Shaun Gallagher: Action and Interaction

Action and Interaction Book Cover Action and Interaction
Shaun Gallagher
Oxford University Press
2020
Hardback £30.00
320

Reviewed by: Horacio M. R. Banega (FFyL UBA / UNQuilmes / UNLitoral, Argentina)

Action and Interaction is divided into three parts. The first is composed of three chapters that analyze action. The second’s four chapters address interaction. Part three discusses the critical turn in the cognitive sciences in three chapters. The book is strikingly exhaustive. Its positions are revisionist and its implications contentious and challenging for the cognitive sciences. While Gallagher’s  Enactivist Interventions (2017) provides an overview of his thinking,  in Action and Interaction he fine tunes that stance for the sake of an interdisciplinary project that incorporates social philosophy and, to a lesser degree, the social sciences. Gallagher is startling concise in his account of different disciplines’ explanations and descriptions of social interaction and the development of the abilities and skills we bring to bear in our engagement with the natural-social-cultural environment. The contributions of the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, the ontology of action, the neurosciences, social psychology, the psychology of development, and of other areas of study work both in Gallagher’s favor and against him. His project is comparable to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s: assault on all fronts the reigning and hegemonic Cartesianism in the ontology, methodology, and epistemology of social cognition. But Cartesianism has endured, and continues to endure, in what Thomas Kuhn calls the normal cognitive sciences. In what follows, I will first offer a brief review of the various chapters in the book and then outline what I deem its most important aspects.

In chapter 1, Gallagher states that “action” must be understood in terms of the movements and intentions of an agent. “The concept of affordance and a pragmatic concept of situation [must be understood] as relational” (7). “Action,” then, is what we call the situation in which motor, pragmatic, contextual, social, and other aspects are arranged to produce a particular affordance. In this book, Gallagher bases his concept of situation on John Dewey’s philosophy (1938).[1] He calls the situation of which the agent forms part the agentive situation. Looking to empirical studies of impaired agents, he indicates that action is structured into three dimensions: a basic motor level; a semantic or pragmatic level, where the intentions of each agent are formed; and a social level, or the level of cultural meaning. These three empirically justified levels configure a first holistic approach to the individualization of action (there is no action without context or agent). A holistic view of action means that action cannot be partitioned without altering its nature. That is why Gallagher does not affirm the existence of basic action but rather the existence of basic activity to account for the beginning of an action. This means that action is a continuous process.

In chapter 2, Gallagher analyzes the temporal structure of action to justify the assertion that basic activity is intentional and to claim that action entails an intrinsic temporality. The enactivist perspective comes into focus at this juncture, with the affirmation that perception of the environment and action are organized to allow for enactive processes that ground the agents’ intentional existences (25). Empirical research in development psychology shows that even primary motor coordination—hand to mouth, for instance—implies an internal temporality. The aim of explicitly addressing the internal temporality of action is to show the double nature of its operationality, first as duration and second as organization of the coordination of the sensorimotor process. The assertion that the organization of the process’s coordination is temporal means that, to be performed, the movement requires present-moment anticipations related to past movements of that sensorimotor coordination. This problem is so complex it demands considering not only time as seen by phenomenological philosophy, but also—and more crucially—the temporal organization intrinsic to the corporal scheme of a baby from the time she appears in the world. Francisco Varela (1999) is one of the scientists who first used dynamic systems theory to formalize Husserl’s notion of the constitution of immanent temporality with its instances of retention, protention, and proto-impression. Varela thus applied his models to the functioning of the different levels of the enactive agent to show the integration of those different levels with their also different durations, and to spell out the dynamic coupling between brain, body, and environment. That dynamic coupling is geared to action; it is not representational but pragmatic—and therein lies the basic unit of enactivism, which radically defies normal cognitive science and its Cartesian basis. Gallagher coins the term “primal enaction” to refer to the initial moment of basic activity, which—because of its fluid structure—is not only momentary. Hence, “anticipatory intentionality is not an apprehension of an absence […] it is […] an apprehension of the possibilities or the affordances in the present” (36). Temporality plays a structuring role in narrative practices as well. With narrative, temporality is double: an internal temporality is at play in the articulation of a story while the narrator has a temporality of her own. There is a strong claim here that the structure of the action precedes the narrative structure, hence demonstrating that the action does not need a narrative configuration to produce meaning. That does not, however, deny the fact that narration adds or complements meanings of actions in specific situations. All these questions lead to the problem of autonomy and agency—topics addressed in chapter 3.

It is in this chapter that Interaction Theory (IT) first makes its appearance, with the affirmation that action emerges out of “our early interactions with others” (42). From there, “the phenomenological sense of agency” leads us to the assertion that action is the integrated form of “intention, sense of agency, and meaning which generally goes beyond the agent´s intention” (43). Those phenomenological components cannot be reduced to purely causal, mechanical, or neural processes.  First off, because they involve intentional bodily processes that are used to distinguish the sense of agency from the sense of ownership—which, in the case of voluntary and intentional movement, are not readily distinguishable. The way to draw that difference is to consider involuntary and unintentional movement, where it is indeed possible to discriminate between sense of ownership and sense of agency. In the case of involuntary and unintentional movement, there is no sense of agency, since I am not the one who causes the movement. At stake in voluntary and intentional movement are motor-control processes along with perceived modifications in the environment pursuant to my action to evidence the configuration of a pre-reflexive sense of agency. Intentions take shape on the basis of those sensorimotor and perceptive processes that allow us to monitor aspects of our actions. Those intentions also help form a sense of agency. A difference is drawn between distal intentions—future-oriented deliberate processes—and proximate intentions—motor intentions connected to the present and to the processes of control at play in an action underway. Gallagher analyzes the relations between those two and then assesses attributions of agency and ownership in relation to one’s own agency and ownership. The sense of agency might be reinforced by an attribution of agency, but that attribution is not necessary to the constitution of that sense. The combination of those relations evidences different degrees of agency.

