162 | P a g e People-based comfort, just like the (largely architectural) place-based comfort before it, proves to be a subjective reality that is negotiated as it is met within an event. In other words, people experience people-related comfort levels as they meet and interact with the other people within placeness (see Amin, 2002:960; Wessendorf, 2014). This negotiation of level of comfort as it relates to other people can lead to either compromised levels of experienced comfort (in cases where the outcome of the negotiation is not positive) or the desired levels of experienced comfort (in cases where the outcome of the negotiation is positive).
From the above exposition, it is obvious that comfort plays a highly influential role in the determination of placeness experience (refer to Bissell, 2008:1698). The interviewed participants argued for comfort as it related to (sometimes part of) the built environment, the people environment, and in a comparative manner that included both the built-up environment and the people environment (see Genereux et al., 1983:41; Milligan, 1998:11; Amin, 2002;
Wessendorf, 2014:397). The manner in which comfort was reflected upon moved beyond Seamon’s interpretation of comfort as merely pause as a result of predominately physical barriers in the environment. Comfort, as thought by the participants, relates to interaction that is often memorialised (or rather stays in the consciousness) because it is highly informative of how spaces within placeness are experienced currently and perhaps going into the future (refer to Miligan, 1998:10; Day, 1999). This experience of comfort includes both physical environment experiences and social environment experiences. The experience of comfort/discomfort affects the individual’s relationship with placeness in a profound manner.
163 | P a g e Greta highlights the manner in which spaces can become meaning-infused to the point that they hold special emotive significances for the individual. Attachment occurs when people grow to have emotional bonds to place (refer to Tuan, 1974:68). This connection is often highly emotional as a result of people having attributed particular emotional meanings to part (or parts of) placeness (see Lalli, 1992:287; Scannell and Gifford, 2017:360). People become attached to places for numerous reasons that encourage emotional bonds with place (refer to Hidalgo and Hernandez, 2001; Lewicka, 2011:207-208). These attachments have to do with the very existence of a part of placeness as a space that may be meaning-infused in numerous personal ways. These personal ways of meaning-infusion lead to a highly affectual relationship between the individual and a part of placeness.
David Seamon connects this emotional attachment to place to what he terms feeling subject.
According to Seamon (1979:76):
Feeling-subject is a matrix of emotional intentionalities within the person which extend outwards in varying intensities to the centres, places and spaces of a person’s everyday geographical world. Feeling-subject works in two ways: it sustains positive feelings for well used centres and places, and expresses negativity when these centres are changed in some way.
This is to say that the individual grows to be attached deeply to parts of the site and situation that constitute a place. This attachment inspires the constant minding of the place so as to keep intact the relationship between the individual and this part of placeness.The emotional attachment means that the individual will work hard to keep active this special relationship.
This attachment encourages elevated relationships with places since their meaning-infusing affords them a highly affective emotional existence directed at the particular individual. In other words, the place is made a space of emotive existence and significance for an individual.
Spaces become meaning-infused because they are thought of by the individual in a particular manner that elevates their emotional significance and therefore the experience of them as when compared to other spaces that may or may not have, in a similar manner of occupation through presence, become meaning-infused spaces. These effects of a special bond that individuals might grow to have with particular places leads to attraction between individual and place
164 | P a g e (Altman and Low, 1992:5-6). In other words, although most spaces are meaning-infused, there are particular spaces which acquire an especially emotional meaning-infusing connotation.
Picture 13: Narnia states that, “I can go sit elsewhere. But it is not the same”. Here the participant is highlighting the effects of a special bond that individuals might grow to have with particular places – this bonding leading to a form of magnetic attraction between individual and place (Altman and Low, 1992:5-6).
This is where I come with my friends....yeah with a few guys if you don't feel like being in the library yet.... Procrastination happens usually here and in the library this is where studying is done usually. Also like I'm ALWAYS sitting at the same place in the library. That place....first year, well that's where me and my friends used to chill. But now they do I.S. and all that stuff. They don't come to there. But I still chill there. Yeah. I mean after a year it was hard to change it. It was a year and a half, but it was hard to change it. Like....it's like a dog, you know, when it wees on something -- it OWNS that spot now. (chuckle). Yeah. It's like...I mean, I can go sit somewhere else but it's not the same; it's not the same. Coz I sit directly outside the librarian's office on Commerce level. So that spot is just....reserved.
You know, sometimes when I go to the library the first place I look is like: is there anyone sitting on my spot? (Narnia, Interview).
Yeah. The soccer fields and RMR studios. Yeah. And I am attached because they have like my passions in them. I love soccer and playing it. I am also into music.
Not just like listening to it but actually producing it. So, if you can’t find me then just look for me in those places. (Armand, Interview).
