Abstract
Architecture itself is a witness to social and cultural development, so the study on it should not only focus on the material symbols but also pay more attention to the multiple roles played by its material space in a specific social–cultural construction from multiple perspectives, residential buildings are no exception. Based on the dialectical analysis of Levi Strauss’s house society concept and Lefebvre’s spatial ternary theory, this paper attempts to sort out the triple theory of the house space; taking Chinese well-preserved Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1912) as an example, it starts from the three aspects of housing space which are material presentation, reconstruction and innovation, and potential circulating capital in the social production and reproduction to explore a qualitative research of the house space, and tries to reappear the metaphorical relationship between housing space of Chinese Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard and social–cultural construction in a historical period of social and cultural development, and explain its profound connotation; from the perspective of sociology, it provides inspiration and lays a foundation for the research on the design of the house space in the transition from the traditional society to the modern society in the specific area.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Room is a special term for Chinese architecture, which is a unit used to express the width of a building's plane. The size of a room is 3 meters or so.
Adobe house is the house that uses mud for a wall, the inside and outside of the wall material is mud.
Sha room is a term named by people in the Guanzhong area. It is usually used for son and daughter's living, which has a single-sloped roof facing the yard.
Zhuge Liang (181–234), courtesy name Kongming, was a politician, military strategist, writer, engineer and inventor in ancient China.
Xunzi (third century BCE) was a Confucian philosopher, sometimes reckoned as the third of the three great classical Confucians (after Confucius and Mencius).
References
Bourdieu, P. (1965). The sentiment of honor in Kabyle Society. In J. G. Peristiany (Ed.), Honor and shame: The values of Mediterranean Society (pp. 191–241). London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1997). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buchli, V. (2018). An anthropology of architecture (X. Pan, & G. Z. Li, Trans.). Beijing: China Building Industry Press.
Carsten, J. (1987). Woman, kinship and community in a Malay fishing village: On Pulau Langkawi, Kedah Malaysia. Dissertation, University of London.
Carsten, J., & Hugh-Jones, S. (1995). About the house: Levi-Strauss and beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deng, Z. H. (2019). House and home: The meaning production of house and family. Modern Anthropology, 7(2), 7–13.
Dong, J. W. (2006). Family vicissitude in Guanzhong area. Journal of Northwest A&F University (Social Science Edition), 6(4), 128–131.
Errington, S. (1987). Incestuous twins and the house societies of insular southwest Asia. Cultural Anthropology, 2(4), 403–404.
Gibson, T. (1995). Having your house and rating it: House and siblings in Ara, South Sulawesi. In J. Carsten & S. Hugh-Jones (Eds.), About the house: Levi-Strauss and beyond (pp. 129–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guo, H. Y. (2016). Inheritance and innovation on tradition of Guanzhong residential buildings. Dissertation, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology.
Henderson, H., & Ostler, N. (2005). Muisca settlement organization and chiefly authority at Suta, Valle de Leyva, Colombia: A critical appraisal of native concepts of house for studies of complex societies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 24, 148–178.
Hugh-Jones, S. (1995). Inside-out and back-to-front: The androgynous house in Northwest Amazonia. In J. Carsten & S. Hugh-Jones (Eds.), About the house: Levi-Strauss and beyond (pp. 226–252). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (English version). Oxford: Blackwell.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1965). The future of kinship studies. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1965, 13–22.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1982). The way of the masks (S. Modelski, Trans.). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1987). Anthropology and myth: Lectures 1951–1982, First Printing edition. Basil: Blackwell.
Li, J. (2017). House and the social structure of Jiarong Tibetan. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.
Li, C. L. (2018). Discussion on the embodiment of shaanxi merchant culture in the architecture of Guanzhong Folk houses. Appreciation, 36, 232–233.
Li, M. L., & Li, X. F. (2003). Sociology view of vernacular architecture research. Huazhong Architecture, 21(4), 50–51.
Liu, A. J. (2015). Report on the development of Shaanxi entrepreneurs. Xi’an: Shanxi RenminPublishing House.
Mauss, M. (2003). Sociology and anthropology (B. P. She, Trans.). Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
Mckinnon, S. (1995). House and hierarchy: The view from a South Moluccan Society. In J. Carsten & S. Hugh-Jones (Eds.), About the house: Levi-Strauss and beyond (pp. 170–188). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, L. H. (2003). Houses and house-life of the American Aborigines (P. Z. Zhu, Trans.). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Sun, S. Z. (2011). Morphological analysis of courtyard space in Guanzhong region. Dissertation, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology.
Wiseman, B. (2009). The Cambridge companion to Levis-Strauss. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Xu, C. P., & Li, B. (2017). Businessmen group born by pressure and opportunity—On the rise of Shaanxi Businessmen in Ming and Qing Dynasties. West Journal, 4, 52–56.
Zhang, Q. (2007). ‘Bailu Plain’ and the folk culture. Dissertation, Shaanxi Normal University.
Zhang, B. T., & Liu, Z. Y. (2017). Shaanxi folk house. Beijing: China Building Industry Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, Y., Ning, Q. Triple understanding of Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard and its house space. J Hous and the Built Environ 36, 521–537 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-020-09764-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-020-09764-2