JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 146.This study shows how places, and by implication other societal units as well, achieve and reproduce distinctiveness. It does this by specifying how actors in two California urban areas, over approximately 100 years, responded differently to the same exogenous forces. Each place is examined to determine how unlike elements conjoin to produce a particular "character" at any given moment and how this character travels through time to constitute a local "tradition. " Borrowing from advances in analyses of structure and agency, this study displays character and tradition as accomplished interaction and helps make an elusive process empirically evident and accessible for study.(EOGRAPHIC units-like cities and \...~regions, but also like other types of social entities, such as corporations, academic departments, or whole societiesseem to exhibit overarching qualities that, however difficult to measure, make them durably distinct. Using "place difference" as our empirical focus, we strive here to make what might otherwise seem ineffable distinctions amenable to systematic empirical investigation.In their personal lives, social scientists are as likely as anyone to be sensitive to holistic qualities that make Chicago the "city of the broad shoulders" rather than, like Paris, the "city of light." More prosaically, they presume that overarching attributes distinguish, say, Denver from Toledo as a place to live or work. Despite the fact that, in the words of geographer Entrikin (1991:13), "these differences are not imaginary, but rather are actual features of the world," social scientists, perhaps wary of facile descriptions of "national character" (Inkeles 1996) or the "invention" (Hobsbawn 1983) of hegemonic traditions, do not much take them up.1 They more typically fall back on the apparent "solidity" of quantitative indictors-thus economic urban categories like "manufacturing center," "port town," "affluent suburb," or a position on the "center-periphery continuum" are common. Such material variables do matter in making up place differences, but they cannot, any
Actors orient themselves toward places based not only on major distinctions-coastal versus inland, large city versus small town-but based on a subtler and seemingly ineffable set of qualities, including meanings associated with place and patterns in local life. This article suggests that to understand how locality matters, we must not merely describe place in broad terms, but come to understand how material and symbolic aspects of place work together to direct activity on the ground. Place character is offered as a conceptual tool for understanding how qualities of place combine and influence local patterns in meaning and action. This article outlines strategies that can aid in uncovering just what constitutes a place's character by identifying understandings associated with specific locales and the social and material realities that provide the bases for these understandings. It also suggests approaches that reveal how character works to shape local action. Classic and contemporary studies are called on to elaborate the precedents and stakes of conducting this research and illustrate how the four research strategies presented here can be used. Concluding remarks suggest how researching place character might advance substantive understandings of situated social action.A rich and accurate understanding of social life requires consideration of the contexts in which that life is lived. Increasingly, attention to context has led researchers to examine place, or the specific locations in which action occurs. The behaviors of interest to sociologists do not simply occur in space, a nonspecific geographical area, but in particular places that, as urban scholars increasingly document, inform the contours of all behavior. Place has specificity in its geography, its material environment, and its meaning (see Gieryn, 2000). The understanding that places have distinct characters provides a way of getting at this specificity by calling attention to how locales vary, and how these variations influence attraction to a place and action within it.This article elaborates on the concept of place character, moving it beyond the realm of realtors and travel writers and squarely into the purview of urban and community scholars. I argue that not only does place matter-a point already well elaborated-but that a novel array of qualities of place increasingly shape local fates and actions, and shape them in ways that deserve attention from social scientists. These qualities extend beyond familiar factors like median income and neighborhood composition to include distinct patterns 243 CITY & COMMUNITY in meaning and action. These patterns, the crux of place character, provide insights into place specificity as a salient element of the context of social life.To attend thoroughly to place character as both a concept and an object of study, I begin with an exploration of how place is created through material and symbolic manipulations. I then develop a case for a more concrete understanding of place character based on contemporary and classic...
Ethnographic research is an iterative process in which layers of knowledge gradually accumulate as we spend time in a setting. The information that presents itself most immediately may be fascinating, but is rarely the type of truth that distinguishes good scholarship. How, then, do we come to understand settings and interactions that are of short durations, where our first-hand observations may be limited to a few hours or days? I present three challenges associated with studying short-term events, and potential solutions to each: gaining entrée and finding a productive position from which to observe the scene; the hazards posed by immediately available informants and pre-existing roles; and finally the effect of short, intense field seasons on the refinement of research questions and analysis of data. Insights are drawn from an independent, multi-year study on county fairs, and a collaborative study of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada Á a four-day event that draws over 100,000 attendees. Concluding remarks contrast the two approaches and reflect on lessons learned from each.
Place refers to specific locations that have been made meaningful and useful by human beings. This entry articulates how location, locale, and sense of place are used to develop the concept of place and how disciplines such as geography, sociology, and anthropology understand and use the concept (including its distinction from space ). Particular attention is paid to how places develop meaning through deliberate and informal means and to how individuals' status and identity inform their understandings of places. Sense of place and place distinction are covered in detail. Scholarly and practical applications of place are discussed, including the connection of place to urban power and conflict, its relevance for processes of gentrification, complications related to increased mobility and technology, and connections to consumption.
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