165 | P a g e Beyond attachment being to specific places within Rhodes University’s placeness, as these participants’ comments show, attachment arises from prior interaction with the concerned place and what this interaction has grown to mean for a person’s relationship with that particular place (refer to Lewicka, 2011:208; Manzo and Devine-Wright, 2013). According to Francis McAndrew (1998:409) attachment comes about because:
Our physical surroundings play an important role in creating a sense of meaning, order and stability in our lives. A sense of the place in which we live is often closely related to our sense of personal identity since so much of what we are depends upon where we live and the experiences that we have had there. Consequently, individuals usually develop very strong sentimental and emotional attachments to the places in which they live.
Places are thus meaning-infused. There are places to which the individual is highly attached just as there are places to which the individual is not so attached. In other words, there are patches of placeness that are afforded attachment value in part as an outcome of the experience of living in their place-based realities that are engaged by and engaging to the individual (Vaske and Kobrin, 2001; Manzo and Devine-Wright, 2013:124).
Milligan (1998:9) describes the process by which a place becomes the object of attachment:
A known location acts as a containing and organizing device for all of the activities that have happened within it for a given individual, experiences which comprise the interactional past of the site. Activities that transpire in a known location, a site that may be said to have an interactional past for a person, become linked to that past by virtue of having occurred in the same site as previous activities. Such a place becomes imbued with meaning because of the experiences an individual has had within the site and, thus, associates with it. The site has been bestowed with meaning through interaction to the extent that an attachment has formed due to the meaningfulness of the interactions that have occurred there. The events that have taken place in the site are conceived of spatially, through the idea of the site. Their meaning is linked to the idea of the site, represented by the site and made possible by the site. The perceived contents of an interactional past are not fixed, however, in that the meaning of the past is always socially constructed based on current situations. Thus, the interactional past of a given site may be added to or reinterpreted over time.
As emotive experiences occur within particular areas of placeness, people become invested in these areas and the areas grow in emotional value to them. These areas then become sites elevated above others as there is a specific emotional utility to them resulting from the fact of having been historically areas of emotional placeness-based experience. Narnia’s attachment
166 | P a g e to a spot in the library arises from over a year of habitual use of a place and that place’s association with prior relationships and friendships. For Greta, the familiarity of a particular booth and its association with feelings of privacy and peace give rise to a sense of personal ownership of what is ostensibly a public facility. And for Armand, the association of places with pleasurable activities that are meaningful to him, in turn infuses those places with special personal meaning. All three reflect back to moments in their experience of a placeness that led to that particular part of placeness being emotionally elevated to the point that it became an area of attachment. With growing attachment, places provide individuals with particular utilities that they find positive. In Greta’s case an area in the library gives her “privacy and peace” whereas Armand finds a place wherein his “passions” are located. In this way the area of attachment is elevated above other areas which do not have the same ability to provide some particular sought-after quality of experience by the individual.
Another important point highlighted especially by Narnia and Greta is the felt need to regulate the utility of a place to which one has become attached so that it is available whenever they personally need it. While the place is publicly “owned” there is a felt need to appropriate it; to have it respected as one’s “own”. Wickham and Graefe (2002:356-357) refer to this impulse as “territorialising” the place of attachment:
Territorial behaviors are an attempt on the individual's part to control not only the activities of others, but their access to a particular area. Territorial beliefs include an individual's perceptions or beliefs about who should enter a site, what goes on at the site, and who should take care of the site. Territorial emotions include a positive emotional bond for a place and the condition of that site as well as the type of user that should use the area, and negative emotional reactions to possible changes in conditions and users in that very same area. Because recreation sites are often symbolic and have deep personal meaning for people, territorial models (e.g.
crowding and conflict) stress an individual's perceived control as an important part of a satisfying experience.
As attachment grows within the individual, that individual would like to believe that they ought to be given preference over the area that is of such emotional significance to them. Attachment to an area gives rise to a desire to have exclusivity in its use and in how others use it. This is because the place and individual are now in a special relationship of emotive affect that is treasured by the individual – an emotive effect that the individual feels is the way it is
167 | P a g e exclusively because of themselves and being chosen by the place for a special experience each time.
In sum, at its essence the attachment to placeness is the manifestation of a growing emotional bond between an individual and a part of placeness (Lewicka, 2011:207; Scannell and Gifford, 2017:358). This bond absolutely changes the relationship that the individual has with that part of placeness as this part now becomes of elevated emotional import for the individual who has grown a degree of attachment with the meaning-infused space (Lewicka, 2011:209). The individual grows attached to the place as an area which he or she has occupied before and from this occupation was sparked an emotional bond with the area (Milligan, 1998:8). In some cases, the emotional bond with an area will lead to wishes of appropriating the legitimate use of the place. Places of great emotional importance are elevated to a status above other places, an elevation that might require recognition on the part of others (Wickham and Graefe, 2002:354).
The attachment will be engaged and engaging each time the individual is within that particular emotive meaning-infused space. In other words, the emotions of that place will continue being felt in the present just as they have been progressively accrued over the past for that particular human being. Thus, within Rhodes University’s greater placeness individual histories, desires, passions and trajectories determine the multiple meanings that micro spaces have for different users.