Wisdom Sits in Places

To look at much of the conventional understanding of place in anthropology, one might assume that place-names are mere reference points on the landscape, with no role in shaping, or being shaped by, cultural practices. At the time of writing Wisdom Sits in Places, Basso noted that little work on American Indian place-names had been conducted since the mid-20th century, and anthropology as such is generally silent on the question of place as a cultural creation.

In some ways, this is unsurprising, for as Basso notes, sense of place is experienced most often as an automatic form of experience, a simple way in which all people order the world around them. Insofar as this acknowledges that sensing place is a quotidian activity, this understanding is, at least on some level, correct. However, treating place as a simple phenomenon is a significant oversight, Basso states, not only because sensing places involves a complex interplay of memory and imagination—ignoring this, anthropology is missing an understanding of how people from different cultures comprehend the world around them—but also because this oversight hinders understanding of the cultural practices and narratives of Native American groups in particular, for whom stories are inseparably linked to the land.