Part III

REST IN THE GEOGRAPHICAL WORLD

All really inhabited space bears

the essence of the notion of home

--Gaston Bachelard (1958, p.5).

CHAPTER 8

AT-HOMENESS AND TERRITORIALITY

Limpets move about and feed when covered with water or while the rocks are still wet. Between tides they tend to cling tightly to the rock, preventing desiccation and predation by terrestrial animals. Many limpets seem to adopt a particular spot on the rock to n’t they return after feeding excursions. This spot may be so worn that the resident limpet just fits snugly into it. This “homing instinct” has been investigated a number of times ever since Aristotle first reported the habit, but the precise mechanism, the physical basis for the homing ability, and the organs and senses involved are still uncertain—B. H. McConnaughey (1974, pp.263-4).

Rest, like movement, plays an integral part in the processes of nature. Inorganic forms such as rocks and soil remain at rest, relatively fixed in place for most of their lifetimes. Plants are stationary and thrive or succumb largely according to the conditions of their growing place. Rest becomes crucially important for mobile organisms, including man, because it provides a time of inactivity and quiet in which worn parts are repaired and depleted energies restored.

In geography, which is often defined as the study of spatial distributions on the earth’s surface, rest is an essential phenomenon because the stationary positioning of things and artifacts is the foundation of all areal arrangements. Geographers in the past have been most concerned with the spatial location and relationships of tangible phenomena—for example, the distribution of human populations, the placement of cities, the areal patterning of natural resources.

Recently, behavioral geographers have begun to study rest as it has meaning for individuals and groups. Generally, the guide for this research has been territoriality  the theory that animals, persons and groups identify with and defend territories of various spatial extents.¹ This work makes a significant contribution to the understanding of human relationships with place and territory. Discoveries in this book echo research on territoriality, and also explore additional qualities of place that situate the territorial dimensions of rest in a wider experiential structure.

Rest refers to any situation in which the person or an object with which he or she has contact is relatively fixed in place and space for a longer or shorter period of time. Participants in the environmental experience groups described experiences of rest in such varied places as city, neighborhood, house and room. They described regularity of place use and emotional attachment to place.

The essential experiential structure of rest, I argue, is at-homeness the usually unnoticed, taken-for-granted situation of being comfortable in and familiar with the everyday world in which one lives and outside of which one is “visiting”, “in transit”, “not at home”, “out of place” or “traveling”. The swelling-place is generally the spatial center of at-homeness. At the same time, the person who is at home establishes taken-for-granted places for the things of his everyday life and is familiar and comfortable with a geographical world extending beyond the dwelling-place. The specific physical extent and boundaries of at-homeness are not so much the concern here as the overriding experiential structure that makes them possible. The aim is to identify the essential character of at-homeness, which if not an essential ingredient of people’s relationship with place would preclude its manifestation in a particular concrete context, be it rooms, houses, city streets, or whatever.

Place as a Function of Territory

That human and animal relationships with space are grounded in aggression and defense is the key assumption of territoriality.² Suttles writes:

The central theme that is shared by many studies of territoriality is its connection with aggression. Humans along with many other animals kill, maul, and pillage individuals from outside their own territory. At the same time, there are many self-sacrificing loyalties and non-utilitarian exchanges among members of the same territorial group (1972, p.140).

Research in territoriality has defined attachment to place and space largely in terms of fear, protection, exclusiveness and preservation. Consider, for example, Soja’s definition of territoriality; note his emphasis on demarcation and distinctiveness:

Territoriality...is a behavioral phenomenon associated with the organization of space into spheres of influence or clearly demarcated territories that are made distinctive and considered at least partially exclusive by their occupants or definers. Its most obvious geographical manifestation is an identifiable patterning of spatial relationships resulting in the confinement of certain activities in particular areas and the exclusion of certain categories of individuals from the space of the territorial individual or group (1971, p.19, italics in original).

Territoriality has been applied to human spatial behavior at a variety of environmental scales, including personal (e.g. Sommer, 1969), urban (e.g. Suttles, 1968), regional (e.g. Soja, 1971) and national (e.g. Gottman, 1973). The main aim of this research has been an understanding of links between the territorial impulse and appropriation of space and place for individuals and groups. As with behaviorists and cognitive theorists, researchers in territoriality rarely question the possibility that their approach could be incomplete or reductive. Territoriality is generally accepted as axiomatic to empirical study of geographic behavior.

Extending Territoriality

I recognize the territorial component of at-homeness but argue that an aggression impulse is only one factor contributing to its nature. As well as a place of protection and defense, the home speaks to the creative, caring part of the person. He who is at home is more likely to live a comfortable existence; he is more likely to extend himself and grow. At-homeness is a prime root of personal and societal strength and growth. It may have a major role in fostering community. For geography and other disciplines of the environment, at-homeness-is crucial because it is the experience associated with people’s resting in a particular place on the earth’s surface and proceeding to live there.

The components of at-homeness, as group reports reveal them, are rootedness, appropriation, regeneration, at-easeness and warmth. In addition, two wider components are explored: first, the habitual, stabilizing force of body-subject, second, an emotional stratum of experience—I call it feeling-subject—that makes a person’s place his or hers. The forces of body and emotion, in multifold, intertwined fashion, connect the person like invisible threads to the places of the world that he calls home. When the person changes these ties in some way, these forces become stressed and the person experiences annoyance, hostility, confusion, home-sickness, or some similar emotional response.

Notes

1. E.g. Ardrey, 1966; Lorenz, 1966; Hall, 1966; Morris, 1967; Suttles, 1968; Boal, 1969; Metton, 1969; Sommer, 1969; Pastalan and Carson (eds.), 1970; Boal, 1971;”Buttimer, 1972; Suttles, 1972; Gottman, 1973; Newman, 1973; Ley and Cybriwsky, 1974; Vine, 1975; Scheflin, 1976. Two excellent overviews of territoriality are Soja, 1971, and Malmberg, 1979.

