The concept of place
Underpinning the Geography National Curriculum and the new GCSE and A Level specifications is a re-emphasis on place. The importance of place, along with other geographical concepts such as space, time and scale have all waxed and waned with the paradigm shifts which have occurred through time. Some of these key concepts such as time, place and space are so big that they overarch many of the sciences and humanities disciplines and therefore have plural and conflicting meanings for different groups of people working in a range of disciplines.
Meanings are by their nature subjective.
Tim Cresswell (2015) suggests, as would most geographers, that place is one of, if not the most, important concept of them all and yet what you understand the concept to mean is probably quite different to me and as place is one of the oldest concepts used in geography, its meaning has therefore changed over time, influenced from within and outside the discipline. As geography has evolved, developed and diversified, so too has the concept of place. It is of no surprise to hear that geographers such as Liz Taylor describe place as 'a highly complex concept' (2014: 276) or Noel Castree (2003) putting place among the most complex of geographical ideas.
Your view of the world will probably influence the relative importance you give to certain geographical ideas, see Table 1 for three different perspectives of key concepts in geography.
Meanings are by their nature subjective.
Tim Cresswell (2015) suggests, as would most geographers, that place is one of, if not the most, important concept of them all and yet what you understand the concept to mean is probably quite different to me and as place is one of the oldest concepts used in geography, its meaning has therefore changed over time, influenced from within and outside the discipline. As geography has evolved, developed and diversified, so too has the concept of place. It is of no surprise to hear that geographers such as Liz Taylor describe place as 'a highly complex concept' (2014: 276) or Noel Castree (2003) putting place among the most complex of geographical ideas.
Your view of the world will probably influence the relative importance you give to certain geographical ideas, see Table 1 for three different perspectives of key concepts in geography.
Table 1. Key concepts in geography from three different perspectives
Many academics have written about place. As a geography teacher, it is well with the time to develop a more nuanced and detailed understanding of the concept. To begin, here is a range of ideas and definitions of place:
Place is a space with meaning, although this is somewhat of an oversimplification. The nature and use of the concept has changed over time, and the meaning of place can vary with context. Most geographers would agree that place 'tends to be understood as a unique location that is connected to other places but is also self-contained and distinctive' (Hopkins 2010: 11).
Massey (2005) suggests that the uniqueness of place is as a result of historical and contemporary interactions with other places and that these interactions are imbued with power, privilege and control. These 'power geometries' impact on different groups of people in different ways. People with 'power' can influence how places are represented, attract investments and consequently affect the mobility of money, knowledge, people and industry in, across and out of places. Those in power repress the powerless people through the unequal distribution of income, wealth and material goods and the unequal distribution of 'life chances', such as access to quality education and health care.
When defining place, John Agnew (1987) outlined three fundamental aspects of place as a meaningful location as follows:
1. location - a specific point on the Earth's surface
2. locale - the material setting for social relations
3. sense of place - the subjective and emotional attachment people have to place
Each of Agnew's three-part definition of place are important when teaching about familiar and unfamiliar places. Unfortunately, place can all too often be used as a backdrop to teaching about case study places, the location of place shown as an arrow on a map without further enquiry about the social relations, power geometries or sense of place of those who live there. The less we know about a place we teach and learn about, the more likely that stereotypes and generalisations will creep in. It is therefore an essential skill for teachers and students to develop a 'sense of place' or feeling that we know what it is like to really be there in place, through the eyes of different groups of people, who experience a place in different ways.
This leads to the idea of the geographical imagination
'...a lot of our geography is in the mind. That is to say, we carry around with us mental images, of the world, of the country in which we live, of the street next door' (Massey 2006: 48)
David Harvey (1990) describes how a 'geographical imagination' or the awareness of how lives in one place are affected by the unseen actions of distant strangers.
Place and identity
'Place is fundamentally a phenomenon of everyday experience and thus proceeds all academic concepts and interpretations' (Edward Relph, 2008). People have different experiences of places, this can be attributed to their social grouping, race, age, gender etc. In some places, people can feel a strong sense of belonging of being in place, for example suited workers in the city centre or young people on the university campus. In other places, people can feel excluded or made to feel out of place, for example skaters in the city centre or women walking past building sites.
Space and Place
To understand the difference between place and space, it is worth reading the work of Yi-Fu Tuan. In his 1977 book Space and Place, he suggests that place is security and space is freedom, 'we are attached to the one and long for the other... Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.' (1977: 6). Massey also compares the concepts of place and space, suggesting that if 'space is rather a simultaneity of stories-so-far, then places are collections of those stories, articulations within the wider power-geometries of space' (Massey, 2005, p.130).
