A review by ralowe
Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan

4.0

yi-fu tuan's book is fun except for the kinda anthro-y feel. coming in, i felt i lacked a formal understanding of the place(nexus of meaning)/space(unit of measurement) distinction when setting up and mapping out the scene of the social encounter. i wanted something really basic, expecting isoclines and charts of exchange flows; i got stories. i found this title on the "topographies/topologies"ќ shelf at city lights, but i was probably really thinking about geography, which, as it turns out, is apparently a broad and fuzzy discipline. i inquired as to the methodology behind shelving "topographies/topologies"ќ, and i was offered a slew of writers like mcluhan and virillio "У of which i noted lewis mumford and manuel castells "У and even the situationists "У all of whom converge more or less around a curatorial concern for the (sometimes spatial?) arrangement of knowledge. scene-setting? it reminds me of how donna haraway up the street at the art institute described the data-modeling achievement of systems theory, with its sonograms and orbital photos of the earth. tuan's voice is wistful and globetrottingly anecdotal to me that would make me slightly nervous but that his prose was so multifaceted and florid, while gathering empirical data and subjecting it to comparative analysis. i don't think he means it, it was the 1970s. tuan's concern is with how stories fill out space into place turgid with human investment and experience, opening kinda phenomenological with infant development in the third dimension, moving on to consider the homeland, migratory circuits, the meanings of monuments, building materials. this book could be a lot longer. doesn't ever get boring.