In modern society most facts about us and most social roles we play are supposed to be optional. In earlier societies my birthplace and my family or clan, and my gender and race, and my father's occupation and religion would have defined my identity, and perhaps kept me from full participation in the economy or the political system. Modernization has -- in principle at least -- removed most barriers to economic and political participation based on such natural givens. I may be Italian by birth but decide that this will play no significant part in my life. Others are not required to deal with me on those ethnic terms and I may be offended when they insist on doing so.
As such aspects of my being become matters for voluntary associations, my identity has fewer restrictions, but it may feel threateningly empty and fail to provide guidance and meaning. Places whose normative activities engage only thin roles may be criticized as thin places, but the real object of critique in such cases is the way in which their criteria for recognizing one another as equal participants demand little more than thin roles. A parking lot or a mall or an airplane trip engages us only as drivers or as shoppers or as passengers. Our individuality may seem thin if all we have available is a sequence of such thin roles.
There is good critical use to be made with the notions of thick or thin places, as long as we do not demand some return to pre-modern naturalized substantial roles. In this revised sense, thick places would be those that engage more aspects of our being than the relatively abstract roles that are what many modern places require.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001