Carmemt, 2001). When they communicate or interact with each other, it should not be interrupted by irrelative persons