2. A large portion of the territorial literature has focused on one highly debated question: is territoriality a biologically or culturally conditioned phenomenon in man? Several well known authors such as Lorenz (1966), Ardrey (1966) and Morris (1967) have argued that territoriality is a natural instinct in both animals and people. Other students such as Allard (1972) have argued against a biologically determined view, pointing out that though territorial instinct may be present in man, it manifests (or fails to) according to the culture in which the individual finds himself. “What kind of behavioral system emerges’, writes Allard (ibid., p.13) ‘must conform to man’s biological capacities, but since these are wide, the capacities alone tell us little about the real systems undergoing the selective process.” For other criticisms of the biological view, see Callan, 1970, and Soja, 1971.

CHAPTER 9

CENTERS, PLACES FOR THINGS, AND FEELING-SUBJECT

One day in my rambles, I discovered a small grove composed of twenty or thirty trees, at a convenient distance apart...This grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighborhood; and after a time, I made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. I did not ask myself why I made a choice of that one spot, going out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside. I thought nothing about it, but acted unconsciously. Only afterwards it seemed to me that, after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again, the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees...; and in a short time I formed a habit of returning animal-like , to repose at that same spot—W. H. Hudson (cited in James, 1958, pp.167-8).

Wherever we go, even for the shortest periods of time, we establish places around which we orient our world and our spatial activities. These centers give the person spatial and place identity; they locate him in the environment where he finds himself. Some group members spoke of visiting a new city, for example, and observing that their lodging place immediately became a center. “I quickly got my bearings in terms of the friends house where I was staying and came and went in terms of it,” said one group member (2.1.2). Another group member, even on his first day of visiting, found himself returning automatically to the place where he was staying. “I took a bus back to the apartment where I was staying,” he explained, “I did it without thinking. I could have done anything, but I went back there” (2.1.1).

Centers are established during shorter trips away from home. A car, for example, may become a temporary center on a shopping trip. “Especially in a place with which I’m not too familiar”, said one group member, “I’ve noticed how the car becomes my focus in space and I direct my shopping movements in terms of it” (2.1.6). Even in places dealt with only briefly, such as a roadside stand or transportation terminal, we tend to establish centers and orient ourselves around them:

When you stop by the side of the road to eat lunch and stay for a time resting—even there you pick a place, sit down, and then usually spend the rest of your time in terms of that place. Or when you wait in a bus station for a few hours, you get up for some candy, or go to the bathroom, or take a walk, but then more than likely you’ll return to the same seat (2.1.3).

Specific implements and fixtures such as seats, desks, tables and beds become centers in interior space: ‘my family always sits in the same seats at the dinner table” (2.13.1); ‘my desk and the big rocking chair I got from the Salvation Army are the two places where I usually am when I’m in my room” (2.13.4); “at school, my favorite place is my desk—it seems to be the center of what I do” (2.14.8). Beyond interior space, larger places such as offices, parks, shops, eating establishments and other foci of activities become centers when the person uses them frequently—for example, going to a park for a daily walk (2.14.5) or visiting a local bakery to buy bread (2.13.4). These places may involve regularity of use and thus be connected with time-space routines and body and place ballets (2.14.1-2.14.8).

Places for Things

Besides establishing centers for themselves, people also establish places for things. Each object becomes associated with a particular place, and in this way the person can order living-space in terms of things. At the scale of clothing, for example, particular pockets and pouches provide places for specific items. “I always keep change, keys, and pens in my right pocket and tissues in the left,” explained one group member (2.16.2). “I have specific places in my pocket-book for certain things,” said another group member. “In the pouch in front I have pencils and pens. Inside is a zipper case where I put my keys” (2.16.3).

Likewise, shelves, drawers, cupboards and closets provide places for things and create what Heidegger (1962, p.136) has called regions—taken-for-granted totalities of places through which the person quickly locates the various things and utensils required for a particular task or occupation. Regions, says Heidegger (ibid., pp. 137-8), have the quality of “inconspicuous familiarity” because they are generally unnoticed and only come to attention when one fails to find something in its place. Inconspicuous familiarity was well described by one group member who realized the taken-for-granted order of kitchen space:

Because of the group, I’ve come to be more consciously aware of how important places are to me in the kitchen. All the things I use have definite places—even the spices in my spice rack. When I’m preparing a meal, I can quickly locate ingredients and utensils without having to think about it at all. Everything is at hand and ready for use (2.17.2).

In outdoor environments, people less frequently create places for things, since most exterior elements are fixed in position and not easily moved. Even here, however, some individual at some point in time must originally locate a particular thing, be it planted tree, water fountain, garage or whatever. Often this locating process requires considerable time and may become a significant event for person or family. One group member described a family argument arising over the location of a tool shed (2.22.1), while another described a similar dispute over the planting site of a tree (2.22.2).

For large mobile objects like cars, place may become very important. Several group members reported that they parked their cars in a regular place, one group member described the annoyance and “loss’ resulting from not having a parking space:

I’ve forgotten several times this past semester where I parked my car. I find myself stopping at the first stop that looks convenient and parking there, then when I go out to find the car at the end of the day I can’t remember where I’ve parked. As I look for it, I find myself thinking, “Where did I park this morning, where would have been the most sensible place to park?” But often this logical approach doesn’t work and I just have to go around and look. It’s ridiculous and annoying at the same time. For the sake of convenience, I’m beginning to establish a parking place (2.21.2).

The Notion of Feeling-Subject

Annoyance due to misplacing a car indicates an emotional stratum of experience directed to place and space. This affective relationship was intimated in Chapter 5 when reporters spoke of an emotional resistance to change in movements or routines. This emotional stratum is now made a phenomenon in its own right and its significance explored in relation to at-homeness.

A sense of attachment is one manifestation of the emotional linkage between person and place. People speak with fondness of places that are or were important to them (2.14). Similarly, places for things foster attachment, especially if the place has existed for a long time (2.20, 2.21). Attachment is sometimes described in terms of attraction: the place seems to draw the user to it. “A magnetic force draws me there,” said a group member who used a crafts workshop regularly (2.14.3). “If you go out for a while, you’re drawn back,” explained another group member, commenting on the frequency with which she and her roommates used the kitchen in the flat (2.13.9). Attachment to place is also described by closeness: the user feels near the places he likes. “I feel close to that park,” said a group member who went there frequently to sit and be alone (2.14.5). “It seems near to me," said a group member of the bakery where he bought bread regularly (2.14.4).

