Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Studies in Continental Thought) - Hardcover

Casey, Edward S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253313317 ISBN 13: 9780253313317

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1993

Synopsis

What would the world be like if there were no places? Our lives are so place-oriented that we cannot begin to comprehend sheer placelessness. Indeed, the place we occupy has much to do with what and who we are. Yet, despite the pervasiveness of place in our everyday lives, philosophers have neglected it. "Getting Back into Place" offers a comprehensive and nuanced account of the role of place in human experience. Edward S. Casey first points to place's indispensability in navigation and orientation. The role of the lived body in matters of place is considered, and the characteristics of built places are explored. Cultivation of place is illuminated by a detailed analysis of gardens and parks. A scrutiny of wild places illustrates what is peculiar to places that resist the impingement of human presence. The contemporary, seminomadic experience of being between places is investigated through a sustained inquiry into the nature of journeys. Finally, the elusive meaning of home-places and of homecoming and homesteading is delineated. This rich intervention in the current discourse among scholars in the humanities and social sciences asserts the pervasiveness of place in constructing culture and identity.

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Review

Getting Back into Place offers an even more generous approach to place. According to Casey, we connect with a place merely by being attentive to it, open to its possibilities. (Environmental History Review)

This rich intervention in the current discourse among scholars in the humanities and social sciences asserts the pervasiveness of place in constructing culture and identity. (World Trade)

Casey's contributions complement those [of other writers], but they surpass most extant works in their majestic breadth, depth, and scope, offering insightful analyses, careful explications, and creative re-readings of both environmental phenomena and historical texts. (Environmental Ethics)

This important and inspiring book is without question the most significant statement on place in our time. (Theology Today)

Review

In descriptions of unprecedented scope, power, and concision, Casey illuminates brilliantly the vexing question crucial for our survival: What is our place in the domain we inhabit and in wilderness Nature? (Bruce Wilshire)

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253313317
• ISBN 13: 9780253313317
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432