Dis-placed voices: sense of place and place-identity on the Sunshine Coast

The geographical literature on place interrogates, amongst other notions, sense of place, place identity, and their connections or disruptions. Although notions of place are multiple and very fluid, place transformation in rural and regional areas may be more rapid than the changing understandings of place held by residents. This research examines notions of place held by residents on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, one of the fastest growing ‘sea change’ regions in the nation. It presents a reading of empirical material that suggests sense of place and place-identity cannot be easily equated in the region. Sense of place was more important to rural and long-term residents than was the place-identity. Landscape change in the region is narrated, and images of place-identity interpreted, to suggest that place-identity has been created and imposed by the globalising forces of development, rather than emanating from many resident's perspectives. Those local voices have been, and continue to be, successively displaced and disrupted. Thus discursive power in various ways shapes and is shaped by dominant place-identity in the region, and some voices are blocked by the discourses of urbanisation. The unequal geographies of power shaping the regional landscape need to be acknowledged within place transformation processes. These geographies of power suggest that sense of place can be thought of as a ‘view from the bottom’, while place-identity primarily functions as a ‘view from the top’.     

Narrative claims on regions: prospecting for spatial identities among social movements in Finland

Regions have been regarded as processes, artefacts and discourses, and recently as ‘brands’ that various stakeholders use in marketing. Discourses on institutional regions are typically promoted by media, governmental bodies and planning organizations that draw on reputed collective regional identities—the expressions of past and current social discourses and cultural practices. However, such institutional regional discourses are often incongruous to spatial imaginaries of everyday life. This article scrutinizes the meanings of spatial attachment to citizens and explores to what extent regional identities are meaningful in everyday life. To avoid biased assumptions, focus-group interviews were carried out within four Finnish provinces among the members of four social movements. The results show that provincial spaces are not actively thought-and-practiced. Spatial identities are rather structured around personal experiences that typically accumulate in several locales, since personal histories are increasingly characterized by mobility. This article also recognizes that the everyday meanings of a socially constructed region are often generationally read and combine different historical narratives.     

Adopting ‘things of the little’: intangible cultural heritage and experiential authenticity of place in the Jewellery Quarter,Birmingham

The paper discusses notions and experiences of authenticity of place in relation to intangible cultural heritage. Drawing on qualitative informant interviews with representatives of traditional and new businesses in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (UK), it analyses authenticity of place with regard to three key dimensions: the experience of origins, the experience of continuity and the experience of potentiality and actuality. Findings suggest that intangible cultural heritage activates and facilitates experiences of authenticity, often related to people’s individual identity constructs and associated benefits or detriments. Some heritage concepts have evolved from their narrowly defined historic context and inform experiences of authenticity in the present.     

The entanglement of the heritage paradigm: values,meanings and uses

This paper explores the ways in which heritage as a practice and concept has been used and diverse meanings and values ascribed to heritage by different claimants, using the medieval site of Ani in eastern Turkey as a case study. On one hand, the site marks a point of conflict between Turks and Armenians, with the heritage and the past of the site playing an important role for identity making and construction of national narratives, as well as developing what might be seen as the authorised heritage discourses for both sides. On other hand, the local community around the site has developed a different relationship to the site Ani because of their daily relationship with its landscape and built environment. This has revealed meaning and values embodied in the site that are beyond the national and political level. This paper considers to what extent the built environment in particular, can play a role in identity making and add to the political tension. It also examines how the value and meaning of a heritage site can be distinct for local communities from national political meanings and uses, and, as a consequence, can be used to resist authorised heritage discourses.     

Mosaic art in modern Israel and the construction of a sense of place

The article deals with the construction of a narrative and sense of place among the Jewish immigrant‐settler society in 20th century Israel in the context of its efforts to establish a national collective identity on indigenous (i.e. authentic) foundations and with the symbolic struggle with the Palestinian national movement as its backdrop. The case study under discussion is the instalment in public spaces of mosaic decorations inspired by ancient Jewish mosaics unearthed in archaeological excavations. I argue that intentionally or unintentionally, these decorations functioned as agents in the construction of an authentic narrative and a sense of place by producing a link between the current and the ancient Jewish presence in the place. This practice went hand‐in‐hand with the hegemonic national dogma about the link between an ancient, allegedly glorious era of the Jewish people in Palestine, and the modern Zionist project.     

