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Attachment to Possessions

  • Chapter
Place Attachment

Part of the book series: Human Behavior and Environment ((HUBE,volume 12))

Abstract

While place attachment has received some recent attention in social science literature, such attention reveals the narrow partitions that have been employed in seeking to understand our bonds to the material environment. For bonds to place share much of the same phenomenology as bonds to our children, a favorite sweater, our cars, a pet, the family photograph album, and our own bodies. What such attachments have in common is their importance, for better or worse, in defining the self in a contemporary consumer culture. This linkage was clearly articulated by William James (1890):

Our fame, our children, the works of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attacked. ... a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes, and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down. (p. 291).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84112, USA

    Russell W. Belk

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  1. Russell W. Belk
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Irwin Altman

  2. Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

    Setha M. Low

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© 1992 Plenum Press, New York

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Belk, R.W. (1992). Attachment to Possessions. In: Altman, I., Low, S.M. (eds) Place Attachment. Human Behavior and Environment, vol 12. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8753-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8753-4_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-8755-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-8753-4

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