to Part III of A Geography of Lifeworld
[from David Seamon, A Geography of the Lifeworld, copyright
1979, 2003 David Seamon]
Part II
MOVEMENT IN THE
GEOGRAPHICAL WORLD
I shall be passing here this day
fortnight at precisely this hour
of five-and-twenty minutes past
seven. My movements are as
truly timed as those of the
planets in their courses.
‑Thomas Hardy (1965, p.24).
CHAPTER 3
It is
darker in the woods, even in common nights than some suppose. I frequently had
to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my
route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the fain
track I had worn...Sometimes, after
coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the
path my eyes could not see, dreaming
and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand
to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and
I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should
forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth with assistance--Thoreau
(1966, pp.113-114).
Movement is an
enduring phenomenon in nature. At all scales in the natural world, things and
living forms are involved in constant or periodic motion. Continents are slowly
displaced by interior earth forces; bulks of soil and rocks are moved by the
action of water, wind, and gravity; seeds are transported far from their place
of origin; flocks of birds migrate long distances in time with the seasons.
Movement has long
been a major theme in geography. Geographers have studied such diverse
phenomena as the motion of depositional materials in rivers, the flow of
freight over the world’s oceans, the spread of domesticated plants and animals
from continent to continent. Spurred on by the behavioral perspective,
geographers have grown increasingly interested in movement as it occurs at the
level of the individual person. Generally, this work has been conducted under
the themes of “activity spaces’, “time geography” or ‘spatial cognition and
behavior”.1
Movement is taken
here to mean any spatial displacement of the body or bodily parts initiated by
the person himself or herself.2 Movement was frequently mentioned in
the environmental experience groups. Often, discussion focused on movements in
the outdoor environment—for example, driving home from work, taking a bus
downtown, walking to a shop. Just as frequently, observations described
smaller-scaled movements, such as going from one room to another, turning on a
light, reaching for a stapler on the desk. Because of these many observations.
I eventually made movement a first pivotal theme. Chapters 3-7 explore several
characteristics of movement‑-its habitual nature, its dependence on the
body, its types of extension in space and time. When these characteristics are
integrated, I argue, they point toward a basic experiential structure of
movement‑-that is, its essential nature as an experience.
This picture of
movement will do much to bridge the gap between cognitive and behaviorist
theories‑-the two major ways in
everyday movement in space has conventionally been viewed in social
science. Closely associated with the philosophical tradition of rationalism,
theories of spatial cognition ( most
geographers have come to accept) argue that spatial behavior is dependent on
such cognitive processes as thinking, figuring out and deciding.3 In
practice, most of this research has studied a particular individual or group’s
cognitive representation of space, is
elicited by such devices as map drawings or questionnaires. The assumption is
made that a study of these cognitive maps (as most geographers have come to
call them) will lead to an understanding of the individual and group’s behavior
in space. As Downs and Stea explain, “underlying our definition [of spatial
cognition] is a view of behavior that, although variously expressed, can be
reduced to the statement that human spatial behavior is dependent on the
individual’s cognitive map of the spatial environment” (1973, p.9, italics in
the original).4
Alternately,
spatial behavior has been discussed in terms of behaviorism, a way of
psychology is linked with the
philosophical tradition of empiricism. This perspective views everyday movement
in terms of a stimulus-response model‑-i.e., a particular stimulus in the
external environment (e.g., the ringing of a telephone) causes a movement
response in the person (the hearer gets up to answer it). In attempting to
imitate the methods of natural science, behaviorists have generally restricted
their research focus to visible behaviors
can be verified through some form of empirical measurement. They
discount all inner experiential processes (e.g., cognition, emotion, bodily
intelligence) because they argue that these phenomena are subjective,
imprecise, and only knowable by the particular person who reports them.5
Thus, they study what an animal or person does, rather than what it, he or she
experiences. In practice, behaviorist work discussing spatial behavior as an
explicit theme has generally studied rats learning to move through mazes;
research with human subjects negotiating space has been much less frequent.6
A major weakness of
both the cognitive and behaviorist approaches is their insistence on explaining
spatial behavior through an imposed a priori theory. The cognitive map
is a key unit of spatial behavior, while the behaviorist assume the importance
of the stimulus-response sequence. Neither group of researchers has felt it
necessary to go to the phenomenon of spatial behavior as it is an experiential
process‑-as it is an experience in the lifeworld. On faith, these
researchers have accepted one theoretical approach or the other, in terms
of they then organize their empirical
investigations.
I seek to break away from these two
opposing theories and return to everyday movement as it is described as an
experience in the reports from the environmental experience groups. I look at
movement as it is a phenomenon in its own right‑-before it has been
defined, categorized and explained by either of these two dominant
perspectives. On the one hand, I bracket the assumption that movement depends
on the cognitive map; on the other, that movement is la process of
stimulus-response.
In contrast to the
view of the cognitive theorists, I argue that cognition plays only a partial
role in everyday spatial behavior; that a sizeable portion of our everyday
movements at all varieties of environmental scale is pre-cognitive and involves
a prereflective knowledge of the body. In contrast to the behaviorist
perspective, I argue that this prereflective knowledge is not a chain of
discrete, passive responses to external stimuli; rather, that the body holds
within itself an active, intentional capacity
intimately “knows’ in its own special fashion the everyday spaces
in the person lives his typical day.
Further, I argue that this bodily knowledge is not a structure separate from
the cognitive stratum of spatial behavior but works in frequent reciprocity
with it.
Already, some
researchers have suggested that much of the theory underlying research in
behavioral geography is out of tune with that behavior as it happens
experientially. Buttimer, for example, has spoken of a “virtual obsession over
cognition and the cognitive dimension of environmental behavior [in] recent
years’ (1976, p.291). Tuan extends this criticism when he writes “it can not be
assumed that people walk around with pictures in their head, or that people’s
spatial behavior is guided by picture-like images and mental maps that are like
real maps’ (1975, p.213). Discoveries here will substantiate Buttimer and
Tuan’s criticism of research in environmental behavior, and have considerable
relation to the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, to whom I will refer as
the chapters proceed.
