[from David Seamon, A Geography of the Lifeworld, copyright 1979, 2003 David Seamon]
APPENDIX C
This appendix provides a set of step-by-step instructions for the student who wishes to investigate more closely his own everyday geographical experience, which in ordinary day-to-day living he takes for granted. This appendix will be better used if its procedures are actually done, rather than just read. Even if the student involves himself in the project for only a few weeks, he may gain important new perspectives on his everyday experiential relations with space, place and environment.
Step One: Organizing an Environmental Experience Group
Although the interested student could investigate his own everyday experience alone, group exploration is much more effective because it generates a collection of observations the number and variety of which no single person could muster through his own efforts. In terms of size, the experience of the Clark group indicates that a group between five and eight participants is good. A smaller number may reduce the spontaneous flow of observations, while a larger group may restrict the chance of participation by all members.
The Clark group met one and a half hours weekly in the evening, and this schedule worked out well. As long as there was a small core of people who attended regularly, the meetings were not overtly disturbed by others who came irregularly. Generally, however, the people with steady attendance benefited considerably more from the group experience than those who came only sporadically.
To provide the group process with direction, one person should assume responsibility for guiding the meetings and asking relevant questions at times when there is an unclear observation, lull, or other awkwardness. Following each theme (see below) are a set of questions which may aid discussion and interpretation of observations.
Step Two: Making use of the Themes Used in the Clark Environmental Experience Group
A pure phenomenology imposes no bounds on experience: all experiential reports on all human situations would be of equal importance and reveal in greater and greater detail the underlying dynamics of life's taken-for-grantedness. As geographers, we limit our interests to the world of geographical experience, but even this incorporates such a vast nexus of experiential parts that we are required to find some method for organizing this complexity into a simpler framework that still maintains authentic contact with the original world of concrete experience.
In the Clark group, this ordering was sought through the use of a theme, which organized each week's meeting around a specific topic that earlier meetings had indicated might be significant. Individuals creating a new group might try these themes and supplement them with other topics that seemed important.
The seventeen themes used by the Clark group over a period of two semesters are articulated below. Group members should seek to discover concrete situations in their own daily experience that may have relevance to the particular week's theme. They can then report their experiences at the weekly meeting so that other group members can share in their discoveries and verify their accuracy.
Step Three: Interpreting the Observations
At least for the first few weeks, group members should simply report observations without attempting interpretation. Ideally, observations should be transcribed weekly and placed on individual cards that can be reviewed by members. This possibility, however, requires considerable time and expense. Alternately, one member of the group should take brief notes on the observations in theme meetings. Then after the group has met for a few weeks (four or five weeks is probably a good number), it can devote one meeting to a review and discussion of themes and observations. At this time, too, group members might wish to compare and contrast their discoveries with observations provided in Appendix A of this book.
As the group proceeds, members will more than likely notice connections and patterns that were unnoticed before. On one hand, the discoveries provided will not be new - only specific illustrations of similar events which one has experienced time and time again in the past. On the other hand, this group procedure seeks to penetrate these well known, mundane situations and discover underlying similarities and connections. Out of these discoveries can arise an expanded awareness of what it means to live in a geographical world.
Theme One: Everyday Movement Patterns
For the coming week, take note of your everyday movement routines. Observe the various places you visit each day in the order that you go to them and when you can, make a list of this pattern at the end of the day. Ideally, group members should perform this task every day during the week, but even a single attempt for just one day will provide important information and observations.
Key questions to keep in mind at the theme meeting:
1. Are there any regularities in your day-to-day movement patterns in terms of time and space?
2. Are there any crucial places and routes in the geographical space through which you move every day?
3. Are there any kinds of experiential space-time dynamics in your everyday movement patterns?
4. How could your daily movement patterns be represented most simply?
Theme Two: Centering
In this theme we wish to consider our lives are centered spatially - do you have a center or centers in space? If so, what functions do these centers provide? Why are centers needed? Is quality of life weakened for a person who doesn't have a center? Have you know different centers in your life? How do varying life-styles affect centering? Is there more than one center in your everyday situation?
Key questions:
1. Do group members report the presence of centers?
2. What needs does a center serve?
3. What kinds of centers are there?
4. Is centering a crucial part of everyday human experience, or can it be sacrificed without harm to the person?
Theme Three: Noticing
This week we wish to observe the situation of noticing. When do we notice things outside of ourselves, especially things in the physical environment? When do we make contact with what we see, when do we hear a sound, when do we notice a smell, etc.? What can be said about the state of noticing? Are we noticing all the time? If not, what's happening to us when we're not noticing? Why do we notice something at one time but not at other times? Are some people more aware of the world outside than other people? What is noticing dependent on? Concrete observation on any of these questions will be extremely revealing?
