The Partition of Space

Author: Shirley Ardener Year: 2006 (chapter in Intimus: Interior Design Reader, eds. Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston, Wiley; text first published as extracts pp. 1–6 of the introduction to Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, ed. Shirley Ardener, Berg, April 1993; first edition 1981) Source type: chapter Raw file: raw/chapters/ardener-2006-partition-of-space.md

Summary

Shirley Ardener's "The Partition of Space" — the opening theoretical text of the Intimus reader, extracted from her introduction to Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps — argues that space and gender are linked ordering systems. Space defines the people in it, and reflexively, people define space: bounded space is never a neutral background but "exerts its own influence" on behaviour, while spatial terms ('spheres,' 'circles,' 'narrow-mindedness') give social life its shape. Social structures (hierarchy, kinship, gender) are "social maps" frequently realized on "the ground" by the placing of individuals in space, governed by "ground rules" for crossing boundaries; individuals belong to many "universes" in each of which they may be dominant or "muted." The essay grounds women's spatial disadvantage anthropologically — through gate-keeping, the mutual dependence of behaviour and space, Hertz's right/left symbolism (Eve from Adam's left rib), cross-cultural coloured space, and the time-space relation — and warns that spatial orderings can obscure, even from their victims, the asymmetries that bear upon them.

Key Claims

Bounded areas — "a restricted area like a club, a theatre or a nation-state" — have "a set of rules to determine how its boundary shall be crossed and who shall occupy that space"; entrants must be recognized "by a gate-keeper, such as a hall porter, an usherette or an Immigration Officer," or by other members of the category (p. 15).
Classification systems define 'X' in contrast to 'non-X' by "taxonomic rules of some kind"; the "significance of the perimeters of the categories that we make" is where the analysis of social ordering must begin (p. 15).
Social life is "given shape" through spatial terms firmly embedded in language — "high society," "wide application," "spheres of interest," "narrow-mindedness," "political circles," "deep divides of opinion" — asserting a correspondence between the 'real' physical world and its 'social reality' (pp. 15–16).
The correspondence runs both ways: "appreciation of the physical world is in turn dependent on social perceptions of it"; measurements are "neither totally imperative nor just random; choice enters 'reality'" (p. 16).
Divisions of space and social formations are intimately associated but "no simple one-way 'cause and effect' pertains"; their "cumulative interdependence suggests that we should think rather in terms of 'simultaneities'" (p. 16) — the term of Edwin Ardener.
Edwin Ardener's spatial semiotics: "We might visualise a semiotic system that depended, in the absence of the power of speech, upon the apperception by the human participants of contextually defined logical relations among themselves in space" (p. 16). People "jockey for position" knowing their fellows may "read" their social importance from it; as Hall puts it, "space speaks."
Goffman: "the division and hierarchies of social structure are depicted microecologically, that is, through the use of small-scale spatial metaphors" (p. 16).
Once space has been bounded and shaped "it is no longer merely a neutral background: it exerts its own influence" — a dozen people in a small room "is not the same thing" as a dozen in a great hall; a round rather than square table shapes interaction; "The 'theatre of action' to some extent determines the action" (p. 16). "So: behaviour and space are mutually dependent."
The environment "imposes certain restraints on our mobility, and, in turn, our perceptions of space are shaped by our own capacity to move about" (p. 16) — mobility capacity conditions spatial perception.
Social identity is partly determined by "the physical and spatial constituents of the groups' environment" (Judy Matthews): space defines the people in it; reflexively, "the entry of a stranger may change a private area into a public one" and "the Court is where the king is": people define space (p. 17).
Objects also structure space: Goffman — "Objects are thought to structure the environment immediately around themselves; they cast a shadow, heat up the surround, strew indications, leave an imprint" (p. 17); and (Saussure's structural insight) even the absence of objects — their "negative presence" — may matter.
"Social maps" are structural relationships (hierarchies, kinship) "frequently, but not necessarily, realised on 'the ground' by the placing of individuals in space"; complex situations are "spaces within spaces" or "overlapping universes" that must be 'pulled apart' into simple maps before being recompiled (p. 17).
Individuals belong to many groups or sets, "each of which may be thought of as occupying its own 'space,' or as sharing a particular 'universe'"; members of one group may be "dominant" in one universe and "muted" in another (p. 17). A woman may be muted relative to her husband and dominant relative to her children; gypsy men are dominant in their own culture and structurally muted vis-à-vis the English (Okely).
Spatial ordering can obscure hierarchy: when religious precedence places nuns above lay-women (monks ← lay-men ← nuns ← lay-women), "the (religious) precedence of nuns over lay-women may tend to obscure the priority of males between the sexes" — possibly explaining "the inability of some to distinguish asymmetries, that even bear upon them disadvantageously" (pp. 17–18).
"No map corresponds to what can be seen: the London underground system is not accurately and completely portrayed on the map provided to the public" (p. 18) — a social map is a logical rearrangement that simplifies the 'jumble,' not a picture; the term is used as "a temporary and handy 'folk' term, rather than as having the status of a definitive scientific label" (p. 18).
Space is coloured in certain societies: among the Zuni, north is blue, south red, east white; among the Atoni of Indonesia, south is red (associated with rulers), east white (warriors), west black (village headman), north yellow; the Irish colour space too — south is black, "the sphere of music, slaves, witches and the dead" (p. 18).
Gender is also an ordering principle, often linked to spatial direction: for the Irish, south is associated with women; "the Chinese see the south as male and the north as female" (p. 18).
Hertz (1909), via Needham's translation: "Society and the whole universe have a side which is sacred, noble and precious, and another which is profane and common; a male side, strong and active, and another, female, weak and passive; or, in two words, a right side and a left side" (p. 19). The right is equated with rectitude, dexterity, the juridical norm, life, the inside, the sacred, good and beauty; the left with the profane, the ugly, bad, death, "the outside, the infinite, hostile and the perpetual menace of evil" (p. 19).
Hertz's naturalization of gender: it is "not chance that God took one of Adam's left ribs to create Eve, 'for one and the same essence characterises woman and the left side of the body — two parts of a weak and defenceless being, somewhat ambiguous and disquieting, destined by nature to a passive and receptive role and to a subordinate condition'" (p. 19).
Dual symbolic classification is worldwide (Needham's collection; Durkheim & Mauss's Primitive Classification): schemes "which divide the world up in accordance with the oppositions between male and female, east and west, future and past, top and bottom, right and left" (Bourdieu, quoted p. 19), to which Ardener adds public/private and inside/outside — "a particular concern of modern Greeks, as shown by Hirschon."
Time and space are "mutually affecting spheres of reality": distance measured as "five minutes' walk away"; "the world getting smaller" through air travel; Paine's Israeli resident who "had taken a leap back in time" by settling in Israel (p. 20). Harvey: "nearness does not consist of shortness of distance" (p. 20); Edwin Ardener theorized 'remoteness'; "Time-systems occupy spaces which are generated by and with the physical and social space" (p. 20).
Note 2 supplies the volume's spatial ontology: 'shape' and 'space' are used "in the sense of 'topological space,'" where alterations in boundaries may preserve the integrity of the space — "a Regency chair may occupy the same 'conceptual slot' or 'conceptual space' as a Victorian chair, though their actual forms may differ" (p. 20).

