What is Our Sense of Place in the Time of the Pandemic?

Abstract

In the last year and a half, since the pandemic struck, our places have radically changed from whence we conduct business, teach, and socialize with others. Most of us have been zoom-bound in our homes, affecting how we interact with others in business negotiations, teaching students, classroom materials, and even socializing. How has our displacement in moving from live classrooms, boardrooms, and conference rooms to home screen interactions on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and other video-communication platforms affected our relations with students and business clients through changed notions of place? This change of place, moreover, was not just a one-off week of distance, as we might experience traveling to remote locations but occurred over an extended time of 18 months. I’ve since learned about the profound effects of place on interactions of perception, thought and emotions, and the ways it influences how we relate, perform, engage, and succeed in our social relations with others.