Structuration and Place : On the

Becoming of Sense of Place and

Structure of Feeling*

ALLAN PRED
ST R U C T U R A T IO N AND TIM E-G EO G RA PH Y
Individual and society. Practice and structure. Agency and structure. Social
ization and social reproduction. These are the coupled categories usually
depicted as dialectically reproducing and transforming one another in the
unbroken process of structuration. Although Bhaskar, Bourdieu, Giddens,
and the other social theorists and social philosophers identifiable with the
structuration school of thought differ in their selection of foci and categories,
they for the most part share certain overlapping and interlocking views that
may be crudely reduced as follows.^
Social reproduction is a constantly ongoing process whereby, in a given
area, the everyday p erform ance o f institutional activities (including those
m undane practices associated with the institution of the family) not only
results in biological reproduction, but also in the perpetuation or modifi
cation of: the institutions themselves; the knowledge necessary to repeat or
create activities;^ and already existing structural relationships. In the simul
taneous unfolding of socialization and social reproduction the individual and
her consciousness are shaped by society while society is unintentionally and
intentionally shaped by the individual and her consciousness. In order to
deal with the dialectical relationships between individual and society, the
constant becoming of both, one must really deal with m aterial continuity
and the dialectics of practice and structure, or with the process of structur
ation, whereby the structural properties of any social system express them
selves through the operation of everyday practices at the same time that
everyday practices generate and reproduce the micro- and macro-level struc
tural properties of the social system in question.
Giddens, Bourdieu, Bhaskar, and several others associated with the struc
turation school are in various ways sensitive to the fact that all practices, all
social activities, take the form of concrete interactions in time-space. Yet,
* This paper was written while the author was receiving research support from the
U .S. National Science Foundation.

46 Allan Pred
nobody identifiable with the structuration perspective really has succeeded
in conceptualizing the means by which the everyday shaping and repro
duction of self and society, of individual and institution, come to be ex
pressed as specific structure-influenced and structure-influencing practices
occurring at determinate locations in time and space, or as time-space detailed situ
ations that at one and the same time are rooted in past time-space detailed
situations and serve as the potential roots of future time-space detailed situ
ations. They all fail to inform us precisely how the everyday functioning and
reproduction of particular cultural, economic, and political institutions in
time and space are continuously bound up with the temporally and spatially
specific actions, knowledge build-up, and biographies of particular individ
uals. Or, they do not capture or fully account for the material continuity
and unbroken time-space flow of the structuration process.
It has been argued elsewhere that it is possible to conceptually augment
the theory of structuration and to overcome its just-nam ed limitations by
integrating it with the discipline-transcending language of Torsten Hagerstrands time-geography.^ Such an augmentation rests on the concepts of
path and project, the two basic building blocks of the time-geographic
language. According to the path concept, each of the actions and events
consecutively making up the existence of an individual has both temporal
and spatial attributes. Consequently, the biography of a person is ever on the
move with her and can be conceptualized and diagrammed at daily or
lengthier scales of observation as an uninterrupted, continuous path through
time-space subject to various types of constraints. (The biographies of
other living creatures, natural phenomena, and man-made objects also can
be conceptualized and diagrammed in the same manner.) In timegeographic terms a project consists of the entire series of simple or complex
tasks necessary to the completion of any intention-inspired or goal-oriented
behavior. Each of the sequential tasks in a project is synonymous with the
formation of activity bundles, or with the convergence in time and space
of the unbroken paths being traced out either by two or more people, or by
one or more persons and one or more physically tangible inputs or resources,
such as buildings, furniture, machinery, and raw materials.
The integration of time-geography with the theory of structuration com
mences with the recognition that each of societys component institutions
does not exist apart from the everyday and longer-term production, con
sumption, or other projects for which it is responsible. If all formal and
informal institutions are viewed in these terms, it then may be asserted that
the detailed situations and material continuity of structuration, and thereby of social
reproduction and individual socialization, are perpetually spelled out by the inter
section of particular individual paths with particular institutional projects occurring at
specific temporal and spatial locations.
W hen elaborated upon, the fundamental assertion underlying the integra

Structuration and Place 47

tion of time-geography and the theory of structuration enables a reinterpre
tation of many of the grand conceptual categories and themes of both social
theory and the separate social sciences. The integration allows such cate
gories and themes to be tied down to determ inate situations as well as the
more general dialectics of practice and structure, and thus permits connec
tions to be drawn between the time-space flow of concrete, localized micro
level interactions and macro-level processes and structural features. Here,
the reinterpretive possibilities stemming from the m arriage of timegeography and structuration theory will be illustrated by a consideration of
the sense of place theme pursued by many hum an geographers, Raymond
WiUiams structure of feehng concept, and some links between the two.
Since sense of place and structure of feeling are associated in various ways
with individual experience and mental activity, it is only appropriate to
preface any closer examination of them with some exceedingly brief observa
tions on the way in which time-geography allows individual-level continuity
within the structuration process to be viewed. (Length limitations make any
comment upon institutional-level continuity impractical here. However, it
should be kept in mind that insofar as individual socialization and institu
tional reproduction are dialectically intertwined in the process of structur
ation, each one becoming the other, the material continuity and time-space
flow of the two cannot be rent asunder.)

IN D IV ID U A L-LEV EL C O N T IN U IT Y IN TH E
ST R U C T U R A T IO N PROCESS
At the individual level continuity arises in the process of structuration be
cause as a person traces out her unbroken path she does not either encounter
separate institutional projects, or independently undertake separate pro
jects outside of an institutional context, in a disjointed or unconnected
manner. Instead, her incessant progress through time-space from project to
project, from one detailed here and now to another, is characterized by a
complex external-internal dialectic, by a repeated dialectical interplay
between her corporeal actions and her mental activities and intentions,
between w hat she does and w hat she knows and thinks. In rather over
simplified and abbreviated terms, external physical action or any steering
of an individuals path through specific temporal and spatial locations in
order to either participate in, or get to and from, a project cannot occur
without resulting in internal mental activity because it always involves con
frontation with environmental stimuli, personal contacts, influences, infor
mation in general, or emotions and feelings that otherwise would not have
been experienced. Yet, the addition of external physical actions to an indi
viduals path prerequires internal mental activity the formation of inten-

