The space for culture and cognition

While neuroscientists, cognitive anthropologists, and behavioral psychologists have begun to examine the dialectical relationship between space and cognition, sociologists have remained curiously silent. Sociologists concede that cognition affects our relationship to space, but seem less willing to explore how space might affect us cognitively. In this paper I argue that the spatial configuration of our environment facilitates particular cognitive modes. I examine what I call structured versus unstructured spaces. I also focus on the structuring of space and whether that structuring is imposed or implied. The structure of the space and the articulation of that structure interact to produce different modes of thought. This relationship between space and cognition has important implications for how and, perhaps, why we use culture. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.