1. On activity
spaces, see, for example, Chapin and Hightower, 1966; Adams, 1969; Wheeler,
1972; on time geography, see Hgerstrand, 1970 and 1974; Thrift,
1977; on spatial cognition, see Downs, 1970; Downs and Stea (eds.), 1973; Hart
and Moore, 1973; Moore, 1973, 1974, 1976; Moore and Golledge (eds.), 1976;
Downs and Stea, 1977; Leff, 1977.
2. This definition,
by its phrasing, includes such involuntary actions as blinking, breathing,
itching, etc. In practice, we discount these movements, since they are largely
instinctual and have little direct bearing on people’s experience with place,
space and environment.
3. Hart and Moore
(1973) provide discussion of the philosophical tradition out of the cognitive perspective arises. The French
phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty (1961) provides one of the most forceful
critiques of this “intellectualist” tradition, as he calls it. There is not one
approach to environmental cognition, but several; their range is well
portrayed in
In practice, both
groups make use of similar operational techniques, especially mapping and
modeling, and it is often difficult to see how their interpretations, when separated
from the theoretical language in they
are grounded, are in any way different. Regardless of their differences in
emphasis, both approaches assume that environmental behavior is a function of
cognition. For this reason, I feel justified in identifying both groups as
cognitive theorists. For a discussion arguing a significant difference between
the two approaches, see
4. The Image
by Kenneth Boulding (1956) was an early philosophical discussion of the
cognitive perspective had impact in
social science. Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City (1961) was one of the
first empirical studies using a cognitive approach. This book spawned a sea of
replications, of none, unfortunately,
considered the experiential validity of the image structures to they gave so much weight (e.g. De Jonge,
1962; Gulick, 1963; Appleyard, 1970; Beck and Wood, 1976a and 1976b). Tuan
(1975a) provides one insightful critique of this work.
5. “Behaviorism”,
writes
Like work in
cognition, there is not one behaviorist theory but several. Se Taylor (1967)
for a discussion of their differences as well as behaviorism’s philosophical
base.
6. Clark Hull’s research is one representative of work on
rat behavior in mazes; see
CHAPTER 4
When I was living
home and going to school, I couldn’t drive to the university directly “I had to
go around one way or the other. I once remember becoming vividly aware of the
fact that I always went there by one route and back the other “I”d practically
always do it. And the funny thing was that I didn’t have to tell myself to go
there one way and back the other. Something in me would do it automatically; I
didn’t have much choice in the matter. Of course, there would be some days when
I would have to go somewhere besides school first and I”d take a different
route. Otherwise I went and returned by way of the same streets each time—a
group member (1.1.6).1
A habit is any
acquired behavior nearly or completely involuntary. Note the habitual quality
of movement in the above observation from the environmental experience groups.
The group member uses the same route sequence automatically each day. Path
movements happen “by themselves’, so to speak, without intervention of
conscious attention. ‘something in me would do it automatically,” says the
reporter, “I really didn’t have much choice in the matter.” Other phrases from
group observations reflect the same self-acting quality; “You go and you don’t
even know it” (1.2.1); I did it effortlessly and unconsciously” (1.1.13); “It
just happens’ (1.1.7); “I always want to go the same old rote way” (1.1.2).
Habitual movements
extend over all environmental scales, from driving and walking to reaching and
finger movements. “You don’t remember walking there “you do it so
automatically,” said one group member who had little recollection of the walk
that got her to class each day (1.2.2). “It doesn’t register with me that I”ve
headed for the "wrong" place,” explained another group member who had
recently switched rooms with a flat-mate yet occasionally found himself going
to the old room (1.1.9). A third group member, forgetting to place a clean
towel under the sink after taking the dirty one to the laundry, found himself
reaching for the towel anyway (1.1.11). A fourth group member caught himself
dialing his home phone rather than the number he had planned to call (1.1.12).
“My thoughts will be elsewhere,” he explained, “and my fingers automatically
dial the number they know best.”
The group member
unable to remember her walks to class gave one particularly descriptive
statement of habitual movement (1.2.2.). You get up and go”, she said, “without
thinking you know exactly where you have to go, and you get there but you don’t
think about getting there while you”re on your way.” The phrasing of this
statement in almost poetic fashion points to a kind of automatic unfolding of
movement with which the person has little or no conscious contact. She finds
herself at the appropriate classroom destination without having paid the least
bit of attention to the movement as it happened at the time. She has no recollection
of the great number of footsteps, turns, stops and starts that in sum compose
the walk from home to school.2
Behaviorists and
cognitive theorists have dealt with habitual movement in two contrasting ways.
The latter students argue that habitual behaviors are not really habitual; that
if the person could see the inner processes directing “habitual” spatial
behavior, he would discover that he is consciously evaluating the situation at
hand and making constant use of his cognitive map:
Admittedly,
much spatial behavior is repetitious and habitual “ in traveling, you get the
feeling that “you could do the trip blindfolded” or “do it with your eyes
shut”. But even this apparent ‘stimulus-response” sequence is not so simple:
you must be ready for the cue that tells you to “turn here”...or evaluate
the rush hour traffic that tells you to “take the other way home tonight”. Even
in these situations you are thinking ahead (in both a literal and
metaphorical sense) and using your cognitive map (Downs and Stea, 1973, p.10,
italics in the original).
In direct
opposition, strict behaviorists reject any cognitive process intervening
between environment and behavior.1 They have consistently emphasized
the automatic nature of everyday movement, which they define in terms of reinforcement
“ i.e. any event the occurrence of which increases the probability that a
stimulus on subsequent occasions will evoke a response (Hilgard et al., 1974,
pp.188-207). Applied to spatial behavior, this principle argues that a
successful traversal of space over a particular route strengthens the chances
that this route will be used the next time the organism traverses that space.