48 Allan Pred
tions or unconscious goals, the making of choices between existing project
alternatives that do not violate basic time-geographic constraints mental
activity that is itself intricately based on the experience and knowledge
acquired by that individual through previous physical participation in tem
porally and spatially specific projects. It is to be recognized that even when a
person physically enters a project that she has defined for herself outside the
workings of any institution, she cannot escape the mental im print left by the
previous intersection of her path with particular institutional projects. For,
whether it is a m atter of the satisfaction of either non-physiological or
physiological wants and needs, there are always culturally arbitrary
mental dispositions or elements of practical knowledge associated with the
creation and definition of independent projects that only can be acquired
via socialization, or path intersections with institutional projects.^
Individual-level continuity in the process of structuration also is linkable
to another dialectical relationship much akin to the external-internal dialec
tic. This life path-daily path dialectic is central to the reproduction of
class and involves the interplay between long-term commitment and every
day practice ; between, on the one hand, an individuals previous suc
cession of long-term institutional roles and resultant record of everyday
project participation and, on the other hand, the objective long-term op
portunities open to her. Through the operation of this dialectic the long
term institutional roles that an adult person may reahstically choose among
at any point are, in whole or in part, both walled off and thrown open by
the m anner in which her previous institutional role commitrhents have
affected, and been affected by, certain of her specific daily paths. More
exactly, when a persons life path, or biography, becomes associated with a
given family role or committed to a specialized role within some other
institution she must as a consequence intermittently steer her daily path to
activity bundles belonging to specific routine or nonroutine projects. But,
when participating in those activity bundles at precise geographic locations
and more or less fixed temporal locations, and when thus having her participation
in other types of activity bundles and projects constrained,^ the individual daily
undergoes experiences, interacts with other people, acquires or reinforces
competencies, and encounters symbolically laden inanimate objects, ideas,
and information stimuli in general that otherwise would not have come her
way in exactly the same form. These daily-path experiences, interactions,
and encounters occasionally result in the intentional or unintentional dis
covery of additional or alternative long-term institutional role possibilities
that, on the basis of her life history and competition from other individuals,
she may or may not have a realistic chance of entering into. Moreover, these
daily-path experiences, interactions, and encounters help her to define and
redefine herself, to renew and initiate strengths and weaknesses, to form
intentions, and to crystallize the consciously or unconsciously motivated

Structuration and Place 49

choices she subsequently makes about which other long-term institutional
roles, if any, to seek. O f course, when new long-term institutional role
choices are willingly or grudgingly opted for, new activity bundles interm it
tently must be incorporated into the individuals daily path and new experi
ences, interactions, and encounters ensue.

SENSE OF PLACE
During the last decade or so the theme of sense of place has assumed a
position of central importance among those hum an geographers identified
with the new humanistic geography. Heavily influenced by the major
works of phenomenology and existentialism, new humanistic geographers
have portrayed sense of place in varying, but highly overlapping and
interrelated, terms and concepts. For them, place is never merely an object.
It is always an object for a subject. It is seen, for each individual, as a center
of meanings, intentions, or felt values; a focus of emotional or sentimental
attachm ent; a locality of felt significance.
T uan, Relph, and others emphasize that space and physical features are
mobilized and transformed into place through hum an residence and involve
m ent in local activities and routines; through familiarity and the accumula
tion of memories; through the bestowal of meaning by images, ideas, and
symbols; through the actual experience of meaningful or moving events
and the establishment of individual or communal identity, security, and
concern.^ Tuan, in particular, has distinguished between those instances in
which place becomes known and sensed by purely visual means, and those in
which place becomes known and sensed via prolonged contact and experi
ence. In the former instances sense of place is acquired from outside know
ledge; from seeing objects of high imageability that one has been
trained to discern as either beautiful, or of public symbolic significance,
tangibly and commandingly expressing communal life, aspirations, needs,
and values.^^ In the latter instances sense of place results from inside, inti
mate knowledge: from the establishment of fields of care, networks of inter
personal concern, in a physical setting; from emotional ties to the material
environment and a conscious awareness of that environments identity and
spatial lim it; from long and close association intensified through the senses
of hearing, smell, taste, and touch; from the traditional recurrence of pa
geants, and solemn and jovial festivities or rivalries with other settlements;
from a total experience of milieu the feel of grass on bare feet, the
smells and sounds of various seasons, the places and times I rrteet friends on
walks, the daily ebb and flow of milking time, meals, reading and thinking,
sleeping, and waking. ^^ Although T uan is not entirely consistent in separa
ting the two, he suggests that a public-symbolic sense of place is most apt to

50 Allan Pred
arise in connection with larger areal units the city or region of ones re
sidence, the nation state while a field-of-care sense of place is most apt to
emerge in connection with smaller areal units the corner of a room, or the
urban street, farm, or rural village of ones residence.
Relph instead prefers to stress the distinction between an authentic and
inauthentic sense of place : An authentic sense of place is above all that of
being inside and belonging to your place both as an individual and as a
member of the community and to know this without reflecting upon it,
whereas an inauthentic attitude to place is essentially no sense of place, for
it involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significance of places and
no appreciation of their identities. Thus, an authentic sense of place is
largely unselfconscious, an array of deeply dissolved meanings, built upon
those attributes of objects, settings, events, and fundamental particulars of
everyday practice and life that become taken for granted, no longer regard
ed as what is, but as what ought to be.
Not surprisingly, these and similar portrayals of sense of place have come
under heavy attack. In addition to its being methodologically eclectic and
frequently cast in obscurantist terms, most of the literature on sense of place
suffers from either a total neglect or inadequate treatment and conceptual
ization of context and contextual processes. Historical context, social con
text, and biographical context do not serve as theoretical underpinnings.
They are either ignored or vaguely and insufficiently dealt with. The im
pression is all too often conveyed that sense of place is the product of auton
omous mind freely interpreting the world of experience of memories,
meanings, and attachm ents flowing from independent actions inspired by
independent intentions. Thus, sense of place is too frequently seen as a
free-floating phenomenon, in no way influenced either by historically specific
power relationships that enable some to impose upon others their view of the
natural and acceptable, or by social and economic constraints on action and
thereby th o u g h t.A lth o u g h the new humanist geographers writing on sense
of place sometimes make reference to society, to intersubjective communica
tion and consensus of meaning, to social position, and to social conditioning,
those terms are only employed as mere backdrops to individual experience
and the idealism and voluntarism of their users remains poorly disguised, if
disguised at all. W ith few real exceptions, the nebulous societies they fleetingly refer to are somehow devoid of both specific rule-providing, activityorganizing institutions and structural relations among collectivities,
individuals, and institutions. Moreover, the experiences portrayed as un
derlying the emergence of sense of place cannot occur in a biographical
vacuum. An individuals sense of place cannot come into being on its own,
divorced from her development of consciousness and ideology in general, or
unaffected by predispositions deeply and complexly embedded in her pre
vious history of language acquisition, and other forms of code absorption

Structuration and Place 51

and perceptual conditioning. Its origins also cannot be separated from her
past social interaction and socialization in the concrete situations provided
by family, school, workplace, and other institutions. In fact, if sense of place
is not to be but another reified category, referring to emanations of thought
or passive reflections existing purely on their own, it should be reinterpreted
in terms of the time-space specific everyday practices by which it becomes
part of biography along with other elements of consciousness development
and socialization, and in terms of the social and economic structural proper
ties that are expressed through, and reproduced by, those very same prac
tices. In short, sense of place needs to be viewed anew, through the
integrated prism of time-geography and the theory of structuration, as but
another by-product of the continuous dialectical becoming of individual and
society, of practice and structure, in historically specific situations.
To begin with, if sense of place is seen as one with symbolic and emotional
meanings, memories, and attachm ents to people and things, and, more gen
erally, experiences that are rooted in day-to-day living and doing, and in
routine activities, or practices and movement of if place, person and activ
ity are seen as a u n i t y , then it must be acknowledged that individual
involvement in the activities in question is not somehow disembodied (as the
literature frequently makes it seem). Instead, any activity participation un
derlying a persons continuous constitution and reconstitution of sense of
place only can occur either via her physically bringing her daily path into
temporal and spatial conjunction with the activity bundle(s) of an institu
tionally defined project and thus by her contribution to social
reproduction or by her physical undertaking of an independendy
defined project whose requisite mental predispositions or elements of practi
cal knowledge depend upon her previous socialization, or path intersections
with temporarily and spatially specific institutional projects. Whichever the
case, no single activity-participation root of sense of place is sunk in splendid
isolation, but intertwined with other activity-participation roots; for, as pre
viously outlined, each external physical action, each path-project intersec
tion, that goes into the unbroken spinning out of biography in time-space is
the consequence of, and a contributor to, an external-internal dialectic and
its closely related life path-daily path dialectic.
Since internal experience of place and external participation in world and
society are dialectically fused in the m anner suggested, it follows that joint
participation and social interaction in some institutional projects will im part
features similar or identical meanings and memories associated with the
sound of a particular factory whistle, the sight of a particular school, the
smell of freshly cut hay in a particular field which are essentially common
with those making up the sense of place of others. Yet, at the same time, it is
also true that each individuals sense of place will be unique to a certain
extent. Person-to-person variations in sense-of-place attributes among re-

