Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience

Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (2002 [1977])
By Yi-Fu Tuan

Synopsis: This book takes a humanistic approach to space and place, noting that "how the human person, who is animal, fantasist, and computer combined, experiences and understands the world is the central theme of this book" (5). It contains chapters dealing with the experiential perspective, body and spatial relations, the child and space/place, crowding and spaciousness, mythical space and place, architectural space and awareness, spatial ability, time, intimate experiences of place, attachments to homeland, and visibility. [As usual, his style is very poetic and flowy, and though it does contain many great stand-alone lines, I always feel like there isn't anything to do with his work.] His main argument seems to be: "Place is security; space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other" (3). This book is very focused on the ways humans experience space/place - both how they negotiate their way in it and how they infuse it with meaning - though of course cultural influences are ever-present and infuse all negotiations with space/place. Tuan is concerned with the mystical and meaning-infused elements of place - i.e. the sacred meaning of certain directions (or lack of meaning - as in modern U.S.). My favorite part here is the use of symbolism to give people of a nation-state a sense of meaningful coherence. "Place is an organized world of meaning" (179). There is an overall mystical sense to his writing.

Interacts With:

This book supposedly helped establish the field of human geography.
Still not sure how this explicitly connects to everything, though it apparently does. Obviously connects to the anthologies in praise of him.

Mapping American Culture

Mapping American Culture (1992)

Eds. Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner

Asks us to reground American studies in place. A compilation largely indebted to the work of Yi-Fu Tuan. Book includes ideas that support American dichotomy of restlessness/mobility and home/rootedness.

Yi-Fu Tuan:

Place and culture are “inextricably intertwined” (29)

Geographers and anthropologists just foreground different things

Humans have a seen to see order and patterns

Humans area unique and isolated, and place and culture “are a salve…for the threatening awareness of being alone in a world that is ultimately unresponsive” (39).

We are basically intensely alone.

Mondale:

Describes the experience of a first-generation migrant from a Tuanian-perspective (54).

“Clustering” as a strategy for those leaving home

Wants someone to further explore the experiences of those who migrate by force or by choice

Schultz:

How do we reconcile the tension immigrants feel between the Old World and the New World?

Rolvaag’s book is infused with a folkloric landscape; “physical landscape as repository of supernatural power” (100).

Question is, to maintain or lessen the culture’s heritage and traditions?

Allen:

Focuses on Southern identity and black gospel culture

How do Southern rural black transplants to urban places maintain a “southern/rural” identity?

Urban/North, Rural/South dichotomy is still strong

Authentic Southerness as backward-looking (129)

Old South as a state of mind that can be transferred to other locales

Souther-style Black religiosity as social capital transportable to new urban situations; used to increase a feeling of connectedness

“Aspects of traditional and modern social identity are simultaneously expressed in public performance, as this community of southern, rural church people strives to bring meaningful order to the northern, secular urban environment they now call home” (133).

Scheese:

*This is a good one*

Connection between mental and physical space

“Because they are alienated, inhabiters and travelers often separate themselves from society and seek transcendence in the natural world.” (143).

Thoreau felt one could not find wildness without unless it exists within.

“What takes place in mental or verbal space is as important as what occurs in physical space” (145).

Meyer:

Writers of 18^th-19^th century sought to mentally possess land as the new settlers had physically; hence such literary tradition “enacts a desire for landscape as both whore and virgin – the eternally possessible and the eternally unpossessed” (154).

Poetic representation as a an act of ownership

Wallace:

Concerned with way “language structures and articulates experiences of place” (170).

Lake Wobegon

What about diff between myth and reality?

Davis:

Landscape photography

Walker Evans and use of photos as vehicles of thick description

Evans’ work as canonization of the Depression-era landscape

FSA project as changing how we viewed landscape; took voice away from those who actually lived the situation

New Topographers as unsympathetic to reality of inhabitants

Postmodern anthro as giving back the insider voice

Bill Owen’s inclusion of quotes as example of polyvocality

AMS scholars should blend technique of photographers and anthropologists

Simon:

Shopping mall as formal garden of today, as gardens represent the ideal society of the time [so consumption is out ideal now???]

The new flaneur has “turned the city back into a place of play” (via consumption) (247)

Hales:

Manhattan Project; all site steeped in Am. Landscape mythology

Labels: Place, Yi-Fu Tuan, photography, appropriation, migration