Towards a developmental theory of place attachment

Towards a developmental theory of place attachmentPaul Morgan *Child Protection Unit,Sydney Children’s Hospital,High Street,Randwick NSW 2031,Australiaa r t i c l e i n f oArticle history:Available online 13August 2009Keywords:Place attachment Attachment theory Child developmenta b s t r a c tPlace theory offers no explanation of the developmental processes by which place attachment arises.Drawing on recent findings in human attachment theory,this study offers a developmental model of the process by which place attachment emerges from a childhood place experience.A pattern of positively affected experiences of place in childhood are generalised into an unconscious internal working model of place which manifests subjectively as a long-term positively affected bond to place known as place attachment.Qualitative analysis of adult remembrance of childhood place experience provides support for this model and finds important parallels in the developmental processes underpinning place attachment and human attachment as well as some differences.Ó2009Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.1.IntroductionThe concept of place refers to the subjective experience of embodied human existence in the material world.It is a paradoxical concept with a meaning that is readily grasped,but difficult to define.In their review of place attachment literature,Low and Altman (1992)state that while place is an integrating concept,there is no systematic theory of place,and numerous commenta-tors since have echoed their concerns about the lack of conceptual coherence in place research.Patterson and Williams (2005)suggest that no systematic theory of place has emerged because the domain of place research is composed of multiple research traditions based on very different,often incompatible epistemological foundations and philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality.Some aspects of place research are best dealt with quantitatively,while for other aspects a qualitative approach is more appropriate.They argue that if researchers grounded in any one research paradigm recognise the limits to that paradigm and adopt an attitude of openness to alternative paradigms,their ‘critical pluralist’frame-work provides an overarching coherence to the field.This study recognises three broad approaches to place theory,which often appear to be incompatible.Phenomenological and humanistic approaches explore the deeper significance of place to human existence and the subjective,emotional quality of people’s relationship to places.This tradition has been criticised by posi-tivistic place researchers for the lack of an empirical basis,and bysocial place theorists as politically regressive in ignoring the social forces by which the meaning of place is contested (Creswell,2004).A second tradition,which Patterson and Williams (2005)name psychometrics,explores the relationship between the physical envi-ronment and the human psyche by attributing numeric measures to psychosocial phenomena such as place attachment and then ana-lysing this data using quantitative techniques.Grounded in the epis-temology of scientific empiricism,this tradition has been criticised for reducing holistic phenomena to a mechanistic set of interacting objective elements,and failing to provide any account of the subjec-tive aspects of the human experience of place (Malpas,1999).The third tradition,social constructivism,while happy to embrace subjectivity,sees it as a socially constructed phenomenon (Massey,1994).Constructivist place theorists have been criticised for seeking to explain place solely in terms of the social processes and failing to account for the embodied,individuated nature of subjective experi-ence and the link that the body creates between subjectivity and the objective material world (Malpas,1999).Following Patterson and Williams (2005),this study recognises that a broad discussion of the phenomenon of place attachment will draw on contributions to place literature from each of these research approaches.2.Place attachmentMost authors recognise an emotional or affective component in the concept of place attachment.But the word emotion,like place,has an easy-to-understand,hard-to-define quality making place attachment if anything,more conceptually elusive than place itself.Giuliani and Feldman (1993)identify 11different definitions of place attachment in a single review collection of articles.In this study place attachment refers to the experience of a long-term*Tel.:þ61293821412.E-mail address:paul.morgan@.auContents lists available at ScienceDirectJournal of Environmental Psychologyjournal homepa ge:/locate/jep0272-4944/$–see front matter Ó2009Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.07.001Journal of Environmental Psychology 30(2010)11–22affective bond to a particular geographic area and the meaning attributed to that bond.Where a person lives in a particular locale over an extended period,that person will often develop feelings of affection for,and a sense of belonging,or being of that place,so that place becomes‘one anchor of his or her identity’(Hay,1998). Indeed Proshansky,Fabian,and Kaminoff(1983)coined the term place identity to signify the importance of the physical environ-ment in shaping the human sense of self.Early studies tended to conceive of place attachment as static.More recently a dynamic view has emerged,so that while place attachment is understood as enduring,it is also seen as changing over time(Hay,1998).For many individuals,childhood place experience plays an important role in adult identity(Cobb,1977;Cooper,1992;Hester& O’Donnell,1987;Pearce,1977).Film