Allan Pred
52
sidents of the same locale or area are inescapable since hum an physical
indivisibility, plus the impossibility of two objects occupying the same space
at the same time, by definition precludes the accumulated projectparticipation elements of any two individual paths from being identical in
their time-space details. Or, within a given area over a given period of time,
each persons physically observable daily paths and life path, or biographical
contact with the countless detailed alternatives of objective reahty, are unrepeatably and uniquely arrayed, and thereby each persons constitution of
consciousness, including sense of place, is uniquely accumulated.^^
While all the components of everyday ennui and euphoria, daily drudgery
and dram a, going into sense of place cannot be duphcated from person-toperson, the recognition of certain symbols and other common features of
consciousness are to a considerable degree bound up with the reproduction
of power or class relationships that accompanies the enactment of institu
tional projects, or the social reproduction that occurs within the unbroken
time-space flow of the structuration process. Insofar as they exist, person-toperson similarities in sense-of-place among the inhabitants of a modern
urban environment are not likely often to be random in origin, or the result
of experiences being shared by people of dissimilar background because their
paths have unintentionally or coincidentally crossed in the course of pur
suing completely unrelated projects. They are considerably more likely to be
the outcome of occupying pretty much the same social space, the same general
place in society, and some of the shared habitual interactions with people and
objects that almost inevitably follow. Such shared interactions are com
monplace since ones place in the society of a given place means ones daily
path, or ones potential reach in time-space, is hemmed in or thrown open in
part by a residence which is similar in quality and location to the residence
of some other persons of the same social stratum , and in part by the sexual
division of labor one has been socialized to accept and the specific types of
institutional projects and project roles that dominate ones life as well as the
lives of some other people belonging to the same group or class in the same
place. W ith respect to residence, it also should be recognized that the nature
of similarities in sense of place among members of the same localized social
group or class will be much influenced by whether their homes and neigh
borhood are willingly or unwillingly chosen and are of their own design or
passed along from previous occupants of another social standing.^
M ore importantly, it is to be understood that dom inant institutional pro
jects greatly afl'ect the similarity of daily paths, and thereby the similarity of
internal experience and sense-of-place, because their underpinning explicit
or implicit rules require that participating individuals expend their labor
power or in some other way engage themselves in activity in a given manner,
at a given time and place, rather than doing something else, somewhere else,
during the same time period. (Participation in dom inant institutional pro-

Structuration and Place 53

jects is synonymous with the reproduction of social structural relationships
since it involves the placement of certain individuals and groups of individ
uals in a subservient or dependent and conflict-laden relationship with those
other power-wielding individuals and groups who define the projects in
question and who either own, or have jurisdiction over, whatever material or
wage-paying resources are necessary to project completion.) Furthermore,
dom inant institutional projects may have a marked impact on the daily
paths of participating individuals with similar or identical roles because their
scheduling precedence and specific time-space demands place a coupling
constraint on both the other institutional projects and individually defined
extra-institutional projects that may antecede and follow them.^
In order to fully appreciate the continuous becoming of sense-of-place as a
by-product of the individuals active participation in the time-space flow of
the structuration process, it also should be realized that the place the
humanly modified landscape or locality being sensed is not something
frozen, but also a continuously becoming by-product of individual (and
collective) active participation in the time-space flow of the structuration
process.^ All the buildings, roads, fields, and other m an-m ade objects, and
all of their associated activities, which together construct, m aintain, and
sculpture place by taking place, or by appropriating and transforming space
and nature, are the consequence of specific goals and intentions based on
ideology (or the values and ideas characterisdc of an individual, group, or
class). Yet, ideology at any level is the product of living in place(s), of the
bringing of particular paths into conjunction with particular institutional
projects occurring at specific temporal and spatial locations.^^ T hat the
continuous becoming of place and ideology are interwoven with one another
and with the unfolding process of structuration, with the always ongoing
dialectics of practice and structure, is perhaps best partly captured by con
sidering the links between, on the one hand, both those construction and
production projects which yield and reshape the visible artifacts of place and
those institutional projects responsible for w hat takes place from day to day,
and, on the other hand, the individual-level dialectics of those who hold the
power or authority necessary to define such projects.
The specific project definitions and loose, flexible, or rigid disciplinary
rules associated with every institutional project which contributes to w hat is
scene as place and what takes places do not appear, fully articulated, out of
nothingness. Instead, those definitions and rules are produced and repro
duced as a consequence of the goals established or decisions reached (locally
or nonlocally) by power-holding individuals or coalitions of individuals. In
turn, the informational inputs, interpretative schema, values, biases, antici
pations, and internalized group interests underlying the formulation of
project- or rule-determining goals and decisions are always unmechanistically derived from the earlier path and project-participation record of the

54 Allan Pred
goal-setters and decision-makers themselves, or from the external-internal
and life path-daily path dialectics of the business executives, government
bureaucrats, workplace supervisors, parents, or other individuals involved.
Put otherwise, the project-defining, or place-creating, goals and decisions
arrived at by individuals holding institutional positions of varying im port
ance cannot be severed from the awareness of local and nonlocal resources
and opportunities those people have built up through their limited acquisi
tion of imperfect information; from the way in which they reflectively or
unselfconsciously interpret and react to political, economic, and other oc
currences outside the institution; from any anticipation they may hold of
rewards or penalties; and from their absorption or rejection of prevaiUng
group or cultural values. And, all of these things, in turn, cannot be divorced
from the uniquely accumulated path histories of those same individuals, or
the temporal and spatial details of their own past involvement in the dialec
tical process of structuration. Moreover, it is contendable that the project- or
rule-determining goals and decisions of institutional power holders or their
contributions to the becoming of place are jointly determined, or over
determined, in another way by the time-space flow of the structuration
process. For, it is often so that the goals and decisions are not merely rooted
in the past details of socialization, and thereby structuration, but also evoked
or forced by a confrontation with the micro- or macro-level structural con
flicts or contradictions of an historically specific set of circumstances with
local or more widely based conflicts or contradictions that are themselves
inseparable from the dialectics of practice and structure.
STR U C TU R E OF FEELING
Since first discussing the term at length some two decades ago in The Long
Revolution, Raymond Williams has repeatedly written on the nature and
specific historical expression of structure of feeling.
As initially presented, this thought-provoking and original concept was
addressed to w hat Williams defined as the theory of culture the study of
relationships between elements in a whole way of life and the analysis of
culture, or the attem pt to discover the nature of the [total or general]
organization which is the complex of these relationships. According to
Williams, the complex general organization of a whole way of life only can
be known in full through actual living experience, for it is a structure of
feeling, a felt sense of the quality of life at a particular place and time; a
sense of the ways in which the particular activities combine into a way of
thinking and living. Williams also refers to any past or present structure of
feeling as a not easily situated common element which remains after allow

