Victor Counted - Place and Post-Pandemic Flourishing: Disruption, Adjustment, and Healthy Behaviors

Victor Counted , Richard G. Cowden and Haywantee Ramkissoon

Place and Post-Pandemic Flourishing

Disruption, Adjustment, and Healthy Behaviors

1st ed. 2021

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This book is dedicated to people all around the world whose connections to places of significance were disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an international health crisis . When the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged, a lack of available treatment prompted widespread public health concerns (Govender et al., ). Non-essential travel and in-person social interactions were restricted. In several countries, educational institutions postponed in-person learning and places of worship were forced to substitute in-person services with online services. Employers also had to adapt to the legislative changes that were prompted by the public health crisis , with many reducing operations and requiring employees to work from home.

The public health measures that were imposed in almost every part of the world forced people to change behavior patterns and reconfigure lifestyles to meet the public health and safety challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic (Counted et al., ). Although those measures were considered a necessary part of the public health response, an indirect consequence was that our interactions and bonds with significant places were disrupted. That disruption in people-place relationships has heightened our sense of awareness about the extent to which human life is inextricably tethered to places. It has also prompted us to more fully understand how the public health crisis has shifted people-place relationships, what our bonds with places might look like after the COVID-19 pandemic, and how connections between people and places can be restored and built again. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this book discusses the implications of a public health crisis for our relationships with place. It also explores how society may recover and foster positive relations with places after a pandemic.

A useful framework for conceptualizing people-place relationships is attachment theory (Giuliani, ).

An object of attachment is anything that we invest emotional energy in. It can be transformed into a mental representation that influences our sense of self, others, and the world around us (Counted et al., ).

Attachment experiences have been applied to people-place relationship experiences, with approximately three decades of empirical research published on place and attachment in environmental psychology (e.g., Lewicka, ). It helps regulate difficult affective experiences (within the place domain), promotes identity development (within the process domain), and facilitates sociocultural meaning-making (within the person domain).

Place attachment overlaps conceptually with interpersonal attachment (Scannell & Gifford, ).