Knowing Their Place : Regional Economies and the Social Construction of Place in Western Europe

This article investigates the relationship between environmental policy and the social construction of place in two neighboring California counties. We examine two counties with dramatic geographic and sociodemographic differences that drew on similar place narratives in order to justify collaborative solutions to agricultural–environmental conflicts. Each narrative trumpets the importance of agriculture to each county's place character and praises the ability of well–intentioned county residents to work together. Our cases illuminate two processes through which place is socially constructed with regard to extralocal factors: place comparison allows residents to highlight potential risks by contrasting their own places with others while place meta–narratives allow actors to draw on culturally available notions of types of places. We conclude by discussing the relationship between place narratives and other factors that can affect policy choice, and therefore, shape the landscape itself.

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On the Social Construction of Place: Using Participatory Methods and Digital Tools to Reconceive Distressed Urban Neighborhoods

The Paradox of Urban Space ◽

10.1057/9780230117204_12 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 205-222 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Matthew Kelley

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Urban Neighborhoods ◽

Digital Tools ◽

Participatory Methods ◽

The Social ◽

Construction Of Place

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“Perfectly Positioned”: The Blurring of Urban, Suburban, and Rural Boundaries in a Southern Community

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ◽

10.1177/0002716217710490 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 672 (1) ◽

pp. 46-63 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Betsie Garner

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Urban Fringe ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Ecological Change ◽

Community Members ◽

Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽

Local Resources ◽

The Social ◽

Object Lesson ◽

Construction Of Place

In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork and formal interviews from a community study in Rockdale County, Georgia, to illustrate the social construction of place-based identity within the rural-urban interface. Given decades of growth and expansion in metro Atlanta, Rockdale has become an object lesson of the boundary shifting and crossing typical of places located along the rural-urban fringe. A sustained pattern of demographic and ecological change in Rockdale has resulted in a lack of consensus about how to imagine the community’s location on the rural-urban continuum. I show how symbolic and social boundaries between urbanity and rurality are blurred within the community as residents draw on local resources to construct alternatively urban, suburban, and rural identities. Additionally, I illustrate how local boosters take advantage of this blurriness to portray Rockdale County as a “perfectly positioned” community and how community members disregard the official rural-urban boundaries of governments or scholars and instead invest their own imagined boundaries with significant meaning.

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“I would say it’s alive”: Understanding the social construction of place, identity, and neighborhood effects through the lived experience of urban young adults

Qualitative Social Work ◽

10.1177/1473325020911673 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 481-500

Author(s):

Kalen Flynn ◽

Brenda Mathias

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Lived Experience ◽

Neighborhood Effects ◽

Social Systems ◽

Well Being ◽

Place Identity ◽

Theoretical Frameworks ◽

Individual Level ◽

The Social ◽

Construction Of Place

A burgeoning literature provides evidence that neighborhood matters, especially in relation to urban adolescent development. Exposure to crime and poverty has been shown to negatively impact key aspects of development, such as physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Traditional theoretical frameworks identifying the social mechanisms of place fail to critically examine how neighborhood effects are socially constructed at the individual level, and rather assume aggregate community narratives. Such blanket measures of neighborhood effects do not account for individual interpretations of space or the impacts of larger structural forces on decision making and developmental processes. A unique combination of qualitative GIS methodologies was utilized to explore how urban adolescents define, navigate, and engage their surrounding environment to better understand the mechanisms of neighborhood effects, and how these interactions shape development. Sedentary and walking interview data were paired with GPS data to develop a real-time understanding of the spaces across which youth were navigating. The findings from this work suggest that how youth perceive space is a complex process, stemming from the interaction of structural and social systems, and highlight the value of understanding varying resident experiences when considering definitions of neighborhood. This study begins to fill a gap in the neighborhood effects’ literature by developing an argument for the social construction of place as an alternative to traditional methodological and theoretical frameworks.

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The Making of Gangnam: Social Construction and Identity of Urban Place in South Korea

Urban Affairs Review ◽

10.1177/1078087419827645 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 56 (3) ◽

pp. 726-757 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Yooil Bae ◽

Yu-Min Joo

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Identity Formation ◽

Place Identity ◽

Urban Place ◽

The Social ◽

Future Selves ◽

Political Conservatism ◽

Socioeconomic Segregation ◽

The Rich ◽

Construction Of Place

Amid a globally increasing trend of urban segregation, this article asks why a particular urban place, the Gangnam area in the city of Seoul, has come to symbolize the rich and the powerful, consolidating both socioeconomic segregation and political conservatism in a short span of time. While different approaches exist that partially explain Gangnam’s luxurious lifestyles, fervent real estate speculation, obsession with education, and political conservatism, this article seeks to provide a holistic explanation for the rise of Gangnam and draws particular attention to the social construction of place identity. Based on the analysis of historically and contextually grounded evidence, imaginations, and cognitive scaling of different stakeholders, it suggests bidirectional formations of self–other and present–future identities, highlighting the sociopsychological aspects of place identity formation. Specifically, it explains political conservatism as the attempts of Gangnam residents to sustain the area’s entrance barrier and pass on their exclusivity to future selves and children.

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