and literature offer numerous examples of adult identity being profoundly shaped by childhood place experience.Hay(1998),investigating place attachment over the entire human life span found that feelings of connection or belonging to place increased as people aged,and that place attachments formed in childhood were stronger than those formed later in life.Strong bonds to place are only possible when individ-uals remained in their place of origin for the duration of childhood. Thisfinding reflects a widespread agreement in the literature that the foundations of place attachment are laid down in middle childhood(Sobel,1990).Descriptive studies also indicate a qualitative difference between adult and childhood experience of place.Adult accounts of place attachment tend to highlight their feelings for place,the meanings attributed to those feelings,and an awareness of the sociocultural influence on place attachment(Massey,1994;Twigger-Ross& Uzzell,1996).On the other hand,enquiries into children’s attitude towards place describe an unselfconscious,taken-for-granted approach to place,where the physical environment is valued for what you can do in it,rather than in and of itself or for social meanings(Hart,1979;Hay,1998;Moore,1986).Descriptive studies have identified common themes of children’s engagement with place.These include:children’s preference for natural over man-made environments(Jones&Cunningham,1999);children’s sensuous engagement with place(Cobb,1977;Sebba,1991); exploration and place-play as inherently pleasurable,self-directed learning activities(Sebba,1991);and children’s use of place for emotional regulation(Dovey,1990;Kirkby,1989;Korpela,1989).Qualitative studies of adults’retrospective accounts of child-hood places note the important meaning that memories of child-hood places take on later in life.The memories of those places can evoke powerful feelings and exert great influence over adult identity(Cooper,1992;Porteous,1990;Rubenstein&Parmelee, 1992).Where adults have migrated away from their place of origin, they can be prone to spending significant amounts of time reflecting on memories of childhood place rather than engaging with their immediate surrounds.‘Our places of origin shape us whether we like it or not’(Chawla,1992).This importance attrib-uted to the autobiographical memory of place should not be confused with veracity.Sebba found a marked disjunction between adult reports of a remembered childhood preference for outdoor settings(96.5%)and children’s reported preferences for outdoor settings(46%),indicating that adult remembrance of childhood experience is subject to a degree of reconstruction and reinter-pretation.Nonetheless,the strong affects commonly experienced during adult remembrance of childhood place experience led Chawla to argue that‘this backward glance is an in important dimension of[place]attachment(Chawla,1992).However,the processes that link adult identity with childhood place experiences are unclear.A number of qualitative studies of children’s use of place attribute place attachment to the support and stimulation of human developmental processes that place offers children.Hart(1979)and Olwig(1989)link place attachment to opportunities the physical environment offers children for the realisation of the developmental drive for mastery.Some authors attribute developmental significance to the self-directed and pleasurable nature of children’s place-based play and exploration (Cobb,1977;Hart,1979;Porteous,1990;Schachtel,1959).Sebba(1991)argues that the developmental drive towards sensory integration and the drive to obtain information about the environment underpin a heightened attentiveness to place in childhood.Also,a developmental shift in early adolescence from the primacy of sensory to cognitive engagement with the world is accompanied by a dimming of sensory perception.Prior to the emergence of abstract thinking in adolescence,sensory perception is more vivid and pleasurable.Consequently,memory of childhood place isfixed in the context of an intense and ecstatic sensory awareness(Cobb,1977;Sebba,1991).For these researchers,place attachment to a greater or lesser extent is established through the developmental processes of childhood.Some argue that children’s observed preference for natural settings over manmade environ-ments represents a universal developmental need(Cobb,1977; Hart,1979;Pearce,1977).However,it is difficult to reconcile this position with Chawla’s (1986)finding that the experience of a positively affected place attachment is not universal.Place attachment quality and strength varies widely with some adults experiencing either no or negative feelings about their place of origin.The memory of childhood place is central to adult identity for some,but for others,place has little bearing on their sense of self.Chawla identified seven different qualitative categories of place attachment,but explanation of differences in the formative process responsible for the different strengths and categories of place attachment are vague.3.Attachment theory1Two decades before Patterson and Williams(2005)offered their ‘critical pluralist’resolution of the problem of conflicting traditions of place research,Daniel Stern(1985)identified a similar episte-mological impasse confronting developmental psychology.In order to progress,developmental psychology required an accurate working hypothesis of infantile subjective experience.Stern argued that such a hypothesis of infantile subjective reality needed to include both developmental psychology’s observed infant and the subjectively reconstructed infantile experience of psychoanalysis, but