Proxemics, implications in a legalistic universe

 The notion of communication, as we know, is hardly restricted to the kind of language we use. Concepts like literalism, nominalism, and efficiency in our dialogues, both personal and professionally, have some value and some considerable limits. Poetic, archetypal, imaginative language, while very different, not only has multiple barely perceptible, yet deeply embedded limitations, both in social acceptance as well as in personal comfort and practice.

Ideational notions, however, are also inevitably operating in a literal ‘space’ concept. And the pandemic, followed by the return to work, have both shone a light on the concept of the space one offers to others, in a professional workplace.

Wework.com carries a piece by Ashley Brown, August 6, 2020, in which the concept of “space” in the workplace is introduced and described. Brown writes:

Interpersonal space, or the amount of physical space between people, tells us a lot of personal space about our environments and culture. As we return to the office in a socially distanced way, we’ll have to renegotiate our understanding or personal space—both our own and our space in relation to others. The study of interpersonal space is known as proxemics. One important aspect of it is that’s it’s nonverbal. We don’t go around asking strangers if we can pass them; we judge from their body language how to best maneuver through their space as necessary….Classical proxemics theory9 was started in the 1960’s by anthropologist Edward T. Hall. He classified four degrees of interpersonal distance or degrees of proximity that we experience. 1) Public distance (between 12-15 feet) you must speak louder to be heard, and it’s more difficult to maintain eye contact, so the connection between two people is minimal. 2) Social distance (between 4-12 feet) relies on visual and auditory cues to form a connection, since you’re still too far apart to touch or perceive body heat. 3) Personal distance (between 1.5-4 feet) is kept during interactions with friends. Here, vision is clear, eye contact is strong, and conversation flows easily. 4) Intimate distance (between 0-1.5 feet), the aura of a person forms a stronger sense of connection than visual or auditory cues. Body heat and olfactory senses add to the connection. The study of proxemics is important because we need proximity to form bonds and communicate effectively. Many would say proximity is essential for mental health. In managing the distance between ourselves and others, we control the level of exposure to another person that we’re comfortable experiencing…The six-feet distance recommended by the Center for Disease Control has become the norm in the U.S. and has impacted every corner or our public spaces, from parks to grocery stores.

Of course, group leaders and managers are formally trained in the theory of proxemics, and then expected to orient their workers to similar guidelines, expectations, and the inevitable complaints about ‘invasion’ of personal space that will occur. Having established, under an umbrella regime of rewards and punishments (classical conditioning) we are fully immersed in a workplace culture that recognizes personal boundaries, and then goes about both training and sanctioning the observance of those boundaries. Rules, and guidelines, seem, on this issue, as well as on so many others, to have replaced an inherent sensibility that we could call respect, that previous generations would never have been taught. Reading body language, for example, is not a skill that is included in the formal curricula of most high schools; it might find a lesson or two in a health and physical education class, depending on the sensibilities of the instructor.

Reading body language, however, is another of those skills that separate men from women, the former being almost “illiterate” in the language, while the latter are intimately familiar with its import and impact. Physical gestures, facial movements, including miniscule movements of the eye brows, or even a faced turned away while one is speaking, or staring off into space, or folding arms or legs…these are all part of the body language that, depending on the ethos of our families of origin, were somehow, almost ethereally and through osmosis, conveyed to some at a high level of importance, and to others as less relevant. Body language has been a subject of court-room practice, in the legal profession and in the prosecutorial profession for decades. Detailed examination of one’s eye movements, for example, has been deemed to be one of the indicators of truth-telling or lying. Dentists, too, have a keen eye, for the moment when a patient experiences pain at the touch of a drill onto a nerve in the jaw. As teachers, while not formally trained, we become familiar with the facial and body movements of our students, if only after years of decoding those cues, as indicators of attentiveness, boredom, listlessness, or even resentment and anger. Class participation, a sine qua non of the effective learning environment, relies on the level of body language literacy of the instructor.

In discussing the “proxemics” theory and practice with neighbours recently, I heard an insightful woman remark, “All of those boundary issues about personal space were matters of manners, when we were growing up.” No one taught us specifically about how to behave when in the company of others, nor to distinguish between individuals of rank from those of family or close friends. “We just knew” was the way she expressed the cultural imprinting. Today, of course, with the cultural klieg light on ‘rights’ and the invasion of rights (read space) by others whose ‘manners’ crossed a line for those offended, organizations are training workers, volunteers and especially managers in the social ethics of maintain proper space decorum. And should that space not be honoured, there are implicit and explicit sanctions to be exercised.

Body language, the core of our puppy’s communication devices, is expressly suited to her breed, her mood, her adults and her attraction to any one of several specific toys. And, both my wife and I are ‘learning’ what it is she is trying to say. Unable to provide more than our own body language, including our voice tone, our eye movements, and our ‘mood’, all of which she ‘gets’ far more completely than we ‘get’ her, our learning curve seems to outstrip her’s.

