Place Identity

Branding Cities: a case study of collaborative methodologies in cultural, film, and marketing research

by Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

The Place of Art in the Public Art Gallery: A Visual Sense of Place

by Chris Whitehead

co-authored with H. Graham and R. Mason, in Davis, P; Corsane, G; Convery, I. (eds), Making Sense of Place, Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming.

Locating art: The display and construction of place identity in art galleries

by Chris Whitehead

in Peralta E; Anico M (eds), Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World, Routledge, 2009

This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic... more This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic location with reference to theories of place identity developed by scholars such as Relph (1976), Proshansky et al (1983), Rowles (1983) and Dixon and Durrheim (2000). It will focus on the ways in which place identities are constructed in displays of art, building upon the notion of place identity as a political and social construction (and in this case specifically a curatorial one) that allows people to make sense of their connectivity to place and to guide their actions and projects accordingly. (Danziger, 1997 and Dixon and Durrheim, 2000) It will refer extensively (though not exclusively) to the representation and construction of place identity in art museums and galleries in the adjoining north-eastern cities of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland. Focal points will include the Laing Art Gallery’s permanent display Art on Tyneside, which is intended to represent an artistic history of the region, and some of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art’s exhibitions of specially commissioned works, such as American artist Chris Burden’s large-scale sculpture of the nearby Tyne Bridge.

Within this analysis, the essay will explore the following questions: why are place, community and identity actively connected in these gallery displays and what rhetorical means are used to do so? In addressing the first of these questions, the essay will examine the politics of representation and the agendas which drive curatorial (and in some cases artistic) choices and initiatives. The second question will focus on identifiable museological strategies of interpretation (including text, graphics and the configuring of interior décor) in the venues under study and will involve an exploration of the discourses of place identity which displays both represent and construct. In this context one may also ask: what are the ‘preferred performances’ (to conflate two bodies of theory) which these displays are intended to prompt in visitors, and what does this say about institutional views of citizenship, community and belonging?

This study will provide a platform for a wider discussion of the significance of place identity in the gallery for ontological understandings of art and engagement with art: what confers ‘north-eastern-ness’ on some art and how might this affect audience understandings of art as a concept, and as a category of material culture and experience? These last questions will be related to complex debates in art history and theory on the relationships between art production and geography, and to others in aesthetics, sociology, cultural studies and museum studies on the role of identity in visitors’ development of cultural capital and in their acts of meaning making and performance in art museums and galleries.

A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979)

by David Seamon

A Geography of the Lifeworld, a book originally published in 1979 by Croom Helm (London) & St. Martin's Press (New York)

This book,  A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979), focuses on a wide-ranging phenomenon labelled everyday... more This book,  A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979), focuses on a wide-ranging phenomenon labelled everyday environmental experience—the sum total of peoples’ firsthand involvements with the geographical world in which they live. By geographical world is meant the everyday places, spaces, and environments in which people find themselves. The source of experiential descriptions was environmental experience groups, small focus groups of students and other interested participants who were willing to meet weekly to examine in their own daily experience such themes as movement patterns, emotions relating to place, the nature of noticing and attention, the meaning of home and at-homeness, places for things, deciding where to go when, and so forth.

Through a phenomenological explication of the more than 1,500 personal observations offered in these environmental experience groups, the study identifies three overarching themes—movement, rest, and encounter—that appear to mark the essential core of everyday environmental experience.

The section on movement examines the habitual nature of everyday environmental behaviors and argues, after French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), that the lived foundation of these behaviors is the body as preconscious but intelligent subject. The section on rest explores people’s attachment to place and gives particular attention to at-homeness and positive affective relationships with places and environments.

The book’s final section on encounter considers the multifaced ways in which people make attentive contact with their world. Group observations indicate that this range of awareness extends from obliviousness and minimal attentive contact with the world at hand through watching, noticing, and more intense kinds of encounter where the experiencer, at least metaphorically, feels a sense of “merging” with some aspect of world.

