Sense of place
The term sense of place has been used in many different ways. It is a multidimensional, complex construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings.
Geographic place
Placelessness
Places that lack a "sense of place" are sometimes referred to as "placeless" or "inauthentic". Edward Relph, a cultural geographer, investigates the "placelessness" of these locations.[16] Anthropologist Marc Augé calls these locations "non-places".[17]
Stepping against the kind of reductive thinking that placelessness can lead to, in his book, The Practice of Everyday Life, Jesuit philosopher Michel de Certeau uses the term "space" (French: espace) to refer to these placeless locations as opposed to "place" (lieu). For de Certeau, "space is merely composed of intersections of mobile elements" that are not in stasis. Place, on the other hand, is space that has been ordered in some way to serve some human need. A park, for instance, is a place that has been constructed "in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence" and therefore "implies an indication of stability".[18] de Certeau's ideas became instrumental in understanding the intersections of power and social relations in the construction of place. For de Certeau, placelessness, or "space" was a site for freedom or at least it is the site for what Timotheus Vermeulen sees as "potentially anarchic movement"[19]
Placeless landscapes are seen as those that have no special relationship to the places in which they are located—they could be anywhere; roadside strip
Development of sense of place
Human geographers, social psychologists and sociologists have studied how a sense of place develops. Their approaches include comparisons between places, learning from elders and observing natural disasters and other events. Environmental psychologists have emphasized the importance of childhood experiences[23] and have quantified links between exposure to natural environments in childhood and environmental preferences later in life.[24] Learning about surrounding environments during childhood is strongly influenced by the direct experience of playing, as well as through the role of family, culture, and community.[25] The special bond which develops between children and their childhood environments has been called a "primal landscape" by human geographers.[26] This childhood landscape forms part of an individual's identity and constitutes a key point of comparison for considering subsequent places later in life. As people move around as adults, they tend to consider new places in relation to this baseline landscape experienced during childhood.[27] In an unfamiliar environment, a sense of place develops over time and through routine practices, a process that can be undermined by disruptions in routines or abrupt changes in the environment.[28]
In the context of climate change, sense of place and then the awareness of the changes and disaster related destruction of place is leading to emotional experiences of grief and solastalgia. Research states that these emotional experiences that arise are inherently adaptive and recommends collective processing and reflecting on these in order to increase resilience and a sense of belonging.[29] In post-disaster situations, some programs aim to re-establish a sense of place through a participatory approach.[30][31]
Music and place
Ethnomusicologists, among other social scientists (like anthropologists, sociologists, and urban geographers), have begun to point toward music’s role in defining people’s “sense of place.”[32] British ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes suggests that humans can construct an idea of “place” through music that signals their position in the world in terms of social boundaries and moral and political hierarchies.[33] Stokes argues that music does not simply serve as a reflection of existing social structures, but yields the potential to actively transform a given space. Music denoting place can “preform” a knowledge of social boundaries and hierarchies that people use to negotiate and understand the identities of themselves and others and their relation to place.
Examples of music’s role in defining a sense of place include ethnomusicologist George Lipsitz’s research on the performance of Mexican-American cultural identity in Los Angeles.[34] In response to mechanical reproduction and increasingly commodified forms of culture, Walter Benjamin once argued that cultural objects have become increasingly removed from their original context and place of creation.[35] In this context, ethnomusicologist George Lipsitz suggests that a consciousness of invisibility and alienation marks the cultural identity of minority groups excluded from political power and cultural recognition.[36] Lipsitz analyzes the postmodern, cultural strategies (like bifocality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, intertextuality, inter-referentiality, and families of resemblance), Chicano rock-and-roll musicians during the late-1980s in Los Angeles used to define a sense of place within popular culture. By attending to the cultural work of Mexican-American rock-and-roll musicians, Lipsitz identifies how their music actively demonstrates a “conscious cultural politics that seeks inclusion in the American mainstream by transforming it.”[37]
See also
- Affordance
- Genius loci
- Spirit of place
- Cultural landscape
- Non-place
- Activity space
- Place identity
- Place attachment
- Topophilia
- Yi-Fu Tuan
- Ian Nairn
- Marc Augé
- Jane Jacobs
References
- ISBN 9780415252256.
- ^ Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press.
- ^ Agnew, J.A.; Duncan, J.S. (1989). The power of place: Bringing together geographical and sociological imaginations. Boston: Unwin Hyman Publishers.
