Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement: The Selected Writings of David Seamon

295 Pages·2023·4.859 MB·English

by  David Seamon

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED
EMPLACEMENT
Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement is a compila-
tion of seventeen previously published articles and chapters by David Seamon, one
of the foremost researchers in environmental, architectural, and place phenom-
enology. These entries discuss such topics as body-subject, the lived body, place
ballets, environmental serendipity, homeworlds, and the pedagogy of place and
placemaking.
The volume’s chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four entries
that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and placemaking. These
chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts
like lifeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five
chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically.
Topics covered include environmental situatedness, architectural phenomenology,
environmental serendipity, and the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place
and placemaking. Part III presents a number of explications of real-world places
and place experience, drawing on examples from photography (André Kertész’s
Meudon), television (Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles’ Limbo and
Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City and
Louis Bromfield’s The World We Live in).
Seamon is a major figure in environment-behavior research, particularly as that
work has applied value for design professionals. This volume will be of interest to
geographers, environmental psychologists, architects, planners, policymakers, and
other researchers and practitioners concerned with place, place experience, place
meaning, and placemaking.
David Seamon is Professor of Environment-Behavior and Place Studies in the
Department of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA.
He is Editor of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology. His most recent book is
Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making (Routledge, 2018).
World Library of Educationalists Series
The World Library of Educationalists celebrates the important contributions to edu-
cation made by leading experts in their individual fields of study. Each scholar has
compiled a career-long collection of what they consider to be their finest pieces:
extracts from books, journals, articles, major theoretical and practical contributions,
and salient research findings.
For the first time ever the work of each contributor is presented in a single vol-
ume so readers can follow the themes and progress of their work and identify the
contributions made to, and the development of, the fields themselves.
The distinguished careers of the selected experts span at least two decades and
include Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot W. Eisner, John Elliott, Howard
Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree and
E. C. Wragg. Each book in the series features a specially written introduction by
the contributor giving an overview of their career, contextualizing their selection
within the development of the field, and showing how their own thinking devel-
oped over time.
Religious Education in Plural Societies
The Selected Works of Robert Jackson
Robert Jackson
Thinking Philosophically About Education
The Selected Works of Richard Pring
Richard Pring
Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge
The Selected Works of Neil Mercer
Neil Mercer
Educating Young Children: A Lifetime Journey into a Froebelian
Approach
The Selected Works of Tina Bruce
Tina Bruce
Journeys in Narrative Inquiry
The Selected Works of D. Jean Clandinin
D. Jean Clandinin
Researching Literate Lives
The Selected Works of Jerome C. Harste
Jerome C. Harste
The Sociology of Assessment: Comparative and Policy Perspectives
The Selected Works of Patricia Broadfoot
Patricia Broadfoot
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PHENOMENOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
PLACE, LIFEWORLDS,
AND LIVED
EMPLACEMENT
The Selected Writings of David
Seamon
David Seamon
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 David Seamon
The right of David Seamon to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-35729-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-35732-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-32822-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003328223
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments viii
1 An Introduction: Going Places 1
PART I
The Value of Phenomenology for Studying Place 13
2 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 15
3 The Wellbeing of People and Place 39
4 Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place Ballets 51
5 Whither Phenomenological Research?: Possibilities for
Environmental and Place Studies 66
PART II
Understanding Place Phenomenologically 85
6 Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology
of Human Situatedness 87
7 Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and
Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance 113
vi Contents
8 Architecture, Place, and Phenomenology: Buildings as
Lifeworlds, Atmospheres, and Environmental Wholes 122
9 The Value of Phenomenology for a Pedagogy of Place and
Placemaking 137
10 A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life
of Great American Cities 152
PART III
Places, Lived Emplacement, and Place Presence 163
11 Place, Placelessness, Insideness, and Outsideness in American
Filmmaker John Sayles’ Sunshine State 165
12 Place, Belonging, and Environmental Humility: The Experience
