This document discusses place identity and environmental conditions. It explores how place influences identity and interactions between people, with identity being multivoiced and dialogical. Living near railways can impact residents' sense of place through noise disruption, but they negotiate their agency and identities in adapting to this context. The document argues that both objective exposure measures and subjective responses to the environment must be considered to understand its influence, as no two people experience reality the same. Place identity matters for policymaking regarding behavior, health, well-being and social change in the face of environmental change.

1. Sensory Architectures
University of Manchester
March 2013
Place, Identity, and
Environmental Conditions
Jenna Condie
Lecturer in Psychology
University of Salford
@jennacondie

2. Draw a Railway Scene
• It doesn’t have to be a work of art

3. khym54 Bob the courier
What has influenced your drawing?
fsse8info

4. Who you are & where you are
Place Identity (Dixon & Durrheim, 2000)
“One of the ways
people use place
in interaction is
as a resource for
constructing
identity, one’s
meaning in
Do we still need to the world”
belong somewhere? (Myers, 2006, p. 39)

5. Dialogical Self
(Bakhtin, 1986; Hermans, 2004)
I’m from
I’m from
Salford
Salford
Hi, I’m from
Hi, I’m from
Manchester
Manchester I’m from
I’m from
Manchester too
Manchester too

6. Choosing Self
(Rose, 1996; Taylor 2009)
Flickr: Nickster 2000

7. Agency Structure
That’s so annoying
Music to my ears

8. The problem with measuring
exposure and response
• “No two persons see the same reality. No two
social groups make precisely the same
evaluation of the environment.” (Tuan, 1974, p.5)
• Language as action orientated (Willig, 2001)
• Stake and interest in place (Benwell & Stokoe,
2006)

9. Living alongside railways
• Residential histories and choosing selves
• Pro-rural and anti-urban ideologies
• Discourses of adaptation
• Maintain positive identities of place
• Construct moral selves (e.g. tolerant)

10. Railways as ‘commonplace’
II suppose everyone lives near something that makes
suppose everyone lives near something that makes
noise and II think its just a by-product of 21st century now
noise and think its just a by-product of 21st century now
Allen
• Spoiled identity (Goffman, 1963) – strategies of
‘normification’ (Bush et al., 2001)
• Dilemma – finding somewhere to live versus living
with disruption
• ‘Identity’ as multivoiced and dialogical
• Negotiating agency in context of ‘disruption’

11. Miles Apart?
Positivism Constructionism
Realism Relativism
Quantitative Qualitative

12. Back together?
Change
Exposure (e.g. noise level)
New sources
Sustainability
Response (e.g. annoyance)

13. ‘Identity’ matters
to policy makers
•Behaviour
•Health & Well-being
•Social Change
•Driver paper on place
and environmental
change