It is in relation to Gallagher’s engagement with Pacherie that something I want to underscore arises, namely where to place the limits between the experiential dimension and the functional dimension of action. Pacherie argues that there can be “naked intentions” that are neutral in relation to the agent. That is a scandal for a phenomenological understanding of the experiential dimension. Gallagher affirms:

Pacherie is right to note that a conceptual analysis cannot “preempt the question of whether these various aspects are dissociable or not […]” (2007 7). What can decide the issue, however, is agreement on where to draw the lines between phenomenological analysis (i.e., of what we actually experience), neuroscientific analysis […] and conceptual analysis (which may introduce distinctions that are in neither the phenomenology nor the neurology, but may have a productive role to play in constructing cognitive models or, in regard to the individual, explaining psychological motivations, or forming personal narratives, etc.).” (58-59).

The end of that passage makes it clear that actions and their intentions, motives, and aims are not mental states; they need others to take shape and advance beyond the singular individual. At stake, then, is a dynamic constitution of the causal and reciprocal brain-body-environment coupling that is the unit of analysis of Enactivism and of Interaction Theory—Gallagher’s topic in Part II of the book.

In chapter 4, Gallagher critiques the Theories of Mind (ToM) called Theory Theory and Simulation Theory in eight condensed arguments or problems he finds in that Cartesian representationalist perspective. What Gallagher term the Starting Problem is crucial to chapter 7. In ToM, a rule of inference must be applied on the basis of our mental states: we must infer a state other than the one we find ourselves in, a state we can imagine the other agent to be in. Nonetheless, “Neither theory has a good explanation of how the process gets off the ground—or more precisely, what ground we stand on as we engage in the process” (Gallagher 2011: 2).

Gallagher lays out his Interaction Theory in chapter 5. That theory holds that intersubjective understanding takes place through embodied practices. Since intersubjetive understanding involves social cognition, it is where the problems social psychology deals with arise, among them bias in the perception of members who do not belong to our group of reference. In this chapter, Gallagher clears up misunderstandings regarding his critique of mindreading and the nature of mental states. His target is the classic notion that mental states are private internal events that others have no access to, or that the only access possible is through inference or simulation on the basis of our own mental states. If that is the basis for the theory of mindreading, Gallagher affirms that it is rarely needed in our daily interactions. The notion of the mind Gallagher defends is the notion of an embodied mind geared to action and enactively contextualized. This conceptualization is “non-orthodox” (99) and difficult to reconcile with the notion of mental states as private events. Gallagher affirms:

Interaction: a mutually engaged co-regulated coupling between at least two autonomous agents, where (a) the co-regulation and the coupling mutually affect each other, and constitute a self-sustaining organization in the domain of relational dynamics, and (b) the autonomy of the agents involved is not destroyed, although its scope may be augmented or reduced. (Based on De Jaegher, Di Paolo, & Gallagher 2010). (99).

It is difficult to determine the scope of that definition because of its theoretical and practical, and multidisciplinary, potential. The primacy of interaction is based on processes of primary intersubjectivity, secondary intersubjectivity, and communicative and narrative competencies, which in turn form the basis for three points that challenge ToM specifically: 1. “Other minds are not hidden away and inaccessible,” 2. “Our normal everyday stance toward the other person is not third-person, observational; it is second-person interaction,” and 3. “Our primary and pervasive way of understanding others does not involve mentalizing or mindreading” (100). Primary intersubjectivity is tied to the development of the innate or early sensorimotor skills required to make contact with others, specifically the caregiver. What matters here is that in second-person interactions the “mind” of the other is manifested in its embodied behavior. That interaction depends on the self/non-self distinction and the proprioceptive development of our own body. Contemporary scientific evidence supports Merleau-Ponty’s thesis on a shared affective intentionality: intercorporeality. Interaction thus contributes to social cognition insofar as it understands it as the joint dynamic constitution of meaning through reciprocal exchanges between agents and environments. Child-development studies show that an understanding that is not theoretical, but rather pragmatic and affective is developed. Neither that understanding nor primary intersubjectivity as embodied practice disappears with development, IT argues. On the contrary, along with secondary intersubjectivity and communicative and narrative practices, it forms the basis for understanding others. The mind is a second-person phenomenon and understanding the other means being bodily available to respond in interaction. This implies personal and subpersonal processes that cannot be so clearly distinguished as a mental state encapsulated in a mind that operates propositionally and modularly with representations and other tools but that is not here in the world. These processes are embodied and affective, pragmatic and intersubjective. On that basis, Gallagher proceeds to work through the eight problems of ToM formulated in chapter 3. [2]

In chapter 6, Gallagher states that interaction assumes direct perception of others, of their emotions and intentions in particular—that because this type of perception (which Gallagher terms “smart” perception) is always contextualized. As we interact with others, we perceive their motor intentions and proximate intentions in their gestures, bodily stances, movements, and in what they are looking at and doing in relation to the context of their daily praxis. There is no need for us to commit to the existence of or to have access to the internal mental states of others to perceive them directly. Significantly, for Gallagher “there are good reasons […] to view beliefs as dispositions that are sometimes ambiguous even from the perspective of the believer” (2005: 214). This pragmatist-like approach enables Gallagher to work through the problem of access to the beliefs of other agents insofar as those dispositions are dispositions to act in a certain way. It is on the basis of the contributions of social psychology and its experiments on bias in perceptive recognition of the color of human faces that Gallagher begins to introduce questions of social conflict into the cognitive sciences.

In chapter 7, Gallagher addresses the communicative actions and narrative practices that broadened the scope of IT to bring to a close its dispute with simulation theorists and sympathizers. That means dealing with the role of the acquisition and exercise of language in social interaction and cognition as pragmatic tools that enable a refusal to commit to propositional attitudes, mental states, and so forth. Both language and narrative practices are grounded on contextualized embodied interaction. The development of linguistic capacity depends on the ability to move vocal cords, tongue, lips, and hands in gestures. It is based on three indications of Merleau-Ponty’s that converge in contemporary analysis. First, “we are born into a ‘whirlwind of language’” (156). Second, language accomplishes thought. Third, language transcends the body. Insofar as meaning is generated in the body and in language, that third point means that meaning outlives its origin. Linguistic pragmatics can broaden the resolutions of the problems raised by theorists of the mind insofar as embodied action is what does something between the speakers in the contextual medium of conversation. Narrative practices’ role in child development is understood to be central, and there is ample empirical evidence that it is based on pre-linguistic, proto-narrative practices. Narration articulates an order based on the temporal structure of social agents’ actions and interactions that both enable that interaction and feed back to it. That order is normative, and it is through narrations that the child begins learning norms while also becoming familiar with the core structure of folk psychology and delving into the Massive Hermeneutical Background (MHB). At the same time, understanding someone means formulating a narrative that, whether explicitly or implicitly, makes it possible to reconstruct their motives and aims, what makes them act in a certain way. It is in this chapter that Gallagher introduces the topic of MHB, which TT and ST look to to resolve the Starting Problem, though without specifying MHB’s nature or functioning in singular cases.  The MHB cannot, as John Searle would have it (1992), be reduced to cerebral processes; it is shaped by acquired dispositions (habits and schemes) of perception, action, and evaluation. “The background, having its effects through an individual habitus, is a normative force that plays an essential role in regulating social practices, and contributing to social reproduction” (2011: 7). Gallagher uses that concept of habitus, devised by Pierre Bourdieu (1980), to exemplify MHB, and that leads us to the question of empathy. Our author also takes issue with the various versions of empathy defended by champions of mindreading.

