Topic > Analysis of various approaches to sense of place

“Place is how we give meaning to the world and how we experience the world' Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The world could be seen as a variety of different places that give us the opportunity to see and understand it better. There are several approaches to the concept of place in the fields of cultural and social geography, anthropology and environmental psychology which are examined in this essay “The Sense of Place”. Disciplines such as anthropology and cultural geography consider the notion of “place” through the humanistic interpretive framework and by studying human experience. While cultural geographers such as Harvey and Soja look at “place” through the lens of neo-Marxist critique focusing on political action and institutional, local and global power relations. Environmental psychology defines the notion of “place” as a range of shared values ​​created through perceptual experiences of places underpinned by concepts of place attachment, sense of place, and place identity. In the field of philosophy, place is a means of being in the world. While, in architectural and design practices, the place is considered mainly from the perspective of physical attributes and the built environment, leaving the dimension of individual and collective meanings underestimated. For a long time, the dominance of spatial science guided by a descriptive approach has restricted the notion of place only to the dimensions of distinctiveness and particularity. As a result, aspects of the human experience of place were overlooked. Only a few decades ago, in the field of humanistic geography, Tuan introduced one of the fundamental ideas of the theory of places, arguing that through our experience and perception of places we learn about the world. Turan suggested that the notion of “place” differs from more abstract and functional notions such as “location” and “spaces” because places are fields of care imbued with meanings and feelings based on human experience, social relationships, emotions, as well as thoughts. The term “topophilia” included the “emotional bond between people and a place. “A place can be as small as the corner of a room or as large as the earth itself: that the earth is our place in the universe is a simple fact of observation for nostalgic astronauts… Geographers tend to think of place as having the size of a settlement: the square within it can be considered a place, but usually not the individual house, and certainly not that old rocking chair by the fireplace”. In “Place and Placelessness”, Relph argues that everyday experience plays a key role in understanding and knowing place. Influenced by the philosophical works of Heidegger and the philosophy of phenomenology, Relph appealed to the essence of place, asking “what makes a place a place?” and has developed a series of characteristics that reveal the essence of place and the human experience of place such as visibility, sense of community, sense of time and the value of rootedness. Relph distinguished 3 elements that build place: “physical environments”, “human activities” and “meanings”. Lately he explained: “A place is more than a place. “Place” meant “those fragments of human environments in which meanings, activities, and a specific landscape are all implicated and enmeshed in each other.” In this way, “place” can be described as a geographical place characterized by specific meanings, memories, sensual experiences, stories and interpretations. In the social sciences, Agnew defined place as a “significant place.” He indicated “location”,)..