PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement is a compila- tion of seventeen previously published articles and chapters by David Seamon, one of the foremost researchers in environmental, architectural, and place phenom- enology. These entries discuss such topics as body-subject, the lived body, place ballets, environmental serendipity, homeworlds, and the pedagogy of place and placemaking. The volume’s chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four entries that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and placemaking. These chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts like lifeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically. Topics covered include environmental situatedness, architectural phenomenology, environmental serendipity, and the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place and placemaking. Part III presents a number of explications of real-world places and place experience, drawing on examples from photography (André Kertész’s Meudon), television (Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles’ Limbo and Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City and Louis Bromfield’s The World We Live in). Seamon is a major figure in environment-behavior research, particularly as that work has applied value for design professionals. This volume will be of interest to geographers, environmental psychologists, architects, planners, policymakers, and other researchers and practitioners concerned with place, place experience, place meaning, and placemaking. David Seamon is Professor of Environment-Behavior and Place Studies in the Department of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA. He is Editor of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology. His most recent book is Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making (Routledge, 2018). World Library of Educationalists Series The World Library of Educationalists celebrates the important contributions to edu- cation made by leading experts in their individual fields of study. Each scholar has compiled a career-long collection of what they consider to be their finest pieces: extracts from books, journals, articles, major theoretical and practical contributions, and salient research findings. For the first time ever the work of each contributor is presented in a single vol- ume so readers can follow the themes and progress of their work and identify the contributions made to, and the development of, the fields themselves. The distinguished careers of the selected experts span at least two decades and include Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot W. Eisner, John Elliott, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree and E. C. Wragg. Each book in the series features a specially written introduction by the contributor giving an overview of their career, contextualizing their selection within the development of the field, and showing how their own thinking devel- oped over time. Religious Education in Plural Societies The Selected Works of Robert Jackson Robert Jackson Thinking Philosophically About Education The Selected Works of Richard Pring Richard Pring Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge The Selected Works of Neil Mercer Neil Mercer Educating Young Children: A Lifetime Journey into a Froebelian Approach The Selected Works of Tina Bruce Tina Bruce Journeys in Narrative Inquiry The Selected Works of D. Jean Clandinin D. Jean Clandinin Researching Literate Lives The Selected Works of Jerome C. Harste Jerome C. Harste The Sociology of Assessment: Comparative and Policy Perspectives The Selected Works of Patricia Broadfoot Patricia Broadfoot For more titles in this series visit www.routledge.com/ World-Library-of-Educationalists/book-series/WORLDLIBEDU PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT The Selected Writings of David Seamon David Seamon First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 David Seamon The right of David Seamon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-35729-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-35732-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32822-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003328223 Typeset in Bembo by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive) CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments viii 1 An Introduction: Going Places 1 PART I The Value of Phenomenology for Studying Place 13 2 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 15 3 The Wellbeing of People and Place 39 4 Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place Ballets 51 5 Whither Phenomenological Research?: Possibilities for Environmental and Place Studies 66 PART II Understanding Place Phenomenologically 85 6 Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness 87 7 Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance 113 vi Contents 8 Architecture, Place, and Phenomenology: Buildings as Lifeworlds, Atmospheres, and Environmental Wholes 122 9 The Value of Phenomenology for a Pedagogy of Place and Placemaking 137 10 A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities 152 PART III Places, Lived Emplacement, and Place Presence 163 11 Place, Placelessness, Insideness, and Outsideness in American Filmmaker John Sayles’ Sunshine State 165 12 Place, Belonging, and Environmental Humility: The Experience of “Teched” as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield 181 13 Finding One’s Place: Environmental and Human Risk in American