that neither approach alone provided an adequate account of human psychological development.He pointed out that some of the tenets of psychoanalysis had been disproved by empirical observa-tions while developmental psychology,restricted to observation, revealed little of the‘felt quality of lived social experience’.To relate observed behaviour to subjective experience,one must make inferential leaps.As soon as we try to make inferences about.the actual experience of the real infant–that is,to build in qualities of subjective experience such as a sense of self–we are thrown back to our own subjective experience as the main1Strictly speaking,the use of the term attachment theory is a misnomer,as it represents only part of this new convergence.Thisfield of research and theory, currently in the throws of a Kuhnian revolution,is so wide ranging and rapidly expanding,that it is yet to attract a broadly accepted identifying name.Some researchers have named it‘infant brain research’.However,this name overlooks the very significant social aspects of thefield and restricts the age range of research.For its part‘attachment theory’does not explicitly include the considerable neuro--scientific elements of thefield.The term attachment theory is used here because it has wide recognition,because it includes those aspects of thefield most pertinent to this study,and because it has a complimentarity vis-a`-vis the term place attachment.P.Morgan/Journal of Environmental Psychology30(2010)11–22 12source of inspiration.Here,then,is the problem:the subjective life of the adult is the main source of inference about the infant’s felt quality of social experience.A degree of circularity is unavoidable.Each view of the infant[adult clinical reconstruc-tion and observational]has features the other lacks.(Stern,1985,pp.13–17)Like Patterson and Williams,Stern noted that epistemologically conflicted approaches show a high degree of complementarity,and the integration of objectivist,scientific approaches with subjective clinical methods resulted in a new holistic conception of how the human mind/brain develops.This overarching coherence is widely understood to have origi-nated in the work of John Bowlby(1969,1974,1980).His attachment theory,developed from naturalistic observations of infants and mothers,described attachment as infant behaviours that elicit adult proximity and care-giving responses.These instinctive behaviours have their roots in neurophysiological structures of the body.In a break with behaviourist orthodoxy of the period,Bowlby also explained attachment behaviours as being motivated by subjective emotional states.He argued that long-term emotional bonds to particular individuals are a basic part of human nature.An attach-ment bond to someone endows feelings of security and wellbeing in the presence of that person.Attachment behaviours are triggered by feelings of anxiety and distress experienced by young children on separation from parental caregivers(Bowlby,1974).By using subjective understanding of emotional states to explain observed infant behaviours,Bowlby integrated supposedly incom-patible epistemologies to provide a holistic scientific theory of great scope and explanatory power.Previously under the dominance of behaviourism,emotions had been dismissed as subjective phenomena,unmeasurable,and irrelevant to the objective scientific study of the human psychology.However,with the development of a procedure known as the‘Strange Situation’,attachment theory’s recognition of emotional states was validated using a predictive empirical methodology(Colin,1996).Attachment theory legiti-mised the scientific study of internal states and repositioned emotions as central to understanding the human mind.In this transactional model of human development,the simplistic nature versus nurture debate has been replaced by a model,where human development is shaped by a complex interplay of environmental and genetic factors occurring in the context of the attachment relationship(Rutter,2002;Sameroff& Fiese,2000;Siegel,2001).From birth,infant and caregiver are engaged in a reciprocal system of sensory stimulation and non-verbal communication of emotional states,and these sequences of interaction usually culminate in the shared experience of mutual delight(Schore,1994).Frequent daily experiences of care-giving and emotional attunement with the attachmentfigure are gener-alised in the infant’s mind into mental representations of self and caregiver that become unconscious psychological structures known as internal working models(Bowlby,1980).These internal models are enduring psychological structures and form the template for all subsequent social relationships.Internal working models manifest subjectively as the long-lasting emotional bond known as love (Sroufe,1990).Attachment interactions also shape the phenotypic expression of brain structure.The vast majority of connections between human brain cells are established postnatally.Advanced brain imaging techniques show the normal development of brain microstructure in infancy is highly dependant on the quality of the attachment relationship(de Haan,Belsky,Reid,Volein,&Johnson,2004;Schore, 1997).The caregiver’s capacity to attune to the infant’s emotional state,and to engage in complex sequences of reciprocal behavioural interactions are fundamental to these developments.Where these abilities are present,attachment is secure,and large numbers of synaptic connections develop.However,where the attachment relationship is significantly disrupted,synaptic connectivity and psychological functioning are markedly impaired(Greenspan,1999; Rutter et