Friday, October 31, 2008
Chapter 3 Place
Reading 'A Global Sense of Place' by Tim CresswellIn the introduction of this chapter, Tim Cresswell tells the readers that this chapter will be covering 'A Global Sense of Place' by Doreen Massey. The reason for his decision being this reading covers the central themes of place of all disiplines and allows new ways of thinking. This chapter also covers other readings to cover a wider range of context.Massey's article was first published in the 1990s, an era of rapid globalization, homogenization, multi cooperation expansion, and political violence intensification. Massey's argument, in sharp contrast to that of David Harvey's 'From Space to Place and Back' which uses place to define a group of people over another, seeks to define place as a world progression phenomenon. In 'From Space to Place and Back' Harvey describes a murder against two caucacian couples and said that the murderer is an African. He than talks about how Gated Community should be used to protect middle class white people from "uncontrollable factors" otherwise they would feel the town. Harvey later said that place is like a permanace in a space, like a city in a country. Harvey is very interested in capitalism, whcih is mobile as in company expansion and collapse. According to Harvey, place has to adopt to this mobile capitalism. Old and outdated places will be destroyed while new places will form. Although mobile captalism is the driven force of globalization and this makes place less important, Harvey doesn't say so. He argued hat because of mobile capitalism, people tries to make their place more attractive and safe to attract companies. Harvey moves on to analys Martin Heideggar's place-as-dwellings theory and how the destruction of dwellings destroys place-based-identity. He said that people can't go back to farm houses so instead they built monuments. These monuments are there to remind people of thier rootedness and authenticity (origin). Harvey also goes back to talk about how people tries to construct their place in the pressure of modernism. He argues that people tries to bring out the historical and cultural side of the place as a mean to resist change. These cultural or historical side, or memories, often conflict with one another because different people have different memories. In short, Harvey's notion of place is a fixed location constructed by cultural and political factors that compete against one another throughout the ages. This place is especially influenced by mobile capitalism and people's sense to preserve their rootedness and attract business opportunity.Doreen Massey's essay: A Global Sense of Place is the next thing that's being discussed in this chapter. Doreen started this essay by first describing various affects of globalization, and that one such affect being an increasing uncertainty of place. She said that the disruption of community is what makes people becoming defensive about commercialism. Doreen also assert however, that community doesn't equal to place. People often times associate the two which is what caused certain reactionary actions regarding heritage, and xenophobia. Massey later argues that place doesn't need to be seen in such an enclosed definition but rather an open one that's fit in today's current. She asks questions such as who is experiencing this phenomenon and what causes this time-space compression. According to Massey, time-space compression is basiclaly fast paced communication across the globe, which is driven by money. So money is what makes the world and us go around. She also tackles how different people view a place differently. She argues that this is not enough, as in capitalism doesn't explain everything. Gender and race also has to do with people's behavior. Massey than moves on to tackle the issue of different groups of people having different amounts of power that allows them to control this time-space compression. The dominate group right now are the western society, which includes scholars who tells people what to think. There are also those who are not in charge but doing most of the actions, including the illegal immigrants from Mexico. There are also those who does nothing and just follow the flow. Having said all these, Massey's argument is that this time-space compression is a very complicated event involving layers of actors. Time-Space compression has to do with local communities being disturbed by commercialisms. Many people argued that this makes people seeking something firm to grasp such as inheritance while others push it away as a way for people to evade the inevitable. Massey argues that this argument has a lot of assumptions involved. Is there really insecurity in this process? People also has to face up to people's need for attachness instead of denying it. She does acknowledges that there are many problematic senses of place. There for our goal should be to establish a sense of place that embodies difference and rootedness of people without being reactionary. The reactionary notion of place is problematic because places are single and place identity often involves inward histories. These sets up boundaries. What distinguishes between the inside and outside than? It's like people saying us and them. If not looked politically however, these boundaries have little meaning. It's possible to feel for a place without feeling defensive. People also have different feelings for a place, so having the same feeling for a place is quite rare. Thinking about a place also brings up various factors around the world. There for how is it possible to have an enclosed place. Instead of thinking about places as boundaries, they should be thinked as a mixture of social relationships and experiences. The identity of a place will continue to progress and advance. These does not conflict with the speciality of a place. The concept of a place will is a process and not a static.According to Tim Cresswell, one of the differences between Harvey and Massey