Linking Discourse and Space: Towards a Cultural Sociology of Space in Analysing Spatial Policy Discourses

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore how spatialities are 'constructed' in spatial policy discourses and to explore how these construction processes might be conceptualised and analysed. To do this, we discuss a theoretical and analytical framework for the discourse analysis of socio-spatial relations. Our approach follows the path emerging within planning research focusing on the relations between rationality and power, making use of discourse analytics and cultural theoretical approaches to articulate a cultural sociology of space. We draw on a variety of theoretical sources from critical geography to sociology to argue for a practice- and culture-oriented understanding of the spatiality of social life. The approach hinges on the dialectical relation between material practices and the symbolic meanings that social agents attach to their spatial environment. Socio-spatial relations are conceptualised in terms of their practical 'workings' and their symbolic 'meaning', played out at spatial scales from the body to the global-thus giving notion to an analysis of the 'politics of scale'. The discourse analytical approach moves away from textually oriented approaches to explore the relations between language, space and power. In the paper, we use examples of the articulation of space in the emerging field of European spatial policy. It is shown how the new spatial policy discourse creates the conditions for a new set of spatial practices which shape European space, at the same time as it creates a new system of meaning about that space, based on the language and ideas of polycentricity and hypermobility.