ABSTRACT
How do objects shape the meaning of place? How can arrangements of built environments, objects, and people channel imagination? These essential questions motivate analyses that push the sociology of space beyond the study of situations to the study of possibilities. Taking lessons from work on the materiality of objects and meaning-making, we elaborate sociological theories of space by moving beyond treatments of objects as simple cues that tell people “What situation we’re in” and “where we are.” Certainly, objects do this work of indexing place—understood as cultural and cognitive associations tied to the built environment. Alternatively, we emphasize the ways space—as the physical and material arrangements of objects in an environment—evokes interpretations of the possible through questions of “what can we do?” This shift prioritizes analyzing space before place, “position” before “location”.