On a personal note, a first dramatic encounter with ‘personal space’ came in a first meeting with a retiring cleric, following a thirty-six-year tenure in the same parish. Without shaking hands, as I had expected, this man, when encountering a summer student intern stood some ten feet away, coldly and calculatingly examining every inch of my person, and, in a tone evocative of one of the entombed, cyber voices, dismissed any attempt to engage in a conversation about the parish he was leaving and to which I had just been assigned.  Not only was there a resistance to provide anything by way of orientation, support and mentoring; the coldness of the encounter remains as a signature of not only this man but of his shepherding of this parish for nearly forty years.

The notion that workers and volunteers are being ‘formally trained’ in the lessons  of proxemics, on the surface, may seem both wise and prudent, as well as preventative of future conflict within the workplace. However, such training results from a kind of failed consciousness, respect, and those basic manners our neighbour was referring to. The training also acknowledges the existence of its own need, and the degree of control of professional space which has grown by leaps and bounds in the last half-century.

Rules, regulations, boundaries and the opportunities to complain formally over whatever transgression might have transpired, changes all spaces into ‘conflict zones based on the premise that professionals will over-step, and also that those in charge have a duty and a responsibility to eliminate or prevent such transgressions from happening in the first place. Searching for ‘perfection’ in the realm of human relationships, in the web of complex organizational structures and functions, while perhaps being considered highly ideal and morally and ethically preferential to the occurrences of transgressions, seems to this scribe, analogous to the “banned books” of yesteryear. When the church sought to prevent their members and adherents from reading certain specific books, to prevent their being ‘morally negatively influence by the content,’ such books became the most in demand of all the available titles.

There is an obvious counter-intuitive aspect to the prescription, by those in authority, to control those over whom they have some responsibility, of too many rules, regulations, boundaries, and expected ‘constraints’ that, predictably and inevitably, will result in ‘incident reports’ and the necessary procedures for follow-up investigations, hearings, rulings, sanctions and eventually even dismissals. However, while the anthropologist’s theory has eminent application in the study of various cultures, including their respective manners of treating each other, the micro-management of the way people behave, as a path toward “healthy workplace ethos” is obviously fraught with peril.

And in addition to the costs of the monitoring, and the investigation and hearings and rulings, there is the fundamental notion of the critical parent (Freud’s super ego) attempting to rule the miscreant ‘child’ (the ordinary worker). Individual responsibility, discretion, discussion, confrontation of a human-to-human kind is transferred to the ‘system’s’ hierarchy. And while there is every reason to desire a workplace free from personal conflict, there is also a reason to expect individuals to own their own part in each encounter. Creating a structural framework in which victims, many of whom are already victims in other parts of their lives, are enabled and emboldened to file formal complaints, and to trigger a process of redress, based on their unique, personal, private and neurotic perceptions of the actions and attitudes of others, is not only demanding a new army of referees, (for which we have not recruited) but also expecting human, professional relationships to be enhanced by such rules and regulation and specific boundaries.

And all of the vagaries of the subjective, hierarchical, personal and unconscious perceptions and motivations (strong positive feelings from one individual to another of a different rank, for example) to come into play. Legalizing human relationships, like ethically and morally condemning romantic and sexual relationships outside of marriage between a man and a woman, as the church has done for centuries, is not only contrary to nature but also unsustainable. Deferring to the legal process, whether through the actual court system, or by imitation within the organizational norms, is another way of vacuuming up all of the human encounters into legally tolerable or legally intolerable.

Removing trust, by instituting such boundaries as those defined by proxemics, and removing personal agency in the resolution of any potential incursions into one’s space, or into the kind of language that this organization ‘prohibits’ effectively renders the culture a legal battleground.

And the tactics of scape-goating, blaming, deception, distraction, dissembling, nepotism, emotional preference that lie at the heart of many of our perceived and real inequalities are rushed into play, just as they are in the legal system. We have already over-loaded our legal systems with cases, many of them unwarranted, specious and frivolous. No doubt, in adhering to a similar model for organizations, we impose a similar template of dysfunction, and ironically, remove or deflect the option of personal responsibility, not only of the potential perpetrators but also of the recipients of the infractions, to learn from the tension and discomfort.

How many workplaces, for example, have ‘ombudsmen/women in place as conflict resolution professionals, to intercept the potential eruption of ‘boundary cases’ among workers? Unions, too, have become effectively emasculated from appropriate and schooled training and deployment of such ‘ombudspersons’ in the workplaces in which they operate.

Rules, in a classical conditioning model, with carrots and sticks, implemented and monitored by other humans, in a model reminiscent of the elementary school, are not only insulting to their ‘workers’ and their supervisors. And, while proving again that Hegel was right when he declared that what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history, we also stunt opportunities for personal growth, learning and conflict resolutions, not to mention we generate a hierarchy who thinks and believes that they are doing right to construct and to implement such processes.

As the Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, or Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge might say, Bah-humbug!