5. Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4.
5. Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4.
5. Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4.
2532 Ez SENSE OF PLACE
Semple came to dubious conclusions, from assum-
ing that people living in mountain passes were
more likely to be bandits to associating world cli-
mate types with distinctive human characteristics.
The latter led to racist conclusions linking climate
and “race temperament,” with Northern Europe-
ans being “energetic” and “thoughtful,” Southern
Europeans being “easygoing” and “emotional,”
and positive characteristics giving way to “grave
racial faults” among black Africans. While she
was not alone in holding these beliefs, Semple’s
work on and ideas about environmental determin-
ism had a major impact on the shaping of Ameri-
can geography in the 1910s and 1920s.
Jonathan Leib
See also Environmental Determinism; Human Geography,
History of; Ratzel, Friedrich; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Colby, C. (1932), Ellen Churchill Semple. Annals of
the Association of American Geographers, 23,
229-240.
Peet, R. (1985). The social origins of environmental
determinism. Annals ofthe Association of
American Geographers, 75, 309-333.
Semple, E. C. (1911). Influences of geographic
‘environment on the basis of Ratzel’s system of
anthropo-geography. New York: Henry Holt.
@ Sense OF PLace
Sense of place refers to subjective human reac-
tions to places. With roots in early forms of
humanistic geography, the concept appears in
various forms in a considerable body of works
expanding on human experience, memory, imagi-
nation, emotion, and meaning; accordingly, it is a
core value in a broad and varied range of endeav-
ors from theory (ie., placing humans in Earth’s
time-space continuum) to practice (e.g., building.
“green” or selling places as commodities). In sum,
the sense of place contributes depth and under-
standing to what it means to be human.
Among myriad approaches to sense of place, a
key strand begins with the individual. Each per-
son brings his or her own personality, back-
ground, and previous experiences into the process
of forming a sense of place. People draw on their
‘own use of the human senses, their own sense of
aesthetics, and their own intellectual and emo-
tional responses that they have developed with
regard to places; these are based on their expe
ences and perceptions and the development of
cognitive understandings of places. One’s reac-
tions and responses are not static, however, and
the way one looks at places continues to evolve as
one’s life cycle develops and as the landscapes
and places around one are transformed. Through
those processes, it can be argued that people
develop (at varying levels of sophistication) their
own landscapes of memory and previous experi-
ences. In some cases, this leads to bonding with
places—love of place—while in others, itcan lead
to ambivalence, disinterest, and/or rejection, that
is, the placelessness of interchangeable superficial
identities that can be found anywhere. Further-
‘more, in invoking sense of place, many humanis-
tic geographers and others from the humanities
are attempting to understand the nonreductionist
uniqueness of individual responses, as well as the
distinctiveness that different places possess, and
to open the minds of people to the richness of the
world through place-based approaches and, spe-