Building on the idea of symbolic space as the coherence of difference enacted through cuts, this post explores how spatial construals scale from individual perspectives to collective topologies—a critical process through which social formations and realities take shape.
1. From Personal to Shared Spatial Frames
Every individual construes space through their embodied perspective—a sensorimotor and semiotic field that defines what is near, what is reachable, and what is salient. However, individual spatial construals alone do not constitute a shared reality.
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Collective spatial coherence emerges when multiple individual construals align, creating a shared frame of reference.
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This alignment is a process of phase—where individual spatial perspectives enter into relational synchrony, enabling coordinated action and mutual intelligibility.
2. Social Practices as Spatial Alignments
Social practices—rituals, conventions, and institutional arrangements—function as mechanisms for stabilising shared spatial frames. Examples include:
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Seating arrangements in meetings which demarcate authority and participation.
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Urban planning that configures collective movement and interaction.
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Digital interfaces that mediate virtual spatial orientation.
Through practice, symbolic space is reified as a stable topology enabling durable social formations.
3. Scaling Through Semiotic Systems
Language, gesture, and symbolic artefacts serve as scaling devices that translate local spatial construals into collective symbolic orders. They function to:
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Encode spatial distinctions in discourse (e.g., “here,” “there,” “inside,” “outside”).
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Anchor abstract spatial schemas (e.g., boundaries of a nation-state).
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Facilitate recursive phase alignment by referring back to established symbolic space.
4. Topology of Power and Control
The spatial dimension of symbolic order is also a topology of power:
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Who controls the boundaries, gates, and markers of space shapes inclusion and exclusion.
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Spatial practices reproduce hierarchies and contestations over territory, identity, and meaning.
Symbolic space thus becomes a field of struggle in which realities are made, maintained, or transformed.
Scaling symbolic space from individual to collective is the foundation for social reality’s persistence and evolution. It reveals that space itself is a symbolic achievement, produced and reproduced through dynamic alignment.
Next, we will explore how symbolic time and space interweave in the ongoing constitution of social worlds.
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