Learning to Think Like a River Rat: Understanding Place and Identity Beyond the Nature/Society Divide

Place has been an important sociological concept in urban and rural sociology. Sociological scholarship has recognized the place as a physical setting, a location for social action, and full of social meanings. Sociology has historically focused most of its attention on place’s social dimensions, including its cultural meanings and purposes (Bell, 1994; Gieryn, 2000; Lofland, 1998). Environmental sociology, specifically the co-constructionist posture (Rice, 2013), calls us to consider how place’s physical and social dimensions are conjointly constituted (Freudenburg et al., 1995). In this paper, I draw upon the co-constructionist posture to bridge the gap between environmental sociology and other sociological understandings of place and place-based identity. I use the co-constructionist approach as an ontological orientation for analyzing social and material interconnections at work in the Mississippi River town of Sabula, Iowa. I analyze Sabula residents’ descriptions, experiences, and practices through which they understand the river town they live in and their connection to it. This case study highlights how the co-constructionist posture can build on the existing place literature to offer a more blended approach to the dimensions of place and identity.