Abstract

This article connects several complexes: the concept of the ‘life-world’ as shaping individual and collective identities the notion of ‘sites of power’, with the concepts of ‘aura’ and of ‘iconic seeing’, and the relation between grounded and shared identities, as important for shared values, and for the experience of communion in a common symbolic horizon - with regard to a present social crisis of fragmentation. It explores the notion of symbolically and experientially significant ‘sites of power’ as elements of the ‘life-world’. Its role for shaping individual and collective identities, perceptions of self, and of their relation to a shared environment, is taken as significant here. The importance of this perspective, and the mode of relating to such sites in it, is reflected with regard to crisis of a growing lack of social cohesion, due to weak ‘shared horizons’ of values and sense of communion and belonging, in increasingly individualised Western societies. Sociological diagnosis of the social problems arising from the problem of identity is referred to. The concepts of the ‘life-world’- developed in the 20th century - as experienced symbolic space -, of ‘aura’, and of ‘iconic’ seeing, are taken into view. Recent literature on ‘sites of power’, and efforts to restore and re appreciate cathedrals as significant to the collective, are regarded as expressing this awareness. Its significance is presented here

Keywords

‘life-world, collective identities, social cohesion, ‘sites of power’, ‘aura’, ‘iconic seeing’, heritage conservation, symbolism of cultural monuments