352 ANALYZING DATA
ment of bodies in space and in the ways in which spatial design recapitulates bodily design.
Analytic taxonomies drawing on theatrical metaphors that see settings for human action as stages
suggest where to look for space data and what to look for. The role of the researcher’s body in
discovery suggests the potential utility of nonverbal communication categories for analyzing data
in both the kinesthetic stage of fieldwork and the more sedentary stage of deskwork.STUDYING BUILT SPACESIn contexts of “doing,” such as policy implementation, court hearings, or parliamentary debates,
language rarely works alone to communicate meaning. Research in nonverbal communication
suggests that words convey as little as 7 percent of the meaning in an interpersonal exchange
(Mehrabian 1972). The rest is conveyed through two other categories of artifacts: acts—such as
gestures, facial expressions, posture—and objects—the physical artifacts we create and vest with
meaning and through which we communicate collective values, beliefs, and feelings. Among
physical artifacts are the spaces in which words are spoken and read and in which people act and
interact, as well as the things that populate those spaces, to which words refer and that acts en-
gage. Studying built spaces as settings for action may also include analyzing their furnishings,
decor, landscaping, and other space-related artifacts, as well as the uses people put them to and
how “users” negotiate spatial meanings.
Studying spaces and other physical artifacts with a focus on their role in meaning and its
communication typically rests on several methodological presuppositions. One is the representa-
tional relationship posited by hermeneutics between meaning—values, beliefs, and/or feelings—
and the artifacts people create that embody them. As chapter 1 notes, meaning and artifact stand
in a symbolic relationship to one another: The artifact is understood to be the more concrete
representation of the more abstract, underlying meaning(s). This semiotic approach looks to in-
vestigate the meanings that built spaces represent (see, e.g., Gottdiener and Lagopoulos 1986).
Analysis might investigate such things as function- or purpose-oriented design (such as the way
an interior cavity is broken up and areas are designated for specific usages), materials, appurte-
nances, and “climate” or “ambient environment” (Baldry 1999). In studying policy, organiza-
tional, communal, occupational, and/or other collective meanings, the researcher is typically
interested less in meanings that artifacts hold for separate individuals than in meanings shared
among members of interpretive communities, such as social and/or economic classes, “race-ethnic”
groups, organizations (or divisions or departments), neighborhoods, or some other community of
meaning and practice. To access such meanings, the researcher seeks to identify the character, the
“feel,” of the space and artifacts commonly used in that situation, event, or practice, inquiring
into their significance in context-specific terms to situational members and/or other situation- or
setting-relevant audiences or stakeholders.
Such inquiry entails interpretation (as also discussed in chapter 1)—a second central presup-
position: Meaning cannot merely be perceived and grasped. Inquiry constitutes an intentional
“reaching” for the other’s meaning. This has a particular aspect in space analysis: Because of its
three-dimensional character and because space is experienced bodily, the intentional effort to
understand what it means to another entails a projective imagining that draws on the researcher’s
own experience of the space. I return to this below.
Interpretive researchers, then, are dealing with both “primary” and “secondary” interpreta-
tions: Their knowledge claims come from reflective sense making of their own experiences of
being in others’ spatial worlds, as well as from interpreting others’ firsthand spatial experiences