is that Harvey thinks globalization as something to be oppossed while Massey thinks of it as a process. Harvey also thinks that gender and race have to do with globalization and capital is not the only way to look at it. The movements are not homogeneous as well, since people are forced to do them while others willingly execute them. Another one of Massey's point is that when thinking about globalization and time-space compression, we have to think about place. Harvey and Massey both agrees that when seeking peace, people tend to withdraw into place. This withdraw, according to Massey, is a form of reactionary and immigrate to a place as a form of reactionary. Massey sees place as a rooted reaction to a mobile world troublesome because rootedness is not always reactionary and that global movement is not always reaction provoking. The reactionary sense of place that disturbes Harvey is marked by three ways of thinking: place has a singular identity, place is authentically rooted in history, and a need of clear sense to separapte a place from the outside world. She argues that the one identity thinking makes people treat newcomers different, the rooted in history has a hard to to relate to newcomers, and that people don't have a sense of boundary in a place of smaller scale (as in contrast to nations and political boundariesp). Massey rethink the global sense of place as process, defined by the outside, having multiple identites and histories, and it's uniqueness rooted in its interaction.The last part of this chapter focuses on Jon May's research about place in Stoke Newington. Jon May thinks that it's not good to believe in one philosophy. May discussed the different interpretation of Stoke Newington by a couple named Paul and Pat and a graphic designer named Alex. Paul and Pat viewed the place lacking a sense of Englishness while Alex viewed it as stereotypcal English establishment. Jon viewed the battle over an area's past as crucial importance in definihg a local sense of place. It's not about whose right however, but about each person's version. The diversity of a place is also an important factor of defining a place. It is important to note that what May said has nothing to do with both Harvey or Massey's sense of place. It's not about a boundary or a progress for instance, it's about different identities of a place and how they are being constructed. At the end Tim said that theory is not just a property of the intellectuals, common people make theories.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Chapter 2 The Genealogy of Place Part 2
First of all I would like to say that I posted this late (after the class). The following is what I get reading the second part of chapter 2 after the class.
The second part of Chapter 2 review started off describing how other humanist geographers understand a place. David Seamon thinks that the daily actions that people display is the way to go studying a place. Seamon especially looks into the unconscious actions of inhabitants. The insiders of a place are though who does these routines unconsciously while those who know the routine appears to act unnatural compare to others. There’s one person who disliked the humanist’s place defining approach and that being Allan Pred. He described place as continuing to change and becoming something else. Pred instead tries to describe the world as an interaction of humans and structures, and this belief is known as structurationism. Structuratiopnists argue that people’s actions aren’t influenced completely by structures nor are they completely out of free-will. This applies to both the language system (we need to follow certain rules but we can talk differently) as well as to people in a society (we aren’t suppose to rob woman walking alone at night but we can). The structurationists also argue that these cultures and structures are subject to changes over time. UIUC for example is a structure that has been changing ever since it was founded. Because structures are subject to change, when studying them people should look at why the place was founded, how individuals negotiate with the rules of the place and how meanings of places change over time (according to the structurationist). Nigel Thrift is another structurationist alongside Allan Pred and Derek Gregory. Thrift developed a method that emphasizes events and practices of a place. Edward Sojo developed a similar way to look at places. It’s called trialectics of spatiality. Sojo comes up with three kinds of places, place, imagined place, and lived place. The first place (place) is the place. The second place (imagined place) is how people think of a place, which is what the humanists are doing. The third place is the lived place. The structurationist tend to look a place as an event because of its ever changing quality.
Several people such as Doreen Massey and Lucy Lippard argued that a place is shapped by numerous things that came from outside, let it be ideas, environment, or goods. Their views are very similar to environmental historians such as William Cronon who view a place’s identity is continuously being influenced by outside forces. An example Cronon gives is the Kennecott town that grew prosper within thirty years because of the discover of copper which eventually leads to the flood of people there and how the discovery of copper in South America (cheaper copper) leads to the close down of the mines and evacuation of people. Because of Alaska’s climate and environment, people living in Kennecott are forced to trade with others for goods (foods mainly). Trade also leads to the introduction of other plants from outside. Railways were built later to supply the population with food. Those who came to Kennecott for copper drew up property lines to protect their interest while the locals are not aware of the importance of such events because they are nomads. Essentially Cronon’s argument is that to understand a place, one has to understand the connections it has with outside.