The last section of the book examines lived relationships and interconnections among movement, rest, and encounter and argues that their threefold structure offers one simple but integrated way to envision human environmental experience conceptually and to think about design and policy implications practically.

Place identity and place attachment

by David Uzzell

Twigger-Ross, C. and Uzzell, D L (1996). ‘Place identity and place attachment’ Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 2, 205-220.

This paper examines the role of place and identity processes using Breakwell’s model as a framework. This model... more This paper examines the role of place and identity processes using Breakwell’s model as a framework. This model suggests that there are four principles of identity which guide action: continuity, self-esteem, self-efficacy and distinctiveness. These principles are examined here in relation to attachment to a residential environment. It focuses on residents living in an area of the London Docklands, chosen because of the social, environmental and economic change in that area. It was hypothesized that attached respondents would discuss their relationship with the local environment in ways which supported or developed the identity principles whereas nonattached residents would not consider the local environment in this way. Twenty indepth semi-structured interviews were carried out on a sample of residents from Rotherhithe in the London Docklands. The interviews were transcribed and content analysed. Results showed that there were differences between the attached and nonattached respondents in their discussion of their local environment. In addition, there were differences within the nonattached group such that some residents were not attached and neutral with regards to their residential environment, whereas others were not attached but had a negative evaluation of their residential environment. These results are discussed within the identity process model framework.

A Diasporic Sense of Place: Dynamics of Spatialization and Transnational Political Fields among Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain

by David GARBIN

Place, Place Identity, and Phenomenology

by David Seamon

A chapter in The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of the Built Environment, Hernan Casakin, Ombretta Romice, & Sergio Porta, editors. London: Betham Science Publishers, 2011. © 2011 David Seamon.

As recent phenomenological studies have demonstrated (Casey 1997, 2009; Malpas 1999, 2006; Mugerauer 2008; Stefanovic... more As recent phenomenological studies have demonstrated (Casey 1997, 2009; Malpas 1999, 2006; Mugerauer 2008; Stefanovic 2000), the phenomenon of place is a multivalent structure sophisticated and complex in its existential constitution. In this chapter, I offer one phenomenological vantage point from which to examine this lived complexity. I contend that, as an integral structure of human life, place can be understood in terms of three dimensions: first, the geographical ensemble—i.e., the material environment, including both its natural and human-made dimensions; second, people-in-place, including individual and group actions, intentions, and meanings; and, third, spirit of place, or genius loci.

Drawing on the conceptual approach of “systematics” developed by the British philosopher J. G. Bennett, I argue that these three dimensions can engage in six different ways, each of which relates to one particular lived mode whereby place contributes to human life. These six modes are: (1) place interaction; (2) place identity; (3) place creation; (4) place intensification; (5) place realization; and (6) place release.

I argue that place identity is important for understanding the nature of place but is complemented by other modes of relationship that together help clarify the complexity and richness of place and place experience.

Merleau-Ponty, Perception, and Environmental Embodiment: Implications for Architectural and Environmental Studies

by David Seamon

chapter prepared for Carnal Echoes: Merleau-Ponty and the Flesh of Architecture, Rachel McCann and Patricia M. Locke, editors, forthcoming, 2012 or 2013. © David Seamon 2010.

In this chapter, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to explore environmental embodiment—the various lived ways,... more In this chapter, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to explore environmental embodiment—the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its pre-reflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of perception, giving particular attention to his claim that perception involves a lived dynamic between perceptual body and world such that aspects of the world—for example, the heavy hardness of a granite block or the cool smoothness of a chrome railing—are known because they immediately evoke in the lived body their experienced qualities.

Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject—pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in an environment can transform that environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character—a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I consider how qualities of the physical and designable world—for example, materiality, form, and spatiality—contribute to the lived body’s engagement with and actions in the world.

“They live in Lonesome Dove”: Media and contemporary Western Apache place-naming practices

by M. Eleanor Nevins

Language in Society 2008

This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use... more This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use English-language mass media discourse to name newly constructed neighborhoods on the reservation, usually with humorous effect. It is argued that these names do not represent simple assimilation to mainstream discursive norms. Instead, they represent the deployment of media discourse according to locally defined speech genres and language ideology to comment on social changes brought about by the new housing developments. As a strategy for engaging with the dominant
society, these names are acts of community self-definition that confound mainstream expectations for place names generally, and for Native American place names in particular. They celebrate participation in media discourse, but in terms that privilege reservation insiders. Use of these names constitutes the reservation as an interpretive community in which participation is defined not along nationalist models of citizenship, but in terms of locally established idioms of sociality. (Discourse and place, genre, intertextuality,
mass media, Western Apache, place names, Native American,
narrative, joking, verbal play)*

Attaccamento ai luoghi, identità giovanile e benessere: una ricerca in Europa ed implicazioni per la comunicazione interculturale

by nicola rainisio

co-authored with Paolo Inghilleri

This paper investigates the connections between place attachment, Well-being and cultural differences in students of... more This paper investigates the connections between place attachment, Well-being and cultural differences in students of three European countries: Italy, Uk and Romania. A sample of 445 participants was investigated on a number of issues, including reported Well-being (using the Satisfaction with Life Scale), place identity, place attachment and place preferences. The results show an existing direct link between place attachment and life satisfaction; this relationship becomes stronger during the adolescence. A second cluster of data shows an emerging need to integrate and to balance global and local sense of belonging to improve the subjective Well-being. The last evidence concerns the perceived place identity, because there’s a significant difference in managing the place meanings between cultural groups. In particular, the difference we found regards subjects who consider themselves citizens of other countries while residing in the three countries examined, and as such they presumably belong to linguistic and ethnic groups of long-time or recent immigration. This findings demonstrated the utility of the integration between Environmental and Positive Psychology, with the aim to investigate the suggested happiness-place links. The implications for new intercultural communication’s strategies are discussed.

Place identity, well-being and subjective environmental history: a research with the young people of three European countries

by nicola rainisio

Poster presented at IAPS International Meeting, june 28 2010, Leipzig

‘‘Dual Naming: Recognising Landscape Identities’

by Laura Kostanski

Published in 'Proceedings of the Indigenous Knowledges Conference', University of Victoria: Wellington, 2008.

Available as a working paper from Ballarat Uni website

Since the time of European exploration of Australia, the topography of the continent has been mapped from a colonial... more Since the time of European exploration of Australia, the topography of the continent has been mapped from a colonial cartographic perspective. Colonial government guidelines have ‘controlled’ the knowledge base of understanding of the
landscape for non-Indigenous Australians. This perspective has lead to a coloniallytainted sense of place for non-Indigenous (and some Indigenous) Australians. Such Euro-centric focused governance and management of the development of Australia
understanding of the landscape was strongly exemplified during a recent six-month review of State forest names in Victoria.
By the beginning of 2004 over 90 percent of State forests in Victoria did not have officially registered names in the Australian Gazetteer. Thus, the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) employed the researchers to undertake a pilot study program, investigating different methods for officially naming the State forests in the Midlands Region of Victoria. The authors were assisted in this process by a steering committee which had representatives from DSE, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria (AAV) and the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL). This pilot study program focussed on producing a best practice model for naming State forest areas, which would
then be utilised for all State forests across Victoria.
It was understood by the researchers that place names were markers of national, regional, local and personal identity, and as such, part of the State forest review concentrated on recognising all the various historical and contemporary identities apparent in the Midlands region. This attempt at recognising historical and contemporary associations with the State forest areas proved to be a challenge. Difficulties arose in multiple areas of the review process. It is important to take a moment to reflect upon the
processes of place naming, before discussion of the current project can begin. We must ask, ‘why do we name?’ and ‘how do we name?’ before we can understand what the problems encountered with naming and changing names are.

A New Ecological Narrative for Bioregionalism: Place, Nature, and Capitalism in the Pacific Northwest

by J.W. Trull

Presented at the 2011 Spokane Intercollegiate Research Conference.

