ABSTRACT
A social construction conceptual frame assumes that space and place are abstractions – not a set of physical properties – made up of shared understandings and social structural differences such as race, class and gender. Thus they cannot be used as “place-as-matter” to explain the world (Brown 2005: 9).Yet changes in the physical environment, its interpretation and its forms of representation also influence the social construction of space and with it people’s sense of inclusion and the ability to appropriate space for their needs. In this sense, then, a social constructivist methodology requires an ethnographic sensitivity to the unstable relationship between the many forms of social abstractions that make up space and place meanings and the materiality of the environments that make up the everyday world.
