Dr Katherine Heenan
Spatial analysis involves examining the ways in which physical spaces influence and are influenced by the social practices and activities which occur there. In so doing, we explore the connections between the physical space and the ways in which people in that space represent themselves while there in both language and action. We do so in order to understand how physical spaces shape and are shaped by the people who use them, and to help us begin to understand how people create the social and discursive spaces in which they live and move. That is, we engage in spatial analysis as a means of understanding how people construct the culture in which they live and to understand the kinds of connections that may exist or occur between a location and social action; between a space and the way people behave in it.
HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
Historical analysis involves examining the beliefs, practices and values of a text--a term used here in its broadest sense--within its historical moment and in comparison to our current historical moment. When we begin to see differences between past perspectives and our own contemporary perspectives, we see that those past perspectives are rooted in very different assumptions from those we take for granted today. This recognition, in turn, can enable us to begin to see the situatedness--the cultural embeddness--of our own perspectives, and thus, to begin to recognize and then analyze some of the other beliefs and assumptions to which our perspectives are connected.
When we begin to see similarities between past perspectives and our own contemporary perspectives—particularly after we have focussed on differences—we can begin to see that contemporary perspectives are rooted in historical antecedents. We can recognize that many of the beliefs and assumptions which we think of as "ours" have complex origins deep within our culture's past and that this history may be influencing our points of view without our being fully aware of it.
The ability to move back and forth between the analysis of differences and similarities, between the past and the present, is a crucial step in developing the capacity to analyze the antecedents and implications of all perspectives we encounter.
CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Raymond Williams writes in Key Words, "Culture is ordinary; that is where we must start." Cultural analysis, then, starts with the world that surrounds us, the social experiences that shape our identities and the identities of the various groups to which we belong or with which we associate. It involves the discovering the relations among beliefs or practices and other beliefs, practices, assumptions that are going on at the same point in time.
Discovering connections between an issue or text and other aspects of its cultural moment provides a sense of the complex interconnections among various attitudes and beliefs (for example, see Tompkins' " 'Indians': Textualism, Mortality, and the Problem of History" in Reading Cultures 409). Recognizing these complex interconnections can help us avoid making overly simplistic cause-and-effect analyses.
Cultural analysis enables us to see that a given cultural moment is not static and unified, but rather that there are always tensions among dominant, residual, and emergent perspectives.
DOMINANT, RESIDUAL, EMERGENT
The concepts of dominant, residual, and emergent are drawn from Raymond Williams. These concepts can give us a framework for understanding the complex and dynamic ways in which a culture operates as it continuously attempts to maintain stability and balance in the face of ever-changing views. While one perspective tends to be dominant at a given point, other perspectives are also contending for meaning, some older or more residual, some newer or emergent.
The dominant perspectives are the ones that are embodied in the majority of the society (hence the term, dominant)--or by its ruling and most powerful class. Within the dominant values of any culture, there are many elements of the past, or residual elements, but these elements of the past are being filtered--"reinterpreted, diluted, projected"--so that they can be incorporated into dominant culture. If something residual is truly oppositional to the dominant, the dominant tries to forget it or marginalize it. At times the dominant is successful, at times not.
By residual is meant those beliefs, practices, etc. that are derived from an earlier stage of that society, often very long ago, and which may in fact reflect a very different social formation (different political, religious beliefs, etc) than the present. Residual beliefs ofter remain dominant long after the social conditions that made them dominant have disappeared (e.g. today's assumptions by some people that men are inherently more important/intelligent, etc. than women). Some residual practices are so old that they are archaic (e.g. the belief that the sun goes around the earth), though their presence may still be felt (as when we say, "The sun rose late today.").
Within the dominant, there are also emergent elements, that is elements that are substantially alternative to the dominant. These must be distinguished from those that are simply novel elements of the dominant. Emergent practices are those that are being developed, usually unconsciously, out of a new set of social interactions, as societies change. They often are very different from and actively challenge the dominant. They may themselves become dominant eventually, but that is not an inevitable process. They start at the margins of society, and may eventually become less marginal. But they may not ever become central. All dominant practices were once emergent; not all emergent practices become dominant.
PERSPECTIVE:
A perspective is a point of view from which a person or group of people look at something at a given time. While each perspective seems “personal,” it is also linked with the larger beliefs of the culture. Thus, it can only be understood and analyzed once it has been placed in those larger contexts.
ANALYSIS:
Analysis is the separation of a whole into its component parts and the study of those parts in some fashion in order to explain or understand the whole more completely. Analysis most often works to answer the question "Why?" When we analyze your own perspective or that in a text you have read, you will first separate out the various perspectives represented in it and then ask why each perspective exists.
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