ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the perspective of synergistic relationality contributes to an understanding of place that is more accurate, comprehensive, and usable than an understanding grounded in analytic relationality. In relation to analytic research on place, one example is studies of place attachment – the emotional bonds that individuals and groups feel for real-world places. Psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist associates the left brain with the analytic functions of logic, verbal language, and "abstracted, decontextualized, disembodied thinking"; he associates the right brain with the synergistic function of intuitive, affective, holistic understandings, including those fostered by the arts and phenomenological awareness. Though Jeff Malpas's phrasing is cryptic, his description is a penetrating rendition of a synergistic understanding of place because it pays heed to the indivisible wholeness of place and its parts. Michael Patterson and Daniel Williams conclude that "structural, holistic understanding cannot be accomplished through the types of concise operational definitions employed in psychometric epistemology".
