Chapter 2: The Genealogy of Place - Tim Creswell (p.33-51)

The second part of chapter 2 focuses on the phenomenology of the place. (the philosophical investigation and description of conscious experience in all its varieties without reference to the question of whether what is experienced is objectively real-how things are perceived, the nature of things as they are - I had hard time understanding phenomenology; def was found from the dictionary)

David Seamon: one's movement in space can determine space. Seamon stresses the idea of daily movement/actions creating a sense of place. When one moves from one place to another in a space, two places are different because the behavior of one's movement can be described as his or her "habit." He introduces the idea of "body-ballet," which is a "time space routine," a path that one performs consistently each day (34) - (I thought this was very interesting-I never thought of it, but my daily routine is almost similar each day. From the time I spend getting ready to go to my first class until the time I return home from school, my schedule is very similar each day) . Allan Pred believes in the development of place. He believes that place continuously change; therefore, place cannot be set or be fixed to a same idea. Creswell also introduces the idea of "structures" of place. Structurationists exist to set rules for a place, and structures exist to create a certain limit to a place, and there may be other rules based on social regulations; However, these rules can be broken based on how one would react to it. If set rules did not exist, there would be meaningless actions to the place. (This is very true- It's fascinating to consider the idea of "breaking the rules"... I think vibe exists because of how we react to how the place is built, organized, or developed-We break the rules to make ourselves comfortable to be in that particular place).

Three different types of places are introduced (pg38): 

1)Measurable and mappable - spatial outcome

2)conception (conceived) - subjective and imagined

3)lived space - different way of thinking

(I think the thirdspace, lived space, summarizes the two other spaces because we perceive both types to get to the thirdplace. We see, observe the physical domain of the place, then we instantly consider our own vision of the place, then we finalize the idea of to determine the place of the space)

I was really glad to see the conclusion at the end. I was lost most of the time. with so many descriptions of place, I kept referring to some questions I had throughout the whole chapter- "so what is a definition? is there a fixed phrase that explains what place is? how many definitions are there?" so in his conclusion, he lists three ways that a place can be observed...

(pg.51)

three approaches

1)descriptive 

2)social constructionist

3)phenomenological

I think this is very similar to Lefebvre's three kinds of spaces. As Creswell stated, there's definitely an overlap among these approaches because one approach lead to the next while observing a place. However, of the three, I believe the "phenomenological approach" to be the most intriguing because it's really about one's relation to the place.