Some people argue that globalization, increase of communication, and pop culture expansion leads to the erosion of places. Edward Relph, a humanistic geographer addresses this issue in his book named Place and Placelessness. Relph argues that the more inside feeling we have for a place, the more we feel that we belong to it. Having only outside feelings would mean the destruction of place (placelessness). According to Relph, communication, disneyfication, museumization, and futurization of places are ways to destroy places. These methods destroy places because they basically turn everyone into outsiders who doesn’t even know the characteristics of their home. Marc Auge is another person who agrees with Relph in terms of non-placeness but doesn’t associate it with badness. Some of the non-placeness places include airport, Mc. Donald, fastfood places, or other places that everyone shares (not parks, but pop culture). Tuan also offers similar points by saying that places are starting to lose their significance because of the vast business expansion. Lucy Lippard, a writer for place gives another explaination of the relationship between communication and place by saying that the visitors of a place is what makes a place ‘the place’. Instead of destroying, the transportation only contributes to the mix of outsiders and a place.
The very last section of this chapter is an overview of all the things said. Humanists view place as the central meaningful thing to a human (a homey feeling). Feminists and Marxists view place as a source of oppression and unequal power distribution. Some such as Seamon, Pred, Thrift, and Massey thought of place as a process instead of a geography limitation. In general, there seemed to be two types of ways to describe places: a closed off geography, their boundaries, meanings, and locations; and the sense of place. The book argues that our sense of place is very great, let it be feelings or geographies that it’s impossible to think of a world without places. Through history there are three levels at which a place is being approached: descriptive approach (common sense), social constructionist (politics, sociology), and phenomenological approach (what forces make this place).
The last parts of chapter two seemed to be very interesting to me. They seemed to be ways to describe places as well as how to look at them differently. For me, I don’t see place as a process, event, or change. A place houses these things. Although I find it interesting that people are arguing that people are becoming outsiders of places (tourism) and that business expansion is destroying the uniqueness of a place, I would like to argue that the reason why people become outsiders is because they have the option to become outsiders. Compare to the ancient times where people stay in their town the entire life and not knowing any other places, the improvement of transportation allows people to know different “places” as comparing to people knowing only one place. This is definitely an improvement, although it’s true that they have less attachment to any particular place. The same argument can be viewed at from a different perspective however. Because of transportation improvement, we are able to not miss a place that much and be able to explore new places and become insiders of other places. Although the lack of good transportation forces people to stay at a place longer, they don’t feel like they are actually living, but waiting to return to their home town. It doesn’t matter how long they stay, they are forever “outsiders” of that place for unable to truly experience the place and let their feeling flow. The business cooperation’s expansion such as Mc Donalds everywhere doesn’t necessary leads to the deindividualization of a place. Let’s trade Mc Donald for something else, say road. Every place has its own roads, does it makes the place less unique? No. Another point I’d like to bring out is that these expansions, in order to adapt to the new “place”, will gradually become part of the place (culture, custom). Mc Donalds in Taiwan actually serve different types of food than those in the USA. In Taiwan, we have hamburger made out of rice. Disneys in different places are also being constructed differently. Although they all have the same marks and looks, the feel is actually very different in different places. Thus I dare say that business expansions does not necessary harm the uniqueness of a place, but contributes to it. I do agree that to look at a place, not only do we have to look at the particular geography, but also the connections with that place and events that have happened.
The second part of Chapter 2 review started off describing how other humanist geographers understand a place. David Seamon thinks that the daily actions that people display is the way to go studying a place. Seamon especially looks into the unconscious actions of inhabitants. The insiders of a place are though who does these routines unconsciously while those who know the routine appears to act unnatural compare to others. There’s one person who disliked the humanist’s place defining approach and that being Allan Pred. He described place as continuing to change and becoming something else. Pred instead tries to describe the world as an interaction of humans and structures, and this belief is known as structurationism. Structuratiopnists argue that people’s actions aren’t influenced completely by structures nor are they completely out of free-will. This applies to both the language system (we need to follow certain rules but we can talk differently) as well as to people in a society (we aren’t suppose to rob woman walking alone at night but we can). The structurationists also argue that these cultures and structures are subject to changes over time. UIUC for example is a structure that has been changing ever since it was founded. Because structures are subject to change, when studying them people should look at why the place was founded, how individuals negotiate with the rules of the place and how meanings of places change over time (according to the structurationist). Nigel Thrift is another structurationist alongside Allan Pred and Derek Gregory. Thrift developed a method that emphasizes events and practices of a place. Edward Sojo developed a similar way to look at places. It’s called trialectics of spatiality. Sojo comes up with three kinds of places, place, imagined place, and lived place. The first place (place) is the place. The second place (imagined place) is how people think of a place, which is what the humanists are doing. The third place is the lived place. The structurationist tend to look a place as an event because of its ever changing quality.
