Humanities and Place: Space, Landscapes and Meaning

Introduction

The Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH) sponsors a long-term multi-year research project that promotes interdisciplinary and cross-cultural humanistic research on the nature and meaning of space, place, and landscapes.  This project is a critical investigation of the interplay between space and place, landscapes and environments - and how meaning and value are expressed in regard to space, place and landscapes.

This project integrates fundamental humanities-oriented research from multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives with interests in space, place, and landscapes to address culture, memory, identity, symbolic and physical environments that are expressed in history, languages, landscapes, architecture, artifact, visual and performing arts.

Theoretical Context

Humanistic geographers propose that place is best understood as a locus of meaning whereby humans take what they view as undifferentiated space and they endow it with value and meaning through familiarity.  thus, abstract space becomes concrete place when it is given meaning.  Alan Gussow in A Sense of Place.  The Artist and the American Land suggests that what converts any physical location - any environment - into a place has to do with what he refers to as the process of experiencing deeply.  A place is an environment that has been claimed by feelings (27).  Yi-Fu Tuan in Space and Place.  The Perspective of Experience proposes that there is an identifiable shift in understanding matters of space - to that of place - when humans get to know what they view as undifferentiated space through experience, and they subsequently endow it with value.

The central methodological concept is that place functions as subject and object, action and arena.  As a basis for all human experience, place exerts enormous influence: people are not only in places but also of them.  That is, they are profoundly place-bound.  Place is not simply something to be observed, researched, and analyzed.  It bedrocks how humans orient themselves and how they negotiate life.   This conceptual construct is more than what exists; it is fundamentally a question of how we know.  It provides a frame for all experience.  Although actual places are clearly social constructs, the fact that they are places make them more than arbitrary.  This makes place a powerful and important dynamic for society.

The Calgary Institute for the Humanities 'place' project fosters a deep and critical understanding of the interplay between space and place, landscapes and environments - and how meaning and value are expressed in regard to space, place and landscapes.