ABSTRACT
The types of research we have discussed in the preceding chapters have stressed new ways of seeing the links between culture, place and health. Here we use the word ‘seeing’ metaphorically to signal apprehending, comprehending and interpreting. But literally seeing is important too, and, in fact, a critical art of the cultural geographer. To see is not just to recognize what is there, but to notice connections in the observable landscape or ‘secondary’ textual materials (e.g. advertising material). However, while visual observation is a key to many types of research, there is more to observation than simply seeing. It can also involve a more complete sensory experience: touching, smelling and hearing the environment as well as implicit or explicit comparisons with previous experience (Rodaway 1994). Further, we consider it important to acknowledge that seeing implies a vantage point, a social and literal place in which we position ourselves to observe and be part of the world (Jackson 1993). What, and how, we observe from this place is influenced by whether we are regarded by others as an ‘insider’ (i.e. one who belongs), an ‘outsider’ (i.e. one who does not belong and is ‘out of place’), or someone in between.
