blog entry for February 11, 2013

This week’s reading came from the book The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden.  Before I begin my blog entry for this week, I will be honest and say that I did not fully understand what I was reading.  For me, the text was hard to follow, so my response may be different from the rest of the class for this reason.

            Section one starts with a brief summary of the debate by Herbert Gans and Ada Huxtable in 1975 as to what the definition of the “built past” was in the New York Times.  “He wanted more social history, she wanted more culture.  He wanted taxpayers’ money spent equitably in all neighborhoods.  She believed aesthetic resources should be ranked in order to buy the best in terms of connoisseurship.” (page 4)  While they may have seemed to share completely different viewpoints, in fact they shared a common concern.  They both thought that America was losing public memories by bulldozing old neighborhoods or old monuments. (page 5)

            This carries over into an important question posed by the author.  What is place?  Both Gans and Huxtable were debating different forms of place, but what is place?  The author wrote that “”Place” is one of the trickiest words in the English language.” (page 15)  Place can mean so many different things.  Place could be a location, or a psychological state of mind.  Everyone has a different definition of place, which means that the author’s question has more answers then one person can possibly image.  Place is unique, so having a debate on place would seem to serve no purpose.  That being said, a debate on the meaning of place is a way of expanding a person’s idea of what a place is.  (Photo below is courtesy of Google Images, I am unable to insert this message below the photo because I am currently unable to use the enter function on this site)

            The author also mentioned another way of looking at place.  Territorial history is an example of how people have attempted to define place, and who or what can live there.  An example given by the author was the treatment of the Japanese during World War II.  Many neighborhoods put up signs that told current and perspective Japanese residents that they were not welcome in the neighborhood. (page 24)  They would have to find a new place to live.  This place was not for them.

            Territorial history can also be apparent during the Civil Rights movement when signs were put up that warned African Americans not to live in a particular neighborhood.  As with the Japanese during World War II, they would have to find a new place to live.  This one was not for them.

    “The relationship between history and memory is peculiarly and perhaps uniquely fractured in contemporary American life.” (page 45)  The history that a person remembers is based on their memory of the event, or their memory of reading/listening about the event.  In terms of deciding what is worth saving, and what is worth destroying, that can easily be based on a person’s memory.  Going through old papers or pictures to decide which are worth keeping is an example of this.  Based on the person’s memory of the events tied with that picture, the fate of the picture will be decided.  The same can hold true for old buildings or monuments.  What does a person remember about that place, and is the memory good enough to determine that the building is worth keeping can be a powerful thing.  Everyone remembers an event differently, so everyone can be attached to a building or picture differently.

            The book also mentioned environmental protection because it shows the “a broad cultural and historical debate is taking place about the extent to which “nature” and “culture” are intertwined.” (page 62)  The author used the example of the British organization Common Ground.  This is a popular environmental group, which focuses on landscape history.  The group seeks to “[combine] the reality of people’s relationship with their places, and which begins in our hearts but gets mediated by our reason.” (page 64)  For them, history is not only a study of objects, but also a study of their surroundings.  Landscapes are a type of place, and for every individual a landscape says something different to them.  For Common Ground, this is worth keeping as much as any old building.