Since any place is vulnerable to having its grammar extended to cover more details of its character and actions, and since all places present their unity in at least minimally self-conscious ways, and since theming is a modality of grammatical unity and self-consciousness, it follows that far from being a foreign addition to places, theming happens through a particular extension of what is already going on in the establishment of places.
Should we then conclude that all places are at least a little bit themed? Not at all, for this would be to confuse unity in general with a specific kind of unity. All places have mediated unities, but theming consists in a particular kind of mediated and self-conscious unity. The particular effect that themes create generally narrows the ways in which a place expresses the basic conditions that make it a place.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001