Key questions:
1. What triggers noticing? What features in the physical environment? What conditions in the person?
2. Are there intensities of noticing? Can one's contact with the world outside vary, depending on the particular moment?
3. Is there an experience in the human situation which is the exact opposite of noticing?
Theme Four: Moving in Space
How do we get about? What is the process like? Do we take the same routes to the same places all the time? What routes do we use to get where? In short, what is movement as an experience about?
Do-it-yourself experiment: Set yourself for one day (or more) to go to a place by a different path than you usually would. To assure more than one experimental attempt, choose a place that you go to several times in a day. Can the experiment be done? What is the experience like as you go the other way?
Key questions:
1. What part of ourselves is responsible for everyday movement?
2. What happens when routine movement patterns are upset?
3. Is everyday movement habitual in any way?
Theme Five: What do We Pay Attention to as We Move Through Space?
The preceding theme considered how we move through space. In this present theme, we seek to clarify in more detail what is happening as we move. For example, what do we notice as we move, what do we fail to notice? How do different transportation modes affect our movement experience? What effect does route type (sidewalk, back road, rocky path, expressway) have on our movement experience? Clearly this theme is closely related to both noticing (theme three) and movement (theme four), yet is different enough to be considered separately.
Key questions:
1. What things affect our noticing as we move?
2. What do we pay attention to as we move?
3. Can the movement experience be broken down into components?
Theme Six: Emotions Relating to Place, Space and Environment
Do we attach particular feelings to particular places? At particular times do certain environments or things in those environments evoke an emotional response in us? Are anger and annoyance emotions that can relate to place? How about happiness, contentment, peacefulness? Are there feelings that you associate with places where you spend a lot of time? Does the cliché "home is where the heart is" have any experiential significance? If you can, try to catch feelings as they happen.
Key questions:
1. What range of emotions in regard to place was registered by group members?
2. What are the common characteristics of places that evoke emotional response?
3. How do emotions relating to place arise? Does it take time for a person to become emotionally connected with a particular place?
Theme Seven: A Place for Everything, Everything in Its Place
Yes, it’s a cliché, but we wish to find out if it has any experiential significance. What is established for us if everything has its place? Does the body perform better when places are provided for things? What is the relation between habitual routine and place? How important is it in your life to have places for things? What things do you put in what places? At what environmental scales is this theme important?
Do-it-yourself experiment: Intentionally move one thing that has a permanent place to another place. For example, change the location of a towel, an alarm clock, a favorite chair - whatever. Observe your reactions.
Key questions:
1. Do you discover an ordering pattern at work in terms of places for things?
2. At what environmental scales do you find 'a place for things' important?
3. Does an ordered environment enhance the quality of everyday living in any way? Does it detract in any way?
4. Do you find a kind of mutually sustaining dialectic between routine behavior and places for things?
Theme Eight: Deciding Where to Go when
Past themes have focused on two dimensions of spatial movement: the process of moving itself and the experience of what we notice as we move along. Now we need to probe the nature of the decision to go. What happened at the moment when we decide to so somewhere? Is this decision always of the same sore? To facilitate this theme, it may be helpful to focus on a few specific activities, such as going for a drink of water, going to the bathroom, going for food, going to class, going to a place where you never usually go to, etc. The most useful observations will be those that catch the nature of the decision as it happens.
Key questions:
1. How does the decision to go happen?
2. Is the decision to go always of the same sort?
3. How is the decision related to actual movement and to the destination of the trip?
Theme Nine: Off-Centering
Our discoveries so far indicate that through repetition the body often establishes set patterns, for example, in terms of movement and places for things. This week we wish to consider the role of position in terms of the body itself. In other words, do we establish specific positioning and locations for ourselves? For example, when we position ourselves in the same way in the same place? Do we become accustomed to a particular positional and directional orientation in variously scaled environments that we use?
Do-it-yourself experiment: Consider your normal positioning in terms of sinks, shelves, tables, rooms, outdoor spaces. Then, seek to change one of these positionings. What happens, how do you feel, how consistently can you do it?
Key questions:
1. Did you notice the importance of your own habitual positioning in your everyday movement? At what scales?
2. Can you think of times when a change in body form - for instance, a new pair of glasses or a knapsack - has disturbed the way in which you routinely position yourself?
3. What happened when you did the experiment? Were you able to do it? Did the task create any tension in situations that you usually take for granted?
Theme Ten: Destinations
Themes on everyday movement have focused so far on how we move in space, what we notice as we move, and how we decide to go somewhere when. Another important aspect of movement may be the role of destination in everyday travels. Is a destination important? How does a trip without a destination differ from one with a destination? Can there in fact be a trip without a destination? Is there a difference between purpose and destination in everyday movement?
Key questions:
1. Did you notice any trips without a destination?
2. Is the notion of intentionality relevant to your observations? Did you notice any trips that were purposeless?
3. Are there other scales of movement at which purpose is important? For instance, on a smaller scale - in movement around your home, or around a room?
