Place and situation

Edward Casey

pp. 19-25

in: Annika Schlitte, Thomas Hünefeldt (eds), Situatedness and place, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

"Place" and "situation" are often confounded in everyday discourse; yet they have crucially different dimensions. Place is locatory and singular, and is the outcome of bodily engagement: to be a lived body is to be in place; and to be in place is to be there by way of body. Situation contributes scope and setting to place itself. In particular, it brings temporality and historicity to bear on place, broadening it and making it more reflective of vicissitudes to which it is subject. Situations occur primarily as events that unfold in time as well as space. They call upon acts of synthesis, imagination, and freedom in their full realization. Place and situation belong together even as they are distinguishable in these various ways.