Humanity has reached a strategic inflection point in the global fight for environmental justice. In response to the... more Humanity has reached a strategic inflection point in the global fight for environmental justice. In response to the impending ecological distress facing human populations globally, this paper outlines the evolution of a stable future for the people of the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In an attempt to make clear the metabolic imbalance that has formed in the linkage between human populations and their environments, an ecological critique of capitalism is developed to articulate an alternative politics for the PNW. By collapsing the dichotomy between nature and culture, this paper forges the basis for a radical environmental ethic grounded in new a narrative that prioritizes place and combats the existing narratives that compose our political, cultural, and scientific histories. What emerges is a politics of environmental justice and ecological sustainability contra capitalism that critiques traditional conceptions political borders and advocates a system of cross-boundary bioregional management.

Hidden cities: authenticity and city fabric.

by Felicity Morel-EdnieBrown

Morel-EdnieBrown, F. A., ‘Hidden cities: authenticity and city fabric’, in Frischer, Bernard, Jane Webb Crawford & David Koller (eds), 2010. Making History Interactive. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Proceedings of the 37th International Conference, Williamsburg, Virginia, United States of America, March 22-26. BAR S2079.(Archaeopress, Oxford, 2010)

Cultural heritage has recently come to be viewed as a panacea for sterility in city development but preoccupation with... more Cultural heritage has recently come to be viewed as a panacea for sterility in city development but preoccupation with creating or discovering a ‘sense of place’ without investigating the authentic cultural fabric, is one of the pitfalls that urban professionals encounter. Lack of authenticity in reading and understanding the development of cities leads to a ‘Disneyesque’ invention of that which a city should be – a place which ‘entertains’ rather than engages.

Community based histories have frequently been the poor cousin of heritage research despite their potential to be a rich source of material for establishing cultural heritage significance. Stories of the past, interwoven with artefacts such as photographs, documents and expressed heritage (stories, dance, tracing of lives) can inform interpretation with a level of authenticity difficult to otherwise replicate.

This paper will explore the richness that has been discovered in central Perth through the Northbridge History Project – an initiative whose role is to revitalize the city authentically by drawing on its diverse histories.

Containing sites of recognized cultural heritage significance, Northbridge has undergone significant infrastructural and generational change in the last 20 years, bringing with it dislocation of its identity. Fragments of the cultural fabric are being collated into an online electronic archive of primary sources www.northbridgehistory.wa.gov.au which is being used to proactively create understanding of the cultural heritage of the area.

Discovering and making available the histories of this diverse area has created a new sense of identity and community engagement bringing awareness that the life of the city is played out against the backdrop of the built environment but the soul of the city comes from its context within the cultural fabric. This is underpinning changes in perception of the area by government and policy makers in which the heritage of the area is more than that which is represented in the streetscape. No longer is there discussion of physically melding the area seamlessly with the city but instead there is increasing awareness that the area's living cultural heritage is valuable and has much to offer the city as it seeks to position itself as Australia's Indian Ocean gateway.

A fully interactive GIS is in the final stages of being planned whereby cross-linking of the archive and an interactive presentation will allow a virtual rendition of the history of the area for interpretation, policy making and research.

Global competitiveness versus community identity: Can culture be the answer to managing this uneasy balance in towns and cities?

by Andres Coca-Stefaniak

Editorial article published in Journal of Town and City Management (http://www.henrystewart.com/jtcm.aspx)

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

La mémoire européenne à l'heure du "paradigme victimaire"

by Stella Ghervas

[with R. Sigrist], in Stella Ghervas & François Rosset (eds), "Lieux d’Europe. Mythes et limites", Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2008.

Patrimoines et lieux de mémoire

by Stella Ghervas

published in Stella Ghervas & François Rosset (eds), "Lieux d’Europe. Mythes et limites", Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2008.

Territoires et frontières

by Stella Ghervas

published in Stella Ghervas & François Rosset (eds), "Lieux d’Europe. Mythes et limites", Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2008.

Pôles et foyers

by Stella Ghervas

published in Stella Ghervas & François Rosset (eds), "Lieux d’Europe. Mythes et limites", Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2008.