Each time the movement is repeated the responses evoking that particular route
are reinforced and in time the pattern becomes habitual and thus involuntary.
In proceeding
phenomenologically, one must place in parentheses these two contrasting
interpretations and ask what habitual movement is as an experience before it
has been defined in cognitive or behaviorist terms. Through this bracketing
procedure, one sees the sensitive role that body plays in much of everyday
movement and moves toward a perspective similar to Merleau-Ponty’s.
I was driving to the dentist’s office and at one stoplight intersection
suddenly found myself turning left rather than going straight as I should have
done. Just for a moment I was able to observe my actions as they happened “ my
arms were turning the wheel, heading the car up the street I shouldn’t have
been going on. They were doing it all by themselves, completely in charge of
where I was going. And they did it so fast. The car was half-way through the
turn before I came to my senses, realized my mistake, and decided how best I
could get back on the street which I was supposed to be on. At the time of the
turn, I was worrying about what the dentist might have to do with my teeth. I
wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Of course, usually I do turn at
that stoplight because I have friends who live up that street and I visit them
often (1.1.8).
The habitual nature
of movement arises from the body, which houses its own special kind of
purposive sensibility. Examine the above observation. Something in the group
member acts before he can cognitively act, and this ‘something” is a directed
action in the hands: “my arms were turning the wheel...they were doing it all
by themselves...” A second group member describes the action of turning on a
string light-switch: “my hand reaches for the string, pulls, and the light is
on. The hand knows exactly what to do. It happens fast and effortlessly “ I
don’t have to think about it al all” (1.1.10).
The movements occur
without or before any conscious intervention. The group member turning on the
light doesn’t have to bring the action to mind “ it happens “fast and
effortlessly”. Similarly, the driver’s conscious attention is on the impending
appointment. He is not aware of the movement at hand until the error is partially
executed: “the car was half-way through the turn before I came to my senses
[and] realized my mistake.” He explains that his arms were “completely in
charge of where I was going”, while the second person says that his hand can
find the string “even in the dark”. By themselves, the arms move to meet the
situation at hand.
The body as the root of habitual movement is pointed to in other observations. One group member described an independent force in her legs which gets her about: “You let your legs do it and don’t pay any attention to where you”re going” (1.2.3). A second group member noted that his hands had a taken-for-granted familiarity with his desk-space, reaching automatically for envelopes, scissors and other needed objects (1.1.13). A third group member described his ability to place letters quickly in their proper mailboxes when he worked in a post office (1.9.7), while yet another group member spoke of the fluidity with which her fingers moved over the piano keyboard as she played (1.9.6).
The body as a
source of movement extends to the most basic of gestures. Consider stepping.
“The foot would come down and grip, while at the same time the other foot was
releasing and moving forward to find a safe spot on which it could rest,” said
a group member describing wading in a stream (1.9.1). “My feet had trouble
getting in tune with their spacing “ they just didn’t feel right,” explained
another group member speaking of some stairs he found uncomfortable (1.9.2).
They reminded him of a better constructed flight he had walked up in an art
gallery: “my feet felt as home and moved up them easily, whereas these
uncomfortable stairs were difficult to manage “ they didn’t fit my feet.”
Individual steps involve a sensibility in legs and feet, which also know
extended movements merging to produce specific activities like wading and
negotiating stairs.
Underlying and
guiding our everyday movements, then, is an intentional bodily force which
manifests automatically by sensitively: fingers hit the proper piano keys, arm
reaches for string or envelope, hands together put letters in their proper
mailbox, feet carefully work their way over a stream-bed, legs carry the person
to a destination. Borrowing the term from Merleau-Ponty (1962), I call this
bodily intentionality body-subject. Body-subject is the inherent
capacity of the body to direct behaviors of the person intelligently, and thus
function as a special kind of subject that expresses itself in a pre-conscious
way usually described by such words as “automatic”, “habitual”, “involuntary”
and “mechanical”.
The body as
intelligent subject is a notion foreign to both cognitive and behaviorist
theories of spatial behavior. Both perspectives view the body as passive “ as
an inert thing responding to either orders from cognitive consciousness or
stimuli from the external environment. The possibility that the body could be
active at a prereflective level has a place in neither perspective.
Consider the
cognitive theorists. They view movement as a function of cognition, by which
they mean any situation in which the person consciously attends to
movement—i.e., makes it an object of conscious awareness through considering,
evaluating, planning, remembering, or some similar cognitive process.4
These researchers have focused little attention on the actual bodily movements
which constitute spatial behavior. They have directed most of their efforts to
the cognitive map as a record of the individual’s cognitive knowledge of space.
They have emphasized the cognitive process that is assumed to co-ordinate
relations between environment and behavior.
In examining his
own drive to work, for example, the cognitive theorist Wallace (1961) assumes
at the start that his driving experience is best considered as a set of
cognitive operations which are grounded in several ‘standard driving rules’, on
the basis of which he makes a particular driving decision. To understand the
relationship between these rules, external environment and driving behavior,
Wallace argues that the driver should be viewed as a “cybernetic machine” which
cognitively screens external information, compares it to driving rules, and
then sends out an order to the body for an appropriate behavior (ibid.,
pp.286-8). There is no possibility that the body could house its own purposeful
integrity or manifest independently of the cognitive orders that Wallace claims
the cognitive mapping process sends out to the body. The body as intentional
subject is lost sight of as the student’s attention is directed to the assumed
role of cognition.
