PLACE AND ITS MULTIDIMENTIONALITY

Abstract

doi: 10.12957/geouerj.2016.13988

According to its classic conception in geography, humanism values existence over the material world. However, when place is analyzed as experience, it implies materiality and immateriality, concrete and abstract, objective and subjective. How to neglect materiality and the spatial events that take place before us? Does the material world that surround us – as well as the dynamics by which we are surrounded – influence our existence? One of the main characteristics of humanism in geography is its holistic nature, which values the wholeness for the purpose of not losing the richness of the totality. Has not humanism in geography emerged from the loophole created by the exacerbated objectivism and by the consequent negligence to the subjective values of individuals and social groups? I personally believe that the detachment between objective and subjective dimensions of reality created the gap from which a geography that does not wish a science that was born with the ambition of unveiling the world in its totality and diversity emerged. In this text, I aim at proposing an example of analysis in the between line, integrating subjectivism and objectivism in the same reality: spatial and existential; material and immaterial ecc.