Attachment to place relates not only to positive emotions; it is also associated with a constellation of negative emotions, including anxiety and annoyance. Negativity most commonly arises when places are changed in some way. Consider a dining-room table put back slightly out of place after cleaning; family members began to feel uncomfortable during dinner, got up, and moved the table to its proper place (2.18.2). “There’s this drawback feeling that wants me to keep it as it is,” said a group member describing a change in furniture she had decided not to make (2.20.1). “It didn’t feel right and I turned it around,” said another group member using a typewriter that was facing in a direction different from usual (2.18.3). Yet another group member expressed mild annoyance because a university snack bar had been moved a considerable walking distance from its former place:

Since they’ve moved the snack bar to its new location I feel a little uncomfortable when I go there. It seems somehow wrong walking to the new place when in the past I’ve gone to the old location. I still go but it seems strange. It will take me some time to get used to it (2.15.2).

The experiential stratum associated with attachment to place I call feeling-subject. Feeling-subject is a matrix of emotional intentionalities within the person which extend outward in varying intensities to the centers, places and spaces of a person’s everyday geographical world.¹ Feeling-subject works in two ways: it sustains positive feelings for well used centers and places, and expresses negativity when these centers and places are changed in some way.

Feeling-subject houses an intelligent directedness similar to body-subject, but different in the sense that it arises from the emotional rather than bodily part of the person. Feeling-subject, coupled with body-subject, is a primary experiential force underlying our daily relations with the geographical world. Though it speaks in a language foreign to cognition and logical thinking—i.e. affective expression— feeling-subject can be said, like its bodily counterpart, to act intelligently and consistently. Feelings for centers or places may often seem logically incongruous or foolish. Yet as the cliché expresses it, “The heart has a mind of its own” and acts in a way internally consistent with emotional bonds to place and space (2.3.2, 2.3.3).

Exploring the exact nature of feeling-subject is not attempted here; present group observations are not detailed or precise enough. Clearly, feeling-subject establishes links with other portions of the world—its social, economic, interpersonal aspects. Love of person, art or God; sense of duty; dislike of prejudice—all these experiences have their grounding in feeling-subject. What is needed is a phenomenology of the emotional stratum of human experience.²

Suffice it to say, both body- and feeling-subjects require time to become familiar with and attached to new environments. These two forces prefer a minimum of change in their lifeworld and react in confusion and annoyance when the taken-for-granted is threatened or upset. Most people live in lifeworlds that are relatively stable and non-changing. This continuity is closely linked with at-homeness, for which the notions of body-and feeling-subjects provide important grips to explore its nature.

Notes

1. Feeling here is synonymous with emotion.

2. Perhaps future phenomenologies of lived-space can provide some insights. Does attachment to place say anything about how feeling-subject develops? Is it accurate in the end to arbitrarily separate body-and feeling-subjects as I have done here? Does emotional attachment ever become a destructive force in the person? What overcomes feeling-subject and allows a person to forsake centers or change places and routines? Why do different people feel different amounts of emotional reaction to the same situation?

CHAPTER 10

THE HOME AND AT-HOMENESS

The moment he entered the Pullman he was transported instantly from the vast allness of general humanity in the station into the familiar geography of his own home town. One might have been away years and never have seen an old familiar face; one might have wandered to the far ends of the earth;...one might have lived and worked in the canyons of Manhattan, until the very memory of home was lost and far as in a dream, yet the moment that he entered K19 it all came back again, his feet touched earth and he was home—Thomas Wolfe (1973, p.46).

Home is the most important center. ‘my apartment is my special place” (2.4.8). “I feel bad about leaving my apartment; I’ve gotten attached to it and I’m going to miss it” (2.3.1). Attachment for home is sometimes best revealed in out-of-the-ordinary situations such as heating failures (2.3.2, 2.3.3). People may bear cold and threat of sickness because of their bonds with home:

I remember when the heating system in my apartment was broken for a few days last winter. Friends invited me to stay at their houses but I didn’t go. Like New Year’s Eve. The friends I was with told me to stay but I couldn’t think of doing it. It didn’t seem right staying in their place when my apartment was just a few blocks away. It was cold in the apartment, but I wanted to be home. I remember thinking to myself how irrational I was being—that I wouldn’t be comfortable and might get sick. The thoughts had no effect. I found myself returning home with no hesitation whatsoever (2.3.3).

Attachment to home is associated with the experience of at-homeness—the taken-for granted situation of being comfortable and familiar with the world in which one lives his or her day-to-day life. Observations on home point to five underlying themes that mark out the experiential character of at-homeness—rootedness, appropriation, regeneration, at-easeness and warmth. Each theme is discussed in turn, then integrated to arrive at a picture of at-homeness as a whole.

Rootedness

Rootedness is the power of home to organize the habitual, bodily stratum of the person’s lived-space. Literally, the home roots the person spatially, providing a physical center for departure and return. Although inescapably a part of a larger geographical whole, the home is a special place because around it the person organizes his comings and goings: ‘space isn’t all equal for me. Where I live is a unique place because I’m always leaving it and coming back. In one sense, I’m bound to that place”(2.2.2).

The body is the foundation of rootedness. Through the recurring cycle of departure and return, body-subject comes to know the placement of home and its relative location in terms of paths, places, people and things. Body-subject left to its own devices illustrates this fact well. One group member, driving back from a bus station and busy in conversation with the friend riding with him, planned to drive the friend home. Instead, the driver suddenly found himself returning to his own residence. “How dumb!” he said, “Here I am driving us back to my house when I have to take you home” (2.8.2). Another group member, caught up in worry, suddenly found himself walking up the stairs of his apartment rather than going to the nearby post office as he planned (2.8.1). Cognition dwells on matters other than movement at hand, and body-subject directs itself towards home—its most frequent destination.

