Discursive displacement and semantic diffusion of sense of place: revisiting Tuan

ABSTRACT Sense of place is a key concept in geography, which resonates with an audience outside of disciplinary geography. And yet, sense of place no longer has the prominence in geography that it once held. We argue that this is due in part to ‘discursive displacement' or shifts in meaning that have occurred as the concept circulated amongst different disciplines (e.g. geography and environmental psychology) and competing paradigms within geography (e.g. humanistic and critical human geography). Within this process of circulation, geographers and other scholars have overlooked Yi-Fu Tuan's distinction between rootedness and sense of place. This ‘semantic diffusion' contributes to the profusion of competing terms in the literature. It also contributes to the displacement of a practical concern with place-making and enhancing place experience, by academic debates over basic definitions and underlying philosophical commitments. In this paper, we pursue two related goals: First, we present a selective history of sense of place as a concept. Second, we argue that the time has come for a reassessment of a ‘Tuanian' sense of place. This offers both a path through the discursive field of ‘sense of place', and an opportunity to revitalize the attentive geography at the heart of Tuan’s humanistic project.