Sep 13

Am226

In the past, the world moved at a slower pace. Travel, communication, and expansion were all slow. Personally, I believe exclusionary mindsets and attitudes were significant characteristics of place in the past because of the lack of technology. People in one place had little communication or interaction with people in another place. Therefore, each place became unique. Cultures, beliefs, traditions, and practices all centered on the inhabitants of an area. There was a lack of exposure to other, varying lifestyles that in a way created ignorant people…and yet, more importantly, it also strengthened the authenticity of a place.

However, technology has developed exponentially and places with “rooted authenticity […] are increasingly unsustainable in the (post)modern world” (Cresswell 26). People have great accessibility to areas around the world thanks to faster, more efficient modes of transportation. As a classmate mentioned during our discussion last week, the increased number of tourists and decreased number of locals at the Maine Lobster Festival has led to a less authentic place. Now that people have the ability to travel and communicate easily and quickly, a place struggles to hold onto its culture, beliefs and traditions.

Some believe place will disappear due to the lack of authenticity. However, I believe place can adapt to the (post)modern world. People can continue to build personal, emotional relationships with a place as long as they are aware, and either accepting or able to deal with, external influence. Cresswell writes, “place […] is marked by openness and change rather than boundedness and permanence” which I interpret as today’s transformed definition of place (Cresswell 39). People will forever have personal connections to different areas of the world, and therefore place will forever exist. But place must adapt to the modern world just like humans have to adapt.

Upon reading the chapter from Cresswell’s The Genealogy of Place I was immediately drawn towards the conversation we had in class about the article Consider the Lobster and its relationship to tourism. On page 22, Cresswell refers to author Martin Heidegger and asserts, “A properly authentic existence… is one rooted in place” (Cresswell, 22). To me, this helps explain the divide between tourists and locals in many “vacationlands,” or, more specifically, the lobster eaters versus the lobster catchers at the Maine Lobster Festival. The apparent bias against tourists coming from local Mainers could be attributed to the idea that tourists are commercializing and exploiting working class people’s livelihoods, but in the context of place I believe it can be said that local communities are fed up with people coming and going with the sense that they fully understand and appreciate their “place.” To a local lobster fisherman, a wealthy tourist coming to eat a lobster for a day does not inhabit the lobsterman’s place, but rather his space. In that sense, Cresswell’s argument can be easily supported, that “we are willing to protect our place against those who not belong and we are frequently nostalgic for places we have left” (Cresswell, 21). A tourist may claim that they had an authentic Maine experience, which, in many ways, could be offensive to the fisherman who woke up at 3:00 in the morning to catch the lobster at the fair. To me, this sort of situation is one of the main reasons that we are forced to make a distinction between space and place, and attribute more meaning and value to one’s place.