GLST 490: The Importance of Place -- Day 5

●Reminder to get started on the reading on reserve given the limited access●Possibly useful web site on gender and the built environment at _____●Interesting article in the Georgia Straight, which I will circulate, on what makes Brighton, England a special place●SOLUTIONS is meeting near the carved pole on Wednesday at noon●Global Studies BBQ today at 4 (Lindsay)●Because the place representation/ contestation presentations involve a lot more work, I would like to make them worth 15%, and the informal one you have already done worth 5%. Any more to do today?

GLST 490: The Importance of Place●We can schedule more of the book reports and start scheduling the place presentations. In addition to the three options already presented, if none of them appeal to you, you could consider doing a profile of a place-maker – a community activist, a community or public artist, a planner, architect or urban designer/ landscape architect. The project would involve finding out what they've done (visuals would be helpful), what motivates them, their philosophy of place-making, and anything else of relevance.●I have given you contradictory information regarding whether you will be presenting the final project you do on a topic of your choice, instructions for which will be forthcoming. I think it is likely it will be submitted only in written form.

Chapter 2 (cont'd)

●A reminder that phenomenology seeks to uncover whether there are essential, universal elements that transcend specific empirical circumstances in our experience of place. One of these, according to Seamon, is how our daily movements become routinized and almost unthinking. I wonder if this is true across all cultures.●Other geographers remind us that place is not static, but ceaselessly changing – never finished, but always in a process of becoming. But clearly this is more true of some places than others, and in some historical epochs more than others●One theory that has been brought to bear in understanding place is that of structuration, first developed by A. Giddens.

Structuration●Giddens says that people are neither 'free agents' nor strictly determined by their environment. Like languages, places have rules and structures, but people can bend and break them, or at least try to. Can you think of examples?●Roger Barker and others have studied the role that “behavior settings” play in influencing people’s behaviour and misbehaviour, and the link between these settings and people’s degree of control. People don't normally “act out” in a church, but they may get rowdy in or outside a bar. The evolution of places is partly governed by our physicality in space and how we conduct ourselves.

Structuration

●At the same time when – whether through apathy or lack of surveillance or control – people begin to allow an area to get run down and neglected, then “disorder” tends to move in and things deteriorate. This, for better or for worse, is the so-called “broken windows” theory. ●Places also have a material structure which we can't wilfully ignore, but which we can sometimes use in unexpected (and unsanctioned) ways. Examples? One example for me is this classroom. I would be much more comfortable if it were arranged in a circle for better dialogue, instead of you facing me, but it's very difficult to re-arrange these tables and chairs every time.

Place as Text●Another important point is that places carry implicit (and sometimes explicit) messages. An example would include the fact that many universities preach sustain-ability – as David Orr points out – but it's not reflected in how their buildings and campuses operate (an implicit pedagogy). Another example would be how cities through the names of streets, parks, buildings, and schools valorize the heritage of the white, male, colonizer, but leave out the heritage of women, workers, people of colour, First Nations, and others. Often the original ecosystems have also been completely displaced, and little record is left of these. Nonetheless, the built environment is still a potential anchor for memory and identity for specific groups.

Place as Open and Porous?●While humanistic geographers originally conceived of place as bounded and permanent, others like Doreen Massey, whose essay is showcased in Chapter 3, have argued that instead place is “an event marked by openness and change.” Places don't usually exist in isolation. Even small towns like Kennecott, Alaska (now abandoned) derived their “placeness” from their being situated in a web of global relations that included the world copper market, and the need to import food and other products to sustain the workers there and the impact their presence had on the region's ecology and First Nations.●We could draw similar conclusions about the island of Malta, as noted by Nikolai. “...places need to be understood as sites that are connected to others around the world in constantly evolving networks which are social, cultural, and natural/ environmental.”

Malta

Place as Open and Porous?●Because of the increasing flow of ideas, information, goods and people around the world, some people fear (and believe they are witnessing) the loss of local and regional distinctiveness as each place becomes like every other place – where one could be blindfolded and taken to a subdivision or shopping mall, and not know if one is in Michigan, BC, Arizona, or Florida, except maybe by sensing the climate. In such situations, there is – in the words of Gertrude Stein – “no there there.”

Place as Open and Porous?●It's hard to imagine having a sense of identity with the last picture. What about this one? At least one would feel that there is a definable “sense of place.”●Connected to sense of place is the issue of authenticity – a very slippery concept. We all think we know it when we see it, but so many places – in the era of tourism – have exaggerated certain features to capitalize on or cater to visitors' stereotypes that they risk becoming carictures of themselves. Examples?

Placelessness and Its Origins

● Some authors, such as Edward Relph, blame this phenomenon on media and mass culture/ mass society. What we think a place is like becomes more important that what it is like.

● Others (such as Richard Sennett), without necessarily contradicting this, also blame it on urban dwellers and travellers themselves – i.e. they want bland, unchallenging experiences, they don't want anything uncomfortable or unexpected (hence the same McDonald's or hotel types throughout the world). Is this true?

Placelessness and Its Origins

● Non-places are often the zones passed through by travellers and consumers – freeways, airports, train stations, ferries and supermarkets, especially big box stores. It's interesting, though, that efforts have been made in recent years to make these places more cozy and human. Why would that be?

● Some go so far as to celebrate our new mobility/ cosmopolitanism and see it as liberating us from oppressive forms of community and parochialism. Do you think this is true? Maybe we no longer need place.

Placelessness and Its Origins

● Lucy Lippard, author of The Lure of the Local, suggests that place and mobility are not mutually exclusive – that “even as the power of place is diminished – and even lost – it continues as an absence – to define culture and identity.”

● Cresswell, broadly speaking, has described three approaches to place: the descriptive, the social-constructionist, and the phenomenological. Maybe each has value and a piece of the truth, and we need to find ways to blend them to enhance our understanding of real places.