Several people such as Doreen Massey and Lucy Lippard argued that a place is shapped by numerous things that came from outside, let it be ideas, environment, or goods. Their views are very similar to environmental historians such as William Cronon who view a place’s identity is continuously being influenced by outside forces. An example Cronon gives is the Kennecott town that grew prosper within thirty years because of the discover of copper which eventually leads to the flood of people there and how the discovery of copper in South America (cheaper copper) leads to the close down of the mines and evacuation of people. Because of Alaska’s climate and environment, people living in Kennecott are forced to trade with others for goods (foods mainly). Trade also leads to the introduction of other plants from outside. Railways were built later to supply the population with food. Those who came to Kennecott for copper drew up property lines to protect their interest while the locals are not aware of the importance of such events because they are nomads. Essentially Cronon’s argument is that to understand a place, one has to understand the connections it has with outside.
Some people argue that globalization, increase of communication, and pop culture expansion leads to the erosion of places. Edward Relph, a humanistic geographer addresses this issue in his book named Place and Placelessness. Relph argues that the more inside feeling we have for a place, the more we feel that we belong to it. Having only outside feelings would mean the destruction of place (placelessness). According to Relph, communication, disneyfication, museumization, and futurization of places are ways to destroy places. These methods destroy places because they basically turn everyone into outsiders who doesn’t even know the characteristics of their home. Marc Auge is another person who agrees with Relph in terms of non-placeness but doesn’t associate it with badness. Some of the non-placeness places include airport, Mc. Donald, fastfood places, or other places that everyone shares (not parks, but pop culture). Tuan also offers similar points by saying that places are starting to lose their significance because of the vast business expansion. Lucy Lippard, a writer for place gives another explaination of the relationship between communication and place by saying that the visitors of a place is what makes a place ‘the place’. Instead of destroying, the transportation only contributes to the mix of outsiders and a place.
The very last section of this chapter is an overview of all the things said. Humanists view place as the central meaningful thing to a human (a homey feeling). Feminists and Marxists view place as a source of oppression and unequal power distribution. Some such as Seamon, Pred, Thrift, and Massey thought of place as a process instead of a geography limitation. In general, there seemed to be two types of ways to describe places: a closed off geography, their boundaries, meanings, and locations; and the sense of place. The book argues that our sense of place is very great, let it be feelings or geographies that it’s impossible to think of a world without places. Through history there are three levels at which a place is being approached: descriptive approach (common sense), social constructionist (politics, sociology), and phenomenological approach (what forces make this place).
The last parts of chapter two seemed to be very interesting to me. They seemed to be ways to describe places as well as how to look at them differently. For me, I don’t see place as a process, event, or change. A place houses these things. Although I find it interesting that people are arguing that people are becoming outsiders of places (tourism) and that business expansion is destroying the uniqueness of a place, I would like to argue that the reason why people become outsiders is because they have the option to become outsiders. Compare to the ancient times where people stay in their town the entire life and not knowing any other places, the improvement of transportation allows people to know different “places” as comparing to people knowing only one place. This is definitely an improvement, although it’s true that they have less attachment to any particular place. The same argument can be viewed at from a different perspective however. Because of transportation improvement, we are able to not miss a place that much and be able to explore new places and become insiders of other places. Although the lack of good transportation forces people to stay at a place longer, they don’t feel like they are actually living, but waiting to return to their home town. It doesn’t matter how long they stay, they are forever “outsiders” of that place for unable to truly experience the place and let their feeling flow. The business cooperation’s expansion such as Mc Donalds everywhere doesn’t necessary leads to the deindividualization of a place. Let’s trade Mc Donald for something else, say road. Every place has its own roads, does it makes the place less unique? No. Another point I’d like to bring out is that these expansions, in order to adapt to the new “place”, will gradually become part of the place (culture, custom). Mc Donalds in Taiwan actually serve different types of food than those in the USA. In Taiwan, we have hamburger made out of rice. Disneys in different places are also being constructed differently. Although they all have the same marks and looks, the feel is actually very different in different places. Thus I dare say that business expansions does not necessary harm the uniqueness of a place, but contributes to it. I do agree that to look at a place, not only do we have to look at the particular geography, but also the connections with that place and events that have happened.
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