Sense of place
From Geography
Cloke, Philo and Sadler (1991, p. 81) understand a ‘sense of place’ to be “a rudimentary understanding of how a place ‘works’ It's a general feeling about a place by an actor. Every actor has a different sense of place for every location. An actor can for instance love or hate a place or they can feel (un)comfortable at that specific location. Therefore sense of place can differ a lot between actors. In The Dictionary of Human Geography ‘sense of place’ is, in line with the above, defined as “the attitudes and feelings that individuals and groups hold vis a` vis the geographical areas in which they live. It further commonly suggests intimate, personal and emotional relationships between self and place” (Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts & Whatmore, 2009, p. 676).
In addition, Knox and Marston (2007) can also be cited in this context. They describe ‘sense of place’ as “the feelings evoked among people as a result of the experiences and memories they associate with a place and the symbolism they attach to that place. It can also refer to the character of a place as seen by outsiders: its distinctive physical characteristics and/or its inhabitants” (p. 33). In this sense, they argue, a sense of place “is the result of a shared pool of meanings, which carries over into people’s attitudes and feelings about themselves and their localities” (p. 33). Knox and Marston (2007) clearly make a distinction between the sense of place as it develops for insiders on the one hand (for instance through shared dress codes and speech patters, and whereby the concept of lifeworld is important), and for outsiders on the other (when, e.g. local landmarks and ways of life are so distinctive that they “evoke a significant common meaning for people who have no common experience of them” (p. 35).
With regard to the relation between the notion of a sense of place and human geography as a scientific discipline, Cloke, Philo and Sadler (1991, p. 81), argue that humanistic geography probably has made its most important contribution by “sensitising numerous researchers (many of whom would not even begin to label themselves as humanistic geographers) to the everyday and yet often quite intimate attachments all sorts of people […] have to places that encircle them”, in order words, to their senses of place. For instance, humanistic geographers such as Yi-Fu Tuan have elaborated on the issue of sense of place further, by developing concepts such as ‘topophilia’ (love of place) and ‘topophobia’ (fear of places) (Gregory et al., 2009).
As described in the definitions above, the key concepts of sense of place are that they can differ a lot between different actors and that previous memories and experiences with that place/location play a key role in the creation for a sense of place for a specific actor.
References
Cloke, P., Philo, C. & Sadler, D. (1991) Approaching Human Geography. London: Chapman.
Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S. (2009). The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th edition. London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Knox, P. L. & Marston S. A. (2007). Human Geography: places and regions in global context. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
Contributors
- Edited by Jan-Peter Hoste
