8.1 Flashcards
What are the three aspects of place?
Location, locale, sense of place.
What is location?
Where a place is, eg coordinates on a map.
What is locale?
Where something happens or is set, or that has particular events associated with it
What is sense of place?
The subjective and emotional attachment people have to a place. People develop a sense of place through experiences and knowledge of a particular area.
What are the three main approaches of place?
The descriptive approach
The social constructionist approach
The phenomenological approach
Outline the descriptive approach.
The idea that the world is a set of places. And each place can be studied and is distinct.
Outline the social constructionist approach.
Place is a product of a particular set of social processes occurring at a particular time.
Eg Trafalgar Square was built to commemorate a British naval victory in the 1800s, thus being understood as a place of empire and colonialism.
Outline the phenomenological approach.
How the individual experiences place, the highly personal relationship between place and a person.
Yi-Fu Tuan developed the term ‘topophilia’ to describe the affective bond between people and place and argued that it is human perception and experience how we get to know places.
The importance of place can be explored by looking at its impact on three aspects…
Identity, belonging and well-being.
Identity can be evident at a number of scales which are…
Localism, regionalism, nationalism
Identity can be evident at ‘localism’. Outline this.
Localism : an affection for or emotional ownership of a particular place.
Can be demonstrated by NIMBYism (which occurs when people are reluctant to have their local area affected by development.
Identity of palace can be identified at ‘regionalism’. Outline this.
Consciousness of, and loyalty to, a distinct region with a population that shares similarities.
Identity of a place can be identified at ‘nationalism’
Nationalism : loyalty and devotion to a nation, which creates a sense of national consciousness.
Historically, why have people identified more with their local place?
Because they have a greater knowledge of this area and people.
Most people identify with place at a national level. This is usually strengthened by…?
A common language, national anthem, flag and through cultural or sporting events.
Why do people argue that place has become less important?
Some argue that globalisation has made place less important as the forces of global capitalism have eroded local cultures and produced homogenised places.
Eg seeing Starbucks on high streets all over the world.
Define clone town.
Settlements where the high street is dominated by chain stores. This is also called placelessness.
Define glocalisation.
Multinational companies are increasingly hovering to adapt to the local market place.
Eg the number of McCafes has increased in countries with a coffee culture.
In the context of place, what does belonging mean?
To be part of the community.
This is increasingly being seen as one of the key factors making a place sustainable and successful.
What can affect the sense of belonging to a place?
Factors such gender, age, sexuality, socio-economic status, religion and level of education.
Relating to being inside / outside a place, what did Relph say?
‘To be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it, and the more profoundly inside you are, the stronger is the identity with the place’.
Define NIMBYism.
‘Not in my backyard’.
Local opposition to developments eg new housing estates or wind farms.
Relating to being in / out of place, what did Tim Cresswell argue?
People, things and practices are often strongly linked to particular places, and when these links are broken, or when people have acted out of place, they are deemed to have committed something of a crime.
Define positionality.
Factors (eg gender, race, age) which influence how we perceive different place.
What is place attachment? When does it develop?
Place attachment develops through +ve associated with a place, but not everyone has the same experiences (and these experiences change as we get older).
Outline ‘near places’.
This could be a geographically near place (eg Leeds).
Equally, this could describe a strong emotional connection with a place and how comfortable a person feels there (eg house in Spain).
Outline ‘far places’.
Could be geographically far places (eg Aus)
Or a weak emotional connection with a particular place, or where you feel uncomfortable within that place.
Why can far places actually feel comfortable?
Because in these days of globalised culture, travel and media, geographically far-off places are not automatically strange, uncomfortable or different.
What are experienced places?
Those places that a person has actually visited and spent time in.
What are media places?
Those that the person has read about or seen on film.
Define ‘character’ of place.
The physical and human features that help to distinguish it from another place.
The character may be linked strongly to the natural environment but it is more a combination of natural and cultural features in the landscape, and the people who occupy the place.
What are exogenous factors?
The relationship of one place with other places and the external factors which affect this.
The demographic, socio-economic and cultural characteristics of a place are shaped by shifting flows of people, resources, money investment.
What are endogenous factors?
The characteristics of the place itself, or factors which have originated internally.
Eg location, physical geography, land use, population size, employment rates.
