Notes on Place

“Where you’ve come from is gone. Where you thought you were going to never existed. Where you are is no good unless you can get away. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), Wise Blood

Introduction
Place is both a concept and a concrete reality. But to talk about place exclusively in theoretical terms would be to miss the central point about it. Place is meaningful only to the extent to which it is tangible, constructed from palpable things, something that can be entered and occupied. A place is a geographical location with which we associate memory, meaning, and relationship. A place is distinguished from the rest of the environment surrounding it by a sense of personal connection as much as by its physical attributes. But memory, meaning, relationship, and personal connection are all contingent on and connected with those physical attributes.

To say that our first place is the womb is not to be psychoanalytically interpretive as much as it is to be physiologically factual. Place is where we belong, and place belongs to us; these two experiences are inseparable. As this double belonging – in and to – expands beyond our mother’s body, we are obliged to negotiate the nature and extent and relationship of both belongings. This primal experience of place merges gradually and imperceptibly with a sense of place that becomes not just personally but also culturally defined.

As the completely personal experience of place evolves into a more broadly cultural one, it typically remains unexamined. Our awareness of the cultural environment in which we belong and that seems to belong to us is no more conscious or critical or comparative than the purely personal realms of mother and home. It is only gradually that we come to reflect on these conditions or even to distinguish between possible choices instead of accepting our experience as given and intrinsically “right.” Eventually we come to understand that what is right and natural for us may differ markedly from what is right and natural for someone else, that my place is not the same as your place. We may choose to emphasize differences with others and focus on exclusivity, or we may seek to identify common ground and embrace inclusion. Each of these choices is an exercise in defining our identity, and we make both kinds for shifting reasons in various realms at different points in our lives.

The purpose of these notes is to offer a rough sketch of ideas about the nature, meaning, and experience of place, how we adapt to changes in place, and how we change in response to place. They are comprised of brief condensations of several ideas about place as opposed to an extended, carefully constructed theory or explanation of this highly complex subject. In writing them, I have drawn extensively on several resources, most particularly Place and Placelessness by Edward Relph, Space and Place by Yi-Fu Tuan, and Place by Tim Cresswell.

Space and Place
Space is a fact. Place is an interpretation.

Space is potential. Place is actuality.

Space is raw material. Place is fabricated.

Space is a given. Place is determined.

Space is a matter of dimensions and outwardness. Place is a matter of significance and inwardness.

Space enables movement. Place enables settlement.

Space is “outside” even when we are within it. Place is “inside” even when we are outside it.

That which appears to some as space may to others be place. Space, as it becomes known, becomes place.

Place is a product of choice. It is what we choose to regard and how we choose to regard it. A place is something we distinguish from its surroundings.

At one end of a continuum are those things about a place that are distinctive. At the other end are those things that a place shares in common with other places. It is easy to overemphasize either one of these characteristics at the expense of ignoring or rejecting the other. Both contribute to an understanding of any particular place and to an understanding of the idea of place.

Place is not so much a thing as it is the form of an idea. It is a medium, a framework, a context, a particular definition of values and meanings. It is not generic or vague. It is specific, individual, and concrete.

The physical attributes of a place can be quantified, measured, bought or sold. The meaning of a place can be understood only through experience, identification, recognition, and association.

Place is a location that means something. It is a locus of meaning associated with a particular intersection of spatial coordinates. It exists within a larger context from which it can be distinguished, yet of which it remains a part.

Place may be a locus of action or repose, presence or absence, horror or delight, but it has meaning only with regard to awareness and experience.

Time and Place
If, as Einstein said, “Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once,” place is what keeps everywhere from becoming nowhere.

Time is about now and then. Place is about here and there.

Knowing a place as a child yields certain qualities of understanding that cannot be replicated by someone encountering that place for the first time as an adult.

A place that is important in one period of our life may be unimportant in another. We may change in ways that are not in harmony with the place, or the place may change in ways we cannot embrace.

Even of it remains physically the same, some qualities of a place, and all relationships with that place, will sooner or later be altered. Places may adapt and survive, they may even flourish and grow stronger through a process of evolution, but they can also fail to adapt and become extinct.

When we leave home and live elsewhere, our conception of home ceases to be altered and adjusted according to daily circumstances. When we are away from home, time there stops for us. When we return, we expect it to be as it was when we left. It is as though, after switching off a television, one expects, upon returning to it many hours later or on another day, that the program will resume from the point at which it had been left. As Thomas Wolfe made clear at a novel’s length, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Neither the “you” nor the “home” are the same as they were when they parted company.

