2. Place
2.1. The irreplaceable place
Place
A place is a space which has a distinct character.
— Christian Norberg-Schulz: Genius Loci
2.1. The irreplaceable place
Why this point of view? Why place? Why focus on something that seems so obvious? Exactly because it is obvious — and because we often ignore it in spite of its obviousness. Place is an inseparable part of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. In fact, we often tend to be unaware of the ubiq-uitous role of place in our existence. As geographer Edward Relph (1980, 6) notes, although we “live, act and orient ourselves in a world that is richly and profoundly differentiated into places, [- -] we seem to have a meagre understanding of the constitution of places and the ways in which we ex-perience them.” Still, this meagre understanding does not vitiate the fact that we are fundamentally “geographical beings” (Sack 1997, 1):
We humans are geographical beings transforming the earth and making it into a home, and that transformed world affects
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who we are. Our geographical nature shapes our world and ourselves. Being geographical is inescapable – we do not have to be conscious of it. (Ibid.)
However, if we are not necessarily always conscious of our attachment to place, much less can we be conscious of what it is like to be without place, due to our lives being “so place-oriented and place-saturated” that the idea of “sheer placelessness” is nearly impossible for us to comprehend (Casey 1997, ix). This inability to imagine placelessness then again attests to the tight bond between place and ourselves. Placeness is as deeply rooted in us as we are rooted in place, for “we are tied to place undetachably and without reprieve” (Casey 1993, xiii). Place is something we could not do without (Casey 1997, ix; see also Norberg-Schulz 1980, 6 and Trigg 2011, 30).
Our special geographical characteristic (cf. Sack 1997, 1) also points to the bidirectional relationship between us and place. We cultivate the soil and shape the face of the earth, but at the same time, the land also affects us, both on the level of concrete effects and on that of more intangible in-fluences (Malpas 1999, 1–2). The probability and the extent of these re-verse influences have been central issues in Western thought since antiq-uity (Glacken 1967, vii). Thus, in the history of geography, differing views have emerged regarding the degree and importance of environmental in-fluence as well as the validity of the controversial idea of environmental determinism. However, despite this dissent, the actual existence of a rela-tionship between man and his environment is seldom questioned. (Cress-well 2004, 17; HG, 236–238, 252, 296.) The characteristics of our culture may not be a straightforward response to particular environmental imper-atives, as the proponents of environmental determinism have maintained,
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yet the connection between man and place certainly remains close. 2 In-stead of existing in a void, we live and work in places. Although we may occasionally consider a certain place insignificant for us, in general the places we occupy function as the base for both individual and collective identity, for places “are often profound centres of human existence to which people have deep emotional and psychological ties” (Relph 1980, 141; see also Trigg 2011, 31). We are, in one word, “placelings” (Casey 1996, 19; Escobar 2001, 143).
Nevertheless, the centrality of place for human existence has not al-ways been perceived as unquestionably axiomatic. In fact, place has under-gone a temporary devaluation and has only recently begun to recover from this marginalization (Escobar 2001, 140). The undervaluation of place has occurred in several disciplines, such as philosophy, anthropology, and the social sciences (ibid., Agnew 1989, passim). Even in the field of geography
— where place is conventionally considered as occupying a focal position
— there have been phases when other concepts have been enthroned as more relevant (Cresswell 2004, 15–51). The exact causes for this devalua-tion tend to vary from discipline to discipline, but in general, the margin-alization of place is partly related to the modern condition, where such phenomena as globalization, mobility, migration, refugeedom, and the new
2 The idea of environmental and climatic influence on human culture and behav-iour has its roots in antiquity, and during later centuries it emerged several times, perhaps most famously in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit de lois, 1748), where Montesquieu suggests that by proper legislation the possible ad-verse effects of climate on human character and behaviour can be minimized.
(MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1989: The Spirit of the Laws.
Translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold Stone. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.) In the field of geography, environmental determinism thrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Germany, Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) was an influential figure, whose ideas — especially the con-cept of Lebensraum — were later misused by the Nazi regime for its own purposes.
(BA, s.v. “Geography”, “Friedrich Ratzel”; HG, 133–134, 252; Martin 2005, 167–
171, 184, 364.)
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information technologies seem to erode place and its significance (Escobar 2001, 141; Cresswell 2004, 43). Although we may find the existential state of “sheer placelessness” incomprehensible, still on some levels “a sense of atopia seems to have settled in” (Escobar 2001, 140). The world has be-come increasingly homogenized as multinational companies extend their tentacles around the globe and various cultural products and customs find their way onto new soils as people travel and move across continents and oceans — either voluntarily or by force (Cresswell 2004, 43, 54; Massey 1993, 61–62). In addition to homogenization, the world also seems to have shrunk, due to new means of telecommunication and the possibilities of fast and inexpensive travelling — an experience to which geographer Da-vid Harvey (2000, passim) has referred with the concept “time-space com-pression”.3 The homogenization of the contemporary world has even brought about the emergence of “non-places” (Augé 1995, passim), i.e., transient and impersonal places marked by mobility and transition, such as airport lounges, supermarkets, or motorways.4
Indeed, place appears to have been losing out to the various prevailing processes of the modern world. Still, paradoxically, as the homogenization
3 Robert David Sack (1997, 9–10) writes about the “thinning out” of places and their meaning, as space becomes compartmentalized and a process of “geograph-ical partitioning and specialization” takes place, and at the same time inhabitants of different regions become globally connected.
4 Although the processes of globalization and homogenization have accelerated particularly during the past two decades, in part due to the impact of the Internet, the modern condition of placelessness was insightfully analysed already in the 1970s by Edward Relph. Relph (1980, 90) defines placelessness as “a weakening of the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience”. As its central causes, Relph (ibid.) lists “mass communications, mass culture”, and “big business”. For Relph, tourism is one of the main culprits of the evolution of placelessness, inflicting “the destruction of the local and regional landscape [- -] and its replacement by con-ventional tourist architecture and synthetic landscapes and pseudo-places” (ibid., 93). At its worst, it promotes the museumization, Disneyfication, and futurization of places (ibid., 93–105).
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of culture apparently seems to have evoked a general erasure of place, it has also helped to put renewed focus back on place. The critique of place in various disciplines has also brought about new perspectives and a pos-sibility for a deeper understanding of its significance. Place has begun to find new defenders, and fairly so, for despite its ostensible downgrade, place continues to be vital for individuals and cultures alike:
Yet the fact remains that place continues to be important in the lives of many people, perhaps most, if we understand by place the experience of a particular location with some measure of groundedness (however, unstable), sense of boundaries (how-ever, permeable), and connection to everyday life, even if its identity is constructed, traversed by power, and never fixed.
(Escobar 2001, 140.)