TY - UNPB

T1 - Useful(filling) Durkheim

T2 - Reconfiguring the Sociological Prospect of Space Syntax

AU - Liebst, Lasse Suonperä

PY - 2011/11/1

Y1 - 2011/11/1

N2 - Already in the paradigmatic formulation in The Social Logic of Space Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson stated the theoretical affinity between Space Syntax and sociology. Taking Émile Durkheim’s classic concept of social mor-phology as their analytical starting point, they established an operational me-thodology with the prospect of analyzing the hitherto under-theorized rela-tionship between society and spatiality. In this Durkheimian light, it is obtrusive how silent urban sociology has been in response to the space syntax methodology, its path breaking analytical potentials, and empirical results. However, we are dealing with a silence that is analytically injurious to both space syntax and sociology: while the latter overlooks the space syntax’s original contribution to a genuinely neo-Durkheimian theory of urban morphology, the former loses a valuable interlocutor who potentially could clarify the way space syntax is embedding urban social life in morpho-logical space. Thus, it is this dual problem caused by the silence of sociology that the current paper is a contribution to transcend. First, the paper revisits Durkheim's social morphology and discusses the Space Syntax’s distinct methodological operationalization and application of the social morphology. Second, the paper attempts to develop a theoretical framework that inte-grates, on the one hand, Space Syntax’s urban morphological insights, and, on the other hand, Randall Collins’ contemporary developments of a micro morphologically founded sociology of interaction rituals.

AB - Already in the paradigmatic formulation in The Social Logic of Space Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson stated the theoretical affinity between Space Syntax and sociology. Taking Émile Durkheim’s classic concept of social mor-phology as their analytical starting point, they established an operational me-thodology with the prospect of analyzing the hitherto under-theorized rela-tionship between society and spatiality. In this Durkheimian light, it is obtrusive how silent urban sociology has been in response to the space syntax methodology, its path breaking analytical potentials, and empirical results. However, we are dealing with a silence that is analytically injurious to both space syntax and sociology: while the latter overlooks the space syntax’s original contribution to a genuinely neo-Durkheimian theory of urban morphology, the former loses a valuable interlocutor who potentially could clarify the way space syntax is embedding urban social life in morpho-logical space. Thus, it is this dual problem caused by the silence of sociology that the current paper is a contribution to transcend. First, the paper revisits Durkheim's social morphology and discusses the Space Syntax’s distinct methodological operationalization and application of the social morphology. Second, the paper attempts to develop a theoretical framework that inte-grates, on the one hand, Space Syntax’s urban morphological insights, and, on the other hand, Randall Collins’ contemporary developments of a micro morphologically founded sociology of interaction rituals.

M3 - Working paper

BT - Useful(filling) Durkheim

ER -