Structuration and Place 55

ing for individual variations of experience. It is, he says, the result of inti
mate knowing, a particular sense of life, a distinct sense of a particular
and native style, a particular community of experience hardly needing
expression. Although in one sense structure of feehng is the culture of the
period, the particular living result of all the elements in the general or
ganization; and although it is a very deep and very wide possession, in all
actual communities, precisely because it is on it that communication de
pends; it is by no means possessed in the same way by the many individ
uals in . . . [any given] community. Differences are especially evident
among generations, observes Williams, because structure of feeling does not
appear to be learned in any formal sense. One generation, he contends, may
im part behavioral and attitudinal elements of culture to its successor
through formal and informal training, but the new generation will have its
own structure of feeling, which will not appear to have come Trom any
where. More precisely: the new generation responds in its own ways to
the unique world it is inheriting, taking up many continuities, that can be
traced, and reproducing many aspects of the organization, which can be
separately described, yet feeling its whole life in certain ways differently, and
shaping its creative response into a new structure of feeling. ^^
In later writings Williams has further emphasized the generational aspect
of structure of feehng and stressed its quality as an historically distinct and
widely felt social experience, as opposed to a purely personal experience,
which is always still in process and has its analytically identifiable emer
gent, connecting, and dom inant characteristics. Thus, the relations
between this quality and the other specifying historical marks of changing
institutions, formations, and beliefs, and beyond these the changing social
and economic relations between and within classes, are again an open ques
tion: that is to say, a set of specific historical questions. Or, depending upon
historical circumstances, structure of feeling may or may not vary between
or within classes. Moreover, it is noted, whether emerging among a young
generation or yet evolving among older generations, structure of feeling must
be distinguished from the more formal concepts of world-view or ideol
ogy, since it is far from being confined to formally held and systematic
beliefs. It instead also encompasses characteristic elements of impulse,
restraint, and tone; specifically affective elements of consciousness and re
lationships: not feeling against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as
thought: practical consciousness of a present kind wherein meanings and
values are actively lived and felt in an interrelating continuity.
In some ways W illiams structure of feeling is conceptually superior to
most versions of sense of place. Structure of feeling more explicitly acknowl
edges the impact of social and historical context on individual experience. It
is not depicted as the product of autonomous mind. It is not set totally apart
from the biographical growth and alteration of consciousness and ideology in

56 Allan Pred
general. It is viewed as always becoming and inseparable from the total
relational complex of national or local culture. All the same, Williams
structure of feeling is not without its problematic aspects.
As presented by Wilhams, the feeling or ambiance of being situated in a
particular generation (and perhaps class) at a particular time, or the com
munity of experience that is structure of feeling, is grounded in active living
and particular activities. However, when Wilhams translates his powerful
and very general theoretical concept into example it is usually rather diffi
cult to discern the bridge from particular individual and institutional prac
tices to structure of feeling and its becoming. Too often, structures of feehng
are made visible while actual living and practices are left invisible. This is so,
for example; when we are told that in England between 1660 and 1690 two
structures of feeling (among the defeated Puritans and in the restored Court)
can be readily distinguished; and when comments are made upon that
structure of feeling which was beginning to form, from Goldsmith to the
poets of the Rom antic movement, and which is particularly visible in
C l a r e . I n The Country and the City, much is made of the fact that the
structures of feeling with respect to N ature conveyed over several cen
turies by English writers have been greatly influenced by the practices not
directly experienced by the vast majority of them, by their lack of personal
experience of agricultural labor. In yet other instances some attention is
given to institutional changes or the growth of particular cultural institutions
without really dealing with the concrete everyday practices associated with
those institutions. Such is the case when the structure of feeling underlying
the British novels of the 1840s is revealingly sketched, or when the structure
of feeling of the emergent productive class of Great Britain in the 1960s is
insightfully captured and analyzed.^
How then is one to conceptually specify the fusion of concrete practices
and the becoming of structure of feeling? Since the real problem is that of
simultaneously accounting for determ inate situations and individual and
collective social becoming, an integrated usage of time-geography and the
theory of structuration would again appear appropriate.
In time-geographic terms an individual acquires a structure of feeling
partly by having her path exposed to news of particular political-historical
events by word-of-mouth, the printed word, or the modern media; partly by
the everyday intersection of her path with time-space specific institutional
projects which also require both the path intersections of other persons (some
of whom belong to the same generation or class) and common interaction
with objects (e.g., buildings, roadways, furniture, and pieces of machinery or
equipment) ; and partly by the constraints and possibilities imposed on her
other forms of project participation, and thereby knowing, by fixed commit
ments to dom inant institutional p r o je c ts .P u t otherwise, it is the spe
cificness of path-based common exposures, projects, and interactions (the

Structuration and Place 57

name of a specific politician or popular song, the contours of a specific make
of car, the packaging of a specific good, the details of a specific implement)
that presumably act as a catalyst of meaning, evoking the presence of a
structure of feeling by conjuring up from one symbol the presence of an
entire symbolic system.
The temporally and spatially specific institutional projects providing the
primary-experience ingredients of structure of feeling are, of course, not
participated in a random unrelated manner. Here too, it is difficult to con
ceive of such individual activity involvement, or physical commitment to the
workings of society, occurring without its being influenced by, and contrib
uting to, a persons external-internal and life path-daily path dialectics. In
like m anner, to the extent that structure of feeling is colored by exposure to
news or information in conjunction with an independently defined pro
ject, such as reading a given magazine or watching a given television prog
ram, it is dependent upon the mental predispositions or elements of practical
knowledge requisite to the definition of such projects, and thereby upon the
individuals previous socialization (and consequent contributions to the
social reproduction of structural relationships) via time-space specific pathproject intersections. In other words, the becoming of structure of feeling is
yet another by-product of individual and collective participation in the
ceaseless time-space flow of the structuration process in historically specific
situations.^
While Williams is clear in his depiction of structure of feehng as a placespecific phenomenon, he is not conceptually specific in his treatm ent of
place. Conceptually, structure of feeling is at least implicitly bound to local
and regional as well as national culture. But, in his examples Williams
almost invariably confines himself to structure of feeling at the national level.
Even when pointing to the memories of the delights of corner-shops, gas
lamps, horsecabs, trams, [and] piestalls, that are part of the structure of
feeling of English working-class members of a particular generation, he does
not distinguish one specific urban working-class community from another.^
Williams in effect thereby equates place with nation and ignores place as
locality, or as a locally circumscribed area which is both what is scene as
place and what takes p la c e .T h u s , an im portant connection between place
and structure of feeling is missed.
W hatever the influence of national or other nonlocal relations and com
ponents, whatever the impact of a widespread mode of production or
homogenizing mass media, the particular activities giving rise to structure
of feeling are always enacted in a specific locality, or place a condition
which imparts a local dimension, or quality, to each generational expression
of it. Those activities, at the same time, are also part of the becoming of the
specific place since, as earlier suggested, place continuously becomes, along
with the ideology it is produced and maintained by and produces and m ain

