ABSTRACT
As a phenomenologist, I face a dilemma in contributing to a volume on place attachment, which can be defined as the emotional bonds between people and a particular place or environment.1 An important phenomenological question is whether place attachment is a phenomenon unto itself or only one dimension of a more comprehensive lived structure identified as place and the experience of place.2 In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three different perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the lived comprehensiveness of place and place experience. I suggest that these holistic, dialectical, and generative perspectives provide a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.