of “Teched” as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield 181
13 Finding One’s Place: Environmental and Human Risk in
American Filmmaker John Sayles’ Limbo 194
14 Phenomenology and Uncanny Homecomings: Homeworld,
Alienworld, and Being-at-Home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television
Series, Six Feet Under 210
15 A Phenomenology of Inhabitation: The Lived Reciprocity
between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American
Writer Louis Bromfield 223
16 Using Place to Understand Lifeworld: The Example of British
Novelist Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb 232
17 Moments of Realization: Extending Homeworld in
British-African Novelist Doris Lessing’s Four-Gated City 244
18 Looking at a Photograph—André Kertész’s 1928 Meudon:
Interpreting Aesthetic Experience Phenomenologically 260
Appendix: Other Selected Works by David Seamon (1978–2022) 272
Index 278
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
9.1 Simplified rendition of the give-and-take linkages among the six
place processes 142
9.2 A more lifelike rendition of the give-and-take linkages among
the six place processes 142
9.3 Key patterns for the Meadowcreek Site Design 146
9.4 Patterns used to design a path to Ripple Ridge 147
18.1 André Kertész, Meudon, 1928 261
18.2 Word cloud of students’ single-word descriptors of Kertész’s Meudon 263
TABLES
9.1 Pattern language written for Meadowcreek 145
18.1 Descriptors of Meudon provided by 74 Kansas State University
architecture students, January 2013. 262
18.2 Author's two descriptions (1986 and 2013) of André Kertész’s 1928
photograph Meudon 265
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The chapters in this volume run from 1980 to the present. Each has been published
because of the support and goodwill of a wide range of editors and publishing
venues. I am grateful to Routledge editor Hannah Shakespeare, who supported
my earlier Life Takes Place and suggested a collection of my published writings in
the Routledge series, “World Library of Educationalists.” I also thank Routledge’s
Matthew Bickerton, who expertly shepherded this volume through production. I
want to thank the following individuals who originally sponsored the chapters in
this volume and provided them a place in journals or edited collections: Anna Grear
and Karen Morrow (Ch. 2); Kathleen Galvin (Ch. 3); Nigel Thrift (Ch. 4); Ryan
Otto (Ch. 5); Thomas Hünefeldt and Annika Schlitte (Ch. 6); Alessandro Gattara,
Sarah Robinson, and Davide Ruzzon (Ch. 7); Janet Donohoe (Ch. 8); Gert
Biesta, Andrew Foran, Patrick Howard, and Tone Saevi (Ch. 9); Conn Holohan
and Elizabeth Patton (Ch. 10); Chris Lukinbeal (Ch. 11); Daniel Payne (Ch. 12);
Daniel Boscaljon (Ch. 14); Carol Manix (Ch. 15); Jefferson Rodrigues de Oliveira
(Ch. 16); Iulian Apostolescu, Stefano Marino, and Anthony Steinbock (Ch. 17);
Steen Halling, Kirsten Bach Larsen, Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, and Ann Starbæk
Bager (Ch. 18).
I dedicate this book to three individuals without whom my research and writing
efforts would be so much less than otherwise. First, I thank the late Anne Buttimer
(1933–2017), geographer, teacher, dissertation advisor, colleague, and frank critic.
If one believes in serendipitous encounters, then Anne’s arrival at Clark University
in Fall 1970, the same semester I began doctoral work, is perhaps the single most
fortuitous event in my professional career. Without what she taught me via her
intelligence, guidance, wisdom, and good sense, I would never have been able to
write the chapters of this volume.
Acknowledgments ix
Second, I thank the late Robert Mugerauer (1945–2022), philosopher, friend,
and ecumenical thinker. Via our mutual interest in how phenomenology might
contribute to environmental and architectural research, Bob and I partook in many
academic efforts together, including our co-editing Dwelling, Place and Environment,
a volume that became a seminal reference for environmental and architectural phe-
nomenology. Though solidly versed in phenomenological thinking, especially the
work of Martin Heidegger, Bob also mastered the geographical, environmental,
and architectural literature. As his lucid writings demonstrate, he held a clear vision
of how phenomenology might offer a grounded means for better understanding
built environments. Bob gave me confidence that what we were attempting, in our
editing and organizing efforts, had great importance for making everyday worlds
better, particularly via design and planning.
Finally, I thank my wonderful architecture colleague Gary Coates, who brought
me to Kansas State University almost 40 years ago and has steadfastly supported my
teaching and research. As with meeting Anne Buttimer, my encountering Gary was
serendipitous. In 1981, he had published an edited collection, Resettling America,
the title of which was a hopeful rephrasing of writer and poet Wendell Berry’s
1977 The Unsettling of America. At the time, I was teaching at the University of
Oklahoma and always perused the university library’s “new book” shelves, which
were placed conveniently by the library entrance. One day in early 1982, I dis-
covered Gary’s book and was doubly impressed: first, because of the reassuring
title; second, because so many of the book’s chapters offered reasonable, practical
solutions to environmental and ecological problems. I wrote Gary a letter, explain-
ing how much I admired his book. We became good friends and, in spring 1983,
I accepted a tenure-track position at Kansas State and became Gary’s colleague.
I thank him for his friendship, ideas, practical advice, and critiques of my writing.
David Seamon
Manhattan, Kansas USA
September 11, 2022