Different Understandings of Place

 

Mandi Cox

20 January 2021

Response Paper

          In his essay, Defining Place, Tim Cresswell dives into the meaning of a term that which the average person might never consider the complexities of: “place.” Cresswell explains why “place is not just a thing in the world but a way of understanding the world” (p. 18). He argues that for something to be a place it must be meaningful otherwise it is more simply a “space.” Cresswell also touches on the idea that “landscape” differs from “place” because “in most definitions of landscape the viewer is outside of it” (p.17) rather than having a sense of meaning or something to be understood, the viewer is simply viewing a thing.

            In class we were asked to come up with initial terms that came to our minds when we thought about Alaska. There were many words that might be used to describe a landscape such as beautiful or natural but there were also words that had deeper meanings such as independence or freedom. To us, the people who have gotten to experience what Alaska has to offer, it is place of independence and a place of freedom, to some it is home. People who have never experienced Alaska only have pictures of the landscapes and the words of others, it may still be a place to them, but they have a different understanding of Alaska than we do.

            How a place is viewed by an individual is based on what they have heard about it, read about it, or what they have personally experienced, so everyone is going to have a different understanding of a one place. One example is the Bristol Bay region in Alaska. To some, this region is viewed as a place to make money, the Pebble mine project would be one of the largest mines in the world, but it would risk polluting Bristol Bay which is home to some of the world’s most abundant wild salmon runs. To others, the Bristol Bay fishery is their livelihood and mining would put their livelihood at risk.