58 Allan Pred
tains, through the active participation of people in the unbroken time-space
flow of the structuration process. T hat is, whether or not structure of feeling
contributes to the definition and rules of institutional projects, its becoming,
like the becoming of sense of place, is inseparable from the becoming of
place, from the unfolding dialectics of practice and structure in place. In
fact, it may be contended that if structure of feeling is a generation- and
class-centered array of meanings and feelings equivalent to a felt sense of
the quality of a life at a particular place {locality] and time, then it corre
sponds to the common meaning and feehng elements of sense of place held
by some of those people of the same generation and class residing in the same
place. For, just as some of the components of structure of feeling will vary
from place to place, so will the activity- and interaction-based quality of the
common meaning and feeling elements of sense of place result in their vary
ing from generation to generation within the same place (except perhaps
where the place in question is characterized by extreme institutional stability
and isolation from other locahties). Presumably, not even Williams himself
would object to such a conflation of structure of feeling and sense of place;
for, in occasionally speaking of sense of city , sense of setdement , and his
own attachm ent to the place, the landscape which was the Black M oun
tain village of his birth, he employs terms that much resemble those used for
structure of feeling.
SENSE O F PLACE AND STR U C TU R E OF FEELIN G:
PAST AND PRESENT
The reinterpretation of sense of place and structure of feeling presented here
does not represent much more than a scaffolding from which to build specific
analyses. The integration of time-geography and the theory of structuration,
for whatever reinterpretative conceptual purposes, cannot provide a model
which plumbs the depths of all relevant situations in all times and places.
W hat the wedding of time-geography and structuration theory does provide,
with respect to any reinterpreted grand conceptual category or theme, is a
general framework for analyzing the interplay of constitution, transform
ation and practice within the context of particular historical situations.
According to the argument made here, the attributes and transformation
of the feelings, meanings, and memories that make up sense of place or
structure of feeling although definitionally not fully accessible to the his
torical or geographical outsider because based in direct activity participation
and experience should be indirectly recoverable in part from the recons
truction of some of the daily paths, and thereby common exposures and
projects, characteristic of the individuals belonging to a given group or
generation at a given place and time. Moreover, since the content of a

Structuration and Place 59

particular sense of place or structure of feehng is presumably partly shaped
by the activity-participation constraints and possibilities felt in the daily web
of interactions with other people and objects, it should be especially im port
ant to identify the role of stable or changing dom inant institutional projects,
and their underlying power relationships, in structuring any reconstructed
paths. W herever possible, of course, any attem pt to recover the becoming of
sense of place or structure of feeling and its finks to the structuration process
should be amplified with either oral history or a very cautious employment
of w hat Thrift has called the diverse literature of remembering [and]
how things were diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, and general
fiction. (Considerable caution is called for since there are no established
phenomenological or other methods for interpreting the experiences that
accumulate as individuals participate in the becoming of place, and since the
open or disguised written record of personal involvement in place tends to
unintentionally or intentionally reflect the interests of some groups rather
than others and is further subject to distortion by self-consciousness and
self-censorship.)^^
While it is not feasible to develop a detailed, historically specific example
here, a few sketchy observations are in order.
If one is familiar with the language and thinking of time-geography, as
well as the theory of structuration, individual books occasionally will convey
an especially great deal about some of the evolving elements of sense of place
and structure of feeling in a specific place over a given period of time. One
such book is Hareven and Langenbachs Amoskeag}^ Through the extensive
use of recorded oral histories, and the juxtaposition of past-evoking pho
tographs, this volume provides considerable insight into the early twentiethcentury lives and thought of people associated with the Amoskeag
M anufacturing Company, once the worlds largest textile producing com
plex, employing over 15,000 individuals, and for about a century synony
mous with the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, which it founded in
1838. Accounts which include many temporal and spatial details of daily
paths in general, and factory production projects in particular, provide vivid
examples of the connections between everyday practice, ongoing social
ization, and the becoming of sense of place and structure of feeling. The
variety of people recounting portions of their biographical histories leave
little doubt as to the existence of significant generational and class variations
in both sense of place and structure of feeling. (Those interviewed in the
book include representatives of local management and Boston ownership, as
well as numerous workers.) It is also quite evident that similarly aged mill
operatives, or individuals of the same generation and class, possessed some
sense-of-place and structure-of-feeling elements that varied by cultural back
ground. Despite the fact that Amoskeag penetrated almost every aspect of
worker life through its dom inant production projects, company store, and

60 Allan Pred
assortment of paternal institutional projects, complete uniformity was lack
ing for a num ber o f reasons. Most importantly, the French Canadians, Poles,
Irish, Scots, Swedes, and others who migrated to mill employment did not
begin their lives in M anchester with blank minds. Instead, they all came
with a previously shaped consciousness, with previously existing senses of
place and structures of feeling; and thus they were re-placed, and their
children were socialized somewhat differently, not least of all because the
division of labor within the mills had a highly pronounced ethnic skew. In a
clear m anner the books docum entation also enables us to see how macro
level structural conditions were instrumental to the calling forth of dram atic
local events in the form of strikes, work speedups, layoffs, firings, and mill
shutdowns that drastically altered daily paths and left a heavy imprint on
individual sense of place and structure of feeling.
Helias beautifully written Horse of Pride is another example of a single
book which enables the recovery of many of the connections between indi
vidual path-institutional project intersections and the becoming of sense of
place and structure of feeling in a specific place over a given time period (in
this case the Breton village of Plozevet during the pre-Second W orld W ar
decades of this c e n tu ry ).E m p lo y in g his own recollections and the verbal
recoundngs of his mother and grandfather, Helias provides a fine-grained
picture of the experiences arising both from integrated daily path compon
ents and from the longer-term repeated participation in the details of a wide
variety of institutional projects, including those involving food preparation
and other household practicalities, agricultural production, education, the
local rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church, organized play, and
communal weddings. Among other things, Helias succeeds in communicat
ing how the feelings, meanings, and memories that others would term sense
of place and structure of feeling are rooted in the interaction with specific
people and things at very precise local sites and times, in the interwoven
building-up of the life paths, or biographies, of self and others. In his depic
tion he is also unintentionally suggestive of the common and disparate senseof-place and structure-of-feeling elements of Red and W hite youths
living respectively at the high and low ends of the village. Perhaps most
noteworthily, Helias helps us to see how national-level economic change and
centraUzed nonlocal institutions including those associated with higherlevel education, military service, and the provision of mass culture at one
and the same time altered the becoming of Plozevet, undermined usage of
the Breton language, and markedly altered the micro-level content and
expectations of everyday life in that village, thereby producing generationally sharp differences in sense of place and structure of feehng.
A few completed and in-process studies have centered on the m anner in
which major transformations in the content and definition of dom inant pro
jects in specific places have led to new activity-participation, or coupling.