al.,1997;Siegel,1999;Zeanah,Boris,&Larrieu,1997).Attachment relationships also influence the way memory is structured(Siegel,1999,pp.29–33).Implicit memory is composed of internal working models,the generalised representations of attachment interactions.Implicit memories do not require conscious attention for their formation,and normally lie outside of conscious awareness.They arefixed in childhood,and are charac-terised by the absence of subjective sense of remembrance.Explicit autobiographical memory,the memory of self across time,is characterised by a subjective sense of recollection and narrative structuring.The storage of explicit memory involves a process known as‘cortical consolidation’.Each act of explicit remembering involves the reorganisation of existing memory traces into new, unpredictable associative linkages.Internal working models have an important influence over cortical consolidation,shaping both the content and narrative structuring of autobiographical memory. Themes reflecting internal working models bring coherence and continuity to explicit memory(Siegel,1999).4.Emotion and the self:emergent phenomenaMore recently attachment theory has expanded to include an identity theory,self psychology(Cicchetti&Beeghly,1994).It describes how the psychological structure of the self emerges from the intersubjective context of the attachment relationship, providing a biological developmental basis to social identity theo-ries.Infants communicate their biological needs by becoming dis-tressed.By attending to infantile biological needs and providing soothing,attachmentfigures regulate emotional distress.With time and frequent repetition,infants establish an internal working model of this care-giving role and through this process,learn to regulate emotional arousal for themselves.The process of emotional regulation that emerges in the attachment relationship plays a major role in establishing internal coherence in the infant (Schore,1994).Brain imaging studies show that the processes of emotional regulation and integration of mental functions both utilise the same neural structures within the limbic system(Siegel,1998). Emotions are now understood as emergent phenomena arising from the integration of all domains of physical and mental activity within the body(Damasio,1998;Sroufe,1996).The subjective sense of self(identity)arises from the experience of integration,the holistic,internal organisation that emerges from the generalisation of repeated experiences of affect regulation within the attachment relationship(Ciompi,1991;Schore,1994;Siegel,1999;Sroufe, 1996).Three aspects of attachment interactions are essential for the emergence of a healthy sense of self:shared pleasure,soothing of distress and repetition(Schore,1994).ck of a developmental theory of place attachmentThe last thirty years have witnessed enormous advances in the field of developmental psychology and neurobiology.Attachment theory now provides a detailed,systematic account of the biolog-ical,psychological and social processes that shape human devel-opment and has achieved the status of scientific orthodoxy.By contrast,place theorists offer no systematic explanation of how the complex relationship between place,identity,affect and cognition develops throughout childhood.Place theory has failed to capitalise on progress in developmental ck of dialogue between developmental psychology and environmental psychology’s placeP.Morgan/Journal of Environmental Psychology30(2010)11–2213theory is apparent from the very limited referencing across these fields in scientific journals.The few attempts to build a coherent developmental theory of place attachment(Chawla,1992;Hart, 1979;Moore,1986)draw on theories that predate the recent advances in developmental science.Low and Altman(1992)noted a growing interest in exploring the‘social relations that a place signifies’,and since the late1980s the majority of studies have tended to focus on the social construction of place attachment.In that time most investigations of the relationship between place and identity have relied heavily on adult focused,cognitive and social frameworks,largely ignoring psychobiological developmental processes,as though place attachment arrives fully formed in adulthood(Jorgensen&Sted-man,2001;Massey,1994;Twigger-Ross&Uzzell,1996).Place attachment theory offers no systematic explanation of the forma-tive processes by which place attachment in all its observed vari-ations emerges(Chawla,1992).In spite of Chawla’s identification of the need for research in this area,the absence of a systematic explanation of the process by which place attachment emerges remains a significant gap in the literature of place.6.Integrating attachment and place attachment theoryThe environmental and developmental branches of psychology both stand to benefit from a greater dialogue between attachment theory and place theory.This study brings together recent devel-opments in these twofields.Attachment theory offers a theory that provides useful insights for the elaboration of the developmental perspective that place theory currently lacks.However attachment theory attributes no developmental significance to the child’s relationship with the physical environment–place.Sameroff’s (1975)transactional theory describes human development as emerging from a relationship of mutual interaction between child and environment.The reciprocity and mutual influence between caregiver and child central to attachment theory exemplify trans-actional processes.In spite of place theorists identifying the important role that physical environment plays an in human development(Chawla, 1992;Hart,1979;Moore,1989;Proshansky et