Essays dealing with the question of how "sense of place" is constructed, in a variety of locations and media. The term "sense of place" is an important multidisciplinary concept, used to understand the complex processes through which individuals and groups define themselves and their relationship to their natural and cultural environments, and which over the last twenty years or so has been increasingly defined, theorized and used across diverse disciplines in different ways. Sense of place mediates our relationship with the world and with each other; it providesa profoundly important foundation for individual and community identity. It can be an intimate, deeply personal experience yet also something which we share with others. It is at once recognizable but never constant; rather it isembodied in the flux between familiarity and difference. Research in this area requires culturally and geographically nuanced analyses, approaches that are sensitive to difference and specificity, event and locale. The essayscollected here, drawn from a variety of disciplines (including but not limited to sociology, history, geography, outdoor education, museum and heritage studies, health, and English literature), offer an international perspectiveon the relationship between people and place, via five interlinked sections (Histories, Landscapes and Identities; Rural Sense of Place; Urban Sense of Place; Cultural Landscapes; Conservation, Biodiversity and Tourism). Ian Convery is Reader in Conservation and Forestry, National School of Forestry, University of Cumbria; Gerard Corsane is Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museum and Galley Studies, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University; Peter Davis is Professor of Museology, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University. Contributors: Doreen Massey, Ian Convery, Gerard Corsane, Peter Davis, David Storey, Mark Haywood, Penny Bradshaw, Vincent O'Brien, Michael Woods, Jesse Heley, Carol Richards, Suzie Watkin, Lois Mansfield, Kenesh Djusipov, Tamara Kudaibergonova, Jennifer Rogers, Eunice Simmons, Andrew Weatherall, Amanda Bingley, Michael Clark, Rhiannon Mason, Chris Whitehead, Helen Graham, Christopher Hartworth, Joanne Hartworth, Ian Thompson, Paul Cammack, Philippe Dubé, Josie Baxter, Maggie Roe, Lyn Leader-Elliott, John Studley, Stephanie K.Hawke, D. Jared Bowers, Mark Toogood, Owen T. Nevin, Peter Swain, Rachel M. Dunk, Mary-Ann Smyth, Lisa J. Gibson, Stefaan Dondeyne, Randi Kaarhus, Gaia Allison, Ellie Lindsay, Andrew Ramsay

Exploring place from myriad perspectives, this volume presents evocative encounterssuch as the Great Barrier Reef experienced through touch or Lake Mungo encountered through soundwhile shedding light on the meaning of place for deaf people. Case studies include the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, Inuit hunting grounds in northern Canada, and the songlines of the Anangu people in central Australia. Iconic landscapes, lookouts, buildings, gardens, suburbs, grieving places, and even cars all provide contexts for experiencing and understanding place.

This clearly written and generously illustrated book unravels how children make sense of place. The author demonstrates that, either at birth or shortly after, all children are natural environmental mappers and protogeographers. Matthews, a geographer who is equally at ease with psychological research, also makes valuable suggestions on how adults can make provisions for play and schooling which take into account children's environmental needs and capabilities. This is the most comprehensive, and current, work to date on the psychology of children's understanding of geography.

In A Sense of Place, journalist/travel writer Michael Shapiro goes on a pilgrimage to visit the world's great travel writers on their home turf to get their views on their careers, the writer's craft, and most importantly, why they chose to live where they do and what that place means to them. The book chronicles a young writer’s conversations with his heroes, writers he's read for years who inspired him both to pack his bags to travel and to pick up a pen and write. Michael skillfully coaxes a collective portrait through his interviews, allowing the authors to speak intimately about the writer's life, and how place influences their work and perceptions. In each chapter Michael sets the scene by describing the writer's surroundings, placing the reader squarely in the locale, whether it be Simon Winchester's Massachusetts, Redmond O'Hanlon's London, or Frances Mayes's Tuscany. He then lets the writer speak about life and the world, and through quiet probing draws out fascinating commentary from these remarkable people. For Michael it’s a dream come true, to meet his mentors; for readers, it's an engaging window onto the twin landscapes of great travel writers and the world in which they live.

This volume offers comprehensive analyses of how we live continuously in a multiplicity and simultaneity of 'places'. It explores what it means to be in place, the variety of ways in which meanings of place are made and how relationships to others are mediated through the linguistic and material semiotics of place. Drawing on examples of linguistic landscapes (LL) over the world, such as gentrified landscapes in Johannesburg and Brunswick, Mozambican memorializations, volatile train graffiti in Stockholm, Brazilian protest marches, Guadeloupian Creole signs, microscapes of souvenirs in Guinea-Bissau and old landscapes of apartheid in South Africa in contemporary time, this book explores how we are what we are through how we are emplaced. Across these examples, world-leading contributors explore how LLs contribute to the (re)imagining of different selves in the living past (living the past in the present), alternative presents and imagined futures. It focuses particularly on how the LL in all of these mediations is read through emotionality and affect, creating senses of belonging, precarity and hope across a simultaneous multiplicity of worlds. The volume offers a reframing of linguistics landscape research in a geohumanities framework emphasizing negotiations of self in place in LL studies, building upon a rich body of LL research. With over 40 illustrations, it covers various methodological and epistemological issues, such as the need for extended temporal engagement with landscapes, a mobile approach to landscapes and how bodies engage with texts.