The Question of Placeness

Returning to a long and fruitful anthropological tradition which has ripened from phenomenological-hermeneutical and metaphysical thought we talk of the human being as \u201cbodily consciousness\u201d or \u201cembodied consciousness.\u201d Therefore, human beings, like things, have to be seen as entities that must \u201calways be somewhere\u201d and, so, it makes sense for them to question the place they are in. But human beings and things have different relationships with the places that they occupy. Indeed, we must say that human beings inhabit: they are not in the world in the way things are, because the relationships they have with space are intrinsic to their existence. "Place consciousness" is therefore also one of the conditions necessary for building individual identities and communities that can establish long-lasting relationships with nature and humans. These can only be based on self-sustainability and awareness of our relationship with the environment we inhabit. The renewed place consciousness that comes from a new understanding of what places are, from renewed practices of inhabiting, and from the strengthening of the experience of links, connections and relations in which the conditions of life and the reproduction of life are given \u2013also made possible by technologies of communication \u2013 requires an innovation of horizon. The paper aims to offer a contribution in that direction