al.,1983),for attachment theorists,transactional theory applies only to the social environment,not the physical environment.The role of place in developmental processes remains largely overlooked by attach-ment theorists.Where the literature of children’s place describes a rich interactive relationship in which place nurtures and stimu-lates children’s development through interactions of play,explo-ration,sensory stimulation and emotional regulation,attachment theory sees place only as a passive backdrop for the attachment relationship.In comparison with the detailed analysis attachment theory affords the human attachment relationship,the role of place as a vital,interactive presence stimulating and supporting the child’s development remains uninvestigated.Emotion is a crucial part of the relationship between person and environment(Kaplan&Kaplan,1984;Russell&Snodgrass,1987; Tuan,1974;Wohlwill&Heft,1987),and is central to the concept of place attachment.However,emotion has proved‘the most problem-fraught sector in contemporary psychology’(Giuliani, 2003),prompting Russell and Snodgrass(1987)to observe with respect to environmental psychology,that‘the relationship between emotion and environment thus remains largely uncharted’.Because emotions do not easily lend themselves to the empirical strategy of measurement,psychometrics has largely ignored them,favouring the investigation of behaviour and cogni-tion in order to progress psychological theory.Mehrabian and Russell(1974)developed a three dimensional model for measuring the emotional qualities of environments,but to date,use of this psychometric tool has not been widely repeated in environmental psychology.However,the role of emotion is seen as central to attachment theory.Place attachment theory could profitably make use of both the detail and the epistemological approach of attach-ment theory.Attachment theory recognises that subjective affective states drive observed human behaviour.‘There is no action and no thought that is not affectively motivated.Motivation underpins agency and motivation is always emotional’(Basch,1988,pp.68–69).The attachment theorist Lichtenberg(1989)has proposed that human behaviour is driven by a set offive‘motivational systems’,‘designed to promote the fulfilment and regulation of basic needs.’Two of these systems,the attachment-affiliation system and the exploration-assertion system are of interest here.The attachment system motivates proximity and care seeking behaviours.The exploration system motivates engagement with the environment. According to Lichtenberg,the experience of exploration and agency in the world produces positively affected sense of efficacy and competence.Lichtenberg(1989)suggests that behaviours promp-ted by his exploration-assertion motivational system(play and exploration)result in positive affect,motivating engagement with the world other than the attachmentfigure.The attachment system activates a positively affected care-giving interaction between attachmentfigure and infant.Frequent repetition of this interaction results in patterning of the behaviour and associated emotional states,and the emergence of an uncon-scious psychological structure(internal working model of the relationship)which manifests in conscious awareness as a long-term,specific affective bond towards the attachmentfigure.The character of the internal working model(as template for all subsequent social relationships)is shaped by the generalised quality of these attachment interactions.Where the positive quality of the interactions is significantly compromised by negative emotional states of the attachmentfigure,the attachment is described as insecure(Ainsworth,Blehar,Waters,&Wall,1978).Marvin,Cooper,Hoffman,and Powell(2002)have developed a model of child behaviour in relation to the attachmentfigure resulting from the interplay of the attachment and exploration motivational system.Their Circle of Security(COS)model describes the child’s circular pattern of movement through the physical environment(called‘the world’in attachment theory),that begins and ends with the attachmentfigure.When the exploration system is activated,the child moves away from the attachmentfigure to explore and play.When the child becomes distressed,anxious or tired,the attachment system is activated and he seeks proximity to, and emotional regulation from,the attachmentfigure.The model emphasises the emotional states and developmental needs underpinning this circular pattern,and explains how a child’s developmental trajectory is shaped by their patterned experience of interaction with the attachmentfigure(Marvin et al.,2002).The physical environment has no role in this model.Motivation to explore and play is located wholly in the child,rather than in a relationship between child and environment.Striniste and Moore (1989)contest such a non-transactional construction of the child’s relationship with the physical environment.‘Motivation[is]both a quality inherent to the child,which determines how the child will use the environment,and a quality of the environment,which has the potential to draw the child’s involvement’(p.25).Place is a vital, fascinating presence that draws in the child.Fascination is the human response to environments or‘circumstances that call on the effortless attention[and]are intrinsically compelling’(Kaplan, 1995,p.172).The integration of this understanding of the physical environment as an interactive presence influencing child behaviour and attachment theory’s detailed interactional model of human development points the way towards a developmental theory ofP.Morgan/Journal of Environmental Psychology30(2010)11–22 14。