Sense of Place, Identity and the Revisioning of Curriculum (Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, 17)

This book explores intersections between sense of place, the formation of identity, indigeneity and colonisation, literature and literary study, the arts, and a revisioned school curriculum for the Anthropocene. Underpinning the book is a conviction that sense of place is central to the fostering of the change of heart required to secure the survival of human life on earth. It offers a coherent overview of seemingly disparate realities on a geographically and historically sprawling canvas. The book is a work of literary non-fiction, drawing on a range of sources: literary works and criticism, theoretical research, empirical studies and artworks. Of its very nature, the book enacts an extensive cultural critique. After establishing a cross-disciplinary foundation for “sense of place”, the book describes its relationship to identity with reference to such terms as attachment, dispossession, reclamation and representation. It shows how a hopeful narrative for planet stewardship can be developed by the uptake of indigenous and traditional discourses of place. It concludes with the envisioning of a place-conscious curriculum, and ways in which an activist agenda might be pursued in the Anthropocene. Acknowledgements 7 Contents 9 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 1.1 Looking Back to Look Forward 14 1.2 Another Book on Sense of Place? 20 1.3 Coming to Know 23 1.3.1 Knowledge Mediated by Discourse 24 1.3.2 Perceptual Intuition 25 1.4 What Lies Ahead 27 References 30 Chapter 2: Theorising Sense of Place 32 2.1 Place and Space 32 2.2 Sense of Place 35 2.2.1 De-legitimating Place 36 2.2.2 Understanding Sense of Place 38 2.3 Spirit of Place 44 2.4 Placelessness 46 2.4.1 Investment with Meaning and Value 47 2.4.2 The Material Physicality of Place 49 References 50 Chapter 3: Sense of Place and Identity 53 3.1 Identity as the Sense of Who I Am 53 3.2 Approaching Identity 54 3.3 Synecdoche 54 3.4 Synecdoche as Verb 55 3.5 Becoming Places 56 3.5.1 Places in Themselves 58 3.5.2 Endowing Significance 60 3.5.3 Impediments to Self-Identification with Place 61 3.6 Dispossession 65 3.6.1 Not-So-Merry England 66 3.6.2 Scotland 70 3.6.3 More on Discursive Power 73 3.7 Sense of Place and Wellness 75 3.8 Re-membering Sense of Place 77 3.8.1 The Clearances Revisited 78 References 80 Chapter 4: Indigeneity and Sense of Place 82 4.1 The Piktukowaq of Nova Scotia 82 4.2 Indigeneity 84 4.3 Australia 91 4.3.1 The Mithaka People as Synecdoche 92 4.4 Canada 95 4.5 The United States 97 References 99 Chapter 5: Decolonising Place 102 5.1 The Colonisation Project 103 5.1.1 Another Synecdoche: Bandon, Cork 105 5.2 Sovereign Power 105 5.3 Discourse 109 5.3.1 The Wild 111 5.3.2 A Brief Digression on the Word “Nature” 112 5.3.3 The Great Chain of Being 113 5.4 Decolonisation 114 5.4.1 Breaking the Chain 115 5.4.2 Unsettled Narratives and the Potential for Hybrid Identity 117 5.4.3 A Personal Digression 121 5.4.4 Decolonising Naming 122 References 124 Chapter 6: Locating Sense of Place in Literary Studies 126 6.1 Figurative Language 127 6.2 The Place of Rocks 129 6.2.1 Personification 129 6.3 Resetting Setting 131 6.3.1 Epic 131 6.3.2 Theatre 132 6.3.3 Prose Fiction 134 6.3.4 Bakhtin: A Digression on the Chronotope 136 6.4 Travellers’ Tales 139 6.5 Poetry 140 6.5.1 Ecopoetry 144 6.6 Ecocriticism 146 References 148 Chapter 7: The Problematics of Representing Sense of Place 150 7.1 Homo Symbolicum 150 7.2 Constructing Landscapes in Paint 152 7.2.1 An Etymological Digression 154 7.2.2 Landscape in Van Diemen’s Land 155 7.2.3 The Visual as Deepening Connection to Place 160 7.2.4 Decolonising Landscape 163 7.3 Embodying Place in Dance 164 7.4 Enhancing Sense of Place Through Music 168 7.4.1 Musical Expression as Generating/Communicating a Sense of Place 169 7.4.2 Connecting with the Natural World Through Music 172 7.5 Can Nature Represent Herself? 173 References 176 Chapter 8: Locating Sense of Place in the School Curriculum 178 8.1 Some Reflections on Curriculum 179 8.1.1 The Knowledge Society: A Diversion 183 8.1.2 Critical Pedagogy 186 8.2 A Place-Conscious Curriculum 188 8.2.1 The Perceptual Dimension 189 8.2.2 The Sociological Dimension 190 8.2.3 The Ideological Dimension 191 8.2.4 The Political Dimension 192 8.2.5 The Ecological Dimension 193 8.3 Place-Conscious Pedagogy: Some Examples 194 8.3.1 Murphy’s Bush 194 8.3.2 Henderson Valley 196 Sounds of Waitakere 197 Improvisation and Composition Project Based on the Opanuku Stream 197 8.3.3 Reshaping L1 Subject English 198 8.3.4 Outdoor Education 200 References 202 Chapter 9: The Geopolitics of Place: Framing Avenues for Activism 204 9.1 Radicals and Activists 207 9.2 The Anthropocene: Narratives and Pathways 208 9.3 The Geopolitics of Place 212 9.4 Landing 216 9.5 Land Use 217 9.6 Rediscovering a Sense of Place and Why It Matters 220 9.6.1 And so to Choice and Ontology 224 References 226 Index 228