At first glance few things are as solid as time and place. The place we live in is made of wood bricks and steel and is anchored in the earth. Yet philosophers and poets will tell us that things are not so simple. Richard Wilbur’s short poem 'Epistemology' for example explores the contradictory challenges to the assumption that the world is solid: 'Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones / But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.'
Place is elusive but easily badged. In most societies whether you are born on this side of the railway line or the river is seen to matter. Whether you live on the east or west side of the city, went to this school or that, and spend your holidays in this country or that, is also taken to matter. But why it should matter and how your experience of place colours your life are less clear.
Recent studies that have tied social disadvantage to place suggest that for many people it does matter. Following the late Professor Tony Vinson's pioneering research it is now generally accepted that the many indices of disadvantage are clustered in comparatively few regions in Australia. These include homelessness, lack of child care, education and places of recreation, mental and physical illness, domestic violence, contact with the justice system, access to computers and so on.
If this is so, it follows that society might address this disadvantage by focusing on these places through long term and integrated programs directed to help children and families to deal with their challenges and integrate with society.
It has also become clear, however, the measures of disadvantage reveal little change over many years. Although this may be simply explained by the failure of successive governments to commit sufficient coordinated resources to properly evaluated programs over a long time, it also raises the question whether place itself, working in conjunction with the factors associated with disadvantage, also has a large role in shaping a person's life and future. And, if this is the case, whether our experience of place is shaped by its long history.
These questions are part of a broader reflection on how our sense of place shapes our understanding of the world. When asked what places have been most significant in their lives, people give varied answers. Some name places from which they have gained considerable benefit in reaching goals they had set themselves. These include most notably places of education, but also sporting facilities and work places. Places are associated with personal and social identity because they have formed tangible links to our future growth and occupations.
For other people the places of greatest significance have been associated with moments of self-transcendence, single or repeated. They are described as magic or paradise places.
"If it implies that there is no place they love, this would be concerning. Might that lack of attachment to place prove to be a significant factor in hindering people from making connections with society?"
A creek valley seen through mist from a hilltop during regular long walks, for example, a mountain suddenly framed by a road winding up through a valley, or a cricket ground irradiated by the evening sun during the last hour of play, are some examples of places that are experienced both as ordinary and transfigured. They are imagined as alive with possibility beyond their tangible reality, and for that reason significant in providing a compass for musings on our identity.
Places of this kind are often associated with childhood and with places away from home. The original experience is later evoked through presence in similar places, and the recall triggers pleasure and longing, as if we are looking in at a sunlit garden through a locked gate. Such places ground the relationships that form our identity, prompt wonder and gratitude for life experienced as a gift, and feed nostalgia for connections once enjoyed and now lost.
The experience of 'magic' places seems similar to the way in which Indigenous Australians describe relationship to country, and perhaps also the relationship of many farmers to their land. Their significance cannot adequately be described in pragmatic terms of opportunity and benefit, because central to the experience are silence and wonder.
The power of this experience of place prompts reflection on the way in which young people who live in areas marked by multiple disadvantage relate to place. Many say they hate the areas in which they have grown up. This would be an understandable response to a world in which they have found neither opportunity nor beauty.
But if it implies that there is no place they love, and that they have never enjoyed an experience of place which awakened a sense of something more and a longing for it, this would be concerning. Might that lack of attachment to place prove to be a significant factor in hindering people from making connections with society? Cloudy, cloudy indeed is the stuff of stones.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Main image: Photo by Giuda90 via Getty