The interactional production of multiple spatialities within a participatory democracy meeting

The paper offers an interactional and praxeological approach to spatiality by stressing the importance of social action for the making of space. In this perspective, space is not mere materiality pre-existent to interaction; it is a practical interactional achievement. In order to show how interaction, language and space intermingle, the paper focuses on a participatory democracy meeting intended to elaborate collaboratively on the principles of an urbanistic project. This case study constitutes a perspicuous setting for the study of practices of space-making: collaborative planning is a context where the production of space is observably negotiated, discussed, argued. The analysis of video-recorded fragments of this meeting reveals a multi-layered spatiality, articulating represented space as it is described within talk, interactional space as it emerges from the dynamic distribution of the participants within the room, and inscriptional space as it is used and shaped by the public writing of people's proposals on a board. These multiple spatialities are all interactionally achieved through the way in which participants’ actions are organised in a timely and embodied manner.