|
A place-conscious ethos of care - what I have called "a compassionate sense of place" - was co-explored with people
involved in environmental organizations in a specific geographic locale. Data was collected through ethnographic methods and
interviews using "living in place" and "caring" as heuristics. Both place and caring are practice-based
logics that challenge universalizing tendencies in modern discourse. Environmentalist discourse and practice attempted to
extend the discourse of "social" relations beyond social space, that is, to the socio-ecological entirety of "place"(understood
here to be socially constructed but distinctly material, the site of the performance of practice and experiences, with porous
boundaries and multiply scaled). Caring was conceived as deeply authentic and disposed to action, yet was considered discursively
and politically ineffectual. Nevertheless, if caring can be politicized, as recent theorists have argued, a compassionate
sense of place could serve as a logic to orient contemporary practice in an ecologically embedded society.
click here to download file
|