On the other hand,
behaviorists have emphasized the significance of body in their discussions of
spatial behavior, but they have viewed it as a collection of reactions to
external stimuli. If the behaviorists were asked, for example, to describe
driving behavior from home to work, he would argue that it involves a
succession of reactions to the shifting sights, sounds and pressures impinging
on the driver’s external sense organs, plus internal stimuli coming from the
viscera and skeletal muscles. These various stimuli coming from the viscera and
skeletal muscles. These various stimuli call out feet and arm movements of the
driver which are reinforced each time a particular driving response successfully
gets the driver safely to his destination. This series of stimulus-responses is
eventually integrated into a smooth step-wise progression which easily and
automatically gets the person from home to work each day (Tolman, 1973, p.28,
originally 1948).
Group observations
indicate that both the cognitive and behaviorist theories are incomplete. The
cognitive description ignores the fact that many movements proceed
independently of any cognitive evaluation process; that the cognitive stratum
of experience comes into play only when body-subject makes a wrong movement,
as, for example, when the dialer becomes aware that he is dialing the wrong
number, or the driver realizes that he is making a wrong turn. Otherwise,
cognition is directed to matters other than the behavior at hand, such as the
impending visit to the dentist.
Yet the fact that
cognitive attention can intervene when body-subject errs points to a first
weakness of the behaviorist perspective: that behavior can involve a cognitive
component and thus is more than a simple sequence of stimulus-response
behaviors. Furthermore, the notion of the body-subject calls into question the
whole concept of stimulus-response, since body-subject is an intelligent,
holistic process that directs, while for the behaviorists, the body is a
collection of passive responses that can only react.
The above
observations give no indication that movement is a response to things in the
external environment. Consider the group member turning on the light (1.1.10).
The central theme in his report is the directed way in which the hand goes up:
“The hand knows exactly what to do.” The environmental context here seems
almost secondary, and in fact the person explains that the arm can find the
string as well in the dark as in the daylight. Similarly, the focus in the
wrong-turn report is the hands which do the turning, “all by themselves,
completely in charge” (1.1.8). The tone of this observation points to the hands
as an intelligent agent in charge of the situation in their own special way.
There is no indication that the body is blindly responding to stimuli in the
environment as the behaviorist would assume. Rather, the body acts in an
intentional way which tackles the behavior as a whole and proceeds to carry it
out in a fluid, integrative fashion.
Through cognition
may not have a primary role in everyday movement, it must be realized that it
has some role. There are moments in a typical day when movements lose their
automatic, unnoticed quality, and the person becomes aware of them.
One function of
cognition has already been noted: a habitual action of body-subject is out of
tune with the physical environment and cognition intervenes. Consider a group
member disoriented in a remodeled snack bar (1.2.1), or a group member
confusing directions on a one-way street (1.3.3). Both explain that correcting
their mistake involves the intervention of conscious attention. “I have to
stop, figure out where I am, then go,” explained the first person. “I said to myself,
"What’s wrong here?", saw the problem, and quickly turned the car in
the right direction.” said the driver. The group member walking into the wrong
bedroom and the group member dialing the wrong number made similar
observations: “Once I”m at the wrong room, I”ll note my mistake and direct
myself to where I should be going” (1.1.9); “then I”ll suddenly notice what
I”ve done and become aware of what I”m going to dial” (1.1.12). Mistaken
movements activate cognition, which quickly evaluates the incongruity at hand
and redirects behavior.
Second, cognition
can intervene before body-subject conducts a particular movement. The need at
hand requires a movement different than usual, and cognition gives the
order. One group member walked down
three flights in a library whose entrances at each floor were virtually the
same (1.9.3). She approached the door of the floor she didn’t want and noticed
an inertial bodily force set to carry her through. “I could feel my body moving
ahead”, she said, all set to go in.” At the same time her cognitive attention
became aware of the door sign indicating floor level. “It was only my head that
told me not to go through,” she explained. “It looked at the door sign and
said, "that’s not where I want to go"...It was only through some kind
of consciousness that I could intervene and do what I wanted.”
A third role of
cognition occurs in unfamiliar environments, where conscious attention assumes
complete control of movements. Descriptions of behavior in new places emphasize
a mental alertness which actively scrutinizes environment and gives directions.
“You have to be constantly awake,” said one group member, “...looking,
searching out the place you want” (1.7.1). “You have to be "on your
toes’,” said another group member, “figuring out if you”re on the right street,
if you”ve gone past the house you”re looking for, if the house you want is on
the right or left” (1.7.2).5
Cognition expends
more energy than body-subject. “All that constant watching”, said one group
member, “takes a lot of energy. Once you know how to get to a place, it’s so
much easier. You just go there without having to exert yourself or figuring out
where you”re going” (1.7.1). Body-subject over time learns the way and the trip
becomes easy and comfortable. Pathways become taken for granted and distances
which originally seemed long become reasonable and normal. “Distances’, said
one group member, ‘seem further when you think about them in your mind,but when
you get to know them by going, they seem closer” (1.6.2).6
Cognition, in sum,
has a role in everyday movement, particularly if that movement is new, novel,
or occurring in an unfamiliar environment. A larger portion of movement,
however, arises from the prereflective sensibility of body-subject. Having
placed cognition in relation to body, one can explore body-subject further,
asking how it learns movements and how it has been interpreted by
Merleau-Ponty.
1. Numbers in
parentheses refer to the location of the observation in Appendix A, which
includes all reports used in the present text. The interested reader can turn
to this appendix when he wishes (1) an observation in full, or (2) a comparison
of one observation with those of a similar theme. These observations are
transcriptions of reports made in meetings of the environmental experience
groups. Some changes have been made in observations to improve the flow of the
text.
2. For additional
observations on habitual movements, see Appendix A, section 1.1.
3. Again, it is
important to realize that there is a subgroup of behaviorists who accept the
basic stimulus-response model but incorporate cognition as an intervening
variable. As I explained in Chapter 3, note 3, however, I consider this
subgroup to be of the cognitive tradition.
