Date of Award

2-17-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Lana F. Rakow

Abstract

This dissertation has been planned and written as an extended review of literature on space and time within and outside of communication studies, and as a thorough categorization of issues about spatiality and temporality that have been and might be employed outside of and within communication studies. This dissertation has been envisioned and conceived as a critical look at both theories that consider space and time as unproblematic, that reify an ideal-typical perspective of time and an absolute-universal perspective of space, and theories that problematize space and time, that challenge the settled and predominant view of spatiality and temporality. The study strives to account for voices heard and voices unheard, voices listened to and voices not listened to, and to provide grounds and tools for comparison and contrast, for association and dissociation. This dissertation has also been envisaged and written as a classificatory incursion into the more or less obvious connections between communication, spatiality and temporality, into the intricate and subtle spatial and temporal aspects of communication practices. This study has the ambition to provide a metatheoretical framework for understanding the spatiality and temporality of communication, and for addressing spatiality and temporality in communication studies. In outlining approaches to spatiality and temporality, and issues connected to the communication of space and of time, this dissertation discusses materials from various areas of the humanities and the social sciences, as well as materials traditionally included in several subdisciplinary areas of communication studies, but also crossing subdisciplinary boundaries. This dissertation is not only a minutiae analysis of positionings, particularly of positionings regarding spatiality and temporality, but also a critical reflection on such positionings and, ultimately, a passionate advocacy for situatedness, especially for spatio-temporal situatedness of theoretical and methodological pursuits. This study is not only an examination of a wide range of claims and assumptions about space and time in communication studies and across areas of the humanities and the social sciences, but also an argument for those theoretical and methodological endeavors that acknowledge and engage concrete spatio-temporal configurations and that allow themselves to propose and to promote spatio-temporal situatedness.

Download

Share

COinS