' "Non-place" is the invention of a French Anthropologist, Marc Augé, who
couldn't understand that places can change. From his ethnographic point of
view, all places that are not defined in the frame of a tribal society are
"non-places" '.
While a broad range of criticisms can and have been made of Augé's work, the
above judgement by Mathis Stock is somewhat of a generalisation. As Augé
puts it: non-place 'never exists in pure form':
.places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in
it; . Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is
never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like
palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is
ceaselessly rewritten. (Augé, 1995: 78-79).
I would also suggest that Non-place (or non-lieu) cannot really be construed
to be the 'invention' of Augé. He developed his stance on 'non-lieux' from,
and contrasted it with, De Certeau's writings on non-lieu in "L'Invention du
Quotidien" - although this was translated in "The practice of everyday life"
as 'nowhere'.
Pete Merriman
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Dr. Peter Merriman
Department of Geography
The University of Reading
Whiteknights
Reading
RG6 6AB
United Kingdom
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mathis Stock" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 6:27 PM
Subject: Re: Final CFP - Knowledge in Place: AAG 2003
Yes, David, you are absolutely right.
"Non-place" is the invention of a French Anthropologist, Marc Augé, who
couldn't understand that places can change. From his ethnographic point of
view, all places that are not defined in the frame of a tribal society are
"non-places".
A more adequate reference would have been Edward Relph's "Place and
placelessness", written some 25 years ago (see the appreciation in PIHG,
2000, n°4).
But does that mean that the way of studying places and of conceiving the
place concept haven't evolved since then?
In my point of view, yes, despite of the efforts of Entrikin's "Betweenness
of place" and the locality debate in the 1990's.
The reason lies, among others, in the gap between subjectivist approaches
and objectivist approaches, which results in the gap between place and
space. But there is no conceptional reason for it. It lies also in the quite
unserious conception of so-called "post-modern geography" which is critique
only within the discipline, but is not capable to appreciate adequately such
"new" places as Center Parcs, tourist places, shopping malls, quickly called
post-modern places or non-places in order not to treat them as they
"deserve": symetrically to the "habitual" places geographers deal with.
In French geography, the anglo-american "place" would be termed
"territoire". So we've got the "place" concept left to fill it with other
definitions, for example that of a special type of space in which the
distance doesn't play any role, whereas the area would be a space where
distance plays a role for human interaction. That's the conception of
Jacques Lévy in his L'espace légitime (1994) or his Le tournant géographique
(1999), two important books for an analyis of the spatial dimension of
society.
Good luck in New Orleans, 2003: a new place/space distinction will maybe
emerge.
mathis
le 14/08/02 17:51, David Wood à [log in to unmask] a écrit :
>> Place can be configured not simply as physical place (as landscape,
> built environment, street), but also as cyberspace (virtual realities,
> chat rooms and multi-user spaces), and in a postmodern sense as
> non-place (service stations, shopping malls and air terminals).
>
> Non-place? Why not post-place, since it's post-modern. It's about as
> meaningless. These are not non-places. They are most certainly firmly
> located and have identity (surely the first criteria for 'place'): it is
> just that the identity derives from generic cultural forms and
expectations,
> and the specific location relates to economic and historically-contingent
> reasons. Surely it is our job to define what phenomena consist of, what
are
> their qualities and connections, not just what they are not (especially if
> this is not even true in common sense).
>
> I suppose the question then is: what is a 'place'?... since I have so
> arrogantly assumed that I know what one is!
>
> David.
>
> PS:The tendency towards negative definition is going a bit far - I
recently
> saw an (entirely serious) reference to 'post-post-modern' in another Call
> for Papers.
>
> PPS: I would love to go and argue my case in New Orleans - unfortunately I
> can't afford to go to New Orleans, and can't justify it environmentally
> either.
>
>
> Dr David Wood
> Global Urban Research Unit (GURU)
> School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
> University of Newcastle upon Tyne
> NE1 7RU
> UK
>
> tel: +44 (0)191 222 7801
> fax: +44 (0)191 222 8811
>
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> website: www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/d.f.j.wood/
>
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