Cresswell-Working with place

"This chapter considers the way the concept of place has been and can be used in research. Because place is such a broad concept this is a potentially endless task." This last chapter of Cresswell's book explores many areas concerned with research and meaning in material space. "The particular research projects on place that people select are very dependent on what view of place they take at a theoretical level." The chapter starts with looking at four different examples of research ideas from different people and expands on them with examples.

            Creating a place in a mobile world

            Discusses the idea of people in transition and their use of space. Ex: Mhay- female contract worker who takes her temporary space and tries to make it familiar, Escobar's Colombian activists dealing with globalization

            Place and memory

            Talks about the effect of the past on present day places. “the ability of place to make the past come to life in the present and thus contribute to the production and reproduction of social memory” Ex: historical monuments like the Statue of Liberty and places like Auschwitz

            A nice place to live

            The changing of place to make it more comfortable leading to the exclusion of the “other” – gentrification and neotraditionalism Ex: New York’s Lower East Side in the 1980s, the urban village of Rancho Santa Margarita in Orange County California, post-war Britian ‘New Town’ Crawley.

            Regions and nations as places

            Discusses the idea of a nation as a whole place. “Theorists of the nation suggest that this is because the creation of the nation involves the creation of ‘imagined communities’ where people with nothing in common in their everyday lives believe themselves to be connected through the idea of a nation as place” Also talks about devolution and regionalization. Ex: Italy’s Northern League

            The second half of the chapter is concerned with Anachorism and the idea of people being in/out-of-place. Specifically the chapter goes into great detail about sexuality and space, homelessness, and refugees. 

Cresswell- Reading 'A Global Sense of Place'

"The purpose of this chapter is to consider, in some depth, how place has been thought through in a key reading from the discipline." Cresswell uses three examples by different authors for this discussion of 'A Global Sense of Place'. David Harvey (From Space to Place and Back Again), Doreen Massey's (A Global Sense of Place),  and John May with his writing on Stoke Newington. Each piece is used to talk about different aspects of the place discussed and how that relates to the other readings and their ideas. "Harvey pits the idea of place...against what he calls the 'uncontrolled vectors of spatiality' " Harvey seems to be more interested in the political economy of place of place than the other authors. "It is this mobility of capital that many see as the prime force of globalization and the main reason for the perceived homogenization of places around the world." Next is Massey's essay "a response that hinges on a redefinition of place as an inclusive and progressive site of social life" Massey questions the dominant views and presents new ways of thinking. She also talks about boundaries. "Boundaries, she argues, simply make distinctions between 'them' and 'us' and therefore contribute to a reactionary politics." Lastly May's ethnographic research of Stoke Newington is presented to show the multiple ways in which people can view the same place. 

Cresswell- The Genealogy of Place - part II

The phenomenological geographer Seamon believed in the idea of place related to human mobility. The habitual movements we makes as individuals and the mobility of groups that give place a feeling. "A 'place-ballet' is an evocative metaphor for our experience of place. It suggests that places are performed on a daily basis through people living their everyday life." Moving along with idea of place performance Pred sees place as something always changing and progressing. "Place is what takes place ceaselessly, what contributes to history in a specific context through the creation and utilization of a physical setting" Examples are given that aid the idea of place relying on the action of agents performing repetitively in space. Discussed next was Soja's notion of the 'trialectics of spatiality'. Place divided into a group of three. " Firstspace is the term he uses to describe empirically measurable and mappable phenomena... Secondspace is conceived space - space which is subjective and imagined... Thirdspace is lived space and it interrupts a distinction between perceived space and spatial practices." In the second section, Place Openness and Change, the concept of connected place is touched upon. Cronen tells a narrative of a small Alaskan town, Kennecott and the ideas of connected place were analyzed. Connection between spaces that effects their growth as a place and the connections between the layers of history in a place. In the third section Cresswell looked at the erosion of place. Relph was concerned about the loss of the feeling of places due to modern communication and the ideas of tourism and easy mobility. "Relph connects various forms of increased mobility to what he calls 'mass culture' and mass values which again dilute authentic relations to place." Auge was then introduced with the idea of non-place "sites marked by their transience - the preponderance of mobility". The second half of this chapter ended with a summary concluding that place can be seen at (at least) three levels, a descriptive approach to place, a social constructionist approach to place, and a phenomenological approach to place.

