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I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you about Place and Placelessness by E. Relph since this time last week. It’s one of those slim but thought provoking books that makes you wish you knew lots of people who have read it so you can all get together and talk about it. What do you think about all the elements that go into place-making? Does authentic place really require an unselfconscious lived-in-ness to make it authentic? Does kitsch and tourism always fall under a sense of placelessness? Or does tourism refer to a certain kind of travel only? And can’t kitsch be ironic or make a statement and have nothing to do with placelessness?
The book is broken up into eight longish chapters with lots of small sections that focus on different elements of Relph’s examination point by point. It is the sort of book that one wants to sit down with and talk about section by section. Published in 1976, the book is sadly out of print and hard to come by. I got lucky that the university library where I work has a copy.
Relph, a geographer, is surprised that geographers in general have not spent much time examining the concept of place. Relph sees place as being something much more than just knowing a certain area. There is a
significance of place in human experience [that] goes far deeper…[it] is apparent in the actions of individuals and groups protecting their places against outside forces of destruction…To be human is to live in a world that is filled with significant places. To be human is to have and to know your place.
Relph proposes and examines all the elements that go into place-making. He likes his Heidegger and quotes him liberally. He also likes Camus. I will not delineate all the elements, I will just quote one of his summary conclusions:
The basic meaning of place, its essence, does not therefore come from locations, nor from the trivial functions places serve, nor from the community that occupies it, nor from superficial and mundane experiences — these are all common and perhaps necessary aspects of places. The essence of place lies largely in the unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centres of human existence.
Relph focuses on the urban, discusses planned communities and prefab housing. He also broadens his view to include countries and narrows it to cover individual places within locations belonging, for instance, to particular family members –a desk, a chair, etc. He has a really lovely section on “home” that I just might write about in a post of its own.
Once Relph establishes what place is and how place is created, he looks at placelessnes and the elements that cause it. He sees contemporary society moving further and further away from place and deeper and deeper into placelessness. We have split our working, home and religious life apart. The average person moves every three or four years. Home is losing its significance and becoming instead an interchangeable thing. Mass media homogenizes place, crowding out the local. Mass culture also serves to homogenize place. In Relph’s time it was Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain, today we have McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart, Target, and any number of other big chain stores.
One of the things about the Mall of America near me that makes me marvel is why people from far away go there specifically to shop. Sure it’s huge, but it is filled with stores you can find anywhere from Nordstrom to Macy’s and Old Navy to Forever 21. Aside from size there is nothing significantly different about it. We are also not encouraged to become attached to places. The economic culture, at least in the U.S., touts the benefits of being mobile so you can go where the jobs are.
Placelessnes is becoming normal and Relph sees this as being a negative thing. He wants to move toward a reinvigorated place-making world but suggests we cannot do it in the same ways we used to. Reviving a sense of place does not lie in preserving old places –museumisation he calls it — nor in a self conscious return to tradition. Instead we must find a way to transcend placelessness. We must find a way to move beyond the homogenous spaces to create a diverse, rich, and lived-in space that enriches experience and our lives.
I’ve had to simplify Relph quite a lot, but I hope I have managed to at least give you a flavor of what he is about. If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, I highly recommend it.
When you first told me about this book, I knew I wanted to read it. It is also at my library, but otherwise impossible to obtain. I will get the book as soon as I can get over there.
Meanwhile I know a really fine book on the topic, A Sense of Place. Perhaps you have read it?
http://www.amazon.com/A-Sense-Place-Richard-Katzev/dp/1592993605/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375834710&sr=8-1&keywords=Richard+Katzev+A+Sense+of+Place
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I wonder if we have compensated this loss of place with literature. Dicken’s London and Hardy’s Wessex two very obvious examples. I suppose the internet offers yet more ways of disembodying ourselves. What Katzev is on about is very interesting. That phenomena of a place being validated by having something identical to what is everywhere else is a bit strange I do agree.
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Ian, Relph talks briefly about being able to experience a vicarious sense of place mainly through literature. It is a valid way to experience place, though as you know, the authors that provide such a full and deep experience are few in number. You are right, the internet contributes to placelessness. It wasn’t around in Relph’s time but I am sure he would view it a very disruptive to place-making. Relph mentions how having an identical place wherever you go can be comforting and safe for those who are in new to a place. It can serve as a familiar base to launch from into the unfamiliar. The trouble arises when the familiar is all we are willing to negotiate with.
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Richard, I am glad your library has the book. When/if you read it let me know what you think! As for a Sense of Place, I have not read it but it looks pretty good. I will have to put in an order to Amazon for it 🙂
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You may like to read author/blogger Nigel Featherstone on Place. He mentions Relph a few times, but this link is the first time I think: http://nigelfeatherstone.wordpress.com/tag/edward-relph/
As you know, I’ve been thinking a bit about place too in recent times. One of the issues is, as de Kretser says, “Place has come undone”. And yet, we are physical beings, no matter how virtual our lives, and that must ground us in a physical place. I think place has an abstract or non-physical dimension but it starts in the physical.
