Space, place & home
Edited book (chapter)
Chapter Title | Space, place & home |
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Book Chapter Category | Edited book (chapter) |
Book Title | Culture and identity, 2nd ed. |
Authors | |
Author | Austin, Jon |
Editors | Austin, Jon |
Page Range | 107-115 |
Number of Pages | 9 |
Year | 2005 |
Publisher | Pearson Education Australia |
Place of Publication | Frenchs Forest, Australia |
ISBN | 0733973299 |
Web Address (URL) | http://www.pearsoned.com.au/Catalogue/TitleDetails.aspx?isbn=9780733973291 |
Abstract | One of the most powerful locations or reference points for considering matters of individual and group identity is that of Home, with some commentators suggesting that it is the 'most important significance-giving factor in human life' (Cresswell, 2002, p 14). Home is that place, that point of reference for many of us that makes it possible to chart personal individual and group journeys. Home provides a singular reference point, in some cases, a place of safe haven for returning to - and in other cases, a place of horror and tragedy. With regard to this latter point, Rose (1993) has pointed out how home may not be that reassuring concept to many women (and some men) who experience home as a prison, a place of abuse, or, mundanely, a place of hard labour. (Cresswell, 2002, p 15) This chapter looks at notions of Home and spatial belonging as they help explain identity formation. Here, we will also link notions of individual belonging to the development of national identities, in particular Australian identity, and track some of the development of ideas about this space and place we now know as Australia. The purpose of this chapter is to expose the connections between the physical and the psychic insofar as coming to identify, to belong and to feel attachment to particular forms of being are rooted, almost literally, in locations that are at once physical (what were the addresses of the places you call Home?) and intellectual (what constitutes Home for you?). If, as Julian Murphett (2004, p 116) maintains, it is at least conceivable that we postmoderns live 'more spatially' than the moderns, who somehow had Understanding something of Place is also particularly important insofar as it is through the encounter The concept of place is central to our understanding of how people turn nature into culture by making it their home. Indeed, the warm coziness of 'home' as a general concept rubs off on the geographic appreciation of place. With increasing mobility that attaches to contemporary social life - whether that mobility be occasioned by forced or voluntary migration, holiday and business travel or repatriation of, for example, victims of natural and other disasters (witness the tsunami disaster in the Indian [Place] is an organized world of meaning. It is essentially a static concept. If we see that world as process, constantly changing, we would not be able to develop any sense of place ... Modern man [sic] might be so mobile that he can never establish roots and his experience of place may be all too superficial (Tuan, 1977,ppI79, 183). Herein we see another contributing factor to the growing sense of unease and anxiety described earlier in this volume as the postmodern angst. |
Keywords | identity; home |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 390399. Education systems not elsewhere classified |
390203. Sociology of education | |
470207. Cultural theory | |
Public Notes | Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions. |
Byline Affiliations | Faculty of Education |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/9ywvz/space-place-home
1995
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