Structuration and Place

61

constraints and, consequently, far-reaching realignments in the daily-path

composition characteristic for large numbers of inhabitants. Although not
their announced or prim ary intent, such studies provide some not inconsid
erable clues as to the local transformations in sense of place and structure of
feeling resulting from institutional changes that are themselves inseparable
from the micro- and macro-level operation of the structuration process. One
such study, focussing on leading U.S. cities during the late-nineteenth cen
tury, has examined the path and project ramifications of the shift from an
artisan and small-scale workshop mode of industrial production to a factory
and large-scale workshop mode of industrial production.^* T hat work shored
up observations loosely m ade from other vantage points, graphically re
vealing that the tight time-space coordination demands of factory and largescale workshop production projects of necessity also imposed time-discipline
and activity-participation constraints upon essential family projects, thereby
contributing to a modification in the nature of the family itself. Likewise, it
was shown that the way in which projects were defined in conjunction with
factory and large-scale shop production resulted in both a clearer break
between production projects and individual free-time projects and the
imposition of severe coupling constraints and time discipline upon the latter
class of projects.
Another such study has dealt with the recent rapid industrialization and
growth of Cuidad Jurez, the Mexican city across the border from El Paso,
Texas. In a similar m anner, this study has revealed how the use of a young
female labor-force in the production projects of the citys burgeoning, U.S.owned electronics industry has not only resulted in a complete restructuring
of the participating womens daily paths; but, also in the establishment of
coupling-constraint obstacles to the enactm ent of basic family projects along
traditional division-of-labor lines, and a consequent fundam ental change in
the nature of family life and experience in place.
Another inquiry, still only in its preliminary stages, considers the
dominant-project and daily-path implications of the various forms of enclo
sure which swept Sweden in the second half of the eighteenth century and
early part of the nineteenth century. The last and most im portant of these
enclosure movements involved the consolidation of scattered land parcels
into physically contiguous units and the local displacement of housing from
compact villages to the relative isolation of those new units. Evidently then,
as a result of this consolidation, the sense of place and structure of feeling
possessed by people was enormously altered by a radical reorganization of
dom inant agricultural projects and, perhaps even more importantly, by the
disappearance or considerable modification of local social and churchcentered projects and the parallel breakdown of shared meanings and codes
based on dress and other time-space specific practices.^^
Finally, it can be asserted that the types of sense of place perceived to be

62

Allan Pred

currently prevalent in the United States and other highly industrialized

capitalist countries becomes better understood v^ihen considered in the
common light of time-geography and the structuration process.
It is often contended that the cultural flatness characteristic of modern
capitalism is synonymous with an indiscriminate nostalgia for other times
and places, the demise of place, and the widespread ascendance of less
intense and more inauthentic forms of sense of place.^ Relph goes so far
as to claim that modern capitalism encourages placelessness, or a
weakening of the identify of places to the point where they not only look
alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience. (In
somewhat contradictory fashion he adds that at its most profound place
lessness consists of a pervasive and perhaps irreversible alienation from
places as the homes of men, but also notes that placelessness means free
dom from place, and contemporary environments can be dram atic and
excinng, and provide great breadth of experience. )^
The reign of superficially felt and poorly articulated forms of sense of place
is variously attributed to: a constantly changing environment; the loss of
intim ate contact with the local physical landscape in an age when people
seldom walk and almost never loiter; the decline of meaningful cele
brations . . . tinged with religious sentiment and tied to localities; the
spatial mobility of people and information facilitated by the automobile and
modern electronic communications; and, more generally, the overriding
concern with efficiency as an end in itself that follows from the trium ph of
applied science and technocracy in large corporations, central governments,
and planning agencies. Less deeply developed expressions of sense of place
are also ascribed to : the architectural standardization of suburban housing,
retail-chain establishments, and resort facilities; the formlessness and lack
of hum an scale and order in places; the shadow of uniformity cast upon
tastes and fashions by the mass media in general, and the glib and con
trived stereotypes of advertising in particular; and the individualistic and
fragmented life style led by people.^
These and other single factors supposedly at the foundation of the weak
sense of place presently held by great numbers of people lack coherence.
Proponents of these various factors ignore the fact that sense of place is
always a part of an individuals ongoing development of consciousness and
ideology, a development that is one with everyday participation in timespace specific institutional practices, with socialization and the reproduction
and transformation of social and economic structures, with the becoming of
the sensed place. Hence, without necessarily undermining any of the abovenamed factors, it can be proposed that insofar as individuals actually possess
a sense of place that is lacking in depth, it is in very large measure a result of
their concrete participation in the reproduction and modification of local

Structuration and Place

63

and macro-level social and economic structures, of the sweeping up of their

own external-internal and life path-daily path dialectics in the unbroken
time-space flow of the structuration process.
Such an interpretation can be m ade somewhat more precise in the follow
ing terms, which are admittedly oversimplified and beg amplification else
where. Through the everyday and practical perpetuation of the
accumulation process under modern capitalism the functional division and
specialization of labor becomes ever finer; not only in corporations, but also
in government and public institutions overridden by the dom inant ideologys
concern for efficiency and productivity. This cannot happen without the
daily paths of most people becoming highly fragmented in their intersections
with the now ever more spatially and temporally compartmentalized pro
duction and consumption projects of institutions. This highly fragmented
character of day-to-day path-project intersections is frequently synonymous
with fleeting rather than prolonged contact with things and people (e.g.,
salespersons, bank tellers, delivery personnel, administrators) who are expe
rienced as thingified strangers since dealt with as interchangeable roleholders rather than as specific thinking and feeling persons. Thus, greatly
fragmented and fleeting path-project intersections, which are not a separate
factor, but part of a society-encompassing process, presumably often yield poorly
integrated meanings, memories, and feelings pertaining to place, or an atom
ized existence and predom inant sense-of-place forms that are clearly distin
guishable from those most typical of the residents of farms, villages, or cities
in the past. It also would appear that the dilution of sense of place under
modern capitalism (and state capitalism) is frequently compounded by a
sometimes dim, sometimes keen, awareness that the institutional project defi
nitions and rules one routinely encounters do not originate locally, within
sight or reach, but in distant seats of power a set of circumstances that also
is itself intertwined with the contemporary accumulation process, with the
reproduction and transformation of social and economic structures through
practices expressing those structures.
W hatever the extent to which sense-of-place forms have changed under
modern capitalism, none of these observations should obscure the persistence
of person-to-person and intergroup variations in some elements of sense of
place within the same locally circumscribed area both the im print of ones
place in society and the physically dictated uniqueness of ones path remain
inescapable- Moreover, placelessness is not to be exaggerated. Regardless of
the strength of homogenizing forces, there are still im portant geographical
differences in the becoming of place, and thereby the becoming of sense of
place (and structure of feeling), not least of all because of local and regional
variations in the historical sedimentation of residual, dom inant, and emer
gent forms of c u ltu re .W h a te v e r significant resemblances and common

64
Allan Pred
features there may be, the possibilities for experience and becoming of con
sciousness are no more identical in San Francisco, Chicago, or Philadelphia
than they are in the farming communities of Californias Central Valley, the
Great Plains, or Mississippi.
A FINAL D ISPLA CEM ENT
W hat, in essence, have the conceptualizations and arguments put forth in
this place m eant?
An understanding of sense of place requires a sense of the place of struc
ture and the uninterrupted temporal and spatial unfolding of structuration.
An understanding of structure of feeling requires a feeling, an awareness,
of structure and structuration in place.
Areally-centered sense of place and generation- and class-centered struc
ture of feeling are one
with the becoming of consciousness,
biography,
place,
with the m aterial continuity of socialization and social reproduction,
the ceaseless time-space flow of the society-encompassing
structuration process,
the endless dialectical spiral of practice and structure,
in given historical circumstances
where the projects of some institutions, and not others, are dominant.
Everyplace, everysense, everystructure
are to be scene in place, taking place,
becoming
becoming
becoming
everyday
through the continuous intersection of
particular individual paths with
particular institutional projects
at specific temporal and spatial locations.
Allan Pred
Department o f Geography
University o f California
Berkeley, California 94720
U.S.A.

