Shared Remembering and Sensory Memories: Exploring Transgenerational Place Attachment

Place attachment is central to understanding how people come to feel a sense of belonging to places that shape their lives. It is increasingly recognized not merely as an individual emotional experience, but as a multifaceted process grounded in embodied knowledge and collective ways of sharing and remembering. Despite this, the transgenerational dimensions of place attachment remain underexplored. This article addresses this gap by examining place attachment as both a sensory and transgenerational process. The study draws on data collected through transgenerational sensobiographical walks, a multi-sensory walking method that brings together participants from different generations to engage with and remember places collectively. The data is analysed using membership categorisation analysis (MCA). The findings indicate that shared remembering across generations produces transgenerational attachments that are shaped by varied ways of self-categorisation based on sensory engagement with place. Age-related categorisations, such as ‘a child’, link more strongly to micro-scale, directly embodied senses of place, whereas value-based categories connect individuals to broader spatial scales through indirect sensory experiences. These insights challenge static notions of generation, revealing a dynamic self-categorisation process that contributes to the creation of diverse and transgenerational attachments to place.