its 3am. do you know why i'm up?
thought: in reading massey's entertainingly surly chapters, there's a nice quote on page 12 by ross talking about how spaces transform us. made me think about how in defining the identity of a place, its inhabitants define themselves. there's a sort of cyclical feedback loop, where the space is shaped by and helps shape its occupants. it's not a one-way street: people enter and a space becomes a place as the people become those inside the place. i guess this might seem trivial, as we all act differently in different contexts, but what i think ross was getting at is that the different ways we act in these places help define our overall identity. we don't move in and out of static personas or places - these personas and places themselves help shape us and our other personas. talk about a nightmare for ethnography.
Comments
Hey Greg, I think you're on to something there. We need more reading in this class like we need a hole in the head (reading this, Paul?) but this E.S. Casey guy wrote a paper called "Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?" that is very much along the same lines as what you're talking about... about the ways that people don't just produce places, but that we carry places around with us and they are part of our identity. He spends perhaps 1/4 of that paper being just a little bit full of crap, but it is, on the whole, pretty interesting.
Posted by: metamanda | January 16, 2007 01:25 PM