Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
This discussion of a pull between a faceless Internet
and the “need for skin” took place nine years before
Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004. People with
Facebook or Twitter accounts (see chapter 4) can feel con-
nected without sharing skin by posting a quip or thought,
which friends around the world can respond to imme-
diately. Psychologists also recognize that the prolifera-
tion of reality television shows is connected to declining
human interaction through membership in service orga-
nizations and clubs in the United States.
In the 1990s, at the launch of the digital revolution,
psychologists predicted people would have poorer social
skills because of the lack of personal or face to face inter-
action in the digital age. We can certainly see evidence of
this in our daily lives, from people answering a phone call
or text message when they are in the middle of a conversa-
tion with someone in person to
sixteen years later, made people want to see how her son
turned out and “get to know” who he was marrying by
watching television programs and reading stories on line
and in print about Catherine Middleton leading up to the
wedding?
The idea that people around the world are linked and
have shared experiences, such as death, tragedy, sorrow,
and even joy, draws from Benedict Ande
rson's concept
of the nation as an imagined community (see chapter 8).
When massive tragedies such as 9/11, Hurricane K
atrina,
or the Japan tsunami occur, people often talk about some-
one they knew who was in the place (or had been at some
point), someone who died (even those they did not know
but heard about in the news), or an act of bravery or tri-
umph that occurred in the midst of tragedy. The desire
to
personalize
, to
localize,
a tragedy or even a joyous event
feeds off of the imagined global community in which we
live. In the process of personalizing and localizing, events
can be
globalized
in an effort to appeal to the humanity of
all people with the hope that all will feel or experience the
loss or joy tange
students texting or mul-
titasking on laptops during a geography lecture. Today,
psychologists recognize that the networks created among
people through digital technology also enable greater per-
sonal interaction and opportunities for empathy. Someone
with medical problems can post a journal on a cite such as
Caring Bridge and hundreds can follow the person's recov-
ery and offer words of support. A young boy with a medical
condition that makes it diffi cult to leave home can post lip
synched videos on You Tube, develop followers around the
world, and end up with recording artists stopping by to lip
sync with him. Social networks can be used for good or for
ill, but either way, they tend to be a major way by which
individuals, in a global, digital age can develop a sense of
belonging and a personal connectedness to people who are
separated by computer screens.
ntially.
In the case of a death or a tragedy, how do people
choose a local space in which to express a personal and/
or global sorrow? In a world where some commentators
argue that place and territory are unimportant because
things like global superhighways of information transcend
place, people continue to recognize territories and create
places. In the case of Princess D
iana's death, people created
hundreds of spaces of sorrow to mourn the loss of a seem-
ingly magnanimous person whose life was cut short. In the
case of September 11, people transformed homes, schools,
public spaces, and houses of worship into spaces of refl ec-
tion by creating human chains, participating in moments
of silence, or holding prayer vigils for the victims.
In his topic
Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes
of Violence and Tragedy
, Kenneth Foote examines the
“spontaneous shrines” created at a place of loss or at a
place that represents loss and describes these spontane-
ous shrines as a “fi rst stage in the commemoration of a
disaster.” Foote draws from extensive fi eld research of
landscapes of tragedy and violence in the United States
to show how people mark or do not mark tragedy, both
immediately with spontaneous shrines and in the longer
term with permanent memorials (Fig. 14.3). He exam-
ines the struggles over whether and how to memorialize
signifi cant people or experienced tragedy. His research
focuses on the United States, and after tracing and fol-
lowing the stories of hundreds of people and places,
Foote concludes that “the debate over what, why, when,
and where to build” a memorial for a person or event is
“best considered a part of the grieving process.”
Foote realized that the ways sites are memorialized
or not vary over time and across a multitude of circu
Personal Connectedness
Sixteen years before hundreds of millions around the world
watched a live feed of the wedding of Price William and
Catherine Middleton (chapter 4) on the Internet and on
television, the news that Prince William's mother, Princess
Diana, had died traveled quickly from global television,
radio, and print media sources among friends, family, and
even strangers. Many felt the need to mourn for a prin-
cess they had never met in a place they had never been.
Some wanted to leave a token offering for the princess: a
rose, a note, a candle, a photograph. Impromptu shrines
to Princess Diana cropped up at the British embassy in
Washington, D.C., and at British embassies and consulates
around the world. People in Britain left countless fl owers at
the royal palace in London, where Princess Diana resided.
In an incredibly divided world, in which the rift
between rich and poor is growing at the global scale, what
made people feel connected to a woman who represented
the royal family ruling over one modest-sized country,
an elite group of people of wealth and privilege? What,
m-
stances, depending on whether funding is available, what
kind of structure is to be built, who is being reme
mbered