CHOOSING RESIDENCE,COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBOURS ‐THEORIZING FAMILIES’ MOTIVES FOR MOVING1

This article takes its point of departure from an ongoing research project that examines the connection between everyday life and choice of residence. The first component of this empirical study is an investigation of reasons given by families for moving out of Copenhagen to a commune ‐ Absalons Have in Trekroner – in a new suburban area close to the city of Roskilde (located approximately 25 km west of Copenhagen). The research examines the connection between this choice of residence and the everyday lives of the families, including why this form of residence ‐ the commune ‐ is attractive to them. What kinds of needs do the families have and how can the new residence fulfil these needs? This article examines these questions, first, by outlining a theoretical discussion of how to capture the connection between everyday life and residence. Here concepts such as “sense of place”, “the social construction and use of place”, “meaningful places”, and how place experiences play a central role are examined. Second, the article presents findings from an empirical study examining families’ choice of Trekroner and the commune Absalons Have.     

Patterns in the Survival of Catholic National Parishes, 1940-1980

National parishes represent the primary institutional response of the Catholic Church to its ethnic diversity in the United States. The national parish differs from the more common territorial parish in the definition of its membership, which comprises all Catholics in an area sharing a specific ethnic or national background. This study examines patterns in the survival of German, Italian and Polish national parishes between 1940 and 1980. Factors related to characteristics of a parish's institutional environment and of the ethnic community it serves have strongly influenced parish survival. These factors include the parish's ethnic affiliation, the size of the ethnic community it serves, the diversity of national parishes present at the local and diocesan level and the process of parish consolidation in places where an ethnic group has formed more than one parish. Through the effects of these factors, national parishes have declined at a much faster rate in the Middle West than in the Northeast, regions in which the vast majority of national parishes were originally established. Catholic ethnic diversity should thus continue to contribute most significantly to American cultural pluralism within the latter region.     

他者,权力与地方建构:想象地理的研究进展与展望

本文通过对相关文献的梳理,对想象地理的理论起源及研究内容进行了总结与分析。根据想象的主体和想象对象的地理尺度差异,国外想象地理研究主要分为两个流派:一是探讨后殖民主义语境下"西方"对"东方"的文化形象的话语建构;二是研究"作者"通过地理文本的生产,以想象的方式对地方的文化形象进行重构的过程。同时,文章通过分析国外近30个实证案例,指出想象地理在地方的文化建构和空间文化意义的生产等文化地理重要话题的研究中都具有重要的作用,并据此对国内想象地理研究提出了展望。     

“全球的地方感”理论述评与广州案例解读

关于地方文化意义的研究在西方人文地理学研究中占据着重要的地位.全球化背景下,地方的意义正在被全球性力量中和与消解.在这种断裂之下,原有的对于“地方性”的想象反而在认同形成的过程中被不断加强.本土社会力图在一个“时空压缩”的“超空间”时代中,保存其自身基于地方意义的身份认同.哈维认为,一切基于地方意义形成的认同都是反动与禁锢的.他提出,应从资本运作的角度出发,理解地方差异的形成,从而理解地方建构中的社会关系与权力关系的建构.但马西则在批判哈维理论的基础上提出了全球(进步)的地方感理论,指出应从多样的社会建构出发,理解地方性的形成过程.马西认为,地方的本质特点包括:开放以及与外界密切的社会联系;地方本身是一个过程,认同在不断的再建构过程中;地方内部具有其认同的多样性;进步的地方感并不否认地方性的存在等.基于马西的进步地方感理论,研究通过对广州关于移民以及粤语传承问题讨论中出现的话语进行的文本分析,指出广州本地社会在上述讨论的过程中,其少部分话语已经呈现出进步地方感所批判的禁锢性,因此需要在重新认识地方的过程中加以修正.     

Snow Fences: Then and Now

Snow fences are an increasingly widespread cultural feature in the great east-west “snow belt” of the northern hemisphere. They are there not only to protect railroads, highways and buildings from the hazards of blowing snow, but also whole towns subject to the ravages of avalanches. Although their origin is unknown, their construction and use have been advanced and improved greatly by many experimenters of more than a dozen nationalities since the middle of the 19th century.