Globalisation and the loss of place
Economic restructuring, the global presence of transnational corporations, improvements in both the speed and capacity of transport (airliners and containerisation) and communication (mobile and internet technology) have all contributed to the phenomenon which has been called 'time-space compression' (Harvey, 1990), where improved connectivity changes our conception of time and distance. Today, air travel (which replaced travel by sea or by train or even stagecoach as the fastest means of transport) makes certain places such as global cities feel much closer together, adding to this sense of a 'shrinking world'.
Containerisation reduced costs and radically increase the efficiency of international trade. Invented by trucking magnate Malcolm Mclean in 1956, the introduction of the steel twenty-foot container radically reduces the unloading time of cargo ships, meaning they can spend a majority of their time travelling, rather than being stuck in port. Last year there were 20 million twenty-foot containers used to transport 35 per cent of all world merchandise trade. In 2014, 27 per cent of these containers originate from China.
Broadband, only widely available since the turn of the century, has played a huge role in shrinking the time it takes to communicate with people via real-time messaging, email, conference calling and social media etc. This has benefited business by allowing economic transactions to occur anywhere, anytime, between people located in faraway places, adding to the sense of a 'shrinking world', but it has caused greater stress to individuals as they feel the need to answer a relentless stream of work emails 24/7, added to the sense of a 'shrinking world'. In 2012, mobile phones were owned by four billion people, of which one billion people owned smartphones and has resulted in a much more connected, networked and mobile world.
" This is an era -- it is often said -- when things are speeding up, and spreading out. Capital is going through a new phase of internationalization, especially in its financial parts. More people travel more frequently and for longer distances. Your clothes have probably been made in a range of countries from Latin America to South-East Asia. Dinner consists of food shipped in from all over the world. And if you have a screen in your office, instead of opening a letter which - care of Her Majesty's Post Office - has taken some days to wend its way across the country, you now get interrupted by e- mail." Doreen Massey (1994) A global sense of place
This process of globalisation, defined as has accelerated markedly over the last forty years and as a consequence there is now a greater uncertainty of what we mean by place.
The plea from Doreen Massey for a new conceptualisation of place as open and hybrid rather than rooted and authentic
The complexity of place
'the geographical world is a messy one, it does not cohere' (Thrift 1999: 32)
Place is a space with meaning, although this is somewhat of an oversimplification. The nature and use of the concept has changed over time, and the meaning of place can vary with context. Most geographers would agree that place 'tends to be understood as a unique location that is connected to other places but is also self-contained and distinctive' (Hopkins 2010: 11).
Massey (2005) suggests that the uniqueness of place is as a result of historical and contemporary interactions with other places and that these interactions are imbued with power, privilege and control. These 'power geometries' impact on different groups of people in different ways. People with 'power' can influence how places are represented, attract investments and consequently affect the mobility of money, knowledge, people and industry in, across and out of places. Those in power repress the powerless people through the unequal distribution of income, wealth and material goods and the unequal distribution of 'life chances', such as access to quality education and health care.
When defining place, John Agnew (1987) outlined three fundamental aspects of place as a meaningful location as follows:
1. location - a specific point on the Earth's surface
2. locale - the material setting for social relations
3. sense of place - the subjective and emotional attachment people have to place
Each of Agnew's three-part definition of place are important when teaching about familiar and unfamiliar places. Unfortunately, place can all too often be used as a backdrop to teaching about case study places, the location of place shown as an arrow on a map without further enquiry about the social relations, power geometries or sense of place of those who live there. The less we know about a place we teach and learn about, the more likely that stereotypes and generalisations will creep in. It is therefore an essential skill for teachers and students to develop a 'sense of place' or feeling that we know what it is like to really be there in place, through the eyes of different groups of people, who experience a place in different ways.
This leads to the idea of the geographical imagination
'...a lot of our geography is in the mind. That is to say, we carry around with us mental images, of the world, of the country in which we live, of the street next door' (Massey 2006: 48)
David Harvey (1990) describes how a 'geographical imagination' or the awareness of how lives in one place are affected by the unseen actions of distant strangers.
Place and identity
'Place is fundamentally a phenomenon of everyday experience and thus proceeds all academic concepts and interpretations' (Edward Relph, 2008). People have different experiences of places, this can be attributed to their social grouping, race, age, gender etc. In some places, people can feel a strong sense of belonging of being in place, for example suited workers in the city centre or young people on the university campus. In other places, people can feel excluded or made to feel out of place, for example skaters in the city centre or women walking past building sites.
