Cultural Constructivism

Terminological note: this page covers the anthropological concept (culture as constructed and produced, against the "essence" view). It is distinct from constructivism — the Russian avant-garde art-and-design movement — despite the shared word.

Definition

Cultural constructivism is the account of culture Hadjiyanni sets against essentialism to ground the culture-design relation in a world of movement. The essentialist pole: early anthropology saw culture as an "essence," "an 'integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society'" (E. Adamson Hoebel, Anthropology: The Study of Man, 1972, p. 6); "Essentialists argued that there is truly something 'authentic' about each culture, and this something is tangible and identifiable, made up of separate and distinct elements." Interiors, "along with food, dress, religion, social relations, music, dance, etc.," were the mediums through which essentialist analysis read "difference" — overall form, spatial layouts, decorative patterns, activities supported, size of spaces, lighting levels, material choices, construction techniques, symbolic meanings.

The constructivist counter: such conceptions are "static and monolithic, ones that do not capture the complex, multidimensional, hybrid, dynamic, intertwining, and ever-changing facets of culture that characterize border crossings and modernization processes." Renato Rosaldo (Culture & Truth) "calls for shifting discourses from defining culture to understanding how culture is constructed and produced. Moving from the singular to the plural, and from the static to the dynamic, acknowledges the many ways to belong – the multiple lenses from which one can choose to view the world." Gupta and Ferguson situate the shift spatially: "exploring the processes of production" of difference "in a world of culturally, socially, and economically interconnected and independent spaces." The concept's interior-theoretical point: "Deciphering how interior spatialities relate to race, gender, and class power dynamics dissolves obscurity around the production of inequality and marginalization."

Key Thinkers

• Renato Rosaldo — Culture & Truth – the Remaking of Social Analysis (Beacon Press, 1989): "A seminal piece that broadens how culture is understood and approached"; shift from defining culture to understanding its construction and production; not yet paged (see log).
• Akhil Gupta & James Ferguson — "Beyond 'Culture': Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference" (Cultural Anthropology 7.1, 1992): "exploring the processes of production" of difference in interconnected and independent spaces; not yet paged (see log).
• E. Adamson Hoebel — the essentialist pole's textbook definition ("integrated system of learned behavior patterns," 1972, p. 6); not yet paged (see log).
• Tasoulla Hadjiyanni — the concept's interior-design application: interiors as sites where constructed culture becomes legible and contestable; CSD as the design programme.

Related Concepts

• Interiors as Global Constructs — the concept's spatial corollary: if culture is constructed, interiors are constructs where the construction happens.
• Assimilation and Resistance — the static-culture narratives constructivism displaces: both fix culture as a bounded essence (to be melted or preserved).
• Postcolonial Identity — the concept's institutional application: national identity as constructed and produced through designed space (Vale, Stokes-Rees).
• Representation — the concept's semiotic engine: Hall's interiors as representation constituting subjects; the constructed culture known through its representations.
• Culturally Sensitive Design — the concept's design programme: recognizing "the multiplicity of ways by which people construct meaning in life."
• Constructivism — the Russian avant-garde movement: the shared word, different referent (see terminological note).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Interiors as global constructs (Hadjiyanni 2018) — the founding source: the essentialist/constructivist divide; Hoebel's essence-definition; Rosaldo's shift from defining to producing; Gupta and Ferguson's production-of-difference; the interiors-as-mediums-of-difference list; the race/gender/class power-dynamics deciphering.

Open Questions

• If "moving from the singular to the plural, and from the static to the dynamic, acknowledges the many ways to belong," what remains of the concept "culture" at all — is constructivism the concept's dissolution (Gupta and Ferguson's "Beyond 'Culture'") or its refinement?
• The chapter indicts essentialism but CSD's own translations (Mexican "traditional patterns, colors, and motifs") read like the essentialist inventory — can constructivism be designed from without falling back into essence-cataloguing?
• Gupta and Ferguson's "world of culturally, socially, and economically interconnected and independent spaces" — "independent" as well as interconnected: does the constructivist account have a theory of the locality that produces difference, or only of the global circulation that erases it?
• What is the interior-architectural method of "deciphering how interior spatialities relate to race, gender, and class power dynamics" — is CSD's community-engaged research that method, and can it be taught at studio scale?