Grinnell Identities

This study was interesting to examine how identity is tied to place. Positioned in the minds of those that give it meaning, “sense of place issues in a stream of symbolically drawn particulars-the visible particulars of local topographies, the personal particulars of biographical associations, and the notional particulars of socially given systems of thought” (Basso 1996:144). In other words, movement within a landscape will assign meaning to different places in that area. Meaning arises from interactions with the landscape-whether it be oral traditions tied to places within a place or events that happen in a place within recent time. As identity develops around place, “without hegemony, means and meaning may never come together, landscape representation may never become a reality, and social conflict will be open as space remains contested” (Harner 2001:676) and power can be exerted through the naming of “geographical entities, most particularly over the way in which places, their inhabitants and their social functions get represented” (Harvey 1990:419).So, we began to shape our study with this in mind.