Phenomenology and Place
Phenomenology is predicated on the conviction that consciousness is, by definition, consciousness of something. In other words, to be conscious is to be aware of a relationship between oneself and the world. Similarly, corporeal existence itself is inconceivable except as the phenomenon of occupying space. To be, in other words, is to be someplace.

Since, as corporeal beings, we occupy some place in this world, we are to some extent defined by that place. It is where we are. We are the occupier of that place. The evolution of consciousness would seem to require that we investigate our relationship with the place we occupy. Further evolution of consciousness is, in part, the result of exploring relationships between ourselves and others, and between our original place and the larger world.

Personal Geographies
Physical geographies describe terrain. They depict the surface of the earth and the layers beneath the surface. Human geographies are constructed from demographics, cultural information, and histories associated with given locations at various scales. Personal geographies are internal charts of where we live and work and go about the business of our daily lives. The primary point of reference in any personal geography is home. The experiences and images that comprise a personal geography combine to create our sense of who we are in terms of the territories we occupy and with which we identify ourselves.

A personal place can be as small as a chair, a bed, or a kitchen table. Such places clearly belong to those who customarily occupy them, and they are recognizable as such even when they are unoccupied. But it is also possible to have deeply personal associations with and attachments to neighborhoods and parks, cities and stretches of wilderness, in ways that have nothing to do with literal possession. Such places correspond with and affirm something about us. We experience a sense of belonging there, for it is a place in which we recognize ourselves.

To say, “I know this place,” is to declare something akin to ownership. To say, “This is a place in which I am known,” is to acknowledge that it has some claim of ownership on you.

We feel that we belong in a particular place and we identify ourselves with it when we regard ourselves as having some kind of right to be there. When we are there, we know with particular clarity and conviction who we are and where we are, and the “who” is inseparable from the “where.”

We stand at the center of our own awareness, and the strength of that awareness diminishes as it expands outward. The farther things are from the focal point of our awareness, the less we are likely to identify with or understand or even to take an interest in them. Perhaps the most important function of education is to help us extend in all directions the power and inclusiveness of our awareness.

Place and No Place
Wherever we become conscious of our surroundings, that place is the point from which we take our bearings. For most people across most of history, that point (farmhouse, village, parish, neighborhood, etc.) is also where they stayed. For those who traveled or moved, that point remained the defining place against which all others were compared.

Today it is increasingly rare to remain permanently in the place we began. The concept of “home” as the central and abiding place remains, but this traditional ideal of home is typically replaced by a piece of real estate. Property and place are not, however, the same thing. Property is about quantities: legal boundaries, acreage, square feet, taxes, price, etc. Place is about qualities: experience, belonging, intimacy, security, and the like.

It is not unusual to be physically present inside a place, but to have no awareness of it that rises to the level of significance. For that to happen we must not only be conscious of where we are, we must be deliberate and intentional about perceiving it as at least potentially meaningful.

If place is something we recognize as distinctive, singular, meaningful, memorable, dimensional, textured, authentic, unique, and idiosyncratic, we can also recognize the absence of those qualities in locations that are generic, interchangeable, meaningless, forgettable, flat, bland, inauthentic, neutral, and impersonal. Places are diverse, each one different from all others, whereas much of the contemporary world is based on uniformity, a condition in which one thing or location is as nearly as possible a perfect copy of all others of its type.

This latter condition is a concomitant of corporate dominance and globalization, and the overwhelming commitment of these forces to efficiency and conformity, which are crucial to their interests. While it is important to recognize the threats of this condition, we should also realize that there are advantages to functioning in conditions that are largely free from personal content, and that can therefore provide a comforting, or at least non-threatening background, a relatively neutral stage on which we can perform our functions of working, transacting business, traveling, and many other things.

In any case, the rural, domestic ideal that provides a foundation for a sense of place as one of authenticity and rootedness (Heidegger’s example of a farmer’s home in the woods is often cited as a paradigm) cannot be transposed to a largely urban, postmodern world of frequent relocation and rapid change. Incessant mobility and constant newness can make place seem either more or less important than it was before the modern era, depending on one’s point of view. But place itself has not become impossible to find or make. It is just that different kinds of place become possible, and perhaps necessary.

It is easy to see place entirely in terms of authenticity and idealism, to assume not only that there is something essential about place, but that there is also an essence of place that is somehow transcendent and pure and intrinsically good. So it is important also to understand that the “insideness” of place is also by definition exclusionary. Images of home and rootedness may be authentically idyllic for some, but for others they evoke a sense of numbing predictability, routine boredom, and oppressiveness. The dark side of place includes narrow mindedness, bigotry, paranoia, nationalism, and other forms of radical, explicit, and implicit exclusion as the obverse of insular inclusion. Such aspects may so completely offset the comforts of home that there is no greater impulse than to flee. In this context we become aware that place is defined by power differences. Those inside seek to exercise power over those from outside, and they typically compete amongst themselves for the control of power within. At the very least, place can be ambivalent, a compound of positive and negative and neutral associations.

