How does The Placial Project analyze a place?

As you might have guessed, the process for studying a place is probably unfamiliar to most of us. It was not familiar to me either initially. Perhaps it might have been more familiar during the time of the Bible, but that was then—this is now.

The process that I follow is intentionally methodical to tease out a place’s placiality. Each of the three components (location, locale, and sense of place) which were discussed in the prior newsletter, undergoes analysis from four perspectives. While this many not exhaust the full placiality of a place, it certainly is a big step in the right direction.

Also, this process is the same whether the place is physically real or imaginary place in virtual reality or is a place found in a book, whether the book is fictional, non-fictional book, or religious. The process will always be the same. One component at a time, I consider each component from four perspectives, writing down observations and implications. (For more detailed discussion of this process, see my dissertation, which makes use of Critical Spatial Theory.)

The first perspective is the perspective of face value, in other words a simple but uninterpreted observation. This is called firstspace. In the case of Calvary at the time of the first century, firstspace is likely the perspective that you normally would use. Observe what you see in the place (whether a physically real place or an imaginary one) by means of the naked eye—its raw location, locale and any noticeable data that reveals its sense of place.

Second, I ask what the “naked facts” of firstspace indicate about underlying systems and ideologies that were present in the place. In the case of Calvary, for example, what do the naked facts that I see in one of the Gospels have to say about Roman governance? About Jewish resistance or religious governance? About governance by unseen spiritual powers? About God’s governance over history? What ideologies can one discern? This perspective is called secondspace. Again, each component (location, locale, and sense of place) is considered from this perspective of secondspace.

Admittedly, determinations about systems of politics, economics, morality, or culture, including generalized observations relative to entire groups, require me to make value judgements. Complicating this, I further admit that I myself have my own beliefs and values which influence what I notice. For Christians, I assume the benchmark for values of dominance versus oppression to be the perspective of God as it is revealed in the Bible. God’s perspective is assumed to represent the perspective of the dominant system, morality, and culture by which a place is evaluated, even if a place seems to be dominated by the oppressors who oppose God’s system.

Third, we ask what firstspace indicates about the experiences of each individual. This perspective assumes that not everyone in a group feels the same about a place. In the case of Calvary, Roman individuals might differ from the experiences of Calvary by Jewish and Christian individual observers. Thirdspace is the name of this perspective.

Perhaps it is obvious, but just as groups differ one from another, so individual experiences of a place might differ from others in the same group. For instance, each disciple of Jesus might have had a different perspective on Jesus on the day of Christ’s crucifixion. Each view is unique, and each persepctive is the perspective of thirdspace.