Segmented Worlds and Self: A Study of Group Life and Individual Consciousness

by Yi-Fu Tuan

Nice, clean copy./lh

Genres: Architecture

222 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1982

About the author

Fu Tuan (Traditional Chinese: 段義孚, born 5 December 1930) is a Chinese-U.S. geographer.
Tuan was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He was the son of a rich oligarch and was part of the top class in the Republic of China. Tuan attended University College, London, but graduated from the University of Oxford with a B.A. and M.A. in 1951 and 1955 respectively. From there he went to California to continue his geographic education. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Liene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yi Fu is becoming one of my favorite authors. The way he writes about and combines design, architecture, psychology and sociology fascinates me. The book once again illustrates the strong differences between group and an individual sense of existence. A very very interesting read. I really enjoyed the last part of the book, where he theorized about how even the today's shift to using mainly visual cues can impact whether one feels like a part of something bigger or as a separate entity.

Also an interesting idea - we think that 'we' end at our clothes, that that's the one unit of body. But this is a totally arbitrary border! We could define ourselves in totally different constellations, but we are just used to the modern Western thinking about all this, so we can't imagine a different way to percieve ourselves.