Understanding Culture Through Space:

Examining the way in which particular southern communities define space affords us the opportunity to better understand both how these particular communities see themselves and how they see the world around them. It is important to understand the dynamic relationship between the local community and the larger cultural community because, in fact, this relationship has historically and continues presently, to influence the way people understand their own role within the community.

This page highlights several aspects of particular types of space. It focuses primarily on residential communities and draws a heavy emphasis on the subject of architecture as it relates to peoples' understandings of culture. Specifically, we have focused on types of houses such as the dogtrot in the Mississippi Delta, the shotgun house, found both in the Mississippi Delta and Charleston, and double houses and growing houses, indigenous to Charleston. Beyond the examination of particular types of houses, we have also attempted to begin a discussion on how the arrangement of the houses themselves, both inside and out, reflects local cultural patterns between blacks and whites, and also how it reflects issues extant between blacks and whites within the greater southern culture.