Place: encountering geography as philosophy

Potential geographers often arrive at university professing an interest in places but not about place. This article seeks to encourage an engagement with place as an idea at A-level and beyond. It asks what place is, how it has been developed over the last 40 years by geographers and others and how our ideas of place can inform our understanding of issues in contemporary society. The final section of the article illustrates these issues by looking at the way notions of place can inform our approaches to British high streets, the politics of immigration and the interrelations between digital media and the material landscape. The article argues for an earlier encounter with geography as philosophy in order to inform and enliven familiar themes in contemporary geography.