Sense of Place

Off-grid Mobilities: Incorporating a Way of Life

by Phillip Vannini

Published in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

Drawing from sensory ethnography, the present multimodal writing—accompanied by photography and digital... more Drawing from sensory ethnography, the present multimodal writing—accompanied by photography and digital video—documents and interprets the mobilities of off-grid living on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia, Canada. The data presentation focuses in particular on the embodied experience of off-grid inhabitation, highlighting the sensory and kinetic experiences and practices of everyday life in a community disconnected from the North American electrical grid and highway network. The mobilities of fuel and energy are presented in unison with ethnographic attention to the taskscape of everyday activities and movements in which off-grid islanders routinely engage. The analysis, based on Tim Ingold's non-representational theory on place, movement, and inhabitation, focuses on how the material and corporeal mobilities of off-grid life body forth a unique sense of place.

Images of a Loving God and Sense of Meaning in Life

by Samuel Stroope

Although prior studies have documented a positive association between religiosity and sense of meaning in life, the... more Although prior studies have documented a positive association between religiosity and sense of meaning in life, the role of specific religious beliefs is currently unclear. Past research on images of God suggests that loving images of God will positively correlate with a sense of meaning and purpose. Mechanisms for this hypothesized relationship are drawn from prior work on attachment theory, religious coping, and symbolic interaction. We suggest that these mechanisms are complementary and that secure attachment styles, reliable coping strategies, and positive self-images work in tandem to facilitate a sense of meaning and purpose. Using a random, national sample from the second wave of the Baylor Religion Survey, we perform multivariate regression analysis that controls for key religious and demographic effects. In our full model, results indicate that the dependent variable is positively associated with student status, religious non-affiliation, congregational friendship networks, and frequency of prayer. Most important from the perspective of the present study, the connection between loving images of God and a sense of meaning and purpose is consistent and robust.

Haunting Technologies: Performing Memories of Place Through Effervescent Mobilities

by Phillip Vannini

Co-authored with Rhys Evans.

See accompanying multimedia essay here: See accompanying multimedia essay here: http://ferrytales.innovativeethnographies.net/content/ghosts-sailings-past

Doing islandness: a non-representational approach to an island’s sense of place

by Phillip Vannini

Co-authored with Jonathan Taggart

This paper presents both an empirical characterization and a theoretical treatment of an island as practice. Through... more This paper presents both an empirical characterization and a theoretical treatment of an island as practice. Through video and ethnographic description we describe and interpret how one kind of islandness is done. Thus we understand islandness corporeally, affectually, practically, intimately, as a visceral experience. Basing our conceptual treatment on the non-representational idea of dwelling, we approach place as a kind of practice. We view the key performances through which an island becomes such as practices of incorporation. Inhabitants, we believe, incorporate a place not by way of mental design or blueprints, or by way of signifying comparisons and juxtapositions, but rather by sheer practical, creative, skillful engagement with its affordances. Thus we understand the practices of an islander as someone who assembles together an island by way of making use of whatever is at hand, solving going concerns as they present themselves.

Read more: http://publicethnography.net/projects/it-me-or-does-paper-move

The place of art in the public art gallery: a visual sense of place

by Rhiannon Mason

Mason R, Whitehead C, Graham H. The Place of Art in the Public Art Gallery: A Visual Sense of Place. In: Davis, P; Corsane, G; Convery, I, ed. Making Sense of Place. Boydell and Brewer, 2012.

Make, Do, and Mend: solving placelessness through embodied environmental engagement

by Isis Brook

Key Words: Environmental virtues, placelessness, transition towns, sense of place
Published in E.Brady and P. Phemister (eds) Human-Environment Relations: Transformative Values and Practice, Springer, 2012

How should we live in the world such that we have culturally enriching and worthwhile lives when the material and... more How should we live in the world such that we have culturally enriching and worthwhile lives when the material and social fabric of our situation does nothing to nurture or sustain the kinds of relationships with each other and with nature that would seem to be a prerequisite for a healthy life?  This chapter examines the claim that there are compensatory benefits - such as cosmopolitanism and increasing self reflection - that mitigate the psychological and social problems of living un-embedded lives in placeless environments.  It then proposes the solution that simply by making things, actively engaging in things and, particularly, by mending things, we can rediscover the necessary environmental virtues to reintegrate ourselves into the material fabric of the world.  Why this should work has to do with the transformatory power of active, purposive engagement with the material realm.  Moreover, we can do this even in the midst of contemporary 'thinned out' spaces to make them into enriching places.