Bodily familiarity extends within the home, establishing places for things and temporal regularity for activities. The person who is at home can move fluidly through the dwelling because body-subject knows that space intimately. Necessary objects and devices are literally “at hand”:

My mother knows the exact location of everything in our house; she has a place for everything. She doesn’t have to figure out where a particular thing is—she goes to it automatically. Like I’ll need some string, and she’ll know the right drawer where it is. I’d have to check a few places before I’d find it, if I ever did (2.17.1).

Body ballets and time-space routines are intimately associated with home. Rituals such as waking, grooming, dressing and cooking have a particular routinized time and place within the home (2.9). In the same way, departures and returns may be fixed by habit. Consider, for example, the following morning time-space routine, which ends with departure from home at “8.50 sharp”:

On working days, my father follows the same routine each morning. He automatically gets up at 7 o’clock He doesn’t need an alarm. He puts on some old clothes, goes to the bathroom, then picks up the morning newspaper from the front stoop. He puts two sausages in a pan over low flame. They’ll be ready to eat at 8:15. While they cook, he reads the paper, always sitting in the same chair. He slouches. Just before the sausages are done, he soft-boils an egg; he doesn’t even wash the pan but uses the same water day after day. He puts a piece of rye bread in the toaster and pours a glass of orange juice...After breakfast—he calls it his “three-minute breakfast” because that’s how long it takes him to eat it—he puts the dishes in the dishwasher, shaves, bathes, dresses, and leaves the house at 8:50 sharp (2.9.1).

A substantial portion of a person’s everyday behaviors happen automatically because of rootedness; he thus conserves mental energy. Rootedness is established through physical action and requires time to develop. The person who lives in the same place his entire life establishes rootedness in the first few months and years of childhood; the person who changes places must re-establish rootedness each time he moves.

Partially because of rootedness, at-homeness cannot be established at once. Spatial familiarity and comfort can arise only through an active integrative process over time. Eventually, space is no longer a set of objective areas, things and points in terms of which behaviors must be figured out cognitively. It becomes a field of prereflective action grounded in the body.

Appropriation

The home appropriates space. Appropriation involves, first, a sense of possession and control: the person who is at home holds a space over which he is in charge. Appropriation is disturbed when a home is infringed upon in some way; feeling-subject immediately reacts. “I’ve gotten angry about it,” said a group member in regard to an acquaintance staying in her apartment who had taken the liberty of walking in without knocking. “He doesn’t live there and he violates our sense of privacy when he walks in like that” (2.6.1). Workmen fixing a group member’s apartment generated a similar feeling of anxiety:

For the past few weeks workmen have been renovating the apartment house where I live. I’ve been trying to observe my reactions to them. There’s a feeling of trespass: “What are these people doing here in my building?” I find their presence annoying. I realize they have to be there, but there’s tension in having them there (2.6.2).

Appropriation is partially a function of the home’s physical context but, more significantly, involves the resident’s ability to control passage in and out. The group members feel uncomfortable because of the uninvited entrance of the acquaintance, the uncontrollable presence of the workmen. Expected or taken-for-granted entrants are familiar or scheduled and do not upset the sense of at-homeness. Uninvited entrants, however, interfere with the resident’s sense of control, and cause feeling-subject to react immediately.

A second aspect of appropriation is privacy. “He violates our privacy,” says the group member above. A place to be alone is part of at-homeness, and the person whose home does not provide such a place feels a certain degree of upset. “It felt like the room wasn’t mine because he was there so much,” said one group member whose dormitory roommate rarely left the room (2.5.2). “With the additional person, it seems like there’s always someone there, and that I never have the place to myself,” said another group member who now lived with two people rather than one. “It’s a relief every so often to know that both room-mates will be away and I can have the whole apartment to myself” (2.5.2).

Appropriation, as a whole, relates to the resident’s ability to control home-space. Lack of appropriation involves infringement or loss of privacy. In either case, the resident has lost his taken-for-granted powers to control and use his home-space as he sees fit. Disruption of appropriation leads to responses of feeling-subject that may include anger, anxiety or discomfort. This emotional response may be long or short, but while it lasts the person is not fully at home.

Regeneration

The person who seeks rest seeks repose and refreshment. Regeneration refers to the restorative powers of the home. Most obviously, the home houses physical rest. Several observations on home made reference to sleep and sleeping place. The group member, for example, who came back to the apartment without heat, returned to sleep (2.3.3.). Another group member went without dinner and drove late into the night to be able to sleep in his own home rather than elsewhere. “There was this irresistible urge,” he said, “to be in my own place and sleep in my own bed” (2.3.4).

The bed itself is often a special place in the home. Some group members spoke of its inviolate character; they felt uncomfortable sitting on a bed without the owner’s explicit permission (2.13.5, 2.13.6). The special significance of bed is partially related to sexual activity: it is a place of mutual love and procreation. In this sense, it is the spatial origin of humankind. In addition, the importance of bed is related to appropriation: without the security and privacy of the home, effective rest would be difficult or impossible. The sleeping person can fully prostrate himself without fear or threat.

Locking rituals point to the importance of security during times of rest and sleep. Some group members explained that locking doors was an integral element of their bedroom routine. One group member described his parents’ locking ritual that had followed the same basic sequence for years:

My mother and father lock the door every night before retiring. Usually my father does it, but then my mother rechecks to make sure he hasn’t forgotten. My father has a regular routine. He goes to the outer porch door, flips on the yard light, checks the outdoor thermometer, shuts off the light, locks the porch door, then comes in and locks the inner door which comes into the kitchen. Then about fifteen minutes later, my mother gets ready for bed, and she checks the door too. In the morning, my mother gets up first. As soon as she’s downstairs, she unlocks both doors and looks out to see what the weather is like. They’ve done this for as long as I can (2.6.3).

Besides sheltering sleep, the home may also foster psychological regeneration. “I go there to get oriented,” explained one group member (2.4.1). “I go back there to get myself together before another class,” said another (2.4.3). One group member found herself returning home after a professor expressed dissatisfaction with a paper she had written; it is the simple return home, the report suggests, rather than any specific activities there which renews her energies: “I found myself walking back to my apartment, just to recuperate. I didn’t know what I’d do there, but I knew the apartment would help me to feel better” (2.4.5).