Travel can provide a temporary reprieve from an undesirable home place. A permanent escape typically remains a dream, but there are always some who are driven to seek the fulfillment of such dreams, and who cut themselves loose and leave. They may wish to distance themselves from poverty or persecution or a lack of opportunity. They may be in pursuit of a job, an education, a spouse, or just a place in which they are not known, and in which they can therefore reinvent themselves.

In and Out of Place: Tidiness, Tyranny, and Transgression
Consider a simple thought experiment. Begin with the quintessential rule of tidiness: “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” One might imagine, for example, a library or a locksmith’s shop or a well-organized kitchen as epitomes of this kind of order. Now imagine substituting the word “everyone” for the word “everything.” “A place for everyone, and everyone in his place.” Most of us, I think, experience a sense of alarm and offense at this phrase. Instead of tidiness, we are talking about tyranny. Instead of the library or the locksmith’s shop or the kitchen, we picture a caste system, social immobility, and oppression.

Place is defined by interiority, a quality that distinguishes it from the exteriority of the space around it. It is something that may be occupied. Place therefore implies boundaries. Everything can be defined in terms of whether it falls within or beyond of those limits. We almost always have a clear idea of where we belong with respect to boundaries, even when we are able to move across them with ease.

In the ancient ritual known as the “beating of the bounds,” which originated in times when maps were rare, and is still practiced in some places today, a procession circumambulates a boundary line on a specific day each year. All along the way an invisible line on the ground is hit with branches and sticks. In some cases, boys were pushed hard against boundary stones so their bruises and pain would reinforce their memories of where they were.

Places do not merely exist. They are constructed, cultivated, maintained, neglected, abandoned, or destroyed. They are advocated for or against. It is therefore essential to ask: In whose interest is it that a place has been created or that it flourishes? Equally we must ask: In whose interest is it that a place declines or disappears?

Perceptions of any place vary considerably from one individual and group to another. Each person regards the same place in different ways depending on her or his needs, intentions, associations, and circumstances. And no one person’s constellation of perceptions is likely ever to align precisely in all particulars with that of another.

Some overlap amongst individuals who share a relationship with a given place is, however, inevitable. And such overlaps constitute the basis for group identifications with place. A good deal of attention is paid to affirming and reinforcing such overlaps, and to diminishing differences. After all, people are certain to share at least some perceptions about a place they inhabit or use together. And since they use it in common, there is a natural inclination to cultivate social ease by emphasizing relatedness and similarity, and to deemphasize distance and difference. A routine concomitant of this process, unfortunately, tends to be the identification of a common enemy, typically a group from outside that appears to threaten those who have formed a bond through their valuing of a place they share in common. This pattern can be identified at all levels, from an academic department to a single block in a neighborhood to tribes and nations.

“The threshold concentrates not only the boundary between inside and outside but also the possibility of passage from one to the other.” Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

What I regard as inside is, for most others, outside, and vice versa. Our identity, our sense of self is, it seems, constructed almost entirely from a collection of ins and outs and the mutual exclusivities of these ins and outs. If I am or declare myself to be one thing, I am by definition not any of the other things that are different from that one thing. I may be able to move without difficulty or threat from a place in which I belong to a place in which I do not belong; I may be tolerated or even welcome there. And that toleration or welcome may be extended to me precisely because I am clearly not trying to become accepted as an insider to that place that exists outside my own place; I am tolerated or welcome because I am only visiting. And perhaps I extend the same courtesy to others when they enter my place from outside. Inclusion and exclusion are therefore not so much ignored or overlooked as they are acknowledged, codified, and reinforced.

As always when things are constructed of insides and outsides – which is a construction in which the concept and the reality of place is central – one of the greatest issues is that of transgression.

Origins and Adaptation
Ordinarily, when we arrive in an altogether new place, we are thoroughly disoriented; we don’t know where anything is and we have no sense of what lies in any direction. We don’t know how different neighborhoods or stores or schools are perceived, categorized, and ranked by locals. It takes time and memory and usually a fair amount of getting lost and finding our way again in order to construct a mental map of where we are.

The place of our origins, the place we knew particularly well, was highly differentiated. The new place in which we arrive is, at first, highly undifferentiated. How we go about the process of differentiation, which is essentially the process of learning a new place, depends very largely on what sort of person we are.

