This research undertaking was a project of both personal and academic interest. The research undertaking was a look at the experience of ‘placeness’ through routinely walking a place allowing for experience of movement, rest, and encounter. From the simplicity of looking at a friend walking the same path as myself I looked to design an undertaking that focused on the experience of meaning-infusing and meaning-infused spaces that are frequented by – and thus often familiar to – the individual. To document this qualitative reality of place experience I sought to re-enact the everyday place that each individual qualitatively experiences when he or she is at Rhodes University. I walked with individuals on their usual routes within Rhodes University and asked them questions to elucidate more the manner in which Rhodes University as a place is most consequentially experienced. I looked to focus on both the visual and the relational reality of Rhodes University in the negotiation of the relationship between individual and place. From the reflections by the participants of the research I then constructed what I believe to be the essences of the experience of the placeness of Rhodes University seen through the lens of the features of what is termed the place ballet.
114 | P a g e Chapter Six: Movement – Part One of the Place Ballet
6.1 Introduction
Well, my experience of Rhodes is not that interesting. I mean, I have the same routine almost all the time. I go to the very same place almost every day. I walk everywhere (chuckle), I see same places but in a very different way, I must say, in regards to how people take pictures and then I'm able to see that 'oh yeah this is really that place, just that they found a different way in taking it'. Yeah. I don't know, I think my experience of Rhodes is very interesting, but it's not interesting in the way that....I don't know how to explain it. The thing is...I can't reflect...I can’t really express it....I can't expand on it because I'm saying it's not interesting in the way that I have the same routine walks and all that but it's very interesting in the way that like social life is nice and I learn new things almost every day. So that makes life interesting everything. Other than that, life at Rhodes is...it's normal. I don't know. I'm really contradicting myself. I really don't know how to explain it (chuckle). (Binx, Interview)7.
Walking is a dwelling in motion (see Solnit, 2001:59; Wylie, 2005:239; Sheller and Urry, 2006:212; Ingold and Vergunst, 2008; Middleton, 2010). People walk their place into being.
Through walking a particular place, individuals get a better sense for that place as that of their consequential emplacement (refer to Wunderlich, 2008:3; Edensor, 2010:71; Vergunst, 2010:377). Whatever the quality of the experience of emplacement is, people grow to have a consequential relationship with those areas they have been emplaced in and experience through the activity of walking (see De Certeau, 1984:26; Lund, 2002: 304; Butler, 2006; Pinder, 2011).
Movement is the phase of David Seamon’s place ballet that is the direct translation for walking (Seamon, 1979:32). The main focus of this research undertaking is routine walking and how it is the way in which the environment (site and situation) is experienced most consequentially.
There is a vast collection of literature on movement as a way in which placeness is experienced
7Within the quoted extracts from participant interviews there are stylistic additions by me that are done to indicate something within the communicated reflection. For example; the ellipsis “[…]” – in brackets or not in brackets – indicate a noticeable reflective pause in a participant’s reflection – a pause to think of how to proceed with the sentence; the bracketed reference to laughter “[chuckle]” indicates a participant doing just that, i.e. a short outburst of laughter; and lastly, the capitalised expressions “[XXXXX]” – often just a single world or a succession of words – indicate a participant raising their voice for that particular word or succession of words.
115 | P a g e (refer to Stevenson, 1924:23; De Certeau, 1984:47; Frandin et al., 1991; Ingold, 2004:328;
Lorimer, 2011). What is often consistent throughout the literature is that movement upon place and space ends up as a dwelling in motion (refer to Ingold and Vergunst, 2008:56; Middleton, 2010:576). This is to say that people, although in movement for most of the time upon site and situation, find movement as one of the more consequential ways in which emplacement is experienced.
Edward Relph’s argument for what it is that makes place -- his triangle of people-action-place – sees movement as people engaged in action within a space that grows to be of meaning (Relph, 1976:10). The people (participants) engage in an action (routine walking) upon a space (places such as Rhodes University). This movement is simply one of the ways in which people firmly place themselves within a meaning-infused and meaning-infusing site and situation for worthwhile spatial experience.