In my view, the book’s third section, which the author calls A Critical Turn, is the most contentious and challenging because it ventures into the terrain of practical philosophy in general and social philosophy in particular. One could well ask what this turn critiques. The answer may be twofold. First, it critiques mainstream cognitive sciences from within (Gallagher and Gallese have discussed issues of cognitive science, see note 16, page 97). But it also critiques the social state of things in late capitalism, and of the many critiques of the reigning state of things Gallagher chooses Axel Honneth’s. The path that takes Honneth from developmental psychology to recognition theory is paved by Trevarthen’s research (2008) on primary intersubjectivity. Gallagher does not fully embrace Honneth’s theses; he posits notions of recognition that do not necessarily imply conflict or revenge, but rather forgiveness and gift.

In chapter 9, Gallagher analyzes the topic of the extended mind, that is, institutions and collective agency. Insofar as those questions involve group identity, they also imply critical narratives: “The cognition involved is distributed,” (214) Gallagher asserts. The distribution of social knowledge is addressed at the level of institutions, bearing in mind narratives’ power to transform situations that distort the communicative practices of institutions. Gallagher acknowledges that a change in narrative may not be enough to effect a change in a situation. To address that question, he looks to debates on cognitive institutions, which affords him a more subtle approach to the question of autonomous agents’ participation and involvement in institutions, which—to put it bluntly—can range from maximum creativity to maximum alienation.  As Gallagher puts it:

First, that the cognitive-science informed analyses of interaction theory and socially extended cognition which offer insight into these processes and how they operate in institutional practices and procedures can inform critical theory. Second, since the cognitive science of such phenomena focuses on narrow questions about how such things work rather than on the broader consequences of such practices, we need to give cognitive science a critical twist.” (227).

Finally, in chapter 10 Gallagher lays out his theory of the practice of justice at play in the social interaction embodied in everyday life. He critiques basic tenets of John Rawl’s Theory of Justice and considers the ethological analyses of cooperative behavior in chimpanzees. He is in favor of an imperfect consensus and, like Honneth, insists on not reducing distributive justice to the distribution of economic goods, though he recognizes that, “in the final instance,” you cannot live without money anywhere in the social world.

Gallagher’s book is so stimulating and far-reaching that all the questions and reflections it occasions cannot be tackled in the little space I have left. The most pressing question, for me, is if it is possible to connect, combine, and harness sociological research and social theory to complement social cognition and embodied cognition. Gallagher begins to build that bridge. In the part of chapter 7 where he analyzes MHB, he adopts sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s thesis on the social world.  I would like to point to two questions along these lines. The first, and critical, question is that for Bourdieu those “acquired dispositions” are actually imposed by a dominant and hegemonic social class. Gallagher’s watering down of Bourdieu’s critical theory seems to take place in part III of the book, where Gallagher privileges hermeneutic positions over critical ones. The positive question can be explained in terms of the practical turn in social sciences, a recent research paradigm[3] of which Stephen Turner (1994) voices a powerful critique. In 2007, he affirms that “Social Theory cannot get very far without making generous use of mentalistic or cognitive concepts” (357). Some of the enactivist theses Gallagher posits are very adept at capturing what is actually happening with social agents in the practical turn and, hence, they enable a double feedback loop: first, from embodied cognition and enactivism to the social sciences, which more robustly justifies the practical turn (against Turner); and second, from the social sciences to social cognition, where the former contributes its research on social ties, group belonging, class conflict, race, gender, practical knowledge, etc.

The relation with sociology makes itself felt at the beginning of the book as well, when a difference is drawn between the process-action of the completed action and a posteriori attribution of meaning. Alfred Schutz distinguishes between action as process and act as completed action. He uses Husserl’s concept of temporality to capture the constitution of the subjective meaning of social action—Max Weber considered this a requisite to differentiate meaningful action from mere movement in space.[4]

It is my sense that, in part III, Gallagher takes on a wide range of topics, though his approach is not without problems. He is too quick to establish a relation between lab experiments with animals and embodied practices of social agents in a social space in conflict. Centuries of reflection on the possibility—or impossibility—of living together complicate a facile combination disciplines like political philosophy, ethics, meta-ethics, the philosophy of law, and experimental research on normative learning. At the same time, Gallagher looks, albeit obliquely, to Aristotle’s notion of phronesis that Gadamer uses in Truth and  Method (1950). It would seem that Richard Bernstein (1986: 155) was right when he affirmed that Aristoteles had at least one universally accepted norm to use as parameter for the application of other, narrower rules to each specific controversy, thus justifying the practical possibility of phronesis. There is a need, however, for discussion of the historical distance and different conditions of application of norms—or of one norm—in our globalized pandemic-ridden present and ancient Athens.  It is because we no longer have such an efficacious norm that Bernstein states that hermeneutics as practical wisdom must move to the sphere of politics.

I also have the sense that the book lacks an analysis of the philosophy of science. It seems to be there on a conceptual level, but it is never fleshed out. The representatives of mainstream cognitive sciences appear, in their scientific contributions, to be ontological and epistemic realists, and that, it appears, is the first thing to reconstruct in an attempt to reshape their discipline. The use of dynamic systems theory clearly points in that direction, but I still have the sense that the models are mistaken with what lies outside of them, without pausing to question the theoretical weight of theoretical terms like distal intention, proximate intention, motor intention, mirror neurons, and so on. In any case, it seems that a similar analysis, but now regarding the empirical content, is necessary in the phenomenology used in scientific research and in its disputes with representationalist cognitive sciences.[5] Both of those questions are related to the naturalization of phenomenology, a project that has been underway for some time and that merits a comprehensive assessment other than the one performed by Gallagher and Dan Zahavi in The Phenomenological Mind (2012).