Structuration and Place

65

N O TES
W hile the list of authors who may be directly or indirectly associated with the
theory of structuration is a lengthy one, I have the following set of works most
particularly in mind when making my unavoidably oversimplified distillation of
views: Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction o f Reality: A
Treatise in the Sociology o f Knowledge (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967); Anthony
Giddens, New Rules o f Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976) ; idem. Central
Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979); Karel Kosik, Dialectics o f the Concrete (Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 52, 1976) ; Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory o f
Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Alain Touraine, The SelfProduction o f Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Raymond W il
liams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Roy Bhaskar,
On the Possibihty of Social Scientific Knowledge and the Limits of Naturalism, in
John M epham and David-Hillel Ruben (eds.). Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 3,
Epistemology, Science, Ideology (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979), pp. 107-39; and
idem, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique o f the Contemporary Human
Sciences (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979).
^ Nigel Thrift, The Limits to Knowledge in Social Theory: Towards a Theory o f Practice
(Canberra: Department of Human Geography, Australian National University,
1979, mimeographed).
^ Allan Pred, Social Reproduction and the Time-Geography of Everyday Life,
Geografiska Annaler, 63B (1981), pp. 5-22; and idem, Power, Everyday Practice and
the Discipline of Human Geography, in idem (ed.), Space and Time in Geography:
Essays Dedicated to Torsten Hagerstrand (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1981), pp. 30-55.
Also note Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, op. cit., pp. 205-6; and Nigel
Thrift and Allan Pred, Time-Geography : A New Beginning, Progress in Human
Geography, 5 (1981), pp. 277-86.
A fu ll compreherision and absorption o f these concepts normally requires, among other
things, an extensive and prolonged exposure to the variety o f diagrams developed for their
portrayal. For further elaboration and diagrammatic representation of the concepts of
path and project see, for example: Torsten Hagerstrand, W hat about People in
Regional Science? Papers o f the Regional Science Association, 24 (1970), pp. 7-21 ; idem,
On Socio-Technical Ecology and the Study of Innovations, Ethnologica Europaea, 1
(1974), pp. 17-34; Allan Pred, Urbanisation, Domestic Planning Problems and
Swedish Geographic Research, Progress in Geography, 5 (1973), pp. 1-76; idem, The
Impact of Technological and Institutional Innovations on Life Content: Some TimeGeographic Observations, Geographical Analysis, 10 (1978), pp. 345-72; idem, O f
Paths and Projects: Individual Behavior and its Societal Context, in R. Golledge
and K. Cox (eds.). Behavioral Geography Revisited (London: M ethuen, 1982), pp. 23155; Don Parkes and Nigel Thrift, Times, Spaces, and Places, A Chronogeographic Per
spective (New York: W iley, 1980); and Tommy Carlstein, Tinu Resources, Society and
Ecology: On the Capacity fo r Human Interaction in Time and Space (London: Edward
Arnold, 1981).
^ C f Nigel Thrift, Local History: A Review Essay, Environment and Planning A,
12 (1980), pp. 855-62; and idem and Pred, Tim e-G eography: A New Beginning,
op. cit., pp. 278-9.
The individuals ability to choose among production, consumption, and other
project alternatives is always circumscribed by time-geographic, or physical, realities.
The projects that can be incorporated within an individuals daily path are hmited

66

Structuration and Place

Allan Pred

owing to simultaneity conflicts, or the individuals indivisibility and consequent in

ability to simultaneously participate in spatially separated activities. An individuals
project choices also are constrained by the finite time resources remaining at her
disposal each day after the completion of physiologically necessary projects and any
already fixed institutional project commitments. Project choices are additionally con
strained by, among other things, the inescapable fact that all movement between
spatially separated points is time consuming to a degree which varies with the trans
portation technology at an individuals command. (Thus, project participation is
barred if the time required to travel from the spatial location of one project to the
spatial location of another exceeds the duration of the period separating the termina
tion of the former and the commencement of the latter.) For further elaboration and
graphic illustration of these and other time-geographic constraints see the sources
cited in footnote 4, above. Also note Bo Lenntorp, Paths in Space-Time Environments: A
Time-Geographic Study o f Movement Possibilities o f Individuals (Lund Studies in Geog
raphy, Series B, no. 44, 1971) ; and Solveig Martensson, On the Formation o f Biographies
in Space-Time Environments (Lund Studies in Geography, Series B, no. 47, 1979).
Since socialization occurs through participation in institutional projects inside
and outside the family, it is to be regarded as coinciding with social reproduction and
continuing throughout ones life, rather than com ing to an abrupt halt at maturity.
C f Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, op. cit., pp. 129-30; and Berger and
Luckmann, The Social Construction o f Reality, op. cit., p. 137.
Note comments on project-participation constraints in footnote 6, above. For a
fuller treatment of the life path-daily path dialectic as well as the external-internal
dialectic see Pred, Social Reproduction and the Time-Geography of Everyday
Life, op. cit.
In traditional human geographic usage, place is seen in a more or less strictly
objective light: as a circumscribed area containing one or more specified phenomena;
as a circumscribed area or spatial unit within a hierarchy of such interacting areas or
units; or as a unique assemblage of interrelated physical facts and human artifacts.
10 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study o f Environmental Perception Attitudes and Values
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979); idem, Place: An Experiential Perspective,
Geographical Review, 65 (1975), pp. 153-65; idem. Space and Place: The Perspective of
Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); idem, Space and
Place: Humanistic Perspective, in Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olsson (eds.). Philos
ophy in Geography (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979), pp. 387-427; E. Relph, Place and
Placelessness (London; Pion, 1976); and Anne Buttimer and David Seamon (eds.).
The Human Experience o f Space and Place (New York : St. Martins Press, 1980).
Tuan cites sacred places, formal gardens, monuments, monumental architec
ture, public squares, and the ideal city as types of public symbols that may elicit a
sense of place (Tuan, Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective, op. cit., p. 412).
For some reason he ignores the visual symbols projected by the mass media.
Ibid, pp. 416-7, 410; Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, op. cit.,
p. 174; and Anne Buttimer, Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place, in Regional
identitet och frandring i den regionata samverkans samhdlle (Symposia Universitatis Upsalicnsis Annum Quingentesimum Celebrantis 11, 1978), pp. 13-39. Tuan more recent
ly has shifted ground somewhat, choosing to differentiate between sense of place,
which is confined to conscious knowledge and deliberate acts of creation, and roo
tedness, a state of being unreflectively secure and comfortable in a given locahty.
See Yi-Fu Tuan, Rootedness versus Sense of Place, Landscape, 24 (1980), pp. 3-8.
Relph, Place and Placelessness, op. cit., pp. 65, 82. Relph is admittedly inspired by
Martin Heideggers Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
For comments on the methodological eclecticism and obscurantist terminology

67

of the sense of place literature se e j. Nicholas Entrikin, Contemporary Humanism in

