Place, Identity, and Environmental Conditions

Jenna CondieLecturer in PsychologyUniversity of Salford @jennacondie

Sensory ArchitecturesUniversity of Manchester

March 2013

• It doesn’t have to be a work of art

Draw a Railway Scene

What has influenced your What has influenced your drawing?drawing?

 fsse8info

 khym54  Bob the courier

“One of the ways people use place

in interaction is as a resource for

constructing identity, one’s

meaning in the world”

(Myers, 2006, p. 39)

Who you are & where you are Place Identity (Dixon & Durrheim, 2000)

Do we still need to Do we still need to belong somewhere? belong somewhere?

Dialogical Self(Bakhtin, 1986; Hermans, 2004)

Hi, I’m from Manchester Hi, I’m from Manchester I’m from

Manchester tooI’m from

Manchester too

I’m from Salford I’m from Salford

Choosing Self(Rose, 1996; Taylor 2009)

Flickr: Nickster 2000

That’s so annoying That’s so annoying

Music to my earsMusic to my ears

Agency Structure

• “No two persons see the same reality. No two social groups make precisely the same evaluation of the environment.” (Tuan, 1974, p.5)

• Language as action orientated (Willig, 2001)

• Stake and interest in place (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006)

The problem with measuring exposure and response

• Residential histories and choosing selves• Pro-rural and anti-urban ideologies • Discourses of adaptation

• Maintain positive identities of place • Construct moral selves (e.g. tolerant)

Living alongside railways

• Spoiled identity (Goffman, 1963) – strategies of ‘normification’ (Bush et al., 2001)

• Dilemma – finding somewhere to live versus living with disruption

• ‘Identity’ as multivoiced and dialogical• Negotiating agency in context of ‘disruption’

Railways as ‘commonplace’

I suppose everyone lives near something that makes noise and I think its just a by-product of 21st century now I suppose everyone lives near something that makes noise and I think its just a by-product of 21st century now

Allen

Miles Apart?

Relativism

Positivism Constructionism

Realism

Quantitative Qualitative

Back together?

Response (e.g. annoyance)

Exp

osur

e (e

.g.

nois

e le

vel)

Change

New sources

Sustainability

‘Identity’ mattersto policy makers

•Behaviour•Health & Well-being•Social Change

•Driver paper on place

and environmental

change