Spaces of representation/representations of space. Discourses of architecture, urbanism and the built environment, 1960-1995

This dissertation examines discourses of architecture, urbanism and the built environment as represented by a group of English-language scholarly journals between 1960 and 1995. The journals studied extend across the "space" disciplines, and include the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the oldest journal of architectural history in the United States; Assemblage, a journal of architectural theory, design and criticism; the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, a journal focusing on "traditional environments," particularly in the rapidly industrializing countries of the so-called "third world," the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, concerned with the political economy of urban and regional development, and Environment and Planning D. Society and Space, a journal that has played an important role in adapting various forms of social and critical theory to the analysis of geographic space at various scales.; The dissertation argues that each of the journals constitutes a space of representation, or a geographically, historically and intellectually specific socio-spatial world, defined through a range of textual and institutional practices. Drawing upon literary theory, the sociology of knowledge, and theories of representation, the study analyzes the representations of space that have emerged from these worlds over the last three decades. Each case study questions the historical conditions and political effects of the discourse, the interests it serves and the relations of power it upholds. The study concludes by examining the discourses as part of a larger, interdependent field of knowledge, according to three critical, comparative themes: interdisciplinarity and the relationship between "the social" and "the spatial"; internationalism and geographies of knowledge and power; and the relation between theory, practice and the construction of professional identity.