changing places Flashcards
What is a place?
Space with meaning
What factors make somewhere a place?
- Location - where it is on a map, longitude and latitude
- Locale - settings (e.g. car or church) which affect social behaviour
- Sense of place - personal and emotional attachment to a place
- Human characteristics (who lives there etc) and human features of the environment (built or land use)
- All the things that flow in or out of that place - e.g. money, people, ideas and resources
- Physical characteristics - topography or landforms
How are all the aspects of place constantly changing?
- Physical characteristics can change over long time (e.g. river migration) or short time scale (e.g. landscape altered by volcanic eruption)
- Human characteristics can change over whole lifetime (new move in and old die) or shorter (migration)
- Flows in and out change (e.g. flow of money changes when new TNC invests in factory or closes one down)
- Sense of place individuals or groups have may change (e.g. perceive differently as adult to when you were younger)
- Different groups/individuals diff sense for same place - e.g. city centre exciting for some and stressful
What factors affect our place attachment?
- Grows stronger over time - number of visits
- Depth of knowledge and understanding of the place
- How enjoyable/intense the experience was
- How safe you feel there
What is placelessness?
- E.g. Airport placeless as could be anywhere
- Chain shops/similar features means similar locales and sense of place in different locations so similar
- Become clone town from dominance of chain shops
- Placelessness = globalisation is making distant places feel and look the same = lose uniqueness
- Global companies and products mean far places can feel similar to near places - e.g. city centres all around the world may have the same chain stores, car brands all over the world
What are some specific examples of factors that impact place attachment?
- Language
- Family
- Where you pay your taxes
- Holidays
- Education
- Where you work
What are topophilia and topophobia?
Topophilia - the love of/strong attachment to a place
Topophobia - a dread/adverse reaction to a place
How can place affect a person’s identity?
- Identity = the sense of who you are
- Place important because create identity based on places they feel connected to
- Because individuals share characteristics they feel bind them as group → shared identity for all from that place
- Shared identity seen on different scales:
➞ Local - individuals from village share positive sense for it
➞ Regional - individuals from region share accent
➞ National - individuals from nation share language, religion, patriotism
What is the difference between an insider and an outsider?
What factors influence whether someone is an insider or outsider?
How are these presented in a qualitative source?
- Insider = someone who is familiar with a place and who feels welcome there, like they belong
E.g. Residents of a country - Outsider = someone who feels unwelcome or excluded from a place, don’t feel they belong
E.g. International immigrants - Age, gender, sexuality - elderly person feels like outsider in nightclub
California Hills in August, Dana Gioia - “I can imagine someone who found these fields unbearable”
- “And yet how gentle it seems to someone raised in a landscape short of rain”
What are the 4 types of place?
Near places (go there often)
- Far places (far/ don’t go there often)
- Experienced places (somewhere we have been, experience shapes sense of place)
- Media places (somewhere we’ve seen in the media/ used media depiction to create sense of place)
What can perceived distance lead to?
What is an organisation that is trying to reduce this perceived distance?
- Perceived distance (how distant feel from another group) between near and far places can prompt jokes, mockery, racially motivated hate crime.
- Fair trade movement aims to reduce inequalities between ‘them’ and ‘us’
What are media places?
Do they always portray reality accurately? Why?
- Places people haven’t been to but have created sense of place for through their depiction in media
- Radio, newspapers, online reviews, social media, film etc
- Media may present a place in certain way for certain purpose that gives inaccurate sense of place to what it’s actually like
E.g. Tourists websites show holiday destinations (e.g. Caribbean) as relaxing, but 21% people in Trinidad live below poverty line - Means diff rep to official cartography/statistics
What are experienced places?
- Places people have spent time in
- Experiences when visit (what they see and people they meet) shape sense of place
What type of place are you most likely to feel like an insider in?
Why might this not be the case for all people?
- More likely feel like insiders in near places as have experienced them and feel comfortable in them
- May feel like outsider in near place as excluded by gender, age, sexuality
How has globalisation affected people’s experience of geographical distance?
What impact does this have on people’s sense of place?
- Improvements in travel technology mean far places are quicker to get to, so can be experienced more easily and frequently
(E.g. Eurostar) - Improvements in ICT mean people can be familiar with media places, despite having no lived experience of them
(E.g. Youtube means watch Gangnam style and gain perception SK) - People can remain closely connected with people and activities in far places via the Internet
(E.g. Facetime connects people across national boundaries)
Means more likely people today feel closely connected to, and like insiders, in places that are geographically far away