- ^ Altman, I.; Low, S.M., eds. (1992). Place attachment. Human behavior and environment: Advances in theory and research. New York: Plenum Press.
- S2CID 149189490.
- S2CID 56055085.
- ^ Tuan, Yi-Fu (1980). Landscapes of Fear. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- ^ Groat, L., ed. (1995). Giving places meaning: Readings in environmental psychology. San Diego: Academic Press.
- ^ Adams, Jennifer (2016-05-26). "Sense of Place". The Nature of Cities. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
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- ISBN 9780201534191.
- ^ Bloom, W. (1990). Personal identity, national identity and international relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Allen, J.; Massey, D.; Cochrane, A. (1998). Rethinking the Region. London: Routledge.
- ^ Agnew, J. (2002). Making political geography. London: Arnold Press.
- ^ Relph, Edward (1976). Place and Placelessness.
- ^ Augé, Marc (1995). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. New York: Verson Books.
- ISBN 0-520-23699-8.
- ^ Timotheus Vermeulen (24 April 2015). "Space is the Place". Frieze (171).
- ISBN 9780679738060.
- ^ Harvey, D.C. (1993). From space to place and back again: reflections on the condition of post modernity. London: Routledge.
- ^ Anyone's Autobiography, 1937: see Gertrude Stein.
- ^ Measham TG (2006) Learning about environments: The significance of primal landscapes, Environmental Management 38(3), pp. 426–434
- ^ Bixler, R. D., M. F. Floyd, and W. E. Hammitt. (2002). Environmental socialization: Quantitative tests of the childhood play hypothesis, Environment and Behavior 34(6) pp. 795–818
- .
- ^ Gayton (1996) Landscapes of the Interior: Re-explorations of Nature and the Human Spirit. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers
- ^ Measham, TG (2007) Primal Landscapes: insights for education from empirical research on ways of learning about environments, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 16 (4) pp. 339–350
- S2CID 237417768.
- ^ Kieft, J.; Bendell, J (2021). "The responsibility of communicating difficult truths about climate influenced societal disruption and collapse: an introduction to psychological research". Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Papers. 7: 1–39.
- Prewitt Diaz, J.O. and Dayal, A. (2008). Sense of Place: A Model for Community Based psychosocial support programs. Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies.
- S2CID 154138597.
- ^ Stokes, Martin. 1994. Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Oxford: Berg; Arno van der Hoeven and Erik Hitters, “The Spatial Value of Live Music: Performing, (Re)Developing and Narrating Urban Spaces,” Geoforum 117 (December 1, 2020): 154–64, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.09.016; Arno van der Hoeven and Erik Hitters, “The Social and Cultural Values of Live Music: Sustaining Urban Live Music Ecologies,” Cities 90 (July 1, 2019): 263–71, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.015.
- ^ Stokes. Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: 3-5.
- ^ Lipsitz, George. 1986/7. “Cruising around the Historical Bloc: Postmodernism and Popular Music in East Los Angeles.” Cultural Critique 5 (Winter 1986-1987).
- ^ W. Benjamin et al., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968): 220–22.
- ^ Lipsitz. “Cruising around the Historical Bloc:” 157-159.
- ^ Lipsitz. “Cruising around the Historical Bloc:" 177.
Further reading
- Chigbu, U.E. (2013). Fostering rural sense of place: the missing piece in Uturu, Nigeria. Development In Practice, 23 (2): pp. 264–277. View and download article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2013.772120
- ISBN 0-19-501919-9
- Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place, University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 0-520-21649-0
- ISBN 1-4051-0672-7
- Cresswell, T. (2009). Place. In Thrift, N., Kitchen, R., (eds) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookvolume.cws_home/722034/vol1) pages 384-395.
- ISBN 1559635681
- Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchen, and Gil Valentine, eds. 2004. Key Thinkers on Space and Place. London: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-4963-1
- Inge, John A Christian Theology of Place, Ashgate, 2003. ISBN 0-7546-3498-1
- ISBN 0-671-88825-0
- ISBN 978-156584248-9
- Long, Joshua. 2010. ISBN 0-292-72241-9
- Massey, Doreen B. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. ISBN 1-4129-0362-9
- Relph, E. C. Place and Placelessness, Pion, 1976. ISBN 0-85086-111-X
- Snyder, Gary. 1996. A Place in Space. Counterpoint. ISBN 1-887178-27-9
- Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1-55786-675-9
- ISBN 0-8166-3877-2
- ISBN 0-231-07395-X