Place and Non-place: A Phenomenological Perspective

Concepts such as non-place and placelessness can provide planners and designers with new insights to better capture the essence of place. This essay first reviews the literature of place and its byproducts, namely non-place and placelessness. Against such a backdrop, the paper then explores how the contemporary transformation of the three components of place, namely locale, location and sense of place, has contributed to a narrative of loss. Characterized by loss of meaning and loss of proper connection between locations, the geographies of 'otherness' and 'nowhereness' and the crisis of identity are among the major implications of this narrative.

Beyond the Postmodern: Space and Place for the Early 21st Century, 2015

This paper will investigate the validity and consistency of the discourse created around French anthropologist Marc Augé's concept 'non-place', considering its internal ambiguities and the contradictions arousing from different critics about the concept. Although Augé's clear and logical definition of non-place seems like a tautology, it's one of the most popular concepts in the discipline of architecture which is used as key theme in academic papers, workshops and theoric lessons related with post/super/hyper modernity, cinema, urban planning and especially with space in the general sense. The understanding and use of the concept seems mainly divided in two opposite absolute meanings. One of them positions Augé as an existentialist (in the Heideggerian sense) and a sedentarist metaphysicist advocating place against space, and the other one as a pioneer in the field of antropology breaking the authority of place and showing new possibilities of space (in a Deleuzian way) in the age of supermodernity. In addition to these, there is a research area dealing with the 'subjectivity problem' of the notion and in relation there are 'expansionists', who doesn't limit the non-places with transitional [transport, transit, commerce, leisure] spaces. This paper will try to show different oppositions and claim that the ambigious and contradictory position of Marc Augé is caused by his transitional position between postmodernity and over-modernity, by his requirements and restrictions coming from the discipline of anthropology and the related contradictory configuration of his theory. However, despite all the ambigious and contradictory character, the concept of non-place can still be used as a theoretical tool to expose and change the controlled spaces of late capitalism.

NOTE: The ideas and examples in this article are now much more fully developed in David Seamon, LIFE TAKES PLACE: PHENOMENOLOGY, LIFEWORLDS, AND PLACEMAKING (London: Routledge, 2018). The most important shift is the author's realizing that genius loci is part of a broader phenomenon that he identifies as "common presence"--"the material and lived 'togetherness' of a place impelled by both its physical and experiential qualities" (Seamon 2018, p. 87). I would ask readers of thIs article to complement their understanding by studying LIFE TAKES PLACE. ABSTRACT OF ORIGINAL ARTICLE: As recent phenomenological studies have demonstrated (Casey 1997, 2009; Malpas 1999, 2006; Mugerauer 2008; Stefanovic 2000), the phenomenon of place is a multivalent structure sophisticated and complex in its existential constitution. In this chapter, I offer one phenomenological vantage point from which to examine this lived complexity. I contend that, as an integral structure of human life, place can be understood in terms of three dimensions: first, the geographical ensemble—i.e., the material environment, including both its natural and human-made dimensions; second, people-in-place, including individual and group actions, intentions, and meanings; and, third, spirit of place, or genius loci. Drawing on the conceptual approach of “systematics” developed by the British philosopher J. G. Bennett, I argue that these three dimensions can engage in six different ways, each of which relates to one particular lived mode whereby place contributes to human life. These six modes are: (1) place interaction; (2) place identity; (3) place creation; (4) place intensification; (5) place realization; and (6) place release. I argue that place identity is important for understanding the nature of place but is complemented by other modes of relationship that together help clarify the complexity and richness of place and place experience.

This is the first part (slightly revised in September 2018 to correct typos) of an unpublished two part essay on the changes that have happened to place since the publication of my book Place and Placelessness in 1976. It considers how experiences of places have changed since then as a consequence of heritage protection, postmodernism, place branding, and placemaking. The second part examines changes because of increases in mobility, multi-centred living and electronic communications, and offers some theoretical speculations about heterotopia and the openness of place. While both essays draw on ideas I have published elsewhere or posted on my Placeness website, this comprehensive synthesis is new and unlikely to be published. The central theme is that there changes since 1975 have had profound implications for how places are made and experienced.

Open House International, 2018

This study aims to explore the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘place-experience’ within the context of Post-phenomenology. During 70’s, humanistic geographers have introduced ‘phenomenology of place’ as a revolutionary approach toward place, which has been largely condemned by Marxist, Feminist and Post-Structural critiques through the last three decades. Accordingly, this study attempts to merge these place-related critiques in order to clarify a new framework titled ‘Post-phenomenology of place’. ‘Post-phenomenology’, as a novel philosophical trend, is a merged school of thought, trying to re-read phenomenology based on Post-structuralism, Pragmatism and Materialism. In this study after a theoretical review on the formation of Post-phenomenology, the various aspects of place are discussed in order to clarify distinctions and paradoxes between phenomenological and Post-phenomenological understandings of place.

