Perspectives On Place I
RESPONDING TO TIM CRESSWELL’S PLACE (CHAPTERS 01 AND 02)
At the end of his summary on the evolving concept of space in geographical studies, Tim Cresswell maps three perspectives that may prove useful in accurately assessing this elusive concept. These are a descriptive approach to place, a social constructionist approach to place, and a phenomenological approach to place. He suggests that there will be overlap between each approach and that it is in those ecotones that a more robust understanding of place (and the pivotal role it plays in the human experience) may emerge.
Using my own life as a thought experiment I am struck by the wildly diverse ways in which place sense shapes me. I simultaneously identify myself as a member of my family, local community, Salt Lake City resident, Utahan, Westerner, and U.S. citizen (among other things). All are designations rooted firmly in place. And in the event that hostile aliens show up on our planet I am positive a deeply felt sense of global citizenship would also emerge. Contrast this with peasant characters engaged in a very different form of living on the French agrarian countryside in John Berger’s Pig Earth. These are people just as deeply rooted to their place, but it is hard to imagine them having the same fractured and diversified place senses that seem so common in modern, urban living. This example illustrates that the way we live now is an anomaly of human experience. Does this mean our often confused sense of place is also an outlier? If so is it just a matter of time before said place sense evolves to the point that we can live effectively in a globalized world?
Such a proposition seems risky in the face of the immense changes we are capable of enacting on the physical environment. From the rarified airspace of commercial flight it is easy to see such action in dynamic process. Massive areas of our country have been sectioned off into grids, fully realizing the political will born of a very specific vision for the country. But what if we are completely off-base in our current conceptualizations of certain places? This is an argument skillfully made by William Cronon in his thesis on wilderness. At its core he argues that our modern idea of wilderness (born out of historical appeals from Romanticism and the frontier myth) are inadequate primarily because they section off certain designated areas as sacred without envisioning a human place/role upon them. In such places history is rewritten to imagine virgin territory where human spiritual renewal can be attained (or consumed) but it comes at the expense of neglecting the local places that we embody and occupy every day. Such a mindset is treacherous and returns to the idea that perhaps our sense of place isn’t fully formed or fully developed, particularly if it fails to address (and even embrace) the forgotten, overlooked, and despised places that have daily connection to our lives. Seemingly this need for a more nuanced place sense (an idea that Cresswell seems to point towards as well) would be robust enough to both fully understand the complexity of place in the lives of human beings as well as critically comment on the abuses done to place (whether through environmental injustice, neglect, or globalized homogenization).