The Andy Griffith Show: Mayberry as Working Class Utopia

by Derek Alderman

Alderman, Derek H., Terri Moreau, and Stefanie Benjamin. 2012. “The Andy Griffith Show: Mayberry as Working Class Utopia.” Blue-Collar Pop Culture: From NASCAR to Jersey Shore, (Vol. 2) Television and the Culture of Everyday Life, Praeger (edited by M. Keith Booker), pp. 51-69.

Spatial Textures: Place, Touch and Praesentia

by Kevin Hetherington

published in Environment and Planning A

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, spring 2011 issue (vol. 22, no. 2)

by David Seamon

Feature essays: ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, spring 2011.

Feature essays in this issue... more Feature essays: ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, spring 2011.

Feature essays in this issue of EAP focus on landscape restoration and real vs. virtual animal dissections. 

In the issue’s first essay, Canadian educator Norm Friesen demonstrates how a phenomenological perspective contributes to understanding the lived differences between real and virtual realities. He focuses on laboratory vs. digitally-simulated animal dissections and draws on the ideas of Heideggerian philosopher Albert Borgmann to locate some of the pedagogical strengths and weaknesses of reality-based vs. hyperreal modes of learning.

In the issue’s second feature essay, retired Australian educator John Cameron writes a sixth “letter” from his rural home on Tasmania’s Bruny Island. His focus is the ecological restoration of some 50 acres of overgrazed paddocks, and the difficulties and satisfactions, both philosophical and practical, which arise from his decision to return the land to its “natural state.”

Back issues of EAP are now available at:

www.krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522

David Seamon
Editor, EAP

Cannibals and Orchids: Cannibalism and the Sensory Imagination of Papua New Guinea

by Ilaria Vanni

This article examines Leona Miller’s book Cannibal and Orchids (1941) as an example of how place, in this case Papua... more This article examines Leona Miller’s book Cannibal and Orchids (1941) as an example of how place, in this case Papua New Guinea (PNG), is imagined according to a particular sensorium. It follows the ‘sensory turn in anthropology’ and the studies developed in the last two decades that take the senses as their object of enquiry. This body of theory is mobilised to analyse Miller’s biographical narrative recounting how PNG is imagined, represented and produced in terms of a disarray of the (Western) senses, coalescing in the trope of cannibalism. This article argues that the experience of PNG as the place of otherness is narrated both in terms of the author’s sensory displacement and of the indigenous sensorium as abject.

Going Through Border Places: Security Practices and Local Perceptions of Insecurity as Filtration at the Kenya-Uganda Boundary

by William Allen

Peer-reviewed and published with the Centre for International Borders Research Working Paper Series at Queens University Belfast (Number 24).

Security provision figures prominently at international boundaries. Although previous studies in African border... more Security provision figures prominently at international boundaries. Although previous studies in African border contexts demonstrate how such practices are complicated by factors including states’ diminished capacity or willingness to uniformly enforce official policies, they do not fully link these observations to the materiality of border towns or the experiences of border- crossers. Furthermore, there is an imperative within border studies to move beyond descriptive analysis and conceptualise borders as dynamic processes that are contingently expressed through everyday activities. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork in two border towns at the Kenya-Uganda boundary, and theoretically informed by work in critical geography, this paper makes three arguments: (1) everyday enactment of border security is reshaped by locally held perceptions and expectations of border town life; (2) the security of the physical border is implicated within more general concerns for safety; and (3) the geographic concept of ‘place’ shows how analysis of security ‘filters’ as they actually unfold through contingent ‘moments’ captures the significance of these two spheres for the border region.

In Place-spective

by Nedine Kachornnamsong

Proceeding of ISEA 2008, The 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art. ISBN: 978-981-08-0768-9

Although most terms of place associates to space, the concept of place in the online communication implicates with... more Although most terms of place associates to space, the concept of place in the online communication implicates with social interaction rather than merely physical setting. The interrelations between place and persons are mutual as a place cannot exist without people, while the interaction between people makes it possible to form a place without space. This spaceless notion of  place will be discussed further in terms of online social interaction.

The outcome of this research was implemented in an installation project atCopenhagen Airport, Denmark. With an intention to promote social interaction among passengers, the installation aimed to re-establish the sense of place by facilitating anindirect communication, where the people could share their dreams with the others.

The Place of Art in the Public Art Gallery: A Visual Sense of Place

by Chris Whitehead

co-authored with H. Graham and R. Mason, in Davis, P; Corsane, G; Convery, I. (eds), Making Sense of Place, Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming.

Locating art: The display and construction of place identity in art galleries

by Chris Whitehead

in Peralta E; Anico M (eds), Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World, Routledge, 2009

This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic... more This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic location with reference to theories of place identity developed by scholars such as Relph (1976), Proshansky et al (1983), Rowles (1983) and Dixon and Durrheim (2000). It will focus on the ways in which place identities are constructed in displays of art, building upon the notion of place identity as a political and social construction (and in this case specifically a curatorial one) that allows people to make sense of their connectivity to place and to guide their actions and projects accordingly. (Danziger, 1997 and Dixon and Durrheim, 2000) It will refer extensively (though not exclusively) to the representation and construction of place identity in art museums and galleries in the adjoining north-eastern cities of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland. Focal points will include the Laing Art Gallery’s permanent display Art on Tyneside, which is intended to represent an artistic history of the region, and some of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art’s exhibitions of specially commissioned works, such as American artist Chris Burden’s large-scale sculpture of the nearby Tyne Bridge.

Within this analysis, the essay will explore the following questions: why are place, community and identity actively connected in these gallery displays and what rhetorical means are used to do so? In addressing the first of these questions, the essay will examine the politics of representation and the agendas which drive curatorial (and in some cases artistic) choices and initiatives. The second question will focus on identifiable museological strategies of interpretation (including text, graphics and the configuring of interior décor) in the venues under study and will involve an exploration of the discourses of place identity which displays both represent and construct. In this context one may also ask: what are the ‘preferred performances’ (to conflate two bodies of theory) which these displays are intended to prompt in visitors, and what does this say about institutional views of citizenship, community and belonging?

This study will provide a platform for a wider discussion of the significance of place identity in the gallery for ontological understandings of art and engagement with art: what confers ‘north-eastern-ness’ on some art and how might this affect audience understandings of art as a concept, and as a category of material culture and experience? These last questions will be related to complex debates in art history and theory on the relationships between art production and geography, and to others in aesthetics, sociology, cultural studies and museum studies on the role of identity in visitors’ development of cultural capital and in their acts of meaning making and performance in art museums and galleries.

Past, Present, and Future: The Effects of the Death of the Swift River Valley and the Birth of the Quabbin Reservoir on Local Residents

by Lauren Howe

Des humanistes européens au coeur de la montagne. Perception et représentation précoces de la montagne à la Renaissance

by Bertrand Levy

In : Le Globe, T. 141, 2001, 89-100.

Perception and experience of the mountain. European Renaissance. Topophilia. C. Gesner, J.-J. Rousseau Perception and experience of the mountain. European Renaissance. Topophilia. C. Gesner, J.-J. Rousseau

Riccarton Bush and the natural and social realities of native trees in Christchurch, New Zealand

by Brendan Doody

Doody, B.J. (2008) Riccarton Bush and the natural and social realities of native trees in Christchurch, New Zealand. M.Appl.Sc. Thesis, Lincoln University, Lincoln, Canterbury.

Urbanization has destroyed and fragmented previously large areas of natural habitat. Small remnants that still exist... more Urbanization has destroyed and fragmented previously large areas of natural habitat. Small remnants that still exist in numerous cities will be unable to sustain many viable wild plant populations if they do not expand into the surrounding urban matrix. Residential gardens surrounding such remnants, and which form a significant component of urban green space in many cities, could play a role in redressing this problem. Riccarton Bush, a 7.8 hectare forest remnant, and its surrounding suburban residential area, in Christchurch, New Zealand, is a good example. Over 125 years the reported number of native vascular plants in the bush has declined by a third. My study was an attempt to understand: 1) the ecological, social and cultural factors influencing the dispersal and regeneration of 12 native bird-dispersed woody species from Riccarton Bush, into surrounding residential properties; and 2) the potential role residential properties could play in the future of the bush. To examine these diverse factors I adopted an interdisciplinary research approach combining methodologies, concepts and theories from ecology and the social sciences. In a broader context my work was an attempt to demonstrate how urban ecology can further develop and strengthen by adopting and integrating new methodologies, theories and concepts.

The ecological component involved recording individuals of the study species found on 90 randomly selected properties within a 1.4 km radius of the bush. Soil samples were also collected from 31 of those properties and placed in a glasshouse and the study species that germinated were recorded. Results showed some species, particularly kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), the most abundant species in the bush, are being dispersed and establishing on properties predominantly within 250 m of the forest margin. These juveniles are not reaching maturity as most gardeners tend to remove all non-planted woody species. Qualitative interviews with 16 residents and a quantitative survey of the residents of 85 of the properties provided insights into the social context which these natural processes were operating.

Using notions of place and performance I argue that gardens are continuously created and recreated by humans and non-humans. Residents attempt to create and maintain a garden that fulfils their individual and familial needs and desires (e.g., aesthetics, leisure and privacy), and public responsibilities such as ensuring they have a ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’ garden. This involves selecting plants for colour, shape and the care they require, and encouraging certain performances (e.g., flowering) while controlling other undesirable plants and performances (e.g. growth, spread and shading). While people make connections between native plants, belonging and identity; the ‘scientific’ demarcation between native and exotic species often becomes obscured as the garden is co-created by people and plants. Some plants become more significant than others but usually this is attributable to their performances rather than whether they are native or exotic.

Residential gardens have the potential to play a major role in the conservation of species restricted to urban remnants. My research suggests that although the potential exists for woody species restricted to Riccarton Bush to naturally regenerate in nearby gardens, this will not happen without human intervention. Plants will need to be eco-sourced and propagated to avoid detrimental impacts on the genetic health of remnant populations, and then actively planted in gardens. The success of such planting initiatives will be increased by providing residents with information about the plants that are suitable for their performative needs and desires (e.g., the size, colour, and maintenance requirements of plants) and, most importantly, control over the location of plantings. In concluding, I argue that by adopting new concepts, theories and methodologies, the productivity, creativity and relevance of urban ecology can be significantly enhanced.

Judging and Constructing Self-Identity

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; currently under review

In Purity and Danger, Douglas theorises purity and impurity in terms of the instantiation and disruption of a shared... more In Purity and Danger, Douglas theorises purity and impurity in terms of the instantiation and disruption of a shared symbolic order. Purity/impurity discourses act, according to Purity and Danger, as a homeostatic system which ensures the preservation of this social whole, generally encoding that which threatens social equilibrium as impurity. There have been calls for new social theory on this ‘under theorised’ topic. Presenting such further reflections, I argue that Douglas’ account is less a full explanation than a regularity. Representations of purity are only secondarily symbols of the social order. Rather, purity/impurity discourses are only associated with ‘matter out of place’ when phenomena are assessed for their relative deviation from an imputed state of ‘self-identity’: qualitative homogeneity and correspondence with their essence. Purity and impurity do more than judge self-identity however. They can play a fundamental role in its performative construction; they are well adapted for smuggling assumptions into our discourses regarding the essence of particular phenomena and forms of subjectivity, simplifying a complex world into a stark contrast between the dangerous and the innocent, the valuable and the valueless, the necessary and the contingent, the originary and the prosthetic, the real and the apparent, and the unitary and the fragmented.

Living in an Urban Rez: Constructing San Francisco as Indian Land

by Max Carocci

Living off the Grid in BC: Clayoquot Sound

by Phillip Vannini

A magazine article, rather than a paper, on people living off grids.