Connections

Concepts:

partition-of-space — the chapter's title concept: space as ordering system, partitioned by ground rules
ground-rules-and-social-maps — the volume's titular pair: rules for boundaries and the maps of social structure
mutedness — dominance and muting across multiple "universes" (Edwin Ardener's concept, applied to women)
gendered-space — space and gender as linked ordering systems
boundaries — category perimeters, gate-keepers, and the rules of boundary crossing
dual-symbolic-classification — right/left, male/female, inside/outside oppositions (Hertz, Needham, Durkheim & Mauss, Bourdieu)
spatial-metaphors — spatial terms as the language of social life; "space speaks"
gender-and-the-interior — the interior's social and symbolic aspects "as experienced by women" (the editors' framing of this chapter)
separate-spheres — public/private and inside/outside as criteria for mapping metaphysical space
interiority — inner/outer as spatial ordering of the metaphysical
space — the general concept this chapter re-works anthropologically
structuralism — classification systems and the "negative presence" of objects (Saussure)
semiotics — Edwin Ardener's semiotic system of spatial position
time-geography — the time-space relation: "mutually affecting spheres of reality"

Authors:

Shirley Ardener — author; editor of Women and Space
Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston — editors of the Intimus volume in which the chapter appears
Pierre Bourdieu — Outline of a Theory of Practice quoted on classification schemes (p. 19)
Ferdinand de Saussure — "negative presence" of objects (note 9)
David Harvey — "nearness does not consist of shortness of distance" (p. 20)
Referenced, not yet paged (see log): Edwin Ardener, Erving Goffman, Robert Hertz, Edward T. Hall, Durkheim & Mauss, Mary Douglas, Rodney Needham, Linda McDowell, Renée Hirschon, Judy Matthews, Juliet Okely, Dale Spender, R. Paine

Debates:

power-and-space — Position C: spatial ordering as power (gate-keeping, muting, mobility restraints)

Related source notes:

Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the introduction to the volume in which this chapter opens the theory section
War on Architecture: E.1027 (Colomina 1993) — the gendered reading of space in the same year as Women and Space's Berg edition
(Re)constructing Histories (Hollis 2018) — the interior-architecture historiography into which Intimus intervenes
Quadrature (La Coe 2018) — the interior as spiritual/social system of spatial meaning (complementary)

