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 Old and outdated places will be destroyed while new places will form.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.