Jin Cheng
Dr. Lauren Holt
September 28, 2014
Persuasive Essay Proposal V1
A place, with its distinctive inclusiveness, always presents to contain some characteristics that can reflect both spiritual pursuits and material conditions for the residents of it. The place one lives in to some extant shapes one’s philosophy and builds one’s sense of identity. There are emerging debates about community, identity, place and space. To understand the relationship between people and place, I choose the concept of homeland as the entry point to discuss how place and the self are related. When we discuss about “place”, most of the time we talk about memories, experience and culture of a certain area. From my point of view, the reason that people find some place special to them is that they will feel uncomfortable to not stay in that place, in other words they have a sense of belonging for the place, and that is why I pick homelands as my topic. Not only can I explore my personal experience, but also can I understand and analyze one of the most common feelings of a place- missing home. However, the word “home” here in fact is very hard to define and I will explore more in my essay.
In this essay, I have assembled and referred a collection of essays, other than the resources we go over in the class, that propose to redefine homeland from various perspectives. Though many of them have very valuable ideas, I finally choose to join Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville in the critical conversation surrounding my topic because they raised numerous examples and a lot of detailed information to analyze the relationship between people and homelands.
There is a very interesting viewpoint that Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville raised, which is that to define homelands, scholars need to examined “five simple homeland components: a people, place, bonding with place, control of place, and time.” (Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville, xviii) I may develop part of my essay by these five criteria.
In order to make my later essay more logical and do as much research as I can before I start writing, I set a rough organization of the project. I will be start with the idea brought by Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville that human groups nearly everywhere tend to regard their own homeland as the center of the world. (Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville, 100) Then I going to try to answer the question that how we can infer that human beings do have strong connection to their homelands. I will employ examples raised in the resources or my personal experience to fully develop it.
And if human beings do have the people-land dynamic with their homelands, is the definition and boundary of a certain homeland not unchangeable? I believe the answer is no. According to Tuan, “With the destruction of one ‘center’ of the world”, another can be built next to it, or in another location altogether, and it in turn becomes the “center of the world.” (Tuan, 150)
Then, what are the driving forces that impel human beings to establish sentimental relationships with their hometowns? Regarding from the research that I have done now, I would say religious demand for guarding spirits and gods and people’s intimate experience of place, even language, local myth and parents’ story telling, are able to make people believe there exist some real bonds in their body with homelands. They can feel that homeland is the place in which their family was established, nurtured and developed.
To examine the importance of religion factors that help the people-homelands connection establish, I will quote Tuan’s word to some extent. According to Tuan, a lot of ancient cities were built for religious demand. “Early Mesopotamian towns were essentially temple communities. The divinities not only promoted life and protected it when life seems uncertain and nature hostile.” (Tuan, 150)
So after all the discussions above, how do we actually define the word “homeland”? Is it the place in which we were born, or the place we grow up, or where we stay most? And there appears another important problem we should think about. That is, does globalization and immigration wave makes people feel more difficult to define their homelands and to experience the equivalent, strong bond to their homelands as others whose family stay in the same area for many generations?
In general, I consider this topic truly interesting and I can get a lot of useful information during my research. I will examine and explore more about the people-homelands dynamic in my later persuasive essay.
Dr. Lauren Holt
September 28, 2014
Persuasive Essay Proposal V1
A place, with its distinctive inclusiveness, always presents to contain some characteristics that can reflect both spiritual pursuits and material conditions for the residents of it. The place one lives in to some extant shapes one’s philosophy and builds one’s sense of identity. There are emerging debates about community, identity, place and space. To understand the relationship between people and place, I choose the concept of homeland as the entry point to discuss how place and the self are related. When we discuss about “place”, most of the time we talk about memories, experience and culture of a certain area. From my point of view, the reason that people find some place special to them is that they will feel uncomfortable to not stay in that place, in other words they have a sense of belonging for the place, and that is why I pick homelands as my topic. Not only can I explore my personal experience, but also can I understand and analyze one of the most common feelings of a place- missing home. However, the word “home” here in fact is very hard to define and I will explore more in my essay.
In this essay, I have assembled and referred a collection of essays, other than the resources we go over in the class, that propose to redefine homeland from various perspectives. Though many of them have very valuable ideas, I finally choose to join Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville in the critical conversation surrounding my topic because they raised numerous examples and a lot of detailed information to analyze the relationship between people and homelands.
There is a very interesting viewpoint that Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville raised, which is that to define homelands, scholars need to examined “five simple homeland components: a people, place, bonding with place, control of place, and time.” (Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville, xviii) I may develop part of my essay by these five criteria.
In order to make my later essay more logical and do as much research as I can before I start writing, I set a rough organization of the project. I will be start with the idea brought by Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville that human groups nearly everywhere tend to regard their own homeland as the center of the world. (Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville, 100) Then I going to try to answer the question that how we can infer that human beings do have strong connection to their homelands. I will employ examples raised in the resources or my personal experience to fully develop it.
And if human beings do have the people-land dynamic with their homelands, is the definition and boundary of a certain homeland not unchangeable? I believe the answer is no. According to Tuan, “With the destruction of one ‘center’ of the world”, another can be built next to it, or in another location altogether, and it in turn becomes the “center of the world.” (Tuan, 150)
Then, what are the driving forces that impel human beings to establish sentimental relationships with their hometowns? Regarding from the research that I have done now, I would say religious demand for guarding spirits and gods and people’s intimate experience of place, even language, local myth and parents’ story telling, are able to make people believe there exist some real bonds in their body with homelands. They can feel that homeland is the place in which their family was established, nurtured and developed.
To examine the importance of religion factors that help the people-homelands connection establish, I will quote Tuan’s word to some extent. According to Tuan, a lot of ancient cities were built for religious demand. “Early Mesopotamian towns were essentially temple communities. The divinities not only promoted life and protected it when life seems uncertain and nature hostile.” (Tuan, 150)
So after all the discussions above, how do we actually define the word “homeland”? Is it the place in which we were born, or the place we grow up, or where we stay most? And there appears another important problem we should think about. That is, does globalization and immigration wave makes people feel more difficult to define their homelands and to experience the equivalent, strong bond to their homelands as others whose family stay in the same area for many generations?
In general, I consider this topic truly interesting and I can get a lot of useful information during my research. I will examine and explore more about the people-homelands dynamic in my later persuasive essay.