This is a book necessary for these times. It provides a number of insights for further scientific and philosophical research into our nature.

Bibliography

Balmaceda, T. 2017. “Apuntes acerca de la hipótesis de la percepción directa de los estamos mentales.” In Pérez, D. and Lawler, D. (Eds.), La segunda persona y las emociones, 249-274. Buenos Aires: SADAF.

Banega, H. 2016. “Husserl’s Diagrams and Models of Immanent Temporality.” Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 7 (1): 47-73.

Bourdieu, P. 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit.

Reckwitz. A. 2002. “Towards a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Cultural Theorizing.” European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2): 243-263.

Bernstein, R. J. 1986. “From Hermeneutics to Praxis.” In Philosophical Profiles. Essays in a Pragmatic Mode. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

De Jaegher, H., Di Paolo, E., and Gallagher, S. 2010. “Does social interaction constitute social cognition?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14 (10): 441–7.

Dewey, J. 1938. The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Wiston.

Ihde,D. 2012. Experimental Phenomenology. Multistabilities, Second Edition.  Albany: SUNY Press.

Gadamer, H.G. 1989. Truth and Method. New York, NY: Continuum.

Gallagher, S., 2006. “Phenomenological contributions to a theory of social cognition.” Husserl Studies, 21 (2): 95–110

Gallagher, S., 2011. “Narrative competency and the massive hermeneutical background”. In Fairfield, P. (ed.), Hermeneutics in Education, 21-38. New York: Continuum.

Gallagher, S., 2017. Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gallagher, S. and Zahavi, D. 2012. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge.

Gomila, A. y Pérez, D. 2017. “Lo que la segunda persona no es.” In Pérez, D. and Lawler, D. (eds.), La segunda persona y las emociones. Buenos Aires: SADAF.

Pacherie, E., 2007. “The sense of control and the sense of agency.” Psyche 13 (1): 1–30.

Schatzki, T., Knorr Cetina, K., y von Savigny, E. (Eds.). 2001. The Practice turn in Contemporary Theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Schutz, A. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Searle, J. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Trevarthen, C. 2008. “Why Theories Will Differ.” In The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, J. Zlatev, T.P. Racine, C. Sinha, and E. Itkonen (Eds.), vii–xiii. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Turner, S. 1994. The Social Theory of Practices. Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and  Presuppositions, Cambridge, The University of Chicago Press.

Turner, S. 2007. “Social Theory as a Cognitive Neuroscience.” European Journal of Social Theory, 10 (3): 357-374

Varela, F.J. 1999. “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time  Consciousness”. In J. Petitot, F.J. Varela, B. Pachoud, and J.-M. Roy (Eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and  Cognitive Science, 266–314. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Weber, M. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press.


[1] As readers of this journal know, the concept of situation can also be grounded in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenologies, which explains the historical compatibility of pragmatist and phenomenological positions. To understand this compatibility or complementarity, see Don Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology. Multistabilities, Second Edition, Albany: SUNY Press, 2012, among others.

[2] For another consideration largely akin to Gallagher’s position though with some caveats, see Tomás Balmaceda, “Apuntes acerca de la hipótesis de la percepción directa de los estamos mentales” (249-274) and Antoni Gomila and Diana Pérez, “Lo  que la seguna persona no es” (275-297), plus other articles compiled in Diana Pérez and Diego Lawler (Eds.), La segunda persona y las emociones, Buenos Aires, SADAF, 2017.

[3] See Andreas Reckwitz. “Towards a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Cultural Theorizing,” European Journal of Social Theory. 2002, 5 (2): 243-263 and Theodore Schatzki,  Karin Knorr Cetina  and Eike von Savigny, (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London and New York: Routlege, 2001.

[4] See Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1967 and Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1947 (Talcott Parsons’s translation is the one cited by the translators of Schutz’s text).

[5] I humbly refer to Horacio Banega, “Husserl´s Diagrams and Models of Immanent Temporality”, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 7 (1), Fall 2016, 47-73, for a revision of Husserlian methodology.

David Seamon: Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making

Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making Book Cover Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making
David Seamon
Routledge
2018
Paperback £35.99
220

Reviewed by: Dr. Andrew Turk (Adjunct Associate Professor, Murdoch University, Western Australia)

David Seamon’s latest book Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making (2018) is very readable for those from disciplines other than the obvious ones of architecture, urban planning, geography and philosophy. The content and structure of this book provides both an introduction to the topic and a summary of key issues.  Seamon has previously[i] introduced his method of ‘synergistic relationality’ analysis via six place process triads, however, this new book provides more illustrative examples and   explanation.  This book requires, and deserves, a detailed reading.  This is reflected in the nature of this review, which summarises, to the extent practicable, the content of the book, as well as providing more general comments, questions and conclusions.  This review is from the perspective of an interdisciplinary researcher regarding place, rather than from a strictly philosophical point of view.

Seamon starts by asking about the relationship between life and place, and argues that life requires place.  Seamon defines place from a phenomenological perspective, as “any environmental locus that gathers human experiences, actions, and meanings spatially and temporally” (2).  He notes that Jeff Malpas describes place as “an open and interconnected region within which other persons, things, spaces, and abstract locations, and even one’s self can appear, be recognized, identified and interacted with”[ii].  People also potentially have strong feelings (affects) about places, both positive and negative.

We understand place via analysis of real-world evidence and this is the proper basis for testing conceptual claims about place.  A key concern of this book is the best way to analyse such evidence.  Seamon contrasts ‘analytic relationality’, which divides places and their relationships into parts or factors, with, his preferred, ‘synergistic relationality’, which takes a holistic view of place as constituted of dynamic aspects which are interconnected both physically and experientially. To investigate modes of dwelling in place, a sound, structured methodology is important because of the complex, indeterminate, interdisciplinary and ever-changing nature of place.