A comment I liked at the weekend conference I’ve just attended was that “place memory” is as much about the life lived in it as the place itself. I think that’s true.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be displaced from one’s place … as asylum seekers are. No matter how much they want to leave the horror behind, they are also leaving something that is quintessentially them. Hmmm … so they create “Little Italy” or “Little Vietnam” in their new home but you know that while they surround themselves with people like themselves, their own language, their own food and music, it’s a poor substitute for the “real” place.
And now, I’ll finish wondering if I’ve said anything meaningful or useful but I’ve enjoyed thinking about it!
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whisperinggums, thanks for the link to Nigel’s posts!
Place has come undone and yet it is very interesting that we still, as physical beings need place no matter how much we are encouraged otherwise. It creates a major cognitive, emotional and physical dissonance, don’t you think?
Relph talks about place memory in the sense of belong to a place, leaving it for some reason and then returning to it later, such as the place where one grows up. There is a discomfort that occurs because the place has changed since we have been gone and we are no longer part of it. Relph doesn’t say it but I think in some respects, this is where nostalgia comes from. That safe place where we belonged is no longer and how can we not help but mourn its loss?
Surprisingly, Relph does not talk about forced placessless as in the case of refugees. I agree it must be really horrible. Creating “Little Italy” or “China Town” in response makes complete sense. Yet, as you say, it is not substitute. One wonders if the children of the displaced are better able to create a more meaningful place for themselves. I also wonder if the displaced will always suffer from placelessness or whether they are eventually able to feel like they belong in a new place? So much to think about!
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Oh yes, there is so much to think about … I’m cogitating my next Monday Musings which will I think continue discussion, drawing from the conference.
You may be right about children of the displaced, but how hard it much be to be between suffering displaced parents and one’s new place.
I suspect you’re right about nostalgia too although I think it doesn’t always have to include a realisation that the place has changed … hmm, though I suppose it does include the sense that you can’t go back (because you have changed) and perhaps that’s almost the same thing.
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Oh I’d love to hear more about the conference 🙂 Yes, I think it must be a difficult position to be the child of immigrants. In a good portion of US immigrant literature there is an ongoing struggle between balancing the parents and their sense of lost place and assimilating into this new place.
Oh you are right, it isn’t always the place we return to that has changed but have changed too. I think it can still cause nostalgia though or at least a feeling of loss.
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Oops, I linked to the “tag” not the “post” but that’s probably good!
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Sounds fascinating! Heidegger actually affected the way I travel and think about places. Sadly, no library local to me carries it. Maybe we can get NYRB Classics to print it.
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Isabella, it is fascinating. I haven’t read Heidegger since university in relation to literary theory where I found his ideas really interesting. So Relph using him so much has made me interested in returning to him and reading in a broader context. I hope someone, NYRB or otherwise, reprints this book because I think it still has much to say to us.
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Personal identities no longer rely on what were once the traditional foundations: church, nationality, community, etc. In many ways, it is liberating. But others may argue that it dulls some of the richness of life – puts us more adrift. I grew up in a neighborhood – not a planned one, but one that grew one home at a time. I remember Toman’s grocery store one block away and the bakery across the street. The pharmacy was on the next corner and a penny candy store was next to it. It was ethnic, mostly Eastern European decent. Just a breath away from downtown Chicago, it nevertheless seemed like a small town to me. We knew each other’s names. I now live in a “planned” community. There are no corner stores; my neighborhood is the conception of the developer – it’s identity was planned before the first shovel of dirt was lifted. I like where I live, but it could be anywhere. The neighborhood where I grew up had “placedness.” I kind of miss that. Good post, Stefanie.
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Grad, this is true, identity has come unmoored from its traditional foundations and I agree it is liberating in some ways. We can craft much more easily the person we want to be. But I don’t think we can entirely discredit the influence of those traditional elements, they are just not as strong as they once were. The place you grew up sounds marvelous, very small town in spite of it being so near Chicago. Planned communities are an interesting phenomenon. It is an outside view of what a community should look like without an input from the people who actually live there. But it sounds like you have been able to transcend that, at least personally in spite of its placelessness.
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What a fascinating book and discussion. Fortunately for me, the book is at the library and I will have my husband pick it up for me when he is next there. my feelings about place have been colored, in large part, by my mother’s experience. She was orphaned at the age of 4 and taken in by relatives. She credits her ability to cope with changing place so much to her being able “to carry myself with me”. Even at a young age, she realized that she need to have a strong sense of self and fortunately her temperament allowed this to happen. And then you add in the aspect of memory and place – absolutely fascinating – lots of dots to be drawn and ideas to ponder.
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pburt, there are so many things to think about, aren’t there? Your mother strikes me as a strong, courageous woman. I don’t think many could do what she did. Glad your library has the book. I hope you enjoy it!
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This sounds really interesting, and hadn’t been on my radar before… a good supplement, maybe, to all the reading I’ve been doing on maps and cartography lately. Thanks!
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Lisa, it is indeed a fascinating book and would very likely make a great accompaniment to your current reading. I hope you can come by a copy!
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