Space and Place
To understand the difference between place and space, it is worth reading the work of Yi-Fu Tuan. In his 1977 book Space and Place, he suggests that place is security and space is freedom, 'we are attached to the one and long for the other... Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.' (1977: 6). Massey also compares the concepts of place and space, suggesting that if 'space is rather a simultaneity of stories-so-far, then places are collections of those stories, articulations within the wider power-geometries of space' (Massey, 2005, p.130).
Globalisation and the loss of place
Economic restructuring, the global presence of transnational corporations, improvements in both the speed and capacity of transport (airliners and containerisation) and communication (mobile and internet technology) have all contributed to the phenomenon which has been called 'time-space compression' (Harvey, 1990), where improved connectivity changes our conception of time and distance. Today, air travel (which replaced travel by sea or by train or even stagecoach as the fastest means of transport) makes certain places such as global cities feel much closer together, adding to this sense of a 'shrinking world'.
Containerisation reduced costs and radically increase the efficiency of international trade. Invented by trucking magnate Malcolm Mclean in 1956, the introduction of the steel twenty-foot container radically reduces the unloading time of cargo ships, meaning they can spend a majority of their time travelling, rather than being stuck in port. Last year there were 20 million twenty-foot containers used to transport 35 per cent of all world merchandise trade. In 2014, 27 per cent of these containers originate from China.
Broadband, only widely available since the turn of the century, has played a huge role in shrinking the time it takes to communicate with people via real-time messaging, email, conference calling and social media etc. This has benefited business by allowing economic transactions to occur anywhere, anytime, between people located in faraway places, adding to the sense of a 'shrinking world', but it has caused greater stress to individuals as they feel the need to answer a relentless stream of work emails 24/7, added to the sense of a 'shrinking world'. In 2012, mobile phones were owned by four billion people, of which one billion people owned smartphones and has resulted in a much more connected, networked and mobile world.
" This is an era -- it is often said -- when things are speeding up, and spreading out. Capital is going through a new phase of internationalization, especially in its financial parts. More people travel more frequently and for longer distances. Your clothes have probably been made in a range of countries from Latin America to South-East Asia. Dinner consists of food shipped in from all over the world. And if you have a screen in your office, instead of opening a letter which - care of Her Majesty's Post Office - has taken some days to wend its way across the country, you now get interrupted by e- mail." Doreen Massey (1994) A global sense of place
This process of globalisation, defined as has accelerated markedly over the last forty years and as a consequence there is now a greater uncertainty of what we mean by place.
The plea from Doreen Massey for a new conceptualisation of place as open and hybrid rather than rooted and authentic
The complexity of place
'the geographical world is a messy one, it does not cohere' (Thrift 1999: 32)
Successful films and TV dramas often conjure a sense of place - a real sense of what it is like to 'be there'. Here are trailers for Hogwarts, Cornwall and Glasgow, what other films evoke such a strong sense of place?
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In the modern world, people bemoan the erosion of place or 'placelessness' as a result of the forces of globalisation. Here are three places which could be any-where, where else do you feel is placeless?
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Hear about place from writer Sere Prince Halverson, academic Edward Relph, geographer Joseph Kerski and thinker David Houle.
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References and further reading:
Agnew, J. (1987) Place and Politics. Boston: Allen and Unwin.
Castree, N. (2003) 'Place: Connections and Boundaries', In L. Holloway, S. Rice and G. Valentine (Eds) Key Concepts in Geography. London: Sage Publications.
Cresswell, T. (2015) Place: an introduction. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Jackson, P. (2006) 'Thinking Geographically', Geography, 91 (3) 199-204.
Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R. and Valentine, G. (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place. London: Sage Publications.
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage Publications.
Relph, E. (2008) Place and Placelessness. London: Sage Publications.
Thrift, N. (1999) 'The Place of Complexity', Theory, Culture & Society, 16 (3), 31-69.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. (1974) Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press.
Agnew, J. (1987) Place and Politics. Boston: Allen and Unwin.
Castree, N. (2003) 'Place: Connections and Boundaries', In L. Holloway, S. Rice and G. Valentine (Eds) Key Concepts in Geography. London: Sage Publications.
Cresswell, T. (2015) Place: an introduction. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Jackson, P. (2006) 'Thinking Geographically', Geography, 91 (3) 199-204.
Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R. and Valentine, G. (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place. London: Sage Publications.
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage Publications.
Relph, E. (2008) Place and Placelessness. London: Sage Publications.
Thrift, N. (1999) 'The Place of Complexity', Theory, Culture & Society, 16 (3), 31-69.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. (1974) Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press.