Monday 14th October 2024
A: Humanistic geography - places, senses and emotions
B: Place as a contained space - belonging and rootedness
Tim Cresswell 2015: ‘No-one quite knows what they are talking about when they are talking about when they are talking about place […] It is wrapped in common-sense’
Yi-Fu Tuan Topophilia (1974): ‘The affective bond between people and place’.
Through repeated experiences of a place
Behaviours and routines
Ties of kinship and spirituality
The idea that social science methods of identifying meaning of places through questionnaires etc. is not enough and that since the meaning of place is so intimate in relation to emotions and connections that individuals or collectives have with a place, the art or poetry of a place must be studied.
Humanistic geography of 1970s and onwards - Love of place and the poetics of place.
Romanticisation of certain traditional ideas of place
Over-focus on immediate characteristics of places- not looking at the holistic picture
Limited discussion of the inter-relationships of places
No discussion of power, politics, or inequality - (the factors that makes one place different from the other)
The problematic character of some key terms like ‘home’
But: Renewal of interest in geography’s interest in bodily senses, experiences and emotions
But: Renewed interest in the cultural emotional and spiritual place connections of indigenous people and other groups. (Pasang Yangjee Sherpa)
‘Through ties of kinship and spirituality’:
Deep senses of belonging to place, but also of ‘ownership’ of place - ‘our’ place, ‘my’ place:
David Harvey: Significance of place has increased in an era of globalisation and ‘time-space compression’
Places in competition:
-as assets to be branded and marketed in a global economy
Places as refuges:
-places of safety and familiarity in a changing world
Places as sites of resistance:
-against gentrification, place based resistance: People against the expansion of Heathrow airport due to it having to go through old villages.
David Harvey: Places as increasingly closed and exclusionary, hostile to outsiders. Shaped by nationalism, racism and bigotry
If place is about belonging, then who belongs?
And who decides who belongs?
The extreme end of the sense of place and all its features:
The politics of place and ethnic cleansing in the post-Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s: Essentialist claims to place and ‘ethnic cleansing’
‘Russian’ claims for Donbas 2022
Palestine and Israel
Essentialism: a term that refers to assumptions that different human groups have innate or essential characteristics (Think: Often related to issues such as gender)
Essentialism definitions of place: Argued that particular places belong to certain groups = ‘Blood and soil’ arguments, often this way of thinking is combined with strong ideas about who does not belong
Re-thinking place as being about connections and openness: Doreen Massey - ‘A global sense of place’
A: Humanistic geography - places, senses and emotions
B: Place as a contained space - belonging and rootedness
Tim Cresswell 2015: ‘No-one quite knows what they are talking about when they are talking about when they are talking about place […] It is wrapped in common-sense’
Yi-Fu Tuan Topophilia (1974): ‘The affective bond between people and place’.
Through repeated experiences of a place
Behaviours and routines
Ties of kinship and spirituality
The idea that social science methods of identifying meaning of places through questionnaires etc. is not enough and that since the meaning of place is so intimate in relation to emotions and connections that individuals or collectives have with a place, the art or poetry of a place must be studied.
Humanistic geography of 1970s and onwards - Love of place and the poetics of place.
Romanticisation of certain traditional ideas of place
Over-focus on immediate characteristics of places- not looking at the holistic picture
Limited discussion of the inter-relationships of places
No discussion of power, politics, or inequality - (the factors that makes one place different from the other)
The problematic character of some key terms like ‘home’
But: Renewal of interest in geography’s interest in bodily senses, experiences and emotions
But: Renewed interest in the cultural emotional and spiritual place connections of indigenous people and other groups. (Pasang Yangjee Sherpa)
‘Through ties of kinship and spirituality’:
Deep senses of belonging to place, but also of ‘ownership’ of place - ‘our’ place, ‘my’ place:
David Harvey: Significance of place has increased in an era of globalisation and ‘time-space compression’
Places in competition:
-as assets to be branded and marketed in a global economy
Places as refuges:
-places of safety and familiarity in a changing world
Places as sites of resistance:
-against gentrification, place based resistance: People against the expansion of Heathrow airport due to it having to go through old villages.
David Harvey: Places as increasingly closed and exclusionary, hostile to outsiders. Shaped by nationalism, racism and bigotry
If place is about belonging, then who belongs?
And who decides who belongs?
The extreme end of the sense of place and all its features:
The politics of place and ethnic cleansing in the post-Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s: Essentialist claims to place and ‘ethnic cleansing’
‘Russian’ claims for Donbas 2022
Palestine and Israel
Essentialism: a term that refers to assumptions that different human groups have innate or essential characteristics (Think: Often related to issues such as gender)
Essentialism definitions of place: Argued that particular places belong to certain groups = ‘Blood and soil’ arguments, often this way of thinking is combined with strong ideas about who does not belong
Re-thinking place as being about connections and openness: Doreen Massey - ‘A global sense of place’