4. On the meaning
of cognition and related terms, wee Moore and Golledge, 1976.
5. No doubt
cognition plays additional roles in everyday environmental experience that have
not been considered here. For example, in his critique of research in
environmental imagery, Tuan (1975a) describes five functions of cognitive maps
which have not been highlighted: they make it possible to give directions to a
stranger; they make it possible to rehearse spatial behavior in the mind so
that we can be reasonably sure beforehand that we will be able to get where we
wish to go; they serve as a mnemonic device by which we can memorize locations
of places, things or people; they are imaginary worlds that depict goals which
may tempt people out of their habitual routines; like a real map, they provide
means to organize data.
6. See Appendix A,
section 1.6, for additional observations on this changing sense of distance.
This theme is worthy of further phenomenological exploration.
CHAPTER 5
MERLEAU-PONTY AND LEARNING FOR
BODY-SUBJECT
Consciousness is being toward the thing through the intermediary of the body. A movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its “world”, and to move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently of any representation. Motility, then, is not, as it were, a handmaid of consciousness, transporting the body to that point in space of which we have formed a representation beforehand. In order that we may be able to move our body towards an object, the object must first exist for it, our body must not belong to the realm of the “in-itself”—Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp.138-9).
Merleau-Ponty
introduced the notion of body-subject in his Phenomenology of Perception
over three decades ago (1945), and discoveries from the environmental
experience groups suggest in a concrete context what he spoke of in more
general, philosophical terms. The central problem of philosophy for
Merleau-Ponty is the “origin of the object in the very center of our
experience” (1962, p.71). He concludes that this center is the body,
particularly its function as intelligent subject. A large portion of his work
demonstrates how traditional philosophies and their psychological offshoots
have ignored the central role of body in human experience and thus misrepresent
the nature of man and his place in the world.1
Merleau-Ponty’s
criticism of the cognitive theorists is their treatment of the body as merely a
physical entity upon which consciousness may act by an exterior causality: “my
body has its world, or understands its world, without having to make use of my
‘symbolic" or "objectifying" function” (1962, pp.140-1).
Movements of the body are not directed by this conscious force -- but by the
body’s intelligent connections with the world at hand:
My flat is, for me,
not a set of closely associated images. It remains a familiar domain round
about me only as long as I have “in my arms’ or “in my legs’ the main distances
involved, and as long as from my body intentional threads run out towards it
(1962, p.130).
The body has an
understanding of the world that is independent of any ‘set of closely
associated images’ that the cognitive theorist would term cognitive map.
Movements are learned when the body has understood them, and this understanding
can be described as a set of invisible but intelligent “threads’ that run out
between body and the world with which the body is familiar. This picture of
movement corresponds to group descriptions above -- the arms turning the wheel,
the legs taking the person to the required destination, the feet carefully
choosing a resting place in the stream-bed. The body has within itself the
power to initiate these directed movements before and without a need for
cognition to screen the world at hand and then implement orders.
In a similar way,
Merleau-Ponty questions the behaviorist conception of movement because it also
depicts the body as unintelligent -- though in a considerably different way
from the cognitive approach. The actions of the body in its world “are not
complexes of elementary movements, each "blind" to itself and to the
other movements making up the total” (Zaner, 1971, p.153). Merleau-Ponty
explain that
the reactions of an organism are not configurations of elementary
movements but gestures endowed with an internal unity...Experience in an
organism is not the recording and fixation of certain readily accomplished
movements. It emerges from aptitudes, that is the general power of responding to
situations of a certain type by means of varied reactions which have only their
meaning in common. Reactions are not, therefore, a succession of events; they
have in themselves an “intelligibility” (Merleau-Ponty, 1963, cited in Zaner,
1971, p.154).
Merleau-Ponty
argues that the body is active and that through this activity our needs
are efficiently transformed into behaviors. His criticism of the cognitive and
behaviorist theories is the same as that presented here: their assumption --
arrived at from two opposite lines of reasoning--that the body is “essentially
a passivity in respect of its sensuousness to objects’ (Zaner, 1971, pp.157-8).
The body must have
within its ken the required habitual behaviors if we are to move our body
effectively to meet the requirements of everyday living. Without the structure
of body-subject in our human constitution, we would be constantly required to
plan out every movement anew -- to pay continuous attention to each gesture of
the hand, each step of the foot. Because of body-subject, we can manage routine
demands automatically and so gain freedom from our everyday spaces and
environments. We rise beyond such mundane events as getting places, finding
things, performing basic tasks, and direct our creative attentions to wider,
more significant life-dimensions:
There is a freedom from milieu that results from what is stable and
pore-established in the subject. This promises to balance out the conventional
existential emphasis on spontaneity as the sole reality of freedom, an emphasis
that sets freedom and stability in the most radical opposition...”It is an
inner necessity for the most integrated existence to provide itself with
"a habitual body" if it wishes both to be engaged with the world and
to dominate that engagement” (Bannan, 1967, pp.67-8)2
Learning for Body-Subject
Body-subject learns
through action. Movements become familiar when the body performs them several
times and incorporates them into its world of prereflective understanding. One
group member who had moved to an unfamiliar part of Worcester reported that she
had difficulty finding her way from the new home to work the first few times.
After traveling the route for a few days, however, she became intimately
familiar with it and could make the trip “even without thinking about it”
(1.8.1). A second group member reported that after a class location was
changed, it took him several times before he would automatically go to the new
room rather than the old (1.3.2).
Bodily involvement
must be active. The movement will not be learned if the body is passive and the
movement conducted separately from the body’s direct participation. One group
member, for example, explained that the past summer she had ridden the same bus
route from her home to work each day (1.8.2). When a friend volunteered to
drive her one morning, however, she could not give him directions. Body-subject
was passively carried to a destination. It had not actively performed the
journey and had not learned the pathway.
