Locale

From Geography

Locale is a concept used Anthony Giddens and Nigel Thrift. The opposite of 'locale' is 'social action'. Both are components of contextual regional research. Locale is a matter of material context and the given constellation (setting) of action and interaction.

In the article 'Everyday Regionalizations' by Benno Werlen the definition of 'locale' is: a spatial context or setting for action comprised of material elements as well as sets of social norms and culturally shared values, to be understood as a material, socioeconomic, and socio-cultural constellation of action with inter-subjective shared meaning contents. Therefore, it is an action related concept that cannot be turned into an objective fact or generalized as social category, having the same meaning for members of a society (in a certain region).

There is a great differentiation in locales, one example are ‘dominant locales’. These are defined by the fact that time must be determined to them on the basis of economic or state. Understanding these dominant locales is possible because there is a straight connection among ‘the interaction structure of the regionally situated actor’ and local social structure (Werlen, 2009).

Locales have five main effects (Werlen, 2009). 1. Locales structure people’s life-paths in space and time to provide the main nodes through which life must flow 2. Locales can have effect on other people’s life-paths 3. Locales provide the arena in which interaction with other people takes place (also the places where conflicts happens) 4. Locales provide the activity structure of everyday routine 5. Locales are the major sites for the processes of socialization, they are the places where behaviour will be learned. So locales have great impact on people’s lives.

Published by Jobke Heij (s4049713) on 1st of October, 2011

References:

Werlen, B. (2009) Everyday regionalizations. In: International encyclopaedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.