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Abstract
This paper draws on philosophical pragmatism, especially the work of John Dewey, to develop a transactional perspective on space. Transaction suggests co-constitutive, ongoing relationships between humans, non-humans, objects and environments (relationships which are in process and on a continuum, rather than sharply distinct) that involve dispersed rationalities attuned to different situations. I suggest how ideas of spatial quality might be both the medium and the outcome of these more dispersed rationalities in transactional space. The paper explores the connections between the idea of transactional space and the existing body of research on social learning, deliberative planning and urban design.
Acknowledgements
An initial version of this paper was presented as a keynote at the SPINDUS conference ‘Epistemology of space and its qualities’, University of Leuven, 28–29 January 2011. My thanks go to the organizers for their invitation. I am grateful to those who participated in the session and for subsequent discussions on these issues. I am also extremely grateful for the detailed and really illuminating comments of the two anonymous referees for this paper.
Notes
1. This is part of Dewey's wider philosophical attack on ‘the spectator theory of knowledge’ and the ways that philosophy had separated itself from the world in forms of perception and contemplation.