There are many different approaches to phenomenology and ways that a phenomenological view of place can be applied, so it is important to judge this book in terms of its stated objectives (5, 6):

  • To develop a phenomenology of place grounded in synergistic relationality;
  • To demonstrate the use of a predefined ‘progressive approximation’ structure of analysis, implementing a form of Systems Theory, developed by British philosopher J. G. Bennett;
  • To surface relationships, actions and processes integral to phenomenology of place in a manner which is multidimensional but integrated;
  • To demonstrate the way wholeness of place can be expressed via examination of paired terms and six triads, based on Bennett’s systems theory;
  • To apply a phenomenological perspective to places, which is understood to arise from our personal, cultural, intellectual, and historical points of view;
  • To address, in the context of both historical and hypermodern places, certain critical concerns, raised by reviewers, about the approach adopted in this book.

Seamon defines phenomenology as “a way of understanding that emphasizes the description and interpretation of human experience, awareness, and meaning, particularly their unnoticed, taken-for-granted dimensions” (8).  He quotes Moran (2005[iii], 2) as suggesting that Edmund Husserl, the “founder of phenomenology”, envisioned phenomenology as “the descriptive, non-reductive science of whatever appears, in the manner of its appearing, in the subjective and intersubjective life of consciousness”.  Seamon explains that the aim is not just descriptions of phenomena, but their comparison to identify “underlying commonalities that mark essential, non-contingent features and qualities of the phenomenon” (9), i.e. their ‘essences’.

In this book the topic of interest is experiences, actions, meanings and events with respect to place.  He cites (9) Van Manen (2014, 39)[iv] as contending the need to study “active and passive” lived experience; the “ordinary and the extraordinary, the quotidian (commonplace) and the exotic, the routine and the surprising, the dull and the ecstatic moments”.  In this way phenomenology pays attention to the totality of human experience and seeks to develop informative and theoretical formulations as comprehensively and authentically as possible.  To achieve this, Seamon draws on a wide range of examples of descriptions of lived experience and, in order to conceptualize place phenomenologically, he cites earlier studies by renowned researchers such as Edward Relph, Edward Casey and Jeff Malpas.

Such phenomenological explorations are based on the assumption that all “human experience, awareness, and action are always intentional – i.e., necessarily oriented toward and finding their significance in a world of emergent meaning”; that is, we are “inescapably immersed, enmeshed, and entwined” in our particular lifeworld (11).  The phenomenological approach shines a light on key aspects of everyday life, including those experiences that normally go unnoticed, via “unquestioned acceptance of the lifeworld … what Husserl called the natural attitude” (12).   Place is not just manifest as the material environment, distinct from the people that dwell there.  Conceptualizations of place need to incorporate “lived complexity in an ordered way, including the generative processes whereby places and place experiences shift over time” (13).

As emphasised by phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty[v], people’s activities within their environment are embodied, often as unselfconscious gestures and behaviours, both individually and as group processes.  These include ‘body routines’ (integrated sets of gestures and actions) and ‘time space routines’ (often-repeated sets of actions to accomplish common tasks).  These conventionalised patterns of behaviour facilitate the dwelling group developing and maintaining a sense of deep involvement with that place.  A routine of bodily interactions is termed a ‘place ballet’ by Jane Jacobs (1961)[vi].

Key aspects of everyday activities in place can be examined phenomenologically via a methodology of data collection and analysis, which must exhibit interpretive accuracy and trustworthiness.  Such methodologies can draw data from a variety of sources, including: “phenomenologies of place already written … studies by sociologists, geographers, psychologists, architects, planners, urban designers and others … accounts from imaginative literature that relate to place experiences and place meanings … recent newspaper articles that deal with place events and place experiences” (16, 17).  Seamon suggests use of a wide range of such texts because this facilitates comparison between sources and validation of key phenomena.

The long history of investigation of ‘place’ is discussed by Seamon, including contributions by human geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph and Anne Buttimer, regarding topics such as place attachment, place identity, place belonging and sense of place.  He notes (19) the interdisciplinary nature of place research, citing Bruce Janz (2005)[vii], who provides a critique of past research on phenomenology of place.  Janz lists requirements for effective place research, including adopting a phenomenological and hermeneutical approach, which concentrates on the experience of place.  This requires a complex, holistic and richly cultural approach to place.

Seamon follows the phenomenological tradition established by Edmund Husserl of being disinclined to collaborate with social science methods for understanding dwelling in place, and critiques examples of rationalist approaches to investigation of place.  He claims they prevent the whole of place being understood in terms of “ambience, character, presence, or serendipitous unfolding” (23).  Instead, he advocates a ‘synergistic relationality’ approach, which concentrates on processes, via an investigative methodology that does justice to the wholeness and emergent nature of place.

For Seamon, place is “an interconnected field of intertwined relationships gathering and gathered by a lived intimacy between people and the world and held together spatially and temporally” (29). A methodology for investigating place must identify and analyse these relationships as they unfold in actions and experiences of everyday life.  To develop his approach to this problem, Seamon turned to the ‘phenomenology of wholeness’ of British phenomenologist and science educator Henri Bortoft and British philosopher and mathematician J.G. Bennett, who together developed the notion of ‘progressive approximation’.  This method seeks to understand the whole via investigating its parts with respect to the way they ‘belong together’, “through a mode of careful, intuitive encounter uniting perception, feeling, and thinking” (30).

According to Seamon, the method of ‘progressive approximation’ permits the researcher to identify the ‘organized structure’ inherent, but hidden, within the bewildering diversity and complexity of phenomena involved with dwelling in place.  This is achieved through a structured investigation, starting from vague outlines of concepts, and subsequent filling in of details, providing a deepening of meanings.  Seamon contends that this seeking out of ‘underlying connectedness’ or ‘integrated structure’ implements a form of ‘triangulation’.

Seamon notes (34, 35) that Bennett (1993, 13)[viii] defines a system as “a set of independent but mutually relevant terms, (in which term refers to) those elements of the system that express a specific character, such as universality, complementarity, dynamism, activity, potential, and so forth”.   Bennett utilises a structured approach to investigation of complex systems, moving from the single, total wholeness (monad), through dyads, inherently belonging to the monad, and indicating the diverse nature of different features of the system.  This leads to triads, expressing the relatedness of different aspects of the system and the processes that bind them.

