From Home to Community and Settlement: Sense of Place in Different Scales Shmuel Shamai 1, 2 , Sara Arnon 1, 2 and Izchak Schnell 3 1 Tel-Hai College, Upper Galilee, 12208, Israel 2 Golan Research Institute, University of Haifa, POB 97, Kazrin, Israel, 12900 3 Tel-Aviv University, Department of Geography and the Human Environment,Tel-Aviv, Israel KEYWORDS Attachment to Place. Uprooted People. Lost Places. Temporary Residence. Region ABSTRACT This research disassembles the factors included in the concept of sense of place into its components. The study took place among 120 evacuees from both Gaza and northern Samaria. The research investigates what factors affect the creation of an attachment to place and what characterizes each level separately. It was found that the physical landscape is important both for the new place and the previous place and along with the landscape, there are different specific aspects: the attachment to home is primarily connected to the basic family circle, attachment to settlement is primarily formed by attachment to the community circle, and the attachment to the region is ideological. Address for correspondence: Shmuel Shamai, E-mail: shamai@research.haifa.ac.il SENSE OF PLACE The term sense of place has been discussed in the literature in a variety of ways. There are different approaches to describe the attitudes of the people towards the places they live and there are different terms to describe these attitudes. These include terms such as national identity and regional awareness and also attachment to the place, which contains a multi-level dimen- sion of place. Thus the term attachment to place is quite similar to the term sense of place with respect to the focus of this study. In quantitative and qualitative research, dif- ferences have been found in sense of place ac- cording to cultural, social and physical compo- nents. The term “place” involves the combined human and physical environment, and includes attitudes and human emotions toward it. Shamai and Kellerman (1985) indicate the association between sense of place (region) and socio-cultural, political, and administrative as- pects of regional boundary demarcation, physi- cal aspects of place, which together constitute attachment to place. An empirical example of the importance of the physical landscape, the geographical envi- ronment, appears in the research of Eisenhauer et al. (2000). The researchers found that the two leading reasons were connected to their fami- lies and their friends (37%) and environmental characteristics (landscape) (34%). Out of four sub-samples, in two sub-samples, environmen- tal characteristics were most important. Inter- viewees cited the landscape with comments ex- pressing sentiments stemming from the physi- cal uniqueness of the area, the landscapes, the weather, geological factors, the environmental location, the place as inducing serenity, and physical characteristics including animals in nature. Kaltenborn (1997) has found that a range of attributes, including the natural and cultural environment, family and social activities, his- tory and traditions, are all important in the de- velopment of affective bonds with places. Feelings towards places are varied. Empiri- cal studies have pointed out that the variety of feelings towards a place is culturally related. For example, a study conducted in Hong Kong found that homeowners expressed stronger connec- tions than renters (La Grange and Ming 2001). Shamai and Kellerman (1985) found that in regions with unique scenery, with clear geo- graphical borders, and with regional coopera- tive organizations, there were higher degrees of awareness than in other regions of Israel. In contrast, personal variables (such as age, num- ber of years in a particular settlement and num- ber of years in the region, country of birth and years of education) almost did not contribute to explanations of differences in the regional awareness, of the respondents (Shamai and Kellerman 1985). Other empirical studies also have pointed out that the variety of the levels regarding feelings towards a place are cultur- ally, socially and physically related (Hay 1998; Hernandez et al. 2007; Lewicka 2010). © Kamla-Raj 2012 Stud Home Com Sci, 6(3): 153-163 (2012)