People/Place Relations

The aim of this seminar is to discuss the difficulties, modalities, or impossibilities by which we can represent borders in their complexity (breaking up, flexibility, punctiform, virtual, etc.), asymmetrical experience, and the new modes of circumvention invented by mobile populations.

While sense of place has been increasingly used in planning literature over the last five decades, its conceptualisation varies by discipline and theoretical orientation, with disjointed elements. This study develops a three-theme conceptual framework articulating individual-community-place interrelationships by critically reviewing the literature on sense of place and place-based constructs of attachment, identity, and satisfaction. Theorising the interactions in-between contributes to theoretical debates on sense of place and developing conceptual clarity to understand the planning context, processes, and outcomes, informing decision-and policy-making. It also facilitates the analysis and synthesis of complex narratives in qualitative studies of people-place relations.

Résumé La recherche géographique sur la non-voyance et la malvoyance tend à se focaliser sur les difficultés et les peurs rencontrées par les non-voyants dans leurs pratiques de mobilité, les excluant a priori d’autres types de réflexions, notamment sur le paysage, objet oculocentré traditionnel de la géographie. Pourtant, l’observation des expériences quotidiennes des non-voyants montre qu’on ne saurait se limiter à ces craintes et difficultés. En certaines circonstances, leur perception de l’environnement intègre des dimensions esthétiques : peut-on parler alors d’un sentiment paysager ? Il s’agit dans cet article d’explorer avec des non-voyants la dimension paysagère de leur relation à l’environnement, afin de montrer la richesse de leurs perceptions et représentations, tout en articulant une réflexion sur la polysensorialité du paysage permettant de dépasser l’oculocentrisme.

There has been little direct attention paid in Australia to the phenomenon of low fertility among women graduates. Yet it was already observed a hundred years ago, when almost half of the first genera-tions of female university graduates remained unmarried and the rest had ...

Ross MacGregor recently published an article in People and Place 1 which was highly critical of our study 2 of the socio-economic effects of forcible separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders from their parents and communities. His paper is also critical of Bringing them Home, 3 the report produced by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) on the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. At no stage does MacGregor make any specific criticism of the results we presented or of our methodology. Instead, he simply denies our conclusions. We consider MacGregor's criticism serious enough to warrant an extended reply because of the importance of issues surrounding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy to Australia's future. MacGregor makes nine claims against our research paper: 1. That the 'the article's use of the term 'stolen generation' is provocative'; 4 2...

Whenever we hear the word 'place', we immediately recognize an inconspicuous 'image', that isn't just visual imagery, but a memory that is embodied within ourselves. It is this memory that roots all us people to the world and gives an existential meaning to the 'survival'.

The article is an attempt to make sense of the different interdisciplinary perspectives associated with people’s attachment to places with a view to construct a holistic template for understanding people-place relationships and experiences. The author took note of the theoretical contributions of Jorgensen & Stedman (2001), Scannell & Gifford (2010), and Seamon (2012, 2014) to construct an integrative framework for understanding emotional links to places and people’s perception and experience of places. This was done with the intention of illuminating the meaning of place and the different “places” people get attached to. The paper concludes by incorporating different place frameworks with the intention of establishing a holistic model for understanding the various attributes and perceptions of people-place relationships and experiences.

Large-scale renewable energy and associated technologies (RET), such as high voltage power lines
(HVPL), often meet opposition from the local communities living nearby. Research has suggested that one
of the main aspects that might contribute to this is the fact that RET are represented as industrial and
urban, and thus, as having a different essence from rural landscapes, where they are usually deployed
and which are represented as natural and unspoilt. However, this ‘hypothesis’ of landscape essentialisation
shaping people's responses to RET has not been explicitly examined. By drawing upon research
from Social Psychology and Human Geography on essentialisation, we will examine if and how landscape
(de-)essentialisation plays a role in people's responses to RET. Namely, by examining it as a rhetorical
construction that can be strategically used to negotiate and legitimize given relations with place and
associated responses to RET.
Focus groups were conducted in the UK and Norway with members of local communities to be affected
by the construction of HVPLs that will connect to new low carbon energy technologies. Analyses show
that participants present British and Norwegian rural landscapes in general and HVPL as having two
different essences, which justifies opposition to those infrastructures. However, analyses also show that
essentialisation of the countryside is strategically used. Namely, participants also present the countryside
in the place where they live as having more of the essence of the British or Norwegian countryside than
other areas of the UK and Norway. In turn, this allows them to legitimize claims that whereas HVPL are
‘out of place’ in the countryside in general, they are more so in the place where they live.
The implications of these results for the definition of acceptable locations for RET and for research on
peopleeplace relations and responses to place change, are discussed.

Enrolments by international students in Australian universities have boomed over recent years, especially in postgraduate courses. In many cases these students struggle to meet the standard that their teachers expect. This is often because of poor English combined with a ...

Though the local population was small in the 19th century, much biodiversity in Australia and other sparsely populated regions was lost. This was because burgeoning numbers in Europe demanded products from large tracts of land overseas. The sources of demand have altered, but the same problems apply today.

... Bob Birrell and Lesleyanne Hawthorne Until the late 1990s the Australian Government's medical workforce policy focussed on limiting reliance on overseas ... well short of the numbers needed to cover the growth in demand for the various medical specialties, for junior and career ...

For many Australian practitioners of alternative spiritualities, ‘nature’ and the non-human environment are alive with significance: they embody a universal divine ‘spirit’ that is both independent of, and continuous with, individual subjects. Particular locations within nature also have special value as a font of powerful personal feelings and as a kind of natural resource of spiritual energy. Moreover, the effect of specifically Australian landscapes is frequently understood by reference to a place’s Aboriginal history or ‘spirit’, with recognition of such places both celebrating and laying claim to the land. However, having a feeling for land is not straightforward. Although Aboriginal people often served as a synonym for the land itself and thus were considered intrinsic to much of the land’s spiritual and personal value, their prior claims to its ownership also sometimes upset non-Aboriginal feelings of love for the land.