Spatial Practices and Hierarchy

In chapter 5, we saw the ways language presents the body in action, thus language being a mode of behavior (Butler 2004; Riley 2005). In effect, language is inseparable from the body; still, equally, it can be said that not all thought is expressed in language, but the unspoken knowledge can find expression through the body (Moore 1994). Our analysis in chapter 6 explored this latter premise in detail, and a picture of a workplace community shaped through a range of symbolic practices centered on time such as the commute, overtime, and gift-giving began to emerge. Thus, we wish to conceive of experience or knowledge in its widest sense: both linguistic and embodied. Allowing these two complimentary perspectives to steer us further into our remaining analysis, this chapter brings the spatial dimensions of office life to the forefront of our attention.p1 The more something appears to us to be natural and normal we neglect to question it; it recedes quietly and pales. I demonstrate that spatial practices in workplaces offer analytical purchase. Space acquires meaning through the practices it sustains (Bourdieu 1977; Moore 1986). And space is not ontologically given; it is discursively mapped and corporeally practiced (de Certeau 1984). Equally, space structures the type of practices that take place. Spaces are not only defined by geographies but by histories, therefore people’s experience of space and situations are essentially through flows of daily experience (Ingold 1999).