This is the second part (slightly revised in September 2018 to correct typos) of an unpublished two part essay on the changes that have happened to place since the publication of my book Place and Placelessness in 1976. It considers how experiences of places have changed since then as a consequence of increases in mobility, multi-centred living and electronic communications. The first part examines changes to the material identity of places. They draw on theories and ideas about place since 1975 and offer some theoretical speculations about heterotopia and the openness of place.. While both essays draw on ideas I have published elsewhere or posted on my Placeness website, this comprehensive synthesis is new and unlikely to be published. The central theme is that there changes since 1975 have had profound implications for how places are made and experienced.

This is a summarized version of my book Place and Placelessness, which was first published in 1976, and which is the foundation for all my subsequent writing about place. I have made this summary partly for the benefit of those who have not have read it, but also because I will soon post on Academia original essays about how I think places, experiences of places, and conceptualizations of place have changed in since 1976

Lund University Dissertation, 2003

In this thesis the notion of place is studied by way of investigating the “non-place” which is excluded or opposed, whenever a place is defined. “Non-place” is used here as a meta-concept, covering various recurring types of opposition to “place,” and it therefore represents a profoundly incoherent spectrum of realities and concepts. Hence, a “non-place” may in this investigation appear as “leftover areas in urban planning,” as “passage,” as “site,” as “utopia,” and as “inauthentic architecture.” The study is made in relation to a set of authors and artists chosen for their influence on contemporary aesthetics of place, and for their explicitly stated dichotomies as regards architectural, geographical or social space. These dichotomies (and authors) have been studied in three parts. In Part I: Places of Preference a group of authors and artists are discussed as conveying a negative view of the modern place-forms where “placelessness” replaced a traditional and culturally dense place. In Part II: Other Places the discussion of polarised notions of place is continued, but now with authors who may be regarded as having a view of non-places as useful. Here, deviance from a normal condition is seen as a prominent theme. Finally, in Part III: The Site-Specific, the notion of place is discussed in relation to the recent historical changes of the concepts of site-specificity and regionalism in art and architecture. The overall aim of the thesis is to show that when place is viewed in terms of dichotomies there is a risk of losing the perspective where social interaction, cultural multiplicity and individual activity is regarded. By focusing instead on placial variants, where the dichotomies are discussed in relation to a set of modalities, places may be regarded in their sociospatial and cultural diversity. The “wants,” the “needs,” the “musts,” the “wills,” i.e., the subjective or actantial influence on a spatial negotiation or an architectural realisation is then put into the foreground. To sharpen the modal approach a concentration should be held not on mere modulation of form where a house, a square or a park is given a slightly new shape, but on the significant alteration of a given comprehension, or use, of a place. This means also that several operators, on different actualising and realising levels, have to be considered when a place or a site-specific work is maintained or changed. Here, such place-formative processes have been studied as the modalities that apear in for instance exploitation, privatisation, domination and identification.

2014

What makes a place a place? A question that has eluded thinkers, from Aristotle to some of the leading social scientists of our age. Intuitively it can be sensed that ‘place’ belongs to a different register or modality of existence than other geographic signifiers such as ‘space’ or ‘site’. The question I wish to pose in this chapter is how we can find ways to begin to re-conceputalize place in a manner that, with the words of Donna Haraway (2010), ‘stays with the trouble’ of the entangled ontological complexity of the phenomenon of place instead of forcing us to succumb to unwarranted reductions. A conceptualization that may be of help in highlighting just how the concept of place appears to transverse the ingrained but highly artificial subject/object-divide which is latent in much of Western thinking. Instead I hope to showcase some of the intellectual tooling that may be of help in tracing the intertwinement, or even mutual constitution, of the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, as well as the ‘material’ and the ‘social’, which complex ontological phenomena such as places may help to open our eyes to. Borrowing words from Dovey, we can hopefully find some ways to explorehow to “move beyond a false choice between place as pre-given or as socially constructed” (Dovey, 2010:6).

2007

This paper investigates the role of spatial structure and “urban narrative” in individual’s experience of a “place”. The spatial structure describes the actual space that individual navigates and occupies through its everyday activities. Whereas the term “urban narrative” describes the factors in urban history and social culture that create an imagined space that evolves through historical time and is navigated through city’s cultural mythology. A main challenge that urban designers and planners are facing is of creating recognisable and valued “places” that people would like to live and work in. This paper deals with the nature of neighbourhood as spatial, social and economic phenomenon and brings to the fore the “sense of place” as its intrinsic characteristic. It is acknowledged that the latter has a long history of investigation. However, to date the research has focused either on individual’s perceptions or attitudes towards geographical spaces or the local design features of u...