#keith basso

"In this convulsive age of uprooted populations and extensive diasporas, holding onto places--and sensing fully the goodness contained therein--has become increasingly difficult, and in years to come, it may everywhere be regarded as a privilege and a gift."

"[Sometimes] we are deprived of these attachments and find ourselves adrift, literally dislocated, in unfamiliar surroundings we do not comprehend and care for even less. On these unnerving occasions, sense of place may assert itself in pressing and powerful ways, and its often subtle components--as subtle, perhaps, as absent smells in the air or not enough visible sky--come surging into awareness. It is then we come to see that attachments to places may be nothing less than profound, and that when these attachments are threatened we may feel threatened as well."

“It is better to write of things one believes one knows something about than to anguish in high despair over the manifold difficulties of knowing things at all. And better as well, having taken the plunge, to allow oneself to enjoy it.”

In short, anthropologists have paid scant attention to one of the most basic dimensions of human experience—that close companion of heart and mind, often subdued, yet potentially overwhelming, that is known as sense of place.