Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places" in their anthropological definition. Examples of non-places would be motorways,[1] hotel rooms, airports and shopping malls. The term was introduced by Marc Augé in his work Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity,[2] although it bears a strong resemblance to earlier concepts introduced by Edward Relph in Place and Placelessness and Melvin Webber in his writing on the 'nonplace urban realm'.[3]
The perception of a space like a non-place is strictly subjective: any given individual can view any given location as a non-place, or as a crossroads of human relations. For instance, a shopping mall is not a non-place for a person who works there every day.[4]
The concept of non-place is opposed, according to Augé, to the notion of "anthropological place". The place offers people a space that empowers their identity, where they can meet other people with whom they share social references. The non-places, on the contrary, are not meeting spaces and do not build common references to a group. Finally, a non-place is a place we do not live in, in which the individual remains anonymous and lonely. Augé avoids making value judgments on non-places and looks at them from the perspective of an ethnologist who has a new field of studies to explore.
- ^ Merriman, Peter (2004). "Driving places: Marc Augé, non-places and the geographies of England's M1 motorway". Theory, Culture & Society. 21 (4–5): 145–167.
- ^ Marc Augé, Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, Le Seuil, 1992, Verso, p. 122.
- ^ Merriman, Peter (2009). "Marc Auge on space, place, and non-places". Irish Journal of French Studies. 9: 9–29 – via Ingenta Connect.
- ^ Korstanje M. 2018 Mobilities Paradox, A critical Analysis, Edward Elgar