Reviews
Place and Belonging in America should provoke reflection on the importance of issues such as immigration, geographic mobility, and globalization for the viability of politics, properly understood.
Jacobson's lucid and insightful analysis is multilayered and interdisciplinary. Along with deft historical interpretation and incisive sociological investigation, he integrates discussions on politics, philosophy, literature, and religion, highlighting their roles in revealing American's evolving sense of place and identity.
Paying keen attention to interpretation, textuality, and the social uses of landscape, Jacobson's study engages questions that make it a must read.
A thoughtful overview of major events and changes to the American linkages of place and identity to the landscape.
Modeling the best of interdisciplinary scholarship, David Jacobson demonstrates the ways in which American representations of self, the human, and consciousness are interwoven with shifting American conceptualizations of time, place, and civic life. Grounded in historical analysis, philosophical in tone, and shaped largely by insights derived from the social sciences, Place and Belonging in America recalls Jonathan Edwards's eighteenth-century reflections on the beauty of history as much as the most slashing postmodern depictions of historical irony. This is an impressive work of synthesis, a beautifully-written book that deserves a wide audience.
This well-written and well-researched book addresses a topic of particular interest to a variety of disciplines: the symbolic representation of space. Its specific concern is the shifting understanding and experience of 'place' in the history of the United States. In addressing this specific concern, the author has drawn upon material from the disciplines of law, history, art, and architecture. David Jacobson has moved into new areas from those covered in his previous book, and Place and Belonging in America places that earlier, good work in a conceptually richer context.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Terra Firma
Chapter 1. An American Eden
Chapter 2. Surveying the Landscape
Chapter 3. Nature's Nation: Preserving the Future
Chapter 4. Spatial Rhythms: Changing the Past
Chapt
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Terra Firma
Chapter 1. An American Eden
Chapter 2. Surveying the Landscape
Chapter 3. Nature's Nation: Preserving the Future
Chapter 4. Spatial Rhythms: Changing the Past
Chapter 5. Intangible Property: A Multihued Landscape
Coda. The Labyrinth of the Soul
Notes
Index