Based on Bennett’s publications, Seamon notes that the monad is an ‘undifferentiated diversity’, which needs to be encountered as a whole before the structure of its parts is examined to determine whether any particular element ‘belongs’ to the system.  Dyads concern binaries and contrasts inherent in the system, so that the existence of one term presupposes the other.  The contrasting elements are complementary to each other, rather than polar opposites.  They interpenetrate and cannot be separated because both are integral to phenomena.  Dyads are selected which most effectively contribute to a deepened understanding of the phenomenon via “the dyad’s two natures; what it is and what it does” (40).  Resolution of essentially contradictory conditions is explained by the triads, where the emphasis is shifted to identification of processes that enable this resolution.

Further background regarding the approach of using process triads to understand place can be found in Seamon’s previous work (2012; 2014).  In the 2012 chapter he contends that place can be understood in terms of three dimensions: “first, the geographical ensemble – i.e., the material environment, including both its natural and human-made dimensions; second, people-in-place, including individual and group actions, intentions, and meanings; and, third, spirit of place, or genius loci (common presence)” (3).  He goes on to show how this concept can be understood via six modes of dwelling (processes), based on ‘systematics’ developed by J.G. Bennett, using slightly different terminology to the 2018 book.  Seamon (2014) discusses the same six place processes, without reference to Bennett’s work, emphasising instead a ‘generative’ view of various aspects of relationships with place, which interact via a synergistic dynamic.  In his 2018 book, Seamon claims that the three ‘impulses’, which are differently combined in the six place triads, are direct consequences of the meaning of place, as explained by Edward Casey, Bruce Janz and Jeff Malpas.

In Chapters 5 to 8, Seamon explains how he utilizes Bennett’s analytic method of monad, dyads and triads for investigation of the essential character of place. Seamon’s method begins with explication of the monad of place as a multifaceted phenomenon of daily life.  He provides lists of the ‘thematic’ aspects and the ‘characteristics’ of place, as a ‘sphere of opening’, providing opportunities to investigate the experiential wholeness of place in a phenomenological manner. Different modes of lived emplacement involve temporal aspects (such as duration of dwelling) and nested horizons of place (household, workplace, neighbourhood, city, etc.).  There is a lived ‘co-envelopment’ between body and world, an inescapable commingling.

Moving from the monad, the next step is to establish dyads of place, to investigate the wholeness of place via an appropriate set of binaries and complementarities involved in encounters and actions in place.  The nominated five place dyads are: movement and rest; insideness and outsideness; the ordinary and extra-ordinary; the within and without; homeworld and alienworld.  He discusses (citing relevant theorists) the reasons for, and significance of, each dyad and examples of different modes of experiencing them.

The third, and dominant level of the systems theory approach to place is triads; the means for reconciling the tensions inherent in the dyads.  Seamon claims “that a triadic knowledge of place is essential if we are to envision design, policy, planning, or advocacy that work to strengthen rather than weaken real-world places” (67).  He adopts Bennett’s term ‘successive approximation’ to describe increasingly more detailed levels of analysis, which approach more closely the real level of complexity of dwelling in place.  To represent the dynamic, generative aspects of place, the six place triads depict various processes and relationships, which can have either a positive or negative impact on dwelling in place.

Bennett (1993, 37-39) defines a triad as “a system of three independent but mutually related terms, each of which he designated by the word impulse, to suggest a sense of force or motivation that, interacting with the two other impulses of the triad, leads to a specific action, process or happening”.  These three basic impulses are affirming (initiating, demanding, or forcing action), receptive (that which is acted upon; being passive, resisting or denying) and reconciling (combining the other two impulses; via integrating, harmonizing, bridging, or neutralizing).  They are successively termed the first (1), second (2) and third (3) impulses.  In the context of place, Seamon names these impulses people-in-place (1), environmental ensemble (2) and common presence (3) and justifies them as aspects of place-as-process.  They represent the fundamentals of place; i.e. the characteristics of people who live there, the nature of the topography and ecosystem, and the intertwining of those two systems to produce a particular, intricate mode of dwelling.

Seamon explains the three place impulses: “Environmental ensemble … refers to the material and environmental qualities of place, including topography, geology, weather, flora, fauna” (85).  This applies to natural landscape, and human-made elements, which provide “the material foundation for place events, transactions, experiences, and meanings” (86). The impulse of ‘people-in-place’ is ‘affirming’ because “typically, people actively manipulate and fabricate their worlds” (87).  It includes “their actions, routines, understandings, and situations, whether unself-conscious or conscious, habitual or out-of-the-ordinary” (87).

Seamon describes ‘common presence’ as “the material and lived ‘togetherness’ of a place impelled by both its physical and experiential qualities” (87).  Seamon notes the significance of Bennett’s (1961, 44)[ix] claim that ‘common presence’ is “one example of phenomena that occupy ‘a kind of no-man’s land between the fields of science, art, and religion’ … it cannot be readily grasped directly but only felt and spoken of imprecisely” (88).  Hence, a flexible interdisciplinary approach is required to incorporate this impulse within a comprehensive investigation of place.

All place processes involve ways of combining the three impulses.  This is reflected in each impulse’s positioning in any one of these six triads: place interaction (1-3-2); place identity (2-3-1); place release (3-2-1); place realization (3-1-2); place intensification (2-1-3); and place creation (1-2-3).  In Chapters 9 to 14, Seamon seeks to tease out the interactions between people and place via explication of the six place triads.  There is not space in this review to fully summarise Seamon’s explanation of the phenomenology of the place triads, however, a brief summary follows.

The ‘triad of place interaction’ “marks the existential foundation of any place – the lifeworld actions, happenings, and situations associated with that place” (93).  Seamon notes that this involves a wide range of interactions between the environment and those who dwell there. He cites authors who have developed typologies of individual and group place experiences.  Place interaction triads may ‘chain’, as a series of progressive actions, and smaller triads may ‘nest’ within larger scale triads to produce a particular mode of dwelling.

The ‘triad of place identity’ “involves ways that place becomes an extended, taken-for-granted part of how an individual or group suppose themselves to be personally and communally” (105).  Seamon distinguishes this triad from that of ‘place interaction’ in that it involves repetitive interactions with the environment which may have either a positive or negative impact on people’s feelings about the place.  A person may consider a particular place as their ‘homeworld’, motivating them to exhibit emotional and practical care for that place.