Body-subject learns
through repetition and therefore requires time to familiarize itself with the
world in which it finds itself. Once that familiarity is established,
body-subject is closely held to it, and by its own initiative is limited in the
creation of new routines. This limitation is well illustrated by observations
describing confusions of body-subject because of a change in physical
environment. The group member paying for his order in the recently remodeled
snack bar found himself automatically moving to the former location of the cash
register rather than its new place (1.3.1). The group member turning his car
left did not notice that the street was one-way and that only a right turn
could be made (1.3.3). In both examples, a learned action is out of phase with
the world as hand and momentary confusion results.
Body-subject
becomes attached to the movements it knows. When the person must conduct a
movement different from usual, varying degrees of emotional distress may arise.
For example, group members were asked to try an experiment of going to a place
by a different route than they usually did.3 People made reference
to a strong feeling of annoyance and dislike when they made or contemplated the
change: “the experiment was an inconvenience” (1.4.2); “it feels uncomfortable”
(1.4.4); “I found myself consistently not wanting to do this, saying "Why
bother?", I didn’t feel like going out of my way” (1.4.5); “I kept putting
the experiment off -- I didn’t want to do it” (1.4.1).4 Some group
members reported a similar feeling of anxiety when they were driven somewhere
by a route different from the one they would usually drive themselves: “I feel
a little uncomfortable” (1.5.1); “I notice myself sometimes getting a little
annoyed and anxious, asking myself why this person is going the
"wrong" way” (1.5.1); “I felt uncomfortable because we weren’t going
the way I thought we should be going” (1.5.3). Body-subject is conservative in
nature and prefers that movements adhere to their patterns of the past. This
fact has important implications for environmental policy and design.
On the other hand, body-subject has some ability to adapt creatively to new situations. Easily being able to adjust from standard to automatic transmission (1.10.1) or quickly becoming familiar with a larger or smaller car (1.10.2) are examples of body-subject’s adaptive powers. For example:
Driving the larger car felt strange at first. I didn’t know how far its sides extended. I noticed that if I didn’t worry about it but let the driving happen -- just hand it over to my hands on the wheel -- they automatically knew what to do, and the driving was easier. Soon it was as if I”d driven the car all my life (1.10.2).
There is a creative
power in the hands that properly judges the extension of the larger automobile
and safely negotiates through the streets. This adaptability is limited,
however, because it is based on repetition. It must involve the residue of
former driving behaviors. Body-subject can not readily adjust, for example,
from automatic to standard shift because the required change in habit is too
great. The person must practice on the new machine before his movements are an
integrated whole again.
The Behaviorist
Interpretation of Learning
Repetition is
crucial to the behaviorist definition of learning, which is defined as the
ability to repeat certain gestures fixed as habits after a period of trial and
error (Hilgard et al., 1974, p.189). Behaviorists explain repetition in terms
of reinforcement from the external environment (ibid., p.189). Much of their
work has attempted to investigate systematically the effect of such
reinforcement variables as amount and delay of reinforcement. Do rats receiving
a larger food reward learn a maze faster than those receiving less? Do rats
receiving a reward immediately after successful completion of the maze learn
faster than those whose reward is delayed (ibid., p.189)?
Phenomenologists
recognize the importance of repetition in bodily learning, but interpret it as
an active endeavor of body by which its powers as subject are extended. This
bodily process, as the above observations on driving indicate, can readily
adjust to minor changes in its world, but requires time to adapt if the world
is considerably changed. Bodily learning is not a sequence of responses
established through reinforcement. It is the body’s grasping understanding
fostered through action.
Merleau-Ponty’s
criticism of the behaviorist approach is the same as the one here. “Learning is
not the fixation of a particular gesture as a response to a particular
situation but rather the establishment of general attitude with regard to the
structure or essence of the situation” (Bannan, 1967, p.38). Each situation
with which the body is familiar is an analogue to many others, and “what our experience
with them generates are global attitudes, not simply repeatable gestures’
(ibid., p.39). Body-subject can transfer its movements over similar contexts
because of these global attitudes -- from standard to automatic transmission;
from smaller to larger cars. Similarly, we can shift our writing strokes from
pencil on paper to blackboard, climb a set of stairs we”ve never used before,
or open a door latch that is different from ones we”ve known in the past.
Generalization is the term that
behaviorists have given to the ability of adjusting to new situations in so far
as they are similar to familiar ones (Hilgard et al., 1974, p.194). Again
because of their stimulus-response assumption, however, they argue that the
cause of generalization is a stimulus similar to the one that originally evoked
a particular behavior. Drivers are readily able to shift from standard to
automatic, behaviorist would contend, because many of the environmental stimuli
are still the same -- location of accelerator and brake, presence of steering
wheel, order of operations. Merleau-Ponty’s point is that the power of
generalization lies within the body as subject. Body-subject establishes a
general attitude towards particular tasks and to some degree can creatively
vary its behaviors.
The Cognitive
Interpretation of Learning
Learning, argue
cognitive theorists, is a situation in which a particular cognitive structure
is elaborated or reorganized to conform better to the world at hand. Unlike the
behaviorists, cognitive theorists see the person as active in the learning
process: learning, say Hart and Moore (1973, p.250), “refers to the situation
in which information is presented to the individual who charges through
reacting to it and corrects initial attempts in response to indications about
his prior successes’ (also see Hilgard and Bower, 1966; Smith, 1975). To
measure environmental learning operationally, these researchers have studied
map drawings, verbal descriptions, or toy models over time (e.g. Stea and
Blaut, 1973; Klett and Alpaugh, 1976; Beck and Wood, 1976a, 1976b).
Is, however, a
person’s ability to move in space reflected in his elicited cognitive
representation of that space? Map drawings and similar devices elicit cognitive
knowledge of the person’s geographical world but may say little about
environmental learning—if learning means the actual ability to get around in
the world. The causal link between cognition and behavior is legitimate and
directly relevant to an understanding of movement if cognitive mapping is a genuine
phenomenon in human experience and behavior. If, however, the body is the prime
source of movement in everyday space, then the relationship between cognition
and behavior is less significant and may not warrant the considerable amount of
research premised on it.