Cresswell- The Genealogy of Place - part I

The beginning of the second chapter seems again to inquire broadly about place. After the first introduction we move the definition of place down through history. First talking about Regional and Humanistic Geography and their influence on place. "In each case the focus was on differentiating once clearly defined region (place) from the next and explaining the logic of the definitions. While Herbertson looked to nature for this logic, Fleure looked to human characteristics." Next was the idea of home as the all important place that one can relate all place to. "he considers the house/home as a primal space that acts as a first world or first universe that then frames our understandings of all the spaces outside." Moving away from place as a concept it was next analyzed as social construct. "Place was not simply an outcome of social process though, it was, once established, a tool in the creation, maintenance and transformation of relations of domination, oppression and exploitation." Seeing it from a different angle, place can also be considered as human just being-in-the-world. "humans cannot construct anything without being first in place - that place is primary to the construction of meaning and society. Place is primary because it is the experiential fact of our existence." This first half of the chapter covered a lot of different ideas about place. What I found most interesting was the idea of place as non-place, where is place? " In other words there was no 'place' before there was humanity but once we came into existence then place did too."

Cresswell- Defining Place

"So what links these examples:?... One answer is that they are all spaces which people have made meaningful. They are all spaces people are attached to in one way or another. This is the most straightforward and common definition of place - a meaningful location."

This first chapter is all about introducing the idea of place and it's many meanings. Cresswell gives different examples of place, introduces them to us, and talk about how those spaces are "places" in their own way. Reading this first chapter helps us to shed the idea of place as a general word and gets us used to being more curious about it's definition. Moving toward the specific in the second half of the chapter, Cresswell talks about the relationship between space and place, landscape and place, and place as a way of understanding the world around us. 

"When we look at the world as a world of places we see different things. We see attachments and connections between people and place." 

Chandler - Semiotics for Beginners - Denotation, Connotation, and Myth

Denotation, connotation, and myth are analyzed in our second reading by Chandler. Denotation and connotation are terms describing the signifier and its signified talked about in our first reading. A denotation is definitional and a connotation is a personal or cultural assoication. Chandler spends time discussing the relationships between the two terms, the ideas behind them, and how they relate to semiotics as a whole.

"The first (denotative) order (or level) of signification is seen as primarily representational and relatively self-contained. The second (connotative) order of signification reflects 'expressive' values which are attached to a sign. In the third (mythological or ideological) order of signification the sign reflects major culturally-variable concepts underpinning a particular worldview - such as masculinity, femininity, freedom, individualism, objectivism, Englishness and so on."

Chandler - Semiotics for Beginners - Signs

The sign was discussed comparing and contrasting the ideas of the linguist Saussure and the philosopher Peirce. Saussure saw the sign as formed out of two parts the signified (concept) and signifier (form). Peirce, however, favored a triadic model with the use of the representamen, an interpretant, and an object.

a lot of questions and examples with varying and endlessly twisting and expandable answers...

So I liked the discussion about analog and digital signs, it was the most interesting for me, with the talk about linguistics coming in second. I feel that the interest I had in both can be seen as connected

“Analogical signs (such as visual images, gestures, textures, tastes, and smells) involve graded relationships on a continuum. They can signify infinite subtleties which seem ‘beyond words’. Emotions and feelings are analogical signifieds. Unlike symbolic signifiers, motivated signifiers (and their signifieds) blend into one another. There can be no comprehensive catalogue of such dynamic analogue signs as smiles or laughs.”

Personally I’ve found language and writing in general to feel limiting and simply less interesting

“Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently.”

Why then are there so many rules invested into language? 

“every sign acquires a history and connotations of its own which are familiar to members of the sign-users' culture. Saussure remarked that although the signifier 'may seem to be freely chosen', from the point of view of the linguistic community it is 'imposed rather than freely chosen' because 'a language is always an inheritance from the past' which its users have 'no choice but to accept”

“the graded quality of analogue codes may make them rich in meaning but it also renders them somewhat impoverished in syntactical complexity or semantic precision.”

I think that I’m willing to make the tradeoff.