In its regenerative powers, the home provides a stable place in which the person can recoup his physical and psychic energies. The person at home has a place where the possibility of rest is taken for granted and secure. Without a place for regeneration, a person’s life almost surely disintegrates.

At-Easeness

At-easeness refers to the freedom to be: the person who is at home can be what he most comfortably is and do what he most wishes to do. ‘my home is where I can best be myself,” said one group member (2.4.6). “It’s the place where I can "let my hair down",” said another (2.4.2). The home is a place where impulse can be spontaneous and free. It contrasts with public environments where people must partake in roles and behaviors required to maintain a particular public image. Within limits, the person at home can manifest all sides of himself and fear no repercussions; he can be as foolish, negative, or loving as he wishes:

My apartment is my special place where I feel that I can do the things I like and not feel bothered or guilty. Reading quietly, sitting with a friend, playing the recorder—all these things I can do anywhere, but somehow they seem best done at home. At home I don’t feel ashamed to be miserable. I can go to my room, shut the door, be as ugly as I want. I can be angry with my roommate and it will be okay. No strings are attached to anything I do at home (2.4.8).

The importance of at-easeness may become especially clear in times of sickness. Sick people, explained one group member, are most comfortable at home because they do not have the energy to “pretend you’re something you’re not” (2.4.4). The invalid feels comfortable to be as sick as he is at home; he can be completely vulnerable and not fear the consequences. In contrast, it is this vulnerability that makes the guest uncomfortable in the host’s home (2.12). Because the home that he visits is not his own, the guest may feel uncomfortable and Ill at ease. Accordingly, etiquette requires the host to reassure and guide the guest, who is often grateful (2.12.1).

At-easeness may be reflected in the home’s physical character, which sustains at-homeness as at the same time it helps create it. “It’s good to live in a place that shows by what it is who you are,” explained one group member who had redecorated her apartment and put up wall hangings that “all tell something about who I am” (2.3.6). “It’s very hard to make a personal mark,” said another group member who had difficulty individualizing his dormitory room because of a uniform concrete construction that resisted modification. “I don’t feel as comfortable there as I might if I could make the place my own” (2.3.5).

At-easeness supports a renewal of self. It is a ground stone from which can develop personal and interpersonal growth. “Ill at ease” connotes sickness. To be ill at ease in one’s own home indicates unnaturalness and leads to resolution or physical and psychological stress.

Warmth

Warmth refers to an atmosphere of friendliness, concern and support that a successful home generates. "The house had a warm feeling, I felt very good being in it,” said a group member vividly struck by his first visit to a friend’s house (2.7.4). “The place felt so much a home,” said another group member. “It felt so warm and cozy. I almost wished I was a child living there—it felt so supportive” (2.7.7). Particular rooms may project a sense of warmth. A kitchen fosters an atmosphere of “friendliness and cheerfulness’ (2.13.9), or a living-room can feel comfortable and safe:

I have vivid memories of the living room in my grandfather’s house. It wasn’t fancy or new, but all old things worn and well used. It had a quality of warmness. There was a stuffed deer’s head over the mantle, and I remember once lying on the rug by the fireplace looking up at it. I remember feeling warm and happy, snug and secure (2.7.6).

Use is one quality prerequisite for warmth; a warm home or room will not be one that is unused or used only infrequently. Instead, frigidity and emptiness permeate these places. “When you’re in a house that hasn’t been lived in for a long time there’s a feeling of coldness,” said one group member (2.7.1). “There’s a definite feeling, a lack of energy in a place where people have not been for a long time,” explained another group member. “It feels like a ghost town” (2.7.3). “You walk in and the room feels so cold,” said another group member describing an infrequently used dining room in her parents’ home (2.7.5). Presence of people and interpersonal harmony are integrally linked with use. Atmosphere may change when friends move into a home that before had been shared with acquaintances:

When we moved into our apartment, some sub-letters were living with us, but they weren’t really friends. They were just helping to pay the rent. When you went home it felt like an apartment, it didn’t feel too much like home. As soon as our friends moved in the place changed. It’s nice now. Even when I return and nobody’s home, there’s a good aura about the place. We all get along fine, we eat dinner together every night, and it’s just like home. You look forward to being together, eating together. It seems like we’ve developed a family feeling (2.10.1).

Care is associated with places of warmth: the person feels concern for the home and keeps it ordered and in good repair. The place, in turn radiates a sense of tidiness and quiet beauty. “The place looked nice,” said the group member of the friend’s house that he vividly remembered. “Someone had taken pains with the place” (2.7.4). “It was decorated in a light blue and was clean and ordered and cared for,” said the group member visiting the home that made him wish to be a child living there (2.7.7.). Cleaning and fixing a place that originally feels “cold and unused” may help the dweller come to like it and feel at home there (2.7.2).

Warmth, unlike other aspects of at-homeness, is a less tangible quality and not present in all homes. Warmth, however, is not insignificant. It sustains an atmosphere of cheeriness and companionship that enhances the sense of life. Today, many people live alone in homes isolated from any wider interpersonal context. Warmth is less likely to be present and one cannot help wondering what impact its loss has on person and society (Heidegger, 1971).

CHAPTER 11

IMPLICATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY, EDUCATION AND DESIGN

Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build—Heidegger (1971, p.160).

For people in other times and places, at-homeness may involve other dimensions besides those explored here. For the Appalachian mountaineer, the gipsy, the migrant worker or the suburban house owner the specific nature of at-homeness will vary. No matter what the specific historical and cultural context, however, at-homeness will surely be present in some fashion whether it involves a small parcel of land on which a small log cabin sits, a series of sites at which a nomad stops on his annual migratory travels, or the motel room of a traveling salesman.

The five aspects of at-homeness discussed here touch different parts of the person, have varying spatial manifestations, and lead to different experiential consequences. Table 11.1 summarizes these variations. Rootedness touches largely the bodily part of the person, providing both spatial and temporal orientation. Rootedness is strong within the home and extends outward to the places and paths that the person uses actively. Rootedness supports order of movement and continuity in time. Present and future behaviors can happen as they have in the past in the space where a person is rooted. He need not plan and figure out day-to-day activities and events; rootedness guarantees their automatic unfolding.