Geography, Annals o f the Association o f American Geographers, 66 (1976), pp. 615-32;
and David Ley, Social Geography and Social A ction, in idem and Marwyn Sam
uels (eds.). Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems (Chicago: Maaroufa Press,
1978), pp. 41-57.
Cf, D. Cosgrove, Place, Landscape, and the Dialectics of Cultural Geog
raphy, Canadian Geographer, 22 (1978), pp. 66-72; R ay Hudson, Space, Place, and
Placelessness: Some Questions Concerning M ethodology, Progress in Human Geog
raphy, 3 (1979), pp. 169-73; Andrew Sayer, Epistemology and Conceptions of
People and Nature in Geography, Geoforum, 10 (1979), pp. 19-44; and David Ley,
Cultural/Humanistic Geography, Progress in Human Geography, 5 (1981), pp. 24957.
Buttimer, Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place, op. cit., p. 20; and Relph,
Place and Placelessness, op. cit., p. 44.
Cf. K. J. W eintraub, The Value o f the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiog
raphy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
Cf. Tuan, Space and Place : The Perspective o f Experience, op. cit., p. 171.
Or, in the terminology of Parks and Thrift, dominant institutions entrain
project participation and social interaction which is associated with nondominant
institutions. (See Don Parkes and Nigel Thrift, Tim e Spacemakers and Entrainment, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new series 4 [1979], pp.
353-71). Also note footnote 6, above. For more on the nature of dominant projects
see Pred, Social Reproduction and the Time-Geography of Everyday Life, op. cit.,
pp. 15-18.
This and related ideas are more fully elaborated upon in my forthcoming Place
as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of
Becoming Places. Some related comments are contained in John Urry, Localities,
Regions and Social Class, International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research, 5
(1981), pp. 207-225.
Cosgrove somewhat similarly has observed; Hum an ideas mould the land
scape, human intentions create and maintain places, but our experience of space and
place itself moulds human ideas. (Cosgrove, Place, Landscape, and the Dialectics
of Cultural Geography, op. cit., p. 66.) Such a dialectic between ideology and
landscape can be traced to Vidal de la Blaches classically integrated concepts o f genre
de vie, milieu, and civilisation. See Anne Buttimer, Society and Milieu in the French Geo
graphic Tradition (Chicago; Rand M cNally, 1971); David Ley, Social Geography
and the Taken-for-Granted W orld, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
new series 2 (1977), pp. 488-512; and Derek Gregory, Human Agency and Human
Geography, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, new series 6 (1980), pp.
1-18. Also note widely differing comments on the creation of landscapes in Marwyn
S. Samuels, The Biography of Landscape: Cause and Culpability in D. W. Meinig
(ed.), The Interpretation o f Ordinary Landscapes (New York; Oxford University Press,
1979), pp. 51-88; and Edward W. Soja, The Social-Spatial D iakctic, Annals of the
Association o f American Geographers, 70 (1980), pp. 207-25.
Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965
[revised edition, original edition published in 1961]) ; idem. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht
(London; Chatto and Windus, 1971); idem, The Country and the City (New York;
Oxford University Press, 1973); idem, Marxism and Literature, op. cit.; and idem.
Politics and Letters : Interviews with New Left Review (London; New Left Books, 1979).
Williams, The Long Revolution, op. cit., pp. 63-5. Although not pursued here, one
of W illiams leading arguemnts was that the connexion between the popular struc-

68

Allan Pred

ture of feeling and that used in the literature of the time is of major importance in the
analysis of culture (ibid, p. 84).
Wilhams, Marxism and Literature, op. cit., pp. 131-2. Also note idem, Politics and
Letters, op. cit., pp. 156-70.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, op. cit., p. 134; and idem, The Country and the
City, op. cit., p. 137.
Williams, The Long Revolution, op. cit., pp. 70-88, 319-83.
C f footnotes 6 and 19, above.
This line of reasoning is compatible with positions taken elsewhere in W illiams
own writings. Williams, for example, sees language and other usable signs as evi
dence of a continuing social process, into which individuals are born and within
which they are shaped, but to which they then also actively contribute, in a contin
uing process which others would label structuration. (Williams, Marxism and Litera
ture, op. cit., p. 37).
Williams, The Country and the City, op. cit., p. 297.
Cf. Giddens definition of locale in Central Problems in Social Theory, op. cit., pp
206-7.
Williams, The Country and the City, op. cit., p. 84.
Cf. Thrift, Local History: A Review Essay, op. cit.
Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach, Amoskeag : Life and Work in an
American Factory City (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Pierre-Jakz Hlias, The Horse o f Pride: Life in a Breton Village (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1978).
Allan Pred, Production, Family, and Free-Time Projects: A Time-Geographic
Perspective on the Individual and Societal Change in Nineteenth-Century U .S.
Cities, Journal o f Historical Geography, 7 (1981), pp. 3-36.
Susan Christopherson, Family and Class in the Mew Industrial City (unpublished
dissertation, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 1982).
My thinking along these lines has been very much influenced both by conversa
tions with Johan Asplund and an as yet unpublished book manuscript by that same
brilliant Swedish social psychologist.
Buttimer, Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place, op. cit., p. 35; David
Lowenthal, Past Tim e, Present Place: Landscape and M emory, Geographical
Review, 65 (1975), pp. 1-36; and Relph, Place and Placelessness, op. cit. C f p. 50,
above, on inauthentic sense of place.
Relph, Place and Placelessness, op. cit., pp. 90, 143, 140. For a critique of R elphs
observations on placelessness see Hudson, Space, Place, and Placelessness, op. cit.
Quotes from Tuan, Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective, op. cit., p.
418; and Relph, Place and Placelessness, op. cit., pp. 143, 119, 58. The other assertions
are so frequently made that the provision of references is impractical.
** On residual, dominant, and emergent forms of culture c f Williams, Marxism and
Literature, op. cit.

Commentary from an Ethogenic

Standpoint

ROM HARR
I take it that my task is to identify those features of the substantive papers in
this volume that chime in with the ethogenic point of view and to comment
on the various ways in which they run counter to or go beyond that stand
point. For this purpose I can summarize the ethogenic position in three
doctrines ;
1. A sociological doctrine: society involves at least two social orders, one
concerned with the organization of work, the other with the or
ganization of honour. They could be called the practical and the ex
pressive orders. In general the expressive order dominates the practical.
2. A psychological doctrine: social actions are structured and their struc
ture is the realization of prior structure, located in the intentions and
belief systems of actors, sometimes individually, more often collectively.
The study of actors accounts gives us access to that belief system.
3. A social psychological doctrine: many features of the mental life that
are experienced as attributes of individuals are derived from social
forms.
Sm iths discussion of the psychology of the pure bred beef business clearly
depends on a version of the distinction between practical and expressive
orders, since his study shows that the continued existence of the business and
the ways in which it is conducted are explicable only if the cattle are seen as
symbols of status, reputation and honour. T hat said I am inclined to think
that his analysis could have gone a good deal further if he had had a more
differentiated scheme than his generic concept of symbol to do the analyti
cal and explanatory work. By treating the symbolic value of the activity as
involving a social order, as say the expressive order, further features of that
order could have been drawn in. A hint of this comes in the concept of
gendeman farmer but that is not enough to explain why the dairy
business (with its own pure breeds) does not engender the same measure of
honour, nor why there is no pure bred lamb business with the same social
cahbre. The expressive order in the United States involves a further series of
images not yet drawn in by Smith. The musical Oklahoma exemplifies them