Direct Quotes

"As a cross-cultural researcher of anthropological issues, Shirley Ardener reminds us that space defines the people in it, and reflexively, people define space." (editorial preamble, p. 15)

"A restricted area like a club, a theatre or a nation-state has a set of rules to determine how its boundary shall be crossed and who shall occupy that space." (p. 15)

"In studying the way people pattern their perceptions, attention has been especially drawn to the significance of the perimeters of the categories that we make in order to codify and confront the worlds we create, in which we then live, and how we cope with some of the problems that arise from the existence of these boundaries." (p. 15)

"Societies have generated their own rules, culturally determined, for making boundaries on the ground, and have divided the social into spheres, levels and territories with invisible fences and platforms to be scaled by abstract ladders and crossed by intangible bridges with as much trepidation or exultation as on a plank over a raging torrent." (p. 16)

"We might visualise a semiotic system that depended, in the absence of the power of speech, upon the apperception by the human participants of contextually defined logical relations among themselves in space." (Edwin Ardener, quoted p. 16)

"The division and hierarchies of social structure are depicted microecologically, that is, through the use of small-scale spatial metaphors." (Goffman, quoted p. 16)

"Once space has been bounded and shaped it is no longer merely a neutral background: it exerts its own influence." (p. 16)

"A dozen people in a small room 'is not the same thing' as a dozen people in a great hall; seating-space shaped by a round, rather than square, table, may influence the nature of social interaction among those seated. The 'theatre of action' to some extent determines the action." (p. 16)

"The environment imposes certain restraints on our mobility, and, in turn, our perceptions of space are shaped by our own capacity to move about, whether by foot or by mechanical or other transport. So: behaviour and space are mutually dependent." (p. 16)

"The entry of a stranger may change a private area into a public one; similarly, 'the Court is where the king is.' Thus: people define space." (p. 17)

"Objects are thought to structure the environment immediately around themselves; they cast a shadow, heat up the surround, strew indications, leave an imprint, they impress a part of themselves, a portrait that is unintended and not dependent on being attended, yet, of course, informing nonetheless to whomsoever is properly placed, trained and inclined." (Goffman, quoted p. 17)

"A woman may be 'muted' relative to her husband and 'dominant' in relation to her children; gypsy men are 'dominant' in their own culture and structurally 'muted' vis-à-vis the English." (p. 17)

"This may account for the inability of some to distinguish asymmetries, that even bear upon them disadvantageously." (p. 18)

"No map corresponds to what can be seen: the London underground system is not accurately and completely portrayed on the map provided to the public." (p. 18)

"If space is an ordering principle, so, of course, is gender." (p. 18)

"Society and the whole universe have a side which is sacred, noble and precious, and another which is profane and common; a male side, strong and active, and another, female, weak and passive; or, in two words, a right side and a left side…" (Hertz, quoted p. 19)

"…for one and the same essence characterises woman and the left side of the body — two parts of a weak and defenceless being, somewhat ambiguous and disquieting, destined by nature to a passive and receptive role and to a subordinate condition." (Hertz on Eve from Adam's left rib, quoted p. 19)

"These schemes of perception which elsewhere Bourdieu speaks of finding, include those 'which divide the world up in accordance with the oppositions between male and female, east and west, future and past, top and bottom, right and left…'" (Bourdieu, quoted p. 19)

"When we speak of 'the world getting smaller' through the advent of air travel, or of a distance being 'five minutes' walk away,' we clearly acknowledge that time and space are 'mutually affecting spheres of reality,' where 'reality' is understood to depend upon human apperceptions." (p. 20)

"Time-systems occupy spaces which are generated by and with the physical and social space." (Edwin Ardener, quoted p. 20)

Open Questions

The chapter's spatial ordering (monks ← lay-men ← nuns ← lay-women) shows asymmetries being obscured from those disadvantaged by them — can the interior disciplines use this model to explain why gendered confinement (the domestic interior as comfort or as cage) is so often experienced as natural rather than imposed?
Ardener insists social maps are realized on the ground only "frequently, but not necessarily" — what, for interior design, is the mode of a social map that cannot be seen in physical arrangements (who speaks first, who bows)? Can interiors be designed to mute or amplify such intangible orderings?
If bounded space "exerts its own influence" independently of its occupants' intentions, what follows for the design professions' claim to control spatial meaning — are designers gate-keepers, or themselves gated by the ground rules of the categories ('X' vs 'non-X') that define their disciplines?
The "negative presence" of objects (Saussure) — the structuring force of absence — sits oddly beside the design professions' focus on what is present. How would one design an absence?
The chapter treats the interior's social and symbolic aspects as experienced by women; the 1993 volume predates the queer-theoretical destabilisation of "home, privacy and publicity" that Intimus's introduction stages (pp. 10–11). Does muting across "universes" survive as an analytic once categories themselves are destabilised?