Body-subject can
manifest knowledge of space only through action. It cannot be asked for its
geographical knowledge by way of map or interview because its language is
comprised of gestures and movements that only ‘speak” through behaviors in the
moment. What the student can do, as has been begun here, is to examine
first-hand accounts of environmental and spatial learning. Consider such
situations as a postman’s learning a new mail route, a pilot’s following a new
flight pattern, a boatman’s negotiating a strange river. Descriptions of such
experiences could be explored for underlying experiential patterns common to
many situations in which new movements are learned and eventually become
familiar.
Much of the
research on spatial cognition is based on the work of Piaget and has studied development
-- “qualitative changes in the organization of behavior” (Hart and Moore,
11973, p.250). Piaget argues that individuals pass through different
developmental stages whereby one’s cognitive knowledge of the world becomes
increasingly integrated and ordered (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956).
This sequence may
be valuable in understanding the development of environmental knowing that is
cognitive, but one questions its relevance to the learning of actual movements
in everyday space, which involve body-subject and have less to do with
cognition. Piaget suggests body-subject in his four major periods of
development when he speaks of a ‘sensorimotor period” that extends from birth
to the age of two: “near the end of this period, the child’s behavior may be
considered intelligent, although this intelligence is tied to actions and the co-ordination
of actions, and does not involve internal representation” (Hart and Moore,
1973, p.260). In focusing its attention on cognition, research on spatial
behavior borrowing from Piaget’s four periods forgets the possibility that
sensorimotor intelligence may continue to have a major role in spatial behavior
throughout the person’s life. The notion of body-subject recaptures its
significance, though in different interpretive form.5
Notes
1. Good overviews
of Merleau-Ponty’s work are Kwant, 1963; Barral, 1965; Bannan, 1967. An
insightful commentary on the role of body in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is
Zaner, 1971.
2. The significance
of body as subject has been recognized by other contemporary scholars -- both
phenomenologists and not. For reviews of phenomenological work discussing body
see Spickler (ed.), 1970; Zaner, 1971. One non-phenomenologist emphasizing the
importance of body is Polanyi (1964, 1966). The form and function of the body
also have bearing on human experience of the world; see Straus, 1966; Spickler
(ed.), 1970; Tuan, 1974B, 1977.
3. See Appendix C.
theme four, for details on this experiment.
4. See Appendix A,
section 1.4 for additional observations on this experiment.
5. Perhaps one could speak of body-subject in developmental terms, though such a possibility will not be considered here. Why, for example, do some people have a better ‘sense of direction” than others? Can other parts of the person, particularly thinking, interfere with the fluidity of body-subject? How developed is body-subject in animals? More or less than in humans? Does body-subject help explain why cats, dogs, and other animals can travel long distances from home and not get lost?
She has been dusting and sweeping the floor as she talks and now she is
finished. Next come the plants, a dozen or so of them ; they need to be watered
and moved in or out of the sun...”I have had them so long -- I don’t remember
the number of years. I know each one’s needs, and I try to take care of them
the same time each day. Maybe it is unnecessary nonsense, the amount of
attention I give. I know that is what Domingo would say. Only once did he put
his belief into words, and then I reminded him that he has his habits too. No
one can keep him from starting in one corner of his garden and working his way
to the other, and with such care. I asked him years ago why not change around
every once in a while and begin on the furthest side, and go faster. "I
couldn’t do it," he said, and I told him I understood. Habits are not
crutches; habits are roads we have paved for ourselves. When we are old, and if
we have done a good job, the roads last and make the remaining time useful: we
get where we want to go, and without the delays we used to have when we were
young...” -- Robert Coles (1973, p.28).
“Habit is the
enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent,” wrote
psychologist William James (1902, p.121). The root of habit, I have argued, is
body-subject, by virtue of which our everyday behaviors can proceed smoothly
and automatically. Body-subject is caretaker of life’s mundane aspects. A
change in its patterns is difficult because, first, the new behavior must be
repeated many times before body-subject learns it, and second, the change may
provoke emotional stress.
Body-subject houses
complex behaviors extending over considerable portions of time as well as
space. These behaviors are of two types that I call body ballets and time-space
routines. When present for many people sharing the same space, these
patterns fuse to create what I call place ballet.
Body ballet is a set of
integrated gestures and movements that sustain a particular task or aim. Body
ballets are frequently an integral part of manual skill or artistic talent --
for instance, washing dishes, ploughing, house-building, hunting or potting.
“His movements were incredible...they flowed together,” said one group member
of a metal-smith at work. “Both hands were working at once...doing exactly what
they had to do perfectly” (1.9.4). Operating an ice-cream truck can involve a
body ballet. Taking orders, scooping ice cream, making change -- all involve a
pattern and flow that quickly become routine:
As I worked I”d get into a rhythm of getting ice cream and giving change. My actions would flow and I”d feel good. I had about twenty kinds of flavors on my truck. Someone would order, and automatically I would reach for the right container, make what the customer wanted, and take his money. Most of the time I didn’t have to think about what I was doing. It all became routine (1.9.5).
Basic bodily
movements fuse together into body ballet through training and practice. Simple
hand, leg and trunk movements become attuned to a particular line of work or
action and direct themselves spontaneously to meet the need at hand. Words like
“flow” and “rhythm” indicate that body ballet is organic and integrated rather
than step-wise and fragmentary. Activities require a minimum of cognitive
activity: “I didn’t have to think about what I was doing”, said the operator of
the ice-cream truck. “It all became routine.”
