Place attachment
Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds an individual forms with specific locations, influenced by personal experiences and sociocultural perspectives. This concept is closely related to place identity and place dependence, which describe how a place contributes to a person's sense of self and their perceived reliance on that location. Researchers in social sciences have explored place attachment since the 1990s, focusing primarily on its emotional components while acknowledging demographic factors such as age, race, and mobility that can shape these attachments.
The multiform model of place attachment, introduced by David Hummon, distinguishes between traditional and active forms of attachment, highlighting the nuances of how individuals connect to places. The meanings individuals assign to locations are not only subjective but can also be influenced by collective memories and experiences within a community. Place identity is thought to play a vital role in individual self-concept, whereas place dependence emphasizes the functional aspects of how a location serves a person's needs. Research continues to examine the implications of place attachment across various fields, including environmental conservation, urban design, and health care, reflecting its relevance to human quality of life and social policy.
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Place attachment
Place attachment refers to the bonds an individual develops and maintains with a particular location. These bonds are associated with place meanings, or the values that the individual assigns to a place. Place identity and place dependence are other related factors. These concepts are sometimes conflated or used interchangeably, and much disagreement exists in the academic community regarding how they relate. Some social scientists argue that place meaning, identity, and dependence are facets, or dimensions, of place attachment. Place attachment and its related concepts are of great interest as they have bearing on human quality of life, the environment, and social policy.
Overview
Place attachment has been studied by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social science researchers since the early to mid 1990s. Although place attachment has mental, emotional, behavioral, and functional components, research has focused most on the emotional aspects.
Place attachment is influenced by such demographic factors as age, class, race, employment status, mobility experience, familiarity, social ties, community size and growth rate, and setting (urban versus rural, manmade versus natural). Although much research has been done with an either/or view of place attachment, as of the late 2000s and early 2010s, researchers increasingly gravitated toward a multiform model to explain differences in individuals’ place attachments. First proposed by David Hummon in 1992, this model categorizes place attachment as traditional or active, corresponding to everyday or ideological (i.e., intentional) senses of rootedness, and place detachment as placelessness, alienation, and place relativity (i.e., ambivalence).
The place meanings, or symbolic values and qualitative assessments, that an individual assigns to a given location are influenced by personal experiences with the place and its features as well as by sociocultural perspectives inherited from familial or communal collective memory. Meanings can be actively or subconsciously assigned to places and may mediate the individual’s level of place attachment.
Social scientists often regard place identity as the degree to which a place informs an individual’s sense of self. They posit that individuals use specific places in establishing their uniqueness, maintaining continuity in time, and building self-esteem and self-efficacy. The places most likely to inform self-concept include workplaces, residences, recreational facilities, and their surrounding communities. Psychologists measure place identity in terms of ranked geographical self-categorizations, such as “I am a Bostonian,” “I am a New Englander,” or “I am an American.” Other researchers consider place identity in terms of the place’s own distinct characteristic features (a concept termed “genius loci”) and continuity in time. Emotional and mental processes are thought to affect place identity most. The social bonding theory asserts that place identity develops through an individual’s attachment to not only the place itself but also to other humans present there.
Place dependence is described as the extent to which an individual senses that he or she is affiliated with and dependent on a place (or similar places). Place identity appears to be integral to place dependence, both in terms of the functional utility of place features themselves and the individual’s sense of identification with the place. Behavioral and functional (goal-related) processes appear to have greater impact on the formation of place dependence.
Tourism and recreation, environmental conservation, architecture, urban design and development, health care, gender studies, child development, and aging are but a few of the many fields influenced by place attachment. Research to investigate the role of place attachment in these areas is ongoing.
Bibliography
Burton, Linda M., et al, eds. Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Place. New York: Springer, 2011. Digital file.
Dahl, Michael S., and Olav Sorenson. “The Social Attachment to Place.” Social Forces 89.2 (2010): 633–58. Print.
Fischer, Gustave-Nicholas. “Place Attachment.” Individuals and Environment: A Psychosocial Approach to Workspace. Berlin: Gruyter, 1997. 130–31. Print.
Lewicka, Maria. “On the Varieties of People’s Relationships with Places: Hummon’s Typology Revisited.” Environment and Behavior 43.5 (2011): 676–709. Print.
Lewicka, Maria. “Place Attachment, Place Identity, and Place Memory: Restoring the Forgotten City Past.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008): 209–31. Print.
Manzo, Lynne C., and Patrick Devine-Wright, eds. Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Applications. New York: Routledge, 2014. Digital file.
Smith, Jordan W., Christos Siderelis, and Roger L. Moore. “The Effects of Place Attachment, Hypothetical Site Modifications, and Use Levels on Recreation Behavior.” Journal of Leisure Research 42.4 (2010): 621–40. Print.
Stewart, William P., Daniel R. Williams, and Linda E. Kruger, eds. “Experiencing Place.” Place-Based Conservation: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York: Springer Science, 2013. 73–120. Digital file.
Wynveen, Christopher J., Gerard T. Kyle, James D. Absher, and Gene L. Theodori. “The Meanings Associated with Varying Degrees of Attachment to a Natural Landscape.” Journal of Leisure Research 43.2 (2011): 290–311. Print.