A modern example of snow fence use is analyzed for a locally named section of Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins in southern Wyoming known as the “Sno Chi Minh Trail.” Here big systems of mostly 12 feet high snow fences line more than half of the western side of the highway for 50 miles. They have reduced accidents and plowing costs by significantly improving visibility in “ground blizzards” of fast-blowing snow.     

社会建构主义视角下的区域：研究综述与启示

区域一直是地理学研究的核心概念。近些年来，如同“空间”和“地方”在本体论和认识论的变化，“区域”的含义也受到了由空间分析范式转变所带来的挑战和修正。基于这种背景，本文梳理了从社会建构主义视角理解区域问题的相关文献，并归纳了主要研究议题。研究发现：区域的含义逐渐从封闭性、有边界的、稳定的领域性特征转向开放性、可渗透的、流动的关系性特征。当前区域的社会建构的研究议题主要包括区域身份的形成与建构、区域的制度化与去制度化、区域化与区域发展三个方面。值得指出的是，区域的社会建构不是要摒弃区域具有固定领域形状的观点，而是要看到经济、社会和政治力量对区域变化的影响，理解区域是制度化、社会建构和政治上存在争议的空间。更重要在于，探讨区域在领域性和关系性之间的相互作用并对区域发展的影响。此外，文章试图廓清“区域”和“地方”这两个术语在人文地理研究中的区别和联系。最后讨论了运用社会建构主义视角看待区域问题的方法论意义，并进一步提出了国内未来研究值得关注的方向。     

Experiencing virtual places: insights on the geographies of sim racing

Virtual spaces have emerged as everyday life spaces in contemporary societies. Very quickly, they have gained a cultural role in the daily life of their users, as these new territories gain their own communities, ideologies, and spatializations. However, little is known about how place is experienced in these different realms. This study seeks to understand place experience in virtual spaces, taking the sim racing virtual spaces as a case study and endeavoring to build a bridge between theory and empirics. This study uses ethnographic methods, which included a year-long participant observation period and a set of 20 in-depth interviews with users, in order to understand their narratives of the virtual geographies of two sim racing videogames: Gran Turismo and rFactor. The results of the study show that spirit of place, place ballets, and sense of place exist just as well among users of virtual spaces—despite the particularities of these new territories and their remaining tensions.     

Muslim immigrants' sense of identity and belonging in the Western world: A comprehensive review

In recent years, much has been written about the growth of anti‐immigrant sentiment in Western countries. Propagated by the fastest growing party family, far right‐wing parties, there is growing support in Western populations in favour of scapegoating Muslim immigrants for economic, cultural and security problems. However, less has been written on how Muslim immigrants feel about their host country. What is their sense of belonging and identification with their country of residence? In this review article, we summarise the results of 29 studies that explicitly focus on questions of integration, national identity and sense of belonging of Muslim immigrants. The studies we review document a range of outcomes, varying from a low sense of belonging and attachment to the country of residence to extremely high integration levels and loyalty. It seems that most variation depends on the country of residence at the macro‐level and on their education at the individual level.     

The Land of Allium: an exploration into the magic of place

Magical. A common adjective used to describe places. But does the magic of place spring from genius loci? Or could it be that we are the magicians, casting spells to transform places into what we desire (or what we fear)? Our sense of place is not a mirror on reality. We come to know places by inscribing our fantasies atop them, by writing onto the landscape our own imagined geographies. C.S. Lewis provides an intriguing glimpse into sense of place through the Pevensie children and their experience in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: a mere wardrobe becomes a complex fantasy world in which the children play and interact. As adults, and as societies, we take real geographies and treat them as Lewis's wardrobe, creating Narnias in the depths of our most mundane landscapes. In this paper I explore the magic of place through an autobiographical photo essay set in a nature preserve in eastern Kansas. The stories I tell highlight in a literary and artistic way the phenomenological aspects of sense of place and the potential political import of the geographical imagination.     

