ABSTRACT
The opening chapters of this book have amounted to an attempt to grasp the inseparable parts of a structure of human Being, which links together identity, materiality and temporality. Throughout, there has been another element which has demanded some consideration, and this has been space or place, since human existence always involves Being-somewhere. In this chapter we will turn to consider place more directly. Places, as referred to here, represent locations which are implicated in a human world. Just as the stretching of persons and material things through time is the means by which they acquire their identities, so I will hope to show that the identity of place has a narrative and accretional quality. This does not simply mean that places which are first given as arrangements of geometrical planes and surfaces later have a layer of cultural meaning spread over them. This much is suggested by the understanding that ‘space’ can be transformed into ‘place’ by human activity. Instead, the suggestion is that places emerge as places through their involvement in structures of understanding and practice. Places are always already place-like as soon as we are aware of them, use them, and consume them.