Aspect	Experiential Stratum	Manifestation in Space & Place	Consequences
Rootedness	bodily, centers the person spatially	Concentrated in places, plaths, points of use; undeveloped in unused portions	Intelligent body-subject; spatial order and temporal continuity; minimal chance of being or becoming lost; taken-for-grantedness in terms of orientation, routines, and places for things
Appropriation	Largely emotional; attachment to place (positive), sense of threat (negative); sentiment	Concentric and generally strongest at center; intensity in proportion to use and attachment; applied to centers, paths, places for things, and things themselves	Provides person a place of ownness and order in a wider world that is public, often chaotic
Regeneration	Bodily, emotional, cognitive; renewal and repair	Generally happening within the home but also associated with other places that have restorative powers—e.g., a path where one takes a daily constitutional	Restores both body and spirit; repose and sleep
At-easeness	Bodily, emotional, cognitive	Usually strongest at home but possible in other places where the person feels comfortable and relaxed	Relaxation, looseness, contemplation, freedom “to be”
Warmth	Precognitive; felt most by the person’s bodily, emotional parts	Most common in interior spaces—e.g., rooms and houses; related to tidiness, decoration, interpersonal harmony	Cheerfulness, contentment, sense of camaraderie and nurturing

Rootedness has been ignored in much research or territoriality, though some studies of animals have noted its significance (e.g. Von Uexkull, 1957; Lorenz, 1966). Leyhausen (1970, p.184), making reference to Heidegger (1949), explains that mammals establish a territory consisting of points of interest--i.e. first-order homes, second-order homes, places for feeding, rubbing, sunbathing, etc.--”connected by an elaborate network of paths, along which the territory owner travels according to a more or less strict daily, seasonal, or other wise determined routine”.

Applying this pattern to domestic cats, he finds they have such a territory. He can not definitely conclude however, that they have a definite routine as Heidegger had maintained. Leyhausen writes:

In their daily routine, the animals [neighboring cats] avoid direct encounters, and even cats sharing a home keep separate in the field. According to Heidegger, species achieve this by following a rather definite timetable, scheduled like a railway timetable so as to make collisions unlikely. Wolff’s and my observations have so far failed to produce any positive evidence that the daily routine of domestic cats is subject to such a definite schedule. Where there is a strong tendency towards being in a certain place at the same time every day, this is usually due to human influence, for example, feeding time (ibid., p.186).

Rootedness is ignored in most studies of human territoriality or reduced to observable behaviors usually called “activity-space patterns’ which are represented in graphic or statistical form (e.g. Boal, 1969, 1971; Lee, 1970; Buttimer, 1972). Rootedness supplements territoriality’s emphasis on space as a function of aggression and opens investigation to the role of habitual, precognitive behaviors in joining animal or person with lived-space.

Appropriation incorporates the emphasis in territoriality on protection and defense but extends this affective bond to include positive attachment. Most work in human territoriality has focused exclusively on negative emotions in regard to place, thus Suttles (1968) emphasizes the forces of neighborhood separation, defense and exclusiveness in his study of the socio-spatial dynamics in Chicago’s low income Adams area neighborhood. Similarly, Newman (1973) falls back heavily on the aggression-defense impulse in his theory of “defensible space”.

Appropriation lies in the emotional part of the person and sometimes involves a mechanism of defense. The error of territoriality has been the reduction of spatial experience to only spheres of influence and control. The aggression impulse is but one part of appropriation. As a complete whole, appropriation involves both negative and positive emotions expressed by a myriad of such feelings as attachment, protection, nostalgia and homesickness (Relph, 1976b, pp.33-43). Tuan (1974) calls the positive emotions for place topophilia, which he defines as “all of the human being’s affective ties with the material environment” (p.93), fostered by such diverse experiences as aesthetic appreciation, physical contact, health, patriotism, familiarity and attachment (pp.92-102). Relph (1976a) has developed the term topophobia to describe yet another aspect of emotion and place--”all experiences of spaces, places, and landscapes which are in any way distasteful or induce anxiety and depression” (27).

Appropriation can be visualized spatially as an invisible atmospheric surface whose height as a particular place is directly related to the attachment that the person feels for that place coupled with his need for its appropriation. Generally, this surface is high around a person’s favorite possessions, his home, and centers to which he feels close. Typically, its height descends for places further from dwelling-place, though points of attachment far beyond the home--for example, a favorite pub, special swimming place, community where one grew up--may modify the general pattern.

At-easeness can be represented by the same tent-like surface. High points are places where the person is more or less relaxed and free. At-easeness is generally strongest within the physical structure of home, but extends to other places where the person feels comfortable. Territoriality studies have largely ignored at-easeness, probably because its behavioral manifestations are not as readily observable as more visible territorial behaviors like aggression and defense. For the same reason, warmth has been ignored by territoriality research. This quality of at-homeness is most limited spatially, manifesting at special places--generally interiors--that extend an atmosphere of cheeriness and support.

Regeneration points to the restorative powers of place and is best represented graphically as points in space where the person can find physical and psychological rest. These points are probably few for most people. Students in territoriality have sometimes mentioned the significance of place in sustaining regeneration (e.g. Carpenter, 1958) but have not considered the relationship in detail. A study of regeneration in terms of routine and ritual would be one interesting probe. Who sleeps how long, when, where, and how often? What going-to-bed and waking rituals are there for which animals, for which people?

The Development of At-Homeness

The key to identity of place, argues Relph (1976b, p.49) is insideness--the degree to which a person belongs to an associates himself with a place. The person who feels inside a place is here rather than there, safe rather than threatened, enclosed rather than exposed. The more profoundly inside a place the person feels, Relph explains, the stronger will be his or her identity with that place. Further, Relph suggests that the dualism between insideness and its opposite, outsideness, is a fundamental dialectic of environmental experience and behavior: for different people, different places take on different degrees of insideness and outsideness.