The ‘triad of place release’ is linked with the ‘triad of place realization’ because they demonstrate opposite ways that ‘common presence’ initiates place actions.  Seamon states that ‘place release’ “involves an environmental serendipity of unexpected encounters and events” (118).  He suggests that such events could involve ‘noticing’ something new, and this may trigger sequences of consequential interactions.  A question arises as to whether environments can be designed to facilitate serendipity or whether particular types of activities might encourage instances of ‘place release’ to occur?  The ‘triad of place realisation’ is, in contrast, defined by Seamon as relating to some breakdown of the ‘ordered wholeness’ of place, causing a deterioration in the mode of dwelling in place.  This can involve discord within ‘common presence’, operating at an unselfconscious or conscious level.

The ‘triad of place intensification’ is paired with the ‘triad of place creation’, because in both “the reconciling impulse of common presence is the outcome of place actions, though these actions are considerably different experientially” (138).  In the case of ‘place intensification’ the outcome is positive, creating a stronger form of ‘common presence’ via an improved physical environment.  However, for ‘place creation’ the improvement is generated by people implementing change through ‘creatively envisioning’ a better mode of dwelling.  These triads are perhaps most easily understood in terms of urban design and renewal of communal facilities and practices, such as creating new plazas and/or encouraging more vibrant communal activities, such as outdoor concerts and festivals.  The interaction between the two triads is evident in such examples and can be conceptualised as ‘organizing lifeworlds’ to overcome fragmentation and strengthen ‘common presence’ in terms of utilitarian, cultural or spiritual aspects.  It is also possible for changes in either the physical or socio-cultural aspects of dwelling to have a negative effect when inappropriate changes undermine place.  Seamon contends that the challenge for planners is to understand the ‘grounded wholeness’ of place, and the complex interactions between physical and social considerations.  Concentrating on the unique phenomenology of any particular place can lead to promotion of ‘place synergy’.

In Chapter 15, Seamon discusses ways of integrating the six triadic place processes.  He notes that the processes interact in a potentially synergistic fashion, although the intricate forms of reciprocity are largely unpredictable.  Places are constantly changing via the flux of internal change processes and by the influence of external forces.  Seamon provides a table (168) of the ways the six place processes may contribute to sustaining or undermining place and, hence, the lived experience of dwelling.  He introduces the notion of ‘virtuous spirals’, “whereby a dynamic interweave among the six processes supports an unfolding place tube intensifying the wellbeing of place and working against environmental and human entropy” (173).  Changes may occur across many places simultaneously or successively, since places are linked in a multitude of ways.  Understanding of the relationship between places requires its own detailed phenomenology (endnote 2, 176).

In the last two chapters of his book, Seamon contends that his method of ‘synergistic relationality’ aids in understanding places, and the processes that drive their creation and development.  He acknowledges the difficulty of fully understanding this approach and discusses some criticisms and concerns raised by reviewers of the draft book.  The conceptual approach taken in the book could be termed ‘essentialist’, i.e., that an invariant and universal human condition prevails, evident only when historical, social and cultural variables are bracketed.  Seamon responds by “emphasizing the basic phenomenological recognition that there are different dimensions of human experience and existence that all must be incorporated in a thorough understanding of human and societal phenomena, including place and lived emplacement” (178).  These dimensions include individual characteristics such as gender, intellectual endowments, and historical, social and cultural contexts, which affect individuals and communities.  However, all human beings experience ‘lived emplacement’ through universal, non-contingent dimensions, which are the subject of this book.

David Seamon’s book is successful in terms of its stated objectives, within the adopted conservative phenomenological paradigm.  However, this review includes some critiques and questions, at several levels of abstraction.  Seamon’s approach can be compared with a diverse range of methods for phenomenological investigation of place discussed in recent publications[x].

The centrepiece of Seamon’s book is the structured methodology of monad, dyads and triads, based on Bennett’s systems theory.  This implementation of ‘synergistic relationality’ is coherent, though somewhat mechanistic.  It would be more satisfying for the reader if Seamon had provided at least a partial review of the history of systems theory and a detailed argument as to why this method is the chosen option.  He states that he has studied this approach for three decades so perhaps felt no need to justify its validity and applicability.  Although this systems theory based method represents a significant development in our understanding of investigation of place, some questions can be raised.

Having established the fundamental wholeness of the place monad, Seamon develops five place dyads representing conceptual oppositions.  While Seamon’s explanations are compelling, they do not sufficiently explain why those particular, predominately physical (and somewhat overlapping), five dyads were chosen. There are other potential binaries of dwelling in place, relating to historical (e.g. whether colonised people or not), utilitarian (e.g. predominating form of work: hunter/gatherer and agricultural vs manufacturing and utilities), social (e.g. dominant vs marginalised people), political (e.g. democratic vs totalitarian), cultural (e.g. indigenous vs multicultural customs and languages), or spiritual (e.g. sacred vs secular places) aspects.   One assumes that the nature of the place investigation being undertaken would determine which type of dyads are most applicable.

The third step in Seamon’s method is to develop triads based on place impulses.  He suggests that the three impulses define place directly, rather than “in terms of other phenomena such as community, culture, politics, power, economics, or some similar qualities that in both analytic and poststructural research are assumed to be independent shaping the dependent factor of place” (84).  The three impulses are indeed fundamental, providing a generic, abstract definition of place.  However, the people-in-place impulse could incorporate the characteristics of the dwelling group, as a system, interacting with the system of topography and ecosystem, to produce an enhanced form of ‘common presence’.  It can be argued that the phenomena listed earlier in this paragraph can be considered as interdependent, with each other and with place.  They contribute to the mode of dwelling for any particular place, within phenomenological as well as social science methods of investigation.  This is an extension of the approach in Seamon (2012, 3) quoted above.

Uluru in central Australia is a strong example of complexity of place.  It has been a sacred place for Pitjantjatjara Anangu Aboriginal people for at least 10,000 years.  After colonisation by Europeans it was named Ayers Rock.  In 1985 land ownership by Anangu was officially recognised and its traditional name restored.  Uluru is a major tourist attraction.  Apart from being a magnificent monolith, that it is a place, and its nature as place, are intricately linked with each of the factors Seamon chooses to bracket. Uluru could be considered as multiple co-located places, each with respect to a community or stakeholder group (Anangu, governments, industry, tourists, etc.) or as one place incorporating all these relationships.  Given its lack of direct engagement with social and cultural aspects of dwelling, could Seamon’s method investigate these different perspectives appropriately, for instance, in the context of developing a fair and effective management plan for the area?