Filmmaker John Sayles’ Limbo 194 14 Phenomenology and Uncanny Homecomings: Homeworld, Alienworld, and Being-at-Home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television Series, Six Feet Under 210 15 A Phenomenology of Inhabitation: The Lived Reciprocity between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield 223 16 Using Place to Understand Lifeworld: The Example of British Novelist Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb 232 17 Moments of Realization: Extending Homeworld in British-African Novelist Doris Lessing’s Four-Gated City 244 18 Looking at a Photograph—André Kertész’s 1928 Meudon: Interpreting Aesthetic Experience Phenomenologically 260 Appendix: Other Selected Works by David Seamon (1978–2022) 272 Index 278 ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES 9.1 Simplified rendition of the give-and-take linkages among the six place processes 142 9.2 A more lifelike rendition of the give-and-take linkages among the six place processes 142 9.3 Key patterns for the Meadowcreek Site Design 146 9.4 Patterns used to design a path to Ripple Ridge 147 18.1 André Kertész, Meudon, 1928 261 18.2 Word cloud of students’ single-word descriptors of Kertész’s Meudon 263 TABLES 9.1 Pattern language written for Meadowcreek 145 18.1 Descriptors of Meudon provided by 74 Kansas State University architecture students, January 2013. 262 18.2 Author's two descriptions (1986 and 2013) of André Kertész’s 1928 photograph Meudon 265 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The chapters in this volume run from 1980 to the present. Each has been published because of the support and goodwill of a wide range of editors and publishing venues. I am grateful to Routledge editor Hannah Shakespeare, who supported my earlier Life Takes Place and suggested a collection of my published writings in the Routledge series, “World Library of Educationalists.” I also thank Routledge’s Matthew Bickerton, who expertly shepherded this volume through production. I want to thank the following individuals who originally sponsored the chapters in this volume and provided them a place in journals or edited collections: Anna Grear and Karen Morrow (Ch. 2); Kathleen Galvin (Ch. 3); Nigel Thrift (Ch. 4); Ryan Otto (Ch. 5); Thomas Hünefeldt and Annika Schlitte (Ch. 6); Alessandro Gattara, Sarah Robinson, and Davide Ruzzon (Ch. 7); Janet Donohoe (Ch. 8); Gert Biesta, Andrew Foran, Patrick Howard, and Tone Saevi (Ch. 9); Conn Holohan and Elizabeth Patton (Ch. 10); Chris Lukinbeal (Ch. 11); Daniel Payne (Ch. 12); Daniel Boscaljon (Ch. 14); Carol Manix (Ch. 15); Jefferson Rodrigues de Oliveira (Ch. 16); Iulian Apostolescu, Stefano Marino, and Anthony Steinbock (Ch. 17); Steen Halling, Kirsten Bach Larsen, Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, and Ann Starbæk Bager (Ch. 18). I dedicate this book to three individuals without whom my research and writing efforts would be so much less than otherwise. First, I thank the late Anne Buttimer (1933–2017), geographer, teacher, dissertation advisor, colleague, and frank critic. If one believes in serendipitous encounters, then Anne’s arrival at Clark University in Fall 1970, the same semester I began doctoral work, is perhaps the single most fortuitous event in my professional career. Without what she taught me via her intelligence, guidance, wisdom, and good sense, I would never have been able to write the chapters of this volume. Acknowledgments ix Second, I thank the late Robert Mugerauer (1945–2022), philosopher, friend, and ecumenical thinker. Via our mutual interest in how phenomenology might contribute to environmental and architectural research, Bob and I partook in many academic efforts together, including our co-editing Dwelling, Place and Environment, a volume that became a seminal reference for environmental and architectural phe- nomenology. Though solidly versed in phenomenological thinking, especially the work of Martin Heidegger, Bob also mastered the geographical, environmental, and architectural literature. As his lucid writings demonstrate, he held a clear vision of how phenomenology might offer a grounded means for better understanding built environments. Bob gave me confidence that what we were attempting, in our editing and organizing efforts, had great importance for making everyday worlds better, particularly via design and planning. Finally, I thank my wonderful architecture colleague Gary Coates, who brought me to Kansas State University almost 40 years ago and has steadfastly supported my teaching and research. As with meeting Anne Buttimer, my encountering Gary was serendipitous. In 1981, he had published an edited collection, Resettling America, the title of which was a hopeful rephrasing of writer and poet Wendell Berry’s 1977 The Unsettling of America. At the time, I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma and always perused the university library’s “new book” shelves, which were placed conveniently by the library entrance. One day in early 1982, I dis- covered Gary’s book and was doubly impressed: first, because of the reassuring title; second, because so many of the book’s chapters offered reasonable, practical solutions to environmental and ecological problems. I wrote Gary a letter, explain- ing how much I admired his book. We became good friends and, in spring 1983, I accepted a tenure-track position at Kansas State and became Gary’s colleague. I thank him for his friendship, ideas, practical advice, and critiques of my writing. David Seamon Manhattan, Kansas USA September 11, 2022