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The Cultural Patterning of Space Like time, space

游客2023-09-13  21
问题                           The Cultural Patterning of Space
    Like time, space is perceived differently in different cultures. Spatial consciousness in many Western cultures is based on a perception of objects in space, rather than of space itself. Westerners perceive shapes and dimensions, in which space is a realm of light, color, sight, and touch. Benjamin L. Whorf, and his classic work Language, Thought and Reality, offers the following explanation as one reason why Westerners perceive space in this manner. Western thought and language mainly developed from the Roman, Latin-speaking culture, which was a practical, experience-based system. Western culture has generally followed Roman thought patterns in viewing objective "reality" as the foundation for subjective or "inner" experience. It was only when the intellectually crude Roman culture became influenced by the abstract thinking of Greek culture that the Latin language developed a significant vocabulary of abstract, nonspatial terms. But the early Roman-Latin element of spatial consciousness, of concreteness, has been maintained in Western thought and language patterns, even though the Greek capacity for abstract thinking and expression was also inherited.
    However, some cultural-linguistic systems developed in the opposite direction, that is, from an abstract and subjective vocabulary to a more concrete one. For example, Whorl tells us that in the Hopi language the word heart, a concrete term, can be shown to be a late formation from the abstract terms think or remember. Similarly, although it seems to Westerners, and especially to Americans, that objective, tangible "reality" must precede any subjective or inner experience, in fact many Asian and other non-European cultures view inner experience as the basis for one’s perceptions of physical reality. Thus although Americans are taught to perceive and react to the arrangement of objects in space and to think of space as being "wasted" unless it is filled with objects, the Japanese are trained to give meaning to space itself and to value "empty" space. For example, in many of their arts such as painting, garden design, and floral arrangements, the chief quality of composition is that essence of beauty the Japanese call shibumi. A painting that shows everything instead of leaving something unsaid is without shibumi. The Japanese artist will often represent the entire sky with one brush stroke or a distant mountain with one simple contour line—this is shibumi. To the Western eye, however, the large areas of "empty" space in such paintings make them look incomplete.
    It is not only the East and the West that are different in their patterning of space. We can also see cross-cultural varieties of spatial perception when we look at arrangements of urban space in different Western cultures. For instance, in the United States, cities are usually laid out along a grid, with the axes generally north/south and east/west. Streets and buildings are numbered sequentially. This arrangement, of course, makes perfect sense to Americans. When Americans walk in a city like Paris, which is laid out with the main streets radiating from centers, they often get lost. Furthermore, streets in Paris are named, not numbered, and the names often change after a few blocks. It is amazing to Americans how anyone gets around, yet Parisians seem to do well. Edward Hall, in The Silent Language, suggests that the layout of space characteristic of French cities is only one aspect of the theme of centralization that characterizes French culture. Thus Paris is the center of France, French government and educational systems are highly centralized, and in French offices the most important person has his or her desk in the middle of the office.
    Another aspect of the cultural patterning of space concerns the functions of spaces. In middle-class America, specific spaces are designated for specific activities. Any intrusion of one activity into a space that it was not designed for is immediately felt as inappropriate. In contrast, in Japan, this is not true: walls are movable, and rooms are used for one purpose during the day and another purpose in the evening and at night. In India there is yet another culturally patterned use of space. The function of space in India, both in public and in private places, is connected with concepts of superiority and inferiority. In Indian cities, villages, and even within the home, certain spaces are designated as polluted, or inferior, because of the activities that take place there and the kinds of people who use such space. Spaces in India are segregated so that high caste and low caste, males and females, secular and sacred activities are kept apart. This pattern has been used for thousands of years, as demonstrated by the archaeological evidence uncovered in ancient Indian cities. It is a remarkably persistent pattern, even in modem India, where public transportation reserves a separate space for women. For example, Chandigarh is a modem Indian city designed by a French architect. The apartments were built according to European concepts, but the Indians living there found certain aspects inconsistent with their previous use of living space. Ruth Freed, an anthropologist who worked in India, found that Indian families living in Chandigarh modified their apartments by using curtains to separate the men’s and women’s spaces. The families also continued to eat in the kitchen, a traditional pattern, and the living/dining room was only used when Western guests were present. Traditional Indian village living takes place in an area surrounded by a wall. The courtyard gives privacy to each residence group. Chandigarh apartments, however, were built with large windows, reflecting the European value of light and sun, so many Chandigarh families pasted paper over the windows to recreate the privacy of the traditional courtyard. Freed suggests that these traditional Indian patterns may represent an adaptation to a densely populated environment.
    Anthropologists studying various cultures as a whole have seen a connection in the way they view both time and space. For example, as we have seen, Americans look on time without activity as "wasted" and space without objects as "wasted." Once again, the Hopi present an interesting contrast. In the English language, any noun for a location or a space may be used on its own and given its own characteristics without any reference being made to another location or space. For example, we can say in English: "The room is big" or "The north of the United States has cold winters." We do not need to indicate that "room" or "north" has a relationship to any other word of space or location. But in Hopi, locations or regions of space cannot function by themselves in a sentence. The Hopi cannot say "north" by itself; they must say "in the north," "from the north," or in some other way use a directional suffix with the word north. In the same way, the Hopi language does not have a single word that can be translated as room. The Hopi word for room is a stem, a portion of a word, that means "house," "room," or "enclosed chamber," but the stem cannot be used alone. It must be joined to a suffix that will make the word mean "in a house" or "from a chamber." Hollow spaces like rooms, chambers, or halls in Hopi are concepts that are meaningful only in relation to other spaces. This pattern of spatial perception among the Hopi seems to be similar to their pattern of time perception, in which periods of time are not seen as separate pieces of duration, as they are in the Western cultures, but are integrated as pieces of a connected pattern.
    Anthropologists do not know why one culture develops one type of time-space perception and another culture develops another type. Spatial perceptions may be adaptations to specific environments: the degree of population density; the amount Of arable land; the absence or existence of natural barriers such as the sea or mountains; the amount of distinguishing landmarks in a region. For instance, among some Eskimo peoples, whose environment is a vast snow plain with few landmarks visible for most of the year, spatial perception is highly developed. The Eskimos must learn to make careful distinctions among different spatial dements, as their lives may literally depend on these distinctions when they are hunting far from home.
    In some cultures a significant aspect of spatial perception is shown by the amount of "personal space" people need between themselves and others to feel comfortable and not crowded. North Americans, for instance, seem to require about four feet of space between themselves and the people near them to feel comfortable. On the other hand, people from Arab countries and Latin America feel comfortable when they are close to each other. People from different cultures, therefore, may unconsciously infringe on each other’s sense of space. Thus just as different perceptions of time may create cultural conflicts, so too may different perceptions of space. [br] The French tradition of ______ is likely to pose a challenging problem to American visitors.
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答案 centralization
解析 本题的关键词The French tradition和American visitors，有助于定位于第三段，根据大意可知：美国参观者在巴黎大街上行走时，会因由中央向四周辐射的城市布局而迷路。而这种格局的特点仅仅是反映法国文化特征——中央集权的一个方面。由此得知答案为centralization。
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