Lunar New Year

Happy Chinese New Year ALL!!

Set the intention for perfect health, abundance, a joyous heart...and a loving tribe.

For your listening enjoyment...Chinese Pop Songs

A Sense of Place

Happy New Year!!!  WELCOME 2017!!

For your listening enjoyment.....

HOME

HOME!!

My Father's Father

I realize this has been my journey over the past 4 years!!...Finding a sense of place...MY PLACE!! Glad the universe has provided some food for thought from the What is a Sense of Place article... and others....perfect timing!!

“My heart wants roots
My mind wants wings.
I cannot bear
Their bickerings.”
― E.Y. Harburg

A Sense of Place–Jennifer Cross

"Adventurous, restless, seeking, asocial or antisocial, the displaced American persists by the million long after the frontier has vanished. He exists to some extent in all of us, the inevitable by-product of our history: the New World transient. He is commoner in the newer parts of America – the West, Alaska – than in the older parts, but he occurs everywhere, always in motion.

To the placed person he seems hasty, shallow, and restless. He has a current like the Platte, a mile wide and inch deep. As a species, he is non-territorial, he lacks a stamping ground. Acquainted with many places, he is rooted in none. Culturally he is a discarder or transplanter, not a builder or conserver. He even seems to like and value his rootlessness, though to the placed person he shows the symptoms of nutritional deficiency, as if he suffered from some obscure scurvy or pellagra of the soul."

What the scientists say–definitions

• Anthropology: Setha Low, “Symbolic Ties that Bind: Place Attachments in the Plaza”  “Place attachment is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space of piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment.... Thus, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, and includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place.”
• Environmental Psychology: Fritz Steele, The Sense of Place “Sense of Place: the particular experience of a person in a particular setting (feeling stimulated, excited, joyous, expansive, and so forth).” “Spirit of Place: the combination of characteristics that gives some locations a special ‘feel’ or personality (such as a spirit of mystery or of identity with a person or group).” “Setting: a person’s immediate surroundings, including both physical and social elements.”
• Geography: Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia “the affective bond between people and place or setting.” Such ties vary in intensity, subtlety, and mode of expression. Responses to the environment may be aesthetic, tactile, or emotional.
• Landscape Architecture/History: John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time “A sense of place is something that we ourselves create in the course of time. It is the result of habit or custom.... A sense of place is reinforced by what might be called a sense of recurring events.”
• Sociology: David Hummon, “Community Attachment: Local Sentiment and Sense of Place”  “By sense of place, I mean people’s subjective perceptions of their environments ant their more or less conscious feelings about those environments. Sense of place is inevitably dual in nature, involving both an interpretive perspective on the environment and an emotional reaction to the environment.... Sense of place involves a personal orientation toward place, in which ones’ understanding of place and one’s feelings about place become fused in the context of enviromental meaning.”

Relationships to place

"Many people are likely to have more than one relationship with a single place, and those relationships are likely to change over time. Regarding the level of analysis, people have relationships to places as small as a favorite rock next to the river, or as large as a geographical region." 

Biographical–

historical and familial–being born in and living in a place, develops over time; The strongest and most enduring relationships...are attachments based on personal history with a place. They are characterized by a strong sense of identification with place and a relatively long residence. In these relationships, place is an integral part of personal history. As such, biographical relationships require time to develop, and are strongest in communities in which one has spent more time. People describe their relationships in terms of cognitive, physical, and emotional connections. Whether one is a long-time resident or a newcomer, spending time in a place creates memories and experiences, which become part of a person’s individual and community identity.

Spiritual–

emotional, intangible–feeling a sense of belonging, simply felt rather than created; having significant relationships to places based on something much less tangible than personal history...relating to place in a profound way, of having a deep sense of belonging or resonance that is difficult to describe and is often unexpected...more of a intuitive connection than an emotional, cognitive, or material connection...a profound sense of belonging, sometimes mystical, and often intangible. Most people who describe feeling a spiritual connection speak of something they “just feel” rather than something they looked for or chose. They do not seem to require time to develop, nor do people describe them as a conscious choice. Spiritual relationship may be formed with a community or region in which a person was raised, or they may be formed with a place encountered later in life. 

Ideological–

moral and ethical–living according moral guidelines for human responsibility to place, guidelines may be religious or secular; founded on conscious values and beliefs about how humans should relate to physical places. The defining characteristic of ideological relationships is a well-articulated ideology about how to live in a place. For some this comes in the form of religious or spiritual teachings. For others, it is secular ethic of responsibility. It should be noted that all relationships to place are based on ideology, but most Americans are not self-conscious of their beliefs that provide guidelines for how to live in a place. Although there are big differences between those people living in a spiritual community and people who have created their own ethic of relationship to place, their self-conscious relationship to place is an important similarity which is absent from mainstream American culture. 

Narrative–

mythical–learning about a place through stories, including: creation myths, family histories, political accounts, and fictional accounts choosing a place based a list of desirable traits and lifestyle preferences, comparison of actual places with ideal; American school children become familiar with national myths and political accounts as they learn about Thanksgiving and early American history. Native American children learn about their region through creation myths. Some of us learn connection to particular places through family histories rooted in one place for several generations while others learn connection to the larger world through family histories rooted in migration. Whatever our own personal and family history, we also learn about places and regions through fictional accounts in books, movies, and television. As Americans, we have been inundated with national myths about the history of the West. Those images in films and novels shape our perceptions and expectations about places and teach us how to relate to those places. We all grow up with stories of places that teach us both about the history of that place and of our relationship to it. The stories that inform us about places include: creation myths, family histories, fictional accounts, local lore, moral tales, national myths, and political accounts. The role of each type of story or narrative plays a different role in different cultural contexts.

