Relating to place
- Appreciating place
- Creating bonds to place
- Creating meaningful relationships to place
- Fostering topophilia
- Celebrating endemophilia
- Enjoying homewellness
Description
Nurturing a sense of place and connection to a place.
Context
The relationship between landscape or place and people has a dual nature. On the one hand there is a group of economic relationships associated with survival and commerce (profit). On the other hand, there is a group of cultural relationships associated with the non-economic activities of a society, expressing both societal values and elements of individual cognition.
To balance the negative psychological state of ‘nostalgia’, environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht proposed ‘endemophilia’ (the sense of being truly at home within one’s place and culture — or ‘homewellness’).
Claim
The values of landscape and lifestyle are fundamental to our cultural identity.
Discovering how to develop an affiliation for new places might be the major environmental task of our age. Even those who do not move at all will find themselves in places that feel new, as habitat damage and climate change take effect. And, if we do leave, we need to learn to love the places in which we find ourselves. If we are to regain intimacy with this place, this Earth, we might have to take up again those ancient and revolutionary tools, walking and listening, listening and walking.