Communication and Culture
Spaces and Places

Spaces and Places

Spaces, Places and cultural identity

Place

The built environment

Spaces

Spaces, Places and Post - Colonialism

The City

Spaces, Places and Capitalism

Spaces, Places and Feminism

Spaces, Places and Consumerism

the study of the spaces and places around us and how we relate to them.


This links to familiarity, identity, cultural identity and national identity.

An environment that each of us individuals has an emotional attachment to.

Environments that hold no meaning because it's our first time there and/ or because we have no emotional attachment to it.

"the humanitarian - made spaces in which people live, work and recreate on a day to day basis" Barthes (1957)

the built environment we inhabit is like a text that is all around us. Barthes (1957)


As such we can use semiotics to decode and apply different readings to this text.

Cities help to define our identity and transmit cultural elements such as values, attitudes, styles, history and nationality.

Engels (1845) found cities horrifying. He said the city was a metaphor for capitalist exploitation.

National museums and art collections reflect an imperial past when treasures were collected from imperial processions as symbols of national power.

(Theme parks) exclude the poor and disadvantaged from a growing range of public facilities.

Did you know - Britain's largest supermarket chains command larger profits than some third world countries?!

The theme park is increasingly part of the British experience of America.


Many Britons now find America more familiar than almost any other place on earth but this fascination with all things American is, paradoxically, often combined with a fear that our world is becoming too American.

Tourists are drawn to the city to experience the colour and diversity of city life but also in search of the cliches and characters they associate with that city.


The pubs, the shops, the hotels and the street ornaments are designed to reflect tourist expectations, as the city becomes it's own theme park. Tourism preserves and manufactures cliches

Feminists believe that the division between the public and lounge (saloon) bar in a traditional pub reflects a gender division in our society.