Seamon asserts that in analytic research approaches “place is typically interpreted as a dependent variable shaped by such independent variables as age, social status, home ownership, or duration of place involvement” (84). The two references provided by Seamon for this statement[xi] support an interdisciplinary and clearly articulated approach to place research.  Patterson and Willliams (2005) review the conceptual clarity of different approaches to research on place, and their epistemological foundations.  They conclude that “systematic coherence requires a pluralistic world view that understands place, not as a single research tradition but as a domain of research informed by many disciplinary research traditions at the research program and paradigmatic level” (362).  Lewicka (2011) reviews the linkages between the type of place research, the methods used, and the theories they rely upon.  She concludes that the key aspect requiring attention is theory concerning place processes, relevant to topics such as meaning-making in place attachment.  This requires interdisciplinary approaches to theory that facilitate consideration of contextual factors relating to the physical and social environments, as interacting systems.  This can be aligned with Martin Heidegger’s notions of ‘dwelling’ and ‘equipment’[xii], which are not significantly pursued by Seamon.

Seamon notes that his version of  ‘common presence’ is difficult to comprehend.  It could perhaps be more easily understood as the synergistic interaction of a group of people, gathered under a communal spatial-socio-cultural-spiritual framework, with a specific area of terrain, as a system of topography and ecosystem.  An enhanced notion of ‘common presence’ can then be thought of as the ‘togetherness’ of intersubjectivity and communalized intentionality,[xiii]in the context of dwelling in that topographic ecosystem.  This entails place as both a utilitarian ‘taskscape’ (Ingold[xiv]) and also a domain (potentially) suffused with culture and spirituality.  Seamon’s determination to avoid the label of ‘social constructivism’ leads him to emphasise the less cultural and task-related aspects of ‘common presence’, such as ‘sense of place’, weakening his approach.

In explaining each of the triads, and their role in his method of analysis, Seamon provides descriptive examples, some in greater detail, from newspaper articles and scientific publications.  Not surprisingly, due to his long-standing expertise in architecture and town planning, these examples predominately relate to urban places.  However, consideration of dwelling needs to cover urban, rural and wild places.  Future evaluations of this approach for places in rural and wild settings will assist in determining the generalizability of Seamon’s method of analysis.

Seamon explains that the six place triads need not arise from an analysis of Bennett’s systems theory.  This is a very important point.  It leads to the question of whether the total conceptual space delineated by the six Bennett-based triads could perhaps be subdivided, ordered and named in more effective ways, based on the broad approach to phenomenology of place developed by the cited authors and others?  What is clear is that Seamon has provided an excellent step forward, which will facilitate development of even more effective reasoning on this matter.

Seamon emphasises the pure phenomenological philosophical perspective.  However, it can be argued that the three place impulses are instantiated in different ways through particular characteristics of topography, ecosystems and communities. A particular mode of dwelling in place can be described via an extremely complex set of variables, usually acting interdependently, and numerous processes, often non-deterministic.  Thus, a model of place, operationalized as a method for investigation and comparison of particular real-world places, needs to facilitate examination of the role of physical and lifeworld factors via targeted case studies.  Indeed, this approach is the one implicitly used by Seamon to explain the six places triads, via reference to newspaper articles and studies of the role of various factors influencing modes of dwelling.

Seamon contends that his structured phenomenological method provides a useful conceptual approach to investigation of differences between places.  Alternative approaches to investigation of place can not only co-exist, but can potentially be synergistically combined.  For instance, Alfred Schütz[xv] developed ethnomethodology to integrate phenomenology and social sciences in the early 1930s.  Phenomenology can be blended with science to facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to investigation of place[xvi]. This can be extended to become transdisciplinary, if phenomenology is used as an overarching paradigm.  This would align with Husserl’s notion of phenomenology as a meta-science (Moran, 2000, 137)[xvii].


[i] Seamon, D. (2012) Place, Place Identity, and Phenomenology: A Triadic Interpretation Based on J.G. Bennett’s Systematics. In: Casakin, H. and Bernardo, F. (Eds.) The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of Built Environments, Bentham Science Publishers, pp. 3-21; Seamon, D. (2014) Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Synergistic Dynamism of Place. In: Manzo, L. C. and Devine-Wright, P. (Eds.) Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Applications. New York: Routledge. pp. 11-22.

[ii] Malpas, J.E. (1999) Place and Experience. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 36.

[iii] Moran, D. (2005) Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

[iv] Van Manen, M. (2014) Phenomenology of Practice. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

[v]  Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of perception. New York: Humanities Press; Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968) The visible and the invisible. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.

[vi] Jacobs, J. (1961) The death and life of great American cities. New York: Vintage.

[vii] Janz, B, (2005) Walls and borders: The range of place.  City and Community, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 87.

[viii] Bennett, J.G. (1993) Elementary systematics. Seamon, D. (Ed.), Santa Fe, NM: Bennett Books.

[ix] Bennett, J. G. (1961) The dramatic universe, vol. 2: The foundations of moral philosophy. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

[x]  e.g.: Janz, B. (Ed.) (2017) Place, Space and Hermeneutics. Springer; Donohoe, J. (Ed.) (2017) Place and Phenomenology. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

[xi] Lewicka, M. (2011) Place Attachment: How far have we come in the last 40 years? Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 207-230; Patterson, M. and Willliams, D. (2005) Maintaining research traditions on place: Diversity of thought and scientific progress. Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 361-380.

[xii] Heidegger, M. (1962/2007) Being and time. Trans. by Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. Maldan, MA: Blackwell.

[xiii]  Kockelmans, J. J. (1994) Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press.

[xiv] Ingold, T. (1993) The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society, pp. 152-174.

[xv] Schütz, A. (1940) Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Initially published in: Farber, M. (Ed.) Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. In: Luckman, T. (Ed.) (1978) Phenomenology and Sociology: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, pp. 119-141.

[xvi]  Mohanty, J. N. (1997) Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy. Northwestern University Press, p. 23.

[xvii]  Moran, D. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology. Abingdon: Routledge.