Seamus Heaney, the 1995 Nobel Laureate in literature, embodied a strong attachment to the Irish landscape which was richly described in his poetry. His poem Digging is an example of this identification with people and land, describing the earthy smells, sounds and rhythms of his father digging potatoes and his grandfather cutting peat. It is rich in place- based identification and attachment, a sense of roots and rootedness. But his poetry describes a kind of connection to place that goes beyond superficial attachment in the sense of a ‘fondness’ for a place or a sentimentality for place based on memories of being there. It speaks to a way of knowing place that is deep- seated and almost visceral in character.

At the core of geographic divisions is a split between two unique identifications with place – on the one hand, people can hold a visceral connectedness, while on the other hand, people's connectedness to place is highly instrumentalised. The book shows that some of the visceral identifications people hold with place, captured so beautifully in Heaney's poetry, put them at a major disadvantage in modern capitalist economies. On the other side of the coin, the instrumentalist identification with place (described in ) is what helps people thrive in capitalist market economies, and perpetuates the disenfranchising of visceral connectedness. This fundamental split must be properly understood and fully acknowledged, with aligned policy solutions, if we are to begin dismantling the stark Chapter 5geographic divides of countries like the UK.