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.