Theme Eleven: Disorientation, Getting Lost, Being Lost
We've probed the importance of order in our everyday experience - in the paths we use, in the places we put things, in the way we position our bodies in different situations. For the next week, it may be helpful to consider situations in which this order is upset, or hasn't yet been established - when we're lost or disoriented. In addition to trying to catch the experience as it happens, you may want to think back to times in the past when you've been lost, and to talk to other people about their experiences. Have you ever really been lost? In what contexts and environments do people get lost? Can one be disoriented without being lost?
Key questions:
1. In what different situations has the order in your everyday movements been disrupted?
2. Does the design of the physical environment play a role in ease of orientation? For instance, can you think of any buildings or places that are difficult to navigate?
3. Are there certain ways in which you try to regain your bearings when you are lost? Disoriented?
4. Is it possible to be disoriented in time as well as space?
Theme Twelve: Care and Ownness
Another taken-for-granted aspect of our relationship to place may be an attachment to place. What places do you care for? How does this care rise? Are there places that belong to you in some kind of personal way? How do you make a place your own? Are there places that exude a spirit of care, or places that no one cares for?
To facilitate thoughts on this theme, you may want to make a list of the places in your life that have meant a lot to you. You might also speak to other people about places that they care for.
Key questions:
1. Are there types of places that appear on everyone's list - for instance homes?
2. Is there a relationship between experience with a place and care for it? How about noticing?
Theme Thirteen: Obliviousness and Immersion
We probed the notion of noticing in the third theme. For next week, let's try to look at what state we are in when we are not actually noticing things in the world outside us. What are we doing when we are in this state? Are some people more often oblivious than others? What role does destination in movement play in obliviousness?
Key questions:
1. Were you able to catch yourself at any point during the week when you weren't making contact without your surroundings?
2. Is there a connection between routine movement and obliviousness? That is, does familiarity with a task or route encourage us to do it automatically?
3. Is obliviousness a liberating and/or constraining force in your life?
Theme Fourteen: Paths, attachment to and Points Along
In themes for past weeks, we've looked at the nature of our movements over paths and at our attachment to certain points in space. Let's focus for the next week on attachment to place in relationship to our habitual paths. Do we become attached to paths? Are there any routes that you've known that have a special significance for you? Are there any that you have bad feelings for? Are there places along paths that are meaningful for you? One example of this might be indicators of approach to destination.
Key questions:
1. Did you discover that some paths are more comfortable than others? What factors help a\to account for this?
2. Does a path's length seem the same to you in both directions? Do you have different indicators of approach to destination depending on your direction.
3. What sorts of spots along paths have special significance to you?
Theme Fifteen: Order
Throughout our meetings, order has been a strong underlying theme that has run though many of our observations. For next week, we need to look in more detail at just how order manifests itself in our everyday live, and how we manifest order in our everyday lives. What is order? How does it extend itself? How do we create it, and what happens when it is not present?
To facilitate this theme, let's all try to consider in what ways - especially as we relate to the geographical world - order pervades our lives. Think of this in terms of scale - bed, room, building, outside spaces, etc. You might also think of it in terms of time and social relations, and your inner situation.
This is a difficult theme that can easily move into abstractions, but hopefully we have a solid enough concrete base to come up with some genuine contact with order's significance for people.
Key questions:
1. At what different scales is order important in your everyday experience?
2. How does order act as a constraining or liberating force in your life?
3. How is order created? How does it maintain itself?
Theme Sixteen: Spring*
We haven't looked very closely yet at the natural environment, effect or weather, and other environmental phenomena. For next week, let's take 'spring', and see if any sorts of things come from it. How is spring noticeable? What does it mean in terms of what we are?
Key questions:
1. What things are signs of spring for you?
2. How does the change in weather affect your experience in space?
3. Do you find that any of your routes have changed with the change in weather?
*There is no discussion of this theme in the interpretive part of this book. The theme reflects an aspect of environmental experience - seasonality - which demands its own detailed phenomenology.
Theme Seventeen: The Tension between Center and Horizon
The architect van Eych suggests that 'man is both center bound and horizon bound.' For the coming week, let's consider this theme, which has been suggested by many other topics. Do we fluctuate between center and horizon, between security and strangeness, between peace and confusion? This is a difficult theme, and will probably involve more thought than observation. Our portrait of geographical experience needs this overriding framework, which seems to cloak the other patterns that we have discovered like an invisible umbrella.
Key questions:
1. What other polarities are at work in your experience?
2. Does order play a role in the tension between center and horizon?
3. Do you find this tension manifesting itself in different ways in your life?
4. Do you notice any patterns (seasonal, weekly, daily, etc.) that reflect this interaction?