Place

Introduction

Place is a problematic concept for psychologists because it inevitably raises the question of the connection between place and person, which, of course, is not fixed. An exploration of the significance of (any) place must consider issues raised by interpretation and mobility. Although the study of place has conventionally been the concern of environmental and cognitive psychology, critical psychologists are likely to work within a different paradigm to consider the complex, unstable, reflexive, and unfolding nature of relationships to place which are shaped but never wholly determined by collective understandings and identifications.

Definition

Place most commonly refers to the physical environment in which the psychological subject is located. However, any specification of “place” is complicated by the multiple terms in which it may be defined. Even in supposedly external or objective terms, a location is open to description in terms of different scales and component...