论加强民族地区党的先进性建设和执政能力建设

民族地区党的先进性建设和执政能力建设,必然要体现少数民族和民族地区的特点,必须结合各民族共同团结奋斗、共同繁荣发展的伟大实践。只有紧紧围绕贯彻党的民族政策、加强民族团结、维护祖国统一和加快民族地区经济社会全面发展的实践,才能使民族地区党的先进性建设和执政能力建设得以真正实现。     

Metropolitan Colonisation and the Reinvention of Place: Class Polarisation along the Cessnock‐Pokolbin Fault‐Line

This paper examines the emergence of a sharply delineated socioeconomic and sociocultural fault‐line between Cessnock's former coal towns and the immediately adjacent Hunter Valley Wine Country, centred on Pokolbin. We provide evidence that divergent culturally‐related class identities act as mutually reinforcing constraints on reciprocity between job‐deficit former coal towns and the job‐surplus wine country. We relate this to a consideration of time‐space dimensions in the interdependencies between the class and place identities of Cessnock and Pokolbin. These identities have been influenced by metropolitan colonisation, with the markedly differentiated absorption of these two locales into the enlarged metropolitan population‐work‐welfare‐housing‐leisure agglomeration. Further, we propose that the former coal towns and the wine country can both be seen as place‐specific representations of wider class‐related changes within Australian society. Our interpretations are founded on three current research directions: first, the role of culture as a critical intervening variable in class identities and actions; second, the current flux in class formations, most notably the loss of self‐identity and solidarity in the working class and the emergence of a new middle‐class sector dedicated to self‐realisation and self‐fulfilment; and third, recognition of class formation as a geographical process.     

积极开展海洋人文地理学研究促进我国海洋开发

海洋经济地理研究工作大体上是从我国进行全国海岸带调查时开展起来的,前后开展了海岸带(包括从岸线起陆上10公里至水下-15米〈实际已达-35米〉的地带)的资源调查与评价、社会经济调查与评价、资源利用与开发设想,以及乡镇、县和市的综合开发研究(例如小区综合开发试验和县、市国民经济发展综合规划的研究)等项研究工作,取得了一批成果,也积累了一些经验,特别是发现了一些问题.由于这一时期是以     

桂林旅游景区书法景观符号效应分析

书法景观是具有中国特色的特殊文化景观和文化符号,广泛应用于旅游景区而成为旅游景观的一种重要类型.本文以桂林旅游景区的书法景观为案例进行研究,结果表明,书法景观作为旅游景区的重要人文景观,旅游者总体上对其具有较高的认知和鉴赏兴趣;书法景观对旅游者产生了一定程度的符号效应,具体表现在书法鉴赏、文化象征、审美引导3个方面,对应于外在行为、文化环境知觉、景观审美活动3个层次的行为效应.书法景观的符号效应在书法鉴赏方面存在显著差异,而在文化象征和审美引导方面无显著差异.书法景观符号效应研究对于揭示人们的地方感和环境行为与书法景观之间的关系、旅游景区书法景观的设计和景区文化氛围的营造等具有指导意义.     

Defining the community of interest as thematic and cognitive regions

When deciding where to draw the boundaries for electoral districts, officials often strive to ensure that communities of interest are not split up but kept wholly within those boundaries. But what constitutes a community of interest is vague, with legal and academic sources describing either a thematic region with shared demographic and land-use traits, or a cognitive region that is meaningful to people and commonly agreed upon. This study, conducted in the city of Santa Barbara, California, seeks to identify communities of interest at the sub-city level as both thematic regions—by clustering Census tracts and land parcels according to classes of relevant variables—and cognitive regions—by surveying residents about the size and locational extent of their community and finding areas of agreement. We then assess the degree to which the two types of regions overlap as a way to evaluate how well the two meanings correspond. We also examine the amount of overlap between the two sets of regions and the city council electoral districts that were recently created in Santa Barbara. Our study finds that the two types of regions correspond relatively well to each other in this test city, but that the electoral districts correspond more to the thematic regions, understandable given that the district creation made no attempt to survey residents about their beliefs.     

Home away from home: meanings of the American truck stop

This paper explores the place attachments of long-haul truck drivers to the truck stop. The feelings and ideas truckers have about truck stops are based upon the function these businesses play in the truckers' mobile lifestyle and the social interactions that are performed within those spaces. Drivers' relationships to these stops also illustrate that modernity and the prevalence of homogenized places do not result in placelessness because feelings and perceptions about these places are based upon the role these businesses play in the everyday tasks of long-haul drivers.