To David Seamon movement can be argued as an inalienable part of all existence. According to Seamon (1979:33):
Movement is an enduring phenomenon in nature. At all scales in the natural world, things and living forms are involved in constant and periodic motion. Continents are slowly displaced by interior earth forces, bulks of soil and rocks are moved by the action of water, wind, and gravity; seeds are transported far from their place of origin; flocks of birds migrate long distances in time with the seasons.
This is to say that most animate (and inanimate) features of the world are prone to movement.
There are dynamics which cause most things to move and be movable. People, animals, water, wind, etc. all have a time for movement. It is through movement that the placeness of Rhodes University is unfolded as an everyday reality of a particular character.
Seamon focuses on the movement of people within the place ballet. People move so as to navigate the site and situation within which they are emplaced (Seamon, 1979:33; De Certeau, 1984; Frandin et al., 1991; Solnit, 2001; Wylie, 2005; Middleton, 2009:1945). Such mobility is thus one of the three ways in which the placeness of Rhodes University is experienced.
Drawing on this interpretation, the chapter argues that the experience of Rhodes University’s
116 | P a g e placeness through the activity of everyday walking is at its very base a transactional experience (refer to Wylie, 2006:523; Bridge, 2013:306). In other words, it is an experience that puts individual and environment into a mutually affecting relationship that determines overall placeness experience.
To say that the experience of Rhodes University’s placeness is at its base a transactional experience is to firmly place its experience in the arguments of phenomenology (see Husserl, 1970; Tilley, 1994; Heidegger, 1996:50; Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 1996; Lopez and Willis, 2004;
Delmar, 2006; Van Manen, 2007) and spatial pragmatism (see Dewey, 1938; McDermott, 1973; Strauss, 1987; Rowles, 1990; Sullivan, 2000; Wylie, 2005; Bridge, 2013). Within such traditions the individual experiences placeness (or any experience for that matter) through being in a relationship of experience with a place and this relationship being co-constitutive to both place and individual (refer to Wylie, 2006:521; Bridge, 2013:309). This relationship to place is under the influence of what the individual and placeness bring to the experience.
Ultimately, how people experience placeness is customized to their interaction with placeness as both subject each other qualitatively for the experience of placeness.
The argument I am making in this chapter of analysis – an argument with much in common with the other chapters of analysis – is that the experience of Rhodes University’s placeness through movement is an experience of placeness through location and idea-bound localised action that encourages a particular relationship between an individual and placenes. When making such an argument it is important to think of movement as localised currently reflexive and future reflective traversal of part of placeness. What I mean here is that the activity of movement upon placeness places an individual within a part of placeness and in such placing encourages a particular view of what the part of placeness is and might be experience-wise for the individual who in many cases has previously been within that particular part of placeness.
The individual then grows to have a particular idea of what movement within the area might entail. This is how movement is localised so that areas are laden with expected, already had, and currently being-had experiences that are constantly being engaged each time there is movement upon them.
117 | P a g e Picture 3: Binx states that, “I walk everywhere”. The participant is here speaking on walking as a way in which they get to experience most of Rhodes University’s placeness (Middleton, 2009:1944).
Three main themes emerged from the interpretation of the descriptions provided by participants in this study concerning how Rhodes University’s placeness is experienced by way of movement through the campus. These are: routine, walking dynamics, and notions of familiarity. Firstly, in referring to movement and routine the participants were connecting their movement activity with an alleged routine that they have grown to adopt upon placeness.
Secondly, the participants spoke about the action of walking upon placeness. Here the participants were focusing on walking as the mode of navigation within placeness and how this mode was an important way in which to establish and interrogate relations between the individual and the site and situation. Lastly, the participants spoke of movement and familiarity. Here the participants were speaking on their spatial knowledge of Rhodes University’s placeness and how this knowledge is experienced most consequentially through the action of walking.