The development of at-homeness is usefully viewed in terms of Relph’s inside-outside designations (ibid., pp.49-55). Places of most profound at-homeness generally reflect existential insideness--the situation of unselfconscious immersion in place described in Chapter 6 in relation to place ballets. Existential insideness, says Relph (ibid., p.55), is the experience of place “that most people experience when they are at home and in their own town or region”. It involves fully the five components of at-homeness: the person is bodily and emotionally immersed in place; life holds continuity and regularity and its mundane aspects, at least, are taken for granted and rarely reflected upon.

How does at-homeness develop? Having no home and not being at home are reflected in two of Relph’s modes of outsideness: existential outsideness, where the person is homeless and alienated from place and people (ibid., p.51); and objective outsideness, where the person intentionally adopts a dispassionate attitude toward place in order that it can be studied selectively in terms of specific locational or activity attributes (ibid., p.51-2). People in these modes of experience are separate from place and feel no attachment. They are entities severed experientially from the geographical world in which they find themselves. They are not at home but observers, tourists, people alone or “out of place”.

Becoming at home is reflected in Relph’s modes of insideness. In behavioral insideness the person begins to notice place--he deliberately looks for aspects of place that make it different from other places. A uniform environment begins to reveal pattern and uniqueness; the person begins to feel inside and at home (ibid., pp.53-4). As these feelings strengthen, the person may experience empathetic insideness, which requires a “willingness to be open to significances of place, to feel it, to know and respect its symbols’ (ibid., p.54). The person grows closer to place and feels attachment and concern. Eventually, but not necessarily, the person may choose to make this place his home; he experiences existential insideness and a “deep and complete identity with place” (ibid., p.55).

At-Homeness Past and Present

At-homeness in the past sprang from existential insideness. People born in place lived there the rest of their lives. They became at home in that place. At-homeness was experienced unselfconsciously and never questioned unless suddenly upset by natural disaster or social upheaval. Clearly there were exceptions--travelers, outcasts, the well-to-do. For most people, however, birthplace was the only place. It was home, no matter how wretched and unfair conditions might seem to the outsider.

The poet and agricultural writer Wendell Berry (1977) argues that in this past mode of at-homeness, people lived in intimate contact with place and natural environment. Aspects of living were continuous, and each place was profoundly unique:

Once, some farmers, particularly in Europe, lived in their barns--and so were both at work and at home. Work and rest, work and pleasure, were continuous with each other, often not distinct from each other at all. Once, shopkeepers lived in, above, or behind their shops...Once, households were producers and processors of food, centers of their own maintenance, adornment, and repair, places of instruction and amusement. People were born in these houses and lived and worked and dies in them. Such houses were not generalizations. Similar to each other in materials and design as they might have been, they nevertheless looked and felt and smelled different from each other because they were articulations of particular responses to their places and circumstances (ibid., p.53).

Today, in an era of mobility and mass communications, people easily transcend physical space and readily compare and switch places. At-homeness is no longer a certainty; it must be re-established each time a person moves. Many people are footloose and feel no attachment to place. At the same time, technology and mass culture destroy the uniqueness of places and promote global homogenization. The result is the placelessness of which Relph (1976b) speaks.

Berry (1977) goes on to argue that the modern mode of at-homeness is responsible for placelessness and community fragmentation. The home is no longer grounded in place, he says, and when people do not live where they conduct other aspects of their lives such as working and recreating “they do not feel the effects of what they do” (ibid., p.52). People, for example, who dig strip-mines, who build expressways, who clear-cut forests “do not live where their senses will be offended or their homes or livelihoods or lives immediately threatened by the consequences’ (ibid., p.52). Home is no longer a kindly response to a specific physical and social milieu; rather, it is a generalization, a product of factory and fashion, an everyplace or a noplace. Modern houses, like airports, are extensions of each other; they do not vary much from one place to another. A person standing in a modern room anywhere might imagine himself anywhere else--much as he could if he shut his eyes. The modern house is not a response to its place, but rather to the affluence and social status of its owner...His home is the emblem of his status, but it is not the center of his interest or of his consciousness. The history of our time has been to a considerable extent the movement of the center of consciousness away from home (ibid., 52-3).

At-Homeness and Dwelling

Martin Heidegger (1962, 1971), the influential German philosopher and phenomenologist, has perhaps discussed in most detail the situation of modern homes and at-homeness. Heidegger believes that we are forgetting how to dwell and by that forgetting, we also forget how to be at home and how to build homes. Dwelling, says Heidegger (1971), is the process through which man makes his place of existence a home and comes into harmony with the Fourfold--the earth, sky, gods and himself. To dwell is “to be on the earth as a mortal”, which in turn means “to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for” the place and community where one chooses to live (ibid., p.147). Dwelling, explains Buttimer (1976, p.277), placing the notion in modern context, ‘means to live in a manner which is attuned to the rhythms of nature, to see one’s live anchored in human history and directed to a future, to build a home which is the everyday symbol of a dialogue with one’s ecological and social milieu”.

Dwelling incorporates at-homeness and extends to other themes: the quality of environment and place that sustains or hinders a home, the manner by which people might better treat the earth and land, the responsibility of the individual for himself and others. While at-homeness focuses largely on the context of person and needs of people, dwelling, reaching further, has ecological significance and joins the individual person with earth, biosphere, communal and spiritual milieu. Dwelling points towards man’s role of caretaker: of the natural world, of other people, of himself, of kindness, morality and understanding (Grange, 1977).

The key to dwelling and caretaking, Heidegger (1971, p.149) says, is sparing and preserving--the kindly concern for land, things and people as they are and as they can become. Sparing and preserving foster a “free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature” (ibid., p.149). The result, Relph explains,

is places which evolve, and have an organic quality, which have what Heidegger calls the character of ‘sparing”--the tolerance of something for itself without trying to change or control it--places which are evidence of care and concern for the earth and for other men. Such spaces and places are full with meaning; they have an order and a sense that can be experienced directly, yet which is infinitely variable (1976b, p.18).

Dwelling and Building

“To build is in itself already to dwell," Heidegger goes on to say (ibid., p.146), striking the essence of the value of dwelling for environmental education and design. Modern men and women, argues Heidegger, have forgotten how to dwell and can no longer build. "What does it mean to live in places fully?” Until we answer this question, Heidegger says, we can not expect that the planned spaces we construct will be successful human or ecological environments.

