Scribd
Upload
97 views

The Situated Self

The document discusses how place and collective memory shape our sense of self. It argues that [1] places become imprinted in our memories through social interactions and experiences, imbuing them with personal and cultural meaning, and [2] collective memory, embodied through social groups, allows us to connect to people and events from the past and build a sense of belonging to larger communities through time. Together, our interactions in physical places and participation in collective remembrance forge our identities in relation to others and stabilization of self-understanding.

Uploaded by

Mikhaela Vienes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
97 views

The Situated Self

The document discusses how place and collective memory shape our sense of self. It argues that [1] places become imprinted in our memories through social interactions and experiences, imbuing them with personal and cultural meaning, and [2] collective memory, embodied through social groups, allows us to connect to people and events from the past and build a sense of belonging to larger communities through time. Together, our interactions in physical places and participation in collective remembrance forge our identities in relation to others and stabilization of self-understanding.

Uploaded by

Mikhaela Vienes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

The Situated Self

A. Sense of Place
You exist in a place. Your social interactions occur in a place. These places become imprinted in
your memory not only in terms of their cardinal location but also in terms of the total
experience that you had while being in that place. The more time you spend in a certain place
the more memories you are able to collect. The place itself becomes memorable as you assign
meanings and symbols to the plce. You then inhabit a place and that place becomes a part of
how you identify yourself (Mahood 2017). The place evokes emotions and compels actions from
you. For example, what do you feel when you have to spend a night or two away from your own
bedroom or your own home or your hometown? What do you feel when you come back? In
social media, why do you seek out connections with people who are from the same place? A
place is not only a social space or something abstract. A place is a physical space that you inhabit
with others. Place is essential to the process of selfhood as it becomes a marker of identity. A
piece of land, a rock, a forest becomes significant to stabilizing your own understanding of how
you are similar or different from others. Land may just be a piece of the earth, but land for
indigenous peoples are ancestral lands, land is homeland for Palestinians, and land is life for
peasants. In this sense, land is an element of self.

Activity:
1. Read: Baker, K. “Identity, Place and Memory”

As your read, use the ff. guide questions to help you understand her ideas:

1. How have different thinkers conceptualize the notion of “place”?


2. How does Baker define “place”?
3. Using Baker’s proposition, what would be meaningful “places” for you?

B. Collective Memory
Time as a material for selfhood is not limited to an immediate situation or a present context.
Selfhood encompasses changing cultural and social contexts, and thus critical features of
selfhood vary over the life course. Changes in particular social settings alter social experience,
which is what the contingency of selfhood is all about. Collective memory (Olick 1999) refers to
active remembrance of the past through our social groups, which allows us to embody the past
into the present. Collective memory is stored, retrieved, and communally shared through
various means, such as traditions, rituals, commemorations, and stories and narratives. It
becomes part of your own biography as you mark your own milestones based on the markers of
this collective memory. In imbibing this collective memory, you are able to identify with people
and events from great distances in time and space, and to build an emotional attachment to
these people and events. It enables you to imagine yourself as belonging to an imagined
community, which is how Benedict Anderson defined a nation. Children of immigrants, for
example, may continue to identify with a distant motherland even if they have never been
there.

Activity:

Do assignment on environmental autobiography. See instructions in VLE.

You might also like