Commodified–

cognitive (based on choice and desirability); The defining characteristic of the commodified relationship is choice, the ability to choose a place with the best possible combination of desirable features. In regards to personal history, commodified relationships have little or nothing to do with personal history. Because they are founded on choice and a list of desirable traits, commodified relationships typically result from dissatisfaction with one community and the quest to find a more desirable place. This relationship is based on the match between the attributes of a place and what a person thinks is an ideal place. These relationships are more cognitive and physical than emotional. In this relationship to place the most significant emotional connections are to things or commodities like upscale restaurants and boutiques, and the natural environment, rather than to the larger community or relationships with other people.

Amenity migrants are the stereotypical example of people with a commodified relationship to place. In this relationship place is a commodity to be consumed, rather than a part of a person’s identity and history or a sacred place.  

Dependent–

material–constrained by lack of choice, dependency on another person or economic opportunity; The defining characteristic of dependent relationships is the aspect of choice. Typically these relationships are the result of having either no choice or severe limitations on choice. Some examples are: children who are dependent on their parents and don’t have a choice about where they live; elderly who have moved to be near caretakers either in their own home or in some kind of retirement facility; and people who have moved for a job or to be with a romantic partner. People who have a dependent relationship to the place, may have made a conscious choice to move, but it is typically not their first choice. Dependent relationships are primarily physical relationships. The relationship with place is typically based on the need to be near a job or another person. These relationships are noticeable lacking a positive emotional or mental connection. People in dependent relationships are often highly conscious of the differences between communities in which they have lived in the past and their current community.

So now... 

...more from Jennifer Cross: A person’s community attachment consists of their experience in a particular setting as well as their feelings about that place.

Rootedness–

Cohesive and Divided; some people have a strong attachment, identification and involvement with one community and others with two distinct communities. People with a sense of cohesive rootedness have a strong sense of attachment, identification, and involvement in one community. They generally have a positive assessment of the place and expect to continue living there. In contrast, those people with a divided rootedness think of themselves in terms of two communities. They have strong attachments to two places (or more??) and often have distinct identities associated with each place. Typically these people have a strong attachment to the community in which they were raised and to the community they have lived in as an adult. The other group of people who fits this category is commuters. If they have commuted for a number of years, they often have two distinct sets of social ties and identities in their home and work communities.

Place Alienation–

People who are alienated often have a negative assessment of the place, do not identify with the place and are not highly satisfied with the place. This category actually has several different types of people in it. Some people are alienated from a place because they have been forced to move from a place in which they were rooted to a place in which they are not, such as: children whose parents move; elderly who move to be near caretakers; and adults who move for a job or to be with a significant other. Other people may be dissatisfied because the place they love and feel rooted in has changed around them. Although I think the word displaced better describes the experiences of these people. [Some] have similar feelings of displacement not because they have moved, but because so many people have moved in around them. This category is characterized by the loss of a deep sense of rootedness.  

Relativity–

Many people who fit into this category have lived in so many places in their life that they are not strongly rooted to any particular community. They are more likely to identify their sense of home with either their house or the world more generally than any particular community. They are also likely to identify with more than one place, such as people who are bi-coastal. They differ from people with a sense of rootedness in two ways. They feel “at home” anywhere instead of in a specific place, and their identity is not strongly tied to their community of residence. In this category, people are likely to think of their house and community as home, but their sense of home is highly mobile and lacks the biographical and emotional depth of those with a sense of rootedness. The ability of individuals to feel at home anywhere and in many places is likely the result of having learned to cultivate a sense of home in a variety of different communities. 

Uncommitted Placelessness–

Persons falling into this category are characterized by a lack of place-based identification and a lack of emotional attachments to particular places. The main difference between relativity and placelessness is that in relativity people have a mobile sense of “home” and can cultivate a sense of home wherever they are, in placelessness people do not have an articulated or place-based sense of home. [Maybe the least common category?? The author identified those] who expressed little identification or emotional attachment to places were people in their late teens and twenties [suggesting] that developing attachments to particular places is closely connected to the lifecourse. [Perhaps] many young adults have yet to become attached to or develop identifications with particular places.

Final thoughts–from Jennifer Cross

"Fritz Steele....summary of the relational nature of senses of place:
Relationships between people and places are transactional:

• The relationship between people and environment is transactional: people take
  something (positive or negative) from and give or do things to the environment;
  these acts may alter the environment’s influence on the people.
  
• The concept of place should actually be psychological or interactional, not just physical. The environment is made up of a combination of physical and social features; the sense of place is an experience created by the setting combined with what a person brings to it. In other words, to some degree we create our own place, the do not exist independent of us.
  
• There are, however, certain settings that have such a strong “spirit of place” that they will tend to have a similar impact on many different people. The Grand Canyon and the left bank of the Seine in Paris are excellent examples.
  
• Settings obviously have an impact on people, both short-term and long-term, and there are some patterns to this impact. "