Dwelling, if we trust Heidegger, is more than attractive buildings and surroundings, or needs defined by physical criteria--amount of floor space, lighting, or whatever. Rather, dwelling involves less tangible qualities and processes--caring for the place where one lives, feeling at home in and part of that place. Until we as social scientists and planners begin to understand the day-to-day environment in terms of dwelling, Heidegger argues, we will continue to create locations that are lifeless and empty spaces rather than lived-in places fostering a sense of vitality and community.

At the same time, Heidegger, like Berry, believes that people exist in place but no longer dwell there. Residents in public housing who vandalize, even destroy their living environment; suburbanites who attack a “they” named responsible for a badly constructed sewer system or mismanaged landfill; corporate executives who become outraged at environmental regulations--people like these, argues Heidegger, forget their responsibility to earth and the larger human community. They move towards a state of homelessness and interpersonal alienation. Using housing as an example, Heidegger writes:

On all sides we hear talk about the housing shortage, and with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill the need by providing houses, by promoting the building of houses, planning the whole architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses. The real plight of dwelling is indeed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also than the increase of the earth’s population and the condition of the industrial workers. The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell (ibid., p.161, italics in original).

Learning to Dwell

Learning to dwell happens in two ways: discovering the importance of dwelling in our own and others’ lives; designing physical environments that sustain and enhance dwelling.

The environmental experience groups provide evidence of the first way. Through exploring experiences of place and space, some group members came to recognize the importance of home and at-homeness (Appendix B). There was growing understanding of the numerous experiential links binding person with place. Consider, for example, the following report made by a group member the summer after the group experience; she has become sensitive to the value of home and sees its importance in day-to-day living:

One thing I noticed over the summer was the way the house I was living in became a home. There was a sense of center that survived moodiness and restlessness. How important that was! All sorts of little things helped--someone lent me sheets, so I didn’t have to sleep in a sleeping bag any more, and I moved the bed back to the bedroom--it was in the living room when I came--so that there was a living space and sleeping space. Having this home, as temporary as it was, ended up to be one of the best things about the summer. Real delight in cleaning things up, putting things in their places, having a place that was mine (commentary 3).

If education about dwelling is valuable, finding ways to construct physical environments that support rather than stymie dwelling is also important. One returns again to community and place ballet. In one sense, it is fair to say that people’s striving for dwelling and at-homeness is the experiential foundation of community. Community establishes a familiarity and comfortableness with people and environment outside the immediate home.

Community and place in the past were bounded spatially; human movements were restricted by the distance a person could walk or ride by relatively slow means of transportation. Residence, business, work and recreation came together in space and time. Place ballet and caring for place were readily possible. Modern time-space routines, in contrast, are often isolated units which rarely fuse in a wider place-space whole. Activities are segmented; the potential interpersonal dynamism that might result if they did fuse is lost. “Geography”, says Berry (1977, p.53) about modern man, “is defined for him by his house, his office, his commuting route, and the interiors of shopping centers, restaurants, and places of amusement--which is to say that his geography is artificial; he could be anywhere and usually is.”

Clearly, advances in technology allow people to overcome distances physically and make their lived-space the changeable patchwork that Berry describes. Experientially, however, this physical separation of places has a part in destroying community. If they are close spatially, people are more likely to develop interpersonal ties and to care for the space they share. Community, as Slater (1970, p.5) reminds us, is “a total and visible collective entity”. Alienation from space weakens this visible totality and destroys concern for specific places and environments.

Dwelling, At-Homeness and Place Ballet

In asking, then, how physical design can foster dwelling and at-homeness, one returns to the notion of place ballet. First, place ballet roots the person in his own time-space routine as at the same time it roots the totality of participants in an overall time-space pattern. Second, in that it automatically “assigns’ specific people to a specific area, place ballet appropriates space and thereby fosters interpersonal familiarity and trust. At the same time, this acquaintance and sociability may generate at-easeness, and in some environments warmth. Place ballet fosters a sense of place that provides participants with spatial order and identification as it protects them from the intrusion of uninvited people and events from the world at large.

If place ballet promotes at-homeness and dwelling, there still remain two important questions: what specific elements of physical design promote or hinder place ballet? What specific place ballets are needed by which places?

The first question I momentarily set aside but return to in Part Five. The second question presently has no clear answer. In urban environments, if the argument of Jacobs (1961) is trusted, place ballets center on neighborhoods, streets, their shops and other establishments. The need is to promote situations where place ballets can be strengthened, revived or begun, and their dynamism spill out into less lively surroundings. In rural areas, suggests Berry (1977, pp. 218-22), the need is a return to the individual landowner with his family and care for the land. Each farm would promote a family place ballet that mingles with a larger, regional time-space whole. This interaction, says Berry, would re-establish a face-to-face relationship between ruralites and urbanites.

In today’s technological and mobile world, a return to human scale may seem impossible. Webber says of the modern American:

The communities with which he associates and to which he belongs are no longer only the communities of place to which his ancestors were restricted; Americans are becoming more closely tied to various interest communities than to place communities, whether the interest be based on occupational activities, leisure pastimes, social relationships, or intellectual pursuits (1970, p.536).

On the other hand, social and spiritual discontent, as well as economic, ecological and energy problems rumble beneath the mainstream and suggest uncomfortably that our world is not secure. Countries throughout the world are becoming increasingly mobile. One out of every three American families changes place of residence every three years; Canadian and European trends begin to reflect a similar pattern. People are less likely to feel responsible for their neighbors because they don’t know them.

In terms of experience, which is the main test here, it does seem that we are unavoidably grounded in place and space and this is partially because we are bodily and emotional beings. If we were gaseous creatures or finer energies that could fly instantly from place to place, if we did not develop emotional attachments, our day-to-day geography would be unimaginably different. The role of place and space might be insignificant.

The decision, ultimately, as to what we are lies with the individual person who can decide that man is infinitely adaptable or, alternately, that he is limited by various inescapable qualities that include body, feelings--the need to dwell. Experientially, at least, people cannot do everything. The best solution, perhaps, is to recognize existential limitations and to become free around them--not in spite of them.