Similar to body
ballet, a timer-space routine is a set of habitual bodily behaviors that
extend through a considerable portion of time. Sizeable segments of a person’s
day may be organized around such routines. Waking at
My brother routinizes the things he does at home. For example, he has a dinner routine. He gets home a little after 6:60, puts his briefcase in the dining-room, goes upstairs to change his clothes. Then he makes dinner -- a salad, a bowl of either canned ravioli or spaghetti, a glass of water. He says he doesn’t want to make a choice of menu each day. He eats in front of the seven o”clock news on television (2.9.2).
In time-space
routines, a series of behaviors—e.g., bathroom, sewing, cooking routines (in
themselves body ballets)—join in a wider pattern directed by body-subject.
These routines are not consciously planned but happen naturally. They are
taken-for-granted segments of daily living. As the first group member
explained, he doesn’t figure out his morning schedule each day; rather, “it
unfolds and I follow it.” Like the frustration of going another route, a change
in routine can cause irritation: “I like this routine and I”ve noticed how I”m
bothered a bit when a part of it is upset—if the Times is sold out, or
if the booths are taken and I have to sit at a counter.”
“Unfolding”
describes well the holistic, organic quality of time-space routines. Large
portions of a day can proceed with a minimum of planning and decision when a
person has established a series of time-space routines in his daily or weekly
schedule. The day can “unfold”, so to speak. On the other hand, the person
generally becomes attached to these routines, and interference (with seating
place, newspaper read, or any other element of the routine) may lead to greater
or lesser stress.
Time-space routines
automatically appropriate activities through time and are an essential aspect
of everyday life. They maintain a continuity in our lives, allowing us to do
automatically in the present what we”ve done in the past. Time-space routines,
together with body ballets, manage the habitual, repetitive aspects of life.
They free our conscious attention for other more eventful endeavors. On the
other hand, time-space routines may be difficult to break or modify because
people grow attached to them and forget that life could be otherwise. In this
sense, time-space routines are a conservative force. They may be a considerable
obstacle in the face of useful change or progress.
Place Ballets
Body ballets and
time-space routines mix in a supportive physical environment to create place
ballet -- an interaction of many time-space routines and body ballets
rooted in space. The place ballet can occur in all types of environments -- indoor,
outdoor, streets, neighborhoods, market places, transportation depots, cafes.
The groundstones of place ballet are continual human activity and temporal
continuity. Place ballet fosters a strong, even profound, sense of place and
has implications for planning and design.
Familiarity arising
out of routine is an important aspect of place ballet. One group member,
working in a corner grocery, got to know many customers because they came
regularly (1.12.1). “I like it,” she said, ‘seeing people I recognize. It helps
to pass the time and gives me people to talk to.” The frequenter of the corner
luncheonette made the same point:
A lot of people know each other, and the owner of the place knows every one of the regulars and what they will order. This situation of knowing other people -- of knowing who’s there at the time, recognizing faces that you can say hello to -- makes the place warmer. It creates a certain atmosphere that wouldn’t be if new faces came in every day (1.12.2).
In place ballet,
individual routines meet regularly in time and space. The regularity is
unintentional, arising slowly over time as the result of many repeated
“accidental” meetings. People who otherwise might not know each other become
acquainted -- even friends. At a minimum, there is recognition. Participants generally
appreciate the climate of familiarity that grows and to which they become
attached. The base of place ballet is body-subject, supporting a time-space
continuity grounded in patterns of the past.
Wider Contexts
The notions of body
ballet, time-space routine and place ballet are valuable for behavioral
geography because they join people with environmental time-space. Though the
above examples are limited and culture-bound, their underlying experiential
patterns transcend particular social and historical contexts and can be found
in all human situations, past and present, Western and non-Western. Consider,
for example, the start of a typical day for the Menomini, and Indian tribe
living along the northwestern
At dawn, the women rose, fetched water, built or rebuilt the fire, and prepared breakfast while the men were getting up. Breakfast was the first of two regular meals per day. The men and boys went off to the hunting and fishing grounds...The women worked at home and nearby, tending the crops, processing food, gathering bark and reeds, collecting edible roots and berries, working on clothing, weaving mats, and caring for infants and children (Hockett, 1973, pp.13-14).
Time-space routines and body ballets are the foundation of this typical daily pattern; activities follow a sequence that is largely habitual and unpremeditated. The women’s activities are an extended time-space routine incorporating many individual body ballets—water-fetching, fire-building, crop-tending and weaving. Each activity requires a particular combination of gestures and movements that correctly manipulate materials at hand and produce the desired artifact or aim. The skill of weaving, for example, is a knowledge of the hands, which long ago learned a proper sequence and rhythm and can now conduct their work quickly and automatically.
One can visualize a
series of place ballets unfolding throughout the Menomini’s day. The women meet
at the stream as they fetch water and partake in conversation. This place is
not only a source of water but a scene of community interaction and
communication that repeats each morning through the regularity of
water-fetching. The underlying structure of the place ballet is no different
from the contemporary street scene that Jane Jacobs describes on the block
where she once lived in Greenwich Village in New York; note that she called it
a “ballet”:1
The stretch of
The essential
experiential process working on
Place ballet takes
on the quality that Relph (1976b, p.55) has called existential insideness
-- a situation in which “a place is experienced without deliberate and
self-conscious reflection yet is full of significances’; people “know the place
and its people and are known and accepted there”. In place ballet, space
becomes place through interpersonal, spatio-temporal sharing. Human parts
create a larger place-whole. The meaning of the whole is normally expressed
indirectly -- through day-to-day meetings and an implicit sense of
participation. The place ballet becomes an object of participants’ explicit
attention only when it is threatened by modification or destruction -- for
example, when a neighborhood is jeopardized by a proposed expressway, or
pedestrian flow along a busy thoroughfare is threatened by street-widening. In
these moments, a sense of loyalty may become visible and be sufficiently strong
to repulse the threat of change.