Photo by Flickr user clazziPlace has often been viewed as a sedentary, romantic and somewhat conservative concept and as such it is frequently regarded with great suspicion. The same goes for the notion of 'home'. In a recent thoughtful article on the matter, Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting writes,
The article's argument is one that would surely be embraced by many a geographer. As Bunting correctly implies, the relations between place and identity are precarious and multifaceted. Places certainly have a significant part to play in making us who we are. However, it is not so much the case that we are in a simple sense determined by any one place, for example the place of our birth, but rather that each place we pass through on life's journey leaves its indelible mark upon us. I am particularly fond of the work of Proust, because it constantly reminds us that our identity is, in a sense, a never completed project. I would argue that it is no less a mistake to reify place, to treat it as something finalised and concrete. Places, like people, have many sides to them.
As well as, in part, making us who we are, the places in which we live, work and tarry also have a bearing on who we will be. A child born into a placeless world would be sorely impoverished by such a dire circumstance. Places are part of the inheritance we pass on to future generations, yet as many a writer has noted, we have been busy in recent decades creating a world without places, or at the very least a world in which all places seem alike. I believe that asserting the importance of place, far from betraying an underlying conservatism, is to assert the future of possibility. Places are where the future germinates, where possibilities emerge. Jeff Malpas, a philosopher who has enquired extensively into our relationship with place, articulates this view very succinctly when he writes,
Malpas, J. (1999) Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
"The politics of home have had a fraught and vicious history on the continent, and perhaps this explains how they have been set aside, and so deliberately ignored. But belonging can be reinterpreted and that's where a host of seemingly unrelated cultural responses to our predicament seem to be forging a new understanding"The article highlights a set of ideas that are currently refocusing attention on notions of home and the 'geography of our lives'. New localism and environmentalism are both identified as key to this recent re-engagement with place. Bunting goes on to reinterpret home and belonging as 'ongoing projects', the continuous result of a 'shared commitment' and not an allegiance to an unchanging common identity or homeland.
The article's argument is one that would surely be embraced by many a geographer. As Bunting correctly implies, the relations between place and identity are precarious and multifaceted. Places certainly have a significant part to play in making us who we are. However, it is not so much the case that we are in a simple sense determined by any one place, for example the place of our birth, but rather that each place we pass through on life's journey leaves its indelible mark upon us. I am particularly fond of the work of Proust, because it constantly reminds us that our identity is, in a sense, a never completed project. I would argue that it is no less a mistake to reify place, to treat it as something finalised and concrete. Places, like people, have many sides to them.
As well as, in part, making us who we are, the places in which we live, work and tarry also have a bearing on who we will be. A child born into a placeless world would be sorely impoverished by such a dire circumstance. Places are part of the inheritance we pass on to future generations, yet as many a writer has noted, we have been busy in recent decades creating a world without places, or at the very least a world in which all places seem alike. I believe that asserting the importance of place, far from betraying an underlying conservatism, is to assert the future of possibility. Places are where the future germinates, where possibilities emerge. Jeff Malpas, a philosopher who has enquired extensively into our relationship with place, articulates this view very succinctly when he writes,
"the idea of place does not so much bring a certain politics with it, as define the very frame within which the political itself must be located." (Malpas, 1999)This is spot on. Indeed, it is to put the horse back before the political cart.
Malpas, J. (1999) Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment