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Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global

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Introducing “eco-cosmopolitanism” and its connection to different forms of artistic, philosophical and practical expressions, the Introduction and Part 1 of Ursula K. Heise’s A Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global provides an approach to environmentalism that transcends place and is interconnected to different locales and regions, mirroring the interconnectedness of a globalized world. At the center of this essay from 1953 is anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner’s expression, “Everywhen” which borrows from approaches to temporality from Aboriginal Australians, highlighting how interconnected the past, present and future is for Australia’s indigenous population. Though Heise doesn’t make an explicit connection to Stanner in this portion of her book, Stanner’s methodology of bridging the gaps of understanding nature and the environment between different cultures and locales (The Modern West against the Aboriginals) as well as the Aboriginals’ sense of temporal interconnectivity exemplifies Heise’s structure of a “sense of planetarity” and make Stanner’s essay a prescient, important work in climate literature.

Our contemporary ecological crisis, however, reveals the deal as more expensive than we thought - ruinously so, unless we manage now to rewrite its terms. This is the hope that motivates ecocriticism - that we will begin to see, and help along, the cultural changes that are signs of this new deal. Reterritorialisation seemed the obvious first step. Some people were, nonetheless, emotionally responsive to the natural world, but it was most likely to be nature as spectacle - as landscape or as a contrived encounter with wildlife - that moved them, rather than nature as an ecological process in which they felt themselves to be embedded. What was needed was a reconnection with local place that would not be confined to the demarcated space of leisure. Such a reconnection would demand that one's actions be accountable to one's deep knowledge of the ecological interactions that constitute place. This was the way to better ecological awareness and responsible behaviour, for only through such feeling for one's surroundings could ecological processes register on the physical senses. That was the theory.

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Altman, I.; Low, S.M., eds. (1992). Place attachment. Human behavior and environment: Advances in theory and research. New York: Plenum Press. In rural areas, the promotion of low impact, traditional land uses (such as subsistence agriculture and small-scale farming) could also promote human well-being through sense of place (Phillips Reference Phillips1998) and sustainable development (Halladay & Gilmour Reference Halladay and Gilmour1995) ( Fig. 1). Cultural landscapes represent those areas where human influence (traditional use of land and resources; Urquhart & Acott Reference Urquhart and Acott2014) has been part of ecosystem dynamics over the centuries, affecting landscape appearance (Phillips Reference Phillips1998), and species adaptation and diversity (Halladay & Gilmour Reference Halladay and Gilmour1995), while maintaining ecological processes (nutrient cycling and connectivity). This is particularly important in developing countries, where the maintenance of traditional systems would help create incentives for traditional land-use practices (Halladay & Gilmour Reference Halladay and Gilmour1995). Enhancing the value of native biodiversity for sense of place experiences could help identify critical native species, such as local cultivar varieties for agricultural practices (Perreault Reference Perreault2005) or wildlife for ecotourism (Martín-López et al. Reference Martín-López, Montes and Benayas2007; Di Minin et al. Reference Di Minin, Fraser, Slotow and MacMillan2013 a), and enhance their conservation ( Fig. 1).

How does geography affect people’s culture? Geography influences the development of the people who occupy given areas. Humans respond and adapt to the conditions they encounter, developing patterns of behavior and customs to cope with dry deserts, arctic cold, high mountain ranges or the isolation of an island. How does geography help us understand the cultures around the world? Kunstler, James. Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, Free Press, 1994. ISBN 0-671-88825-0 In her meaty introduction which provides a broad overview of the conflicting opinions and thoughts on the subject of localism as place as an environmentalist strategy, Heise writes, “With this wave of countercritiques, the theoretical debate has arrived at a conceptual impasse: while some theorists criticize nationally based forms of identity and hold out cosmopolitan identifications as a plausible and politically preferable alternative, other scholars emphasize the importance of holding on to national and local modes of belonging as a way of resisting the imperialism of some forms of globalization” (12). Heise then presents one of the central ideas of this text, “eco-cosmopolitanism” which she defines as an “environmental world citizenship,” arguing that “ecologically oriented thinking has yet to come to terms with one of the central insights of current theorists of globalization: namely, that the increasing connectedness of societies around the globe entails the emergence of new forms of culture that are no longer anchored in place…”(13). In urban planning, the development of a green infrastructure fosters psychological well-being by providing daily access to natural settings and sense of place (Maller et al. Reference Maller, Townsend, Pryor, Brown and St Leger2006; Tzoulas et al. Reference Tzoulas, Korpela, Venn, Yli-Pelkonen, Kaźmierczak, Niemela and James2007; Bendt et al. Reference Bendt, Barthel and Colding2013), while ensuring a range of ecosystem services in urban areas (such as air filtration, microclimate regulation, and noise reduction; Gaston et al. Reference Gaston, Ávila-Jiménez and Edmondson2013). Urban green spaces may enhance biodiversity through the promotion of ecological corridors and habitat connectivity (Rudd et al. Reference Rudd, Vala and Schaefer2002), as well as providing a refuge for native biodiversity (Goddard et al. Reference Goddard, Dougill and Benton2010). Psychological benefits of green spaces increase with species richness (Fuller et al. Reference Fuller, Irvine, Devine-Wright, Warren and Gaston2007). Management strategies enhancing biological diversity (such as mosaics of habitat patches; Thwaites et al. Reference Thwaites, Helleur and Simkins2005) and sense of place experiences in urban green space, could contribute to both human well-being and biodiversity conservation ( Fig. 1).

Project MUSE Mission

A sense of place is when people feel a longing of belonging towards a place or a city they are familiar with. How can a sense of place help you identify an issue and understand why it is important? Nach der Natur – Das Artensterben und die moderne Kultur [After Nature: Species Extinction and Modern Culture] (2010)

Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchen, and Gil Valentine, eds. 2004. Key Thinkers on Space and Place. London: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-4963-1W. Benjamin et al., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968): 220–22. Long, Joshua. 2010. Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-72241-9 You construct your perception. You construct it based on how you choose to see the world. That construction is influenced by several factors. Influences on perception include past experiences, education, values, culture, preconceived notions, and present circumstances. Why do people perceive places differently? Gayton (1996) Landscapes of the Interior: Re-explorations of Nature and the Human Spirit. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers

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