However we go about it, this process is the practice of transforming space into place. Which is to say, it is the means by which we become familiar with our surroundings. Familiarity arises not exclusively from acquired knowledge, but from a growing sense of competence and confidence, an awareness that one is coming to feel at least somewhat at home in the new place.

We can spend much of our lives in a given place and know it well, yet still regard it as uninteresting and unmemorable. It is just where we are. On the other hand, we can visit a place briefly, and our experience there can change our lives by giving us a new sense of ourselves. It is therefore not the amount of time we spend in a place that gives it meaning to us, it is the meaning we perceive in a place regardless of the amount of time we are there.

It is also possible that we might be so deeply invested in a place that every other place appears to us as superficial, unreal, uninteresting, or at best, no more than the locus for a brief and pleasant distraction.

The apparent unreality of unfamiliar places is a geographic parallel with the phenomenon of seeing other cultures as exotic. A concomitant of this experience may be to see this otherness as evidence of the exclusive rightness of our own way of life, a view that deepens and broadens the divide between ourselves and others.

When we encounter an unfamiliar place, we enter into a (typically unconscious, or at least unarticulated) negotiation between a preference for comfort and insulation that will mitigate our anxiety, and a willingness to feel exposed and uncertain in order to experience that place more fully. It is normal to inoculate ourselves against the effects of what we do not know, but we can choose the potency of that inoculation and the degree to which we are willing to let it wear off as we become better able to acknowledge and absorb the new place instead of defending ourselves against it.

When we arrive in a new place from somewhere distant and different, we tend to think of our new home – the physical place in which we sleep and bathe and eat and relax – as particularly significant. This home enables us to exercise the greatest degree of control over our environment, which means we can construct within it something familiar, a place with which we can identify ourselves in something like the way in which we did in the place we left behind. Nearly everything else is a default background at first, an environment that just happens to be the location in which we ended up. As such, we feel we can largely ignore it beyond learning it well enough to find our way to the things we need.

If we choose not to learn much more about it, or to invest ourselves in caring for it, such choices are made easy by supposing that there is little there that is worth our learning or caring. And since alienation is perhaps the most common experience in contemporary life, our reflexive response to this place is to burrow into our small, private world of home and imagine that the rest is largely without meaning.

Yet when we diminish the place in which we live, when we ignore it or merely tolerate it, when we complain about it or denigrate it, when we fail to appreciate and enjoy it just as it is, we diminish ourselves as well.

Place and Dayton
If we see Dayton, Ohio, for example, as an ordinary, modest, uninteresting place, one with little status, a place that makes scant claim on the attention of the world or on ourselves, we feel content to ignore it. After all, are we not likely to consider ourselves lacking in ambition or status or value if we regard such a place as satisfactory and identify ourselves with it? Are we willing to accept it as our fate to be as ordinary and modest and uninteresting as we perceive this place to be?

Or, on the other hand, might our acceptance – indeed our affirmation – of such a place be a sign of self-confidence, a quiet declaration that we are unconcerned about such external judgments? Would living in Tokyo or New York, Istanbul or Buenos Aires somehow, all by itself, actually transform us into more interesting and more important people? On what basis could we reasonably imagine this to be so? Surely it is more rewarding to make a place truly our own than to, in effect, buy one that is already fully made and marketed. Few would deny that Dayton lacks glamour and cachet. It is not a “destination” city, nor is it on any official list of most desirable places to live. Its history of technological innovation, manufacturing, and political progressiveness counts for very little in the present. Today it is depressed and much abandoned, and no amount of denial and boosterism will change that. But it does, even in this condition, provide something of real value: It is a relatively blank slate. It affords the raw material of space from which and in which one can fashion a place.

I wrote near the beginning of these notes: “Place is a product of choice. It is what we choose to regard and how we choose to regard it. … It is a medium, a framework, a context, a particular definition of values and meanings.” Each individual must choose whether to make any particular space into a place. To do so is a creative act. When several individuals make such a choice, and their concepts and perceptions of place correspond to some degree with those of others, a place that transcends the personal can begin to emerge. Dayton’s only chance for a decent future is to reject a deeply entrenched sense of failure and negativity in spite of an abundance of reasons that legitimize such a view. No matter how good the city may have been in the past, there is no option to return to its previous condition. We need to read, intuit, interpret, and respond to the essence of Dayton as a place that is fully in the present as a locus of meaning, a place in which it is rewarding simply to be aware of its presence and of our experience of being in it.

Sean Wilkinson
February 2011 & June 2012