Research Methodology and Thesis Writing (Fall, 2006)

Sense of Place, Identity, and Nature Preservation:

A、Sense of Place

(What process through which place is actively sensed and rendered as meaningful)

 
1.
 “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time”, Edward.S Casey.

a.

 The definition of place: the terrain which can be known by sensory experience.

b.

 The concept of space is constructed after the topological experience.

c.

 Body-in-place is a necessary medium for sensing place.

d.

 Local knowledge: Knowledge by acquaintance with places by means of our knowing body.

e.

 Response

 
i.
 How phenomenological way of theorizing “place” serves as an effective and subversive strategy against spaciocentrism.

 
ii.
 The possibility of “emplaced culture” when a culture is defined as the exchange and contestation of codes.

f.

 Further Reading

 
i.
 The Primacy of Perception, by Merleau -Ponty

 
2.
 “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea”, Steven Feld.

a.

 Contrary to western ocularcentrism (the close connection of seeing, sight, and the construction of reality), people in Bosavi capture the spatial quality of the given world by hearing and sounds.

b.

 Instead of landscape in western concept, theirs is soundscape.

c.

 Response

 
i.
 The arbitrary relationship of words and referent indicates the impossibility to represent the given world transparently. Thus, does acoustemology provide another way out? Or does it another way of knowing the world (and the environment)?

 
ii.
 Language, representation of the given environment

d.

 Further Reading

 
i.
 Downcast Eyes, by Martin Jay

 
ii.
 The Rule of Metaphor, by Paul Ricoeur

 
3.
 “Pleasant Places, Past Times, and Sheltered Identity in Rural East Anglis”, Charles O. Frake.

a.

 The definition of place: a place comes into being out of space by being named.

b.

 The cartographic creation of place is the outcome of the interplay of a complex of interests and pressures.

c.

 The awareness of the existence or the non-existence of “a place” is constructed by multiple ways.

d.

 Local knowledge is the counterpower against the official.

e.

 A nowhere place is constructed/isolated by the spatializing of temporal/diachronic continuum, which is thought of as permanent, always-there, consistent.

f.

 The past becomes “a place”, the most English

g.

 Response

 
i.
 How the past as a remote place is conducive to the construction of identity.

 
ii.
 How the connection of national identity and natural beauty serves as the effective strategy for nature conservatists. (Taiwan-based).

 
iii.
 How the essentialized concept of “the rural” is strategically manipulated in the issue of nature preservation. (Taiwan-based)

h.

 Further Reading

 
i.
 Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, by Denis E. Cosgrove.

 
ii.
 Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination.

 
iii.
 The Past Is a Foreign Country, by David Lowenthal.

 
iv.
 British National Identity and the English Landscape, by David Lowenthal.

 

B、Handbook of Culturarl Geography

 
1.
 “Landscape and European Sense of Sight—Eyeing Nature”, Denis Cosgrove.

a.

 The etymological root of the term “landscape” means an area of land visible to the eye from a vantage point, denoting the dominance and subordination of viewer and the object of vision.

b.

 Visualism distantiates human beings from the environment, which is conceptualized as an object. (The separation of the being-in-the-world and the given world).

c.

 The term park denotes the aesthetic appropriation of natural space

d.

 Response

 
i.
 The relation between visualism, how natural environment is framed as distant landscape, and the impact on the natural environment.

 
ii.
 The politics of “National” “Park”. (Taiwan-based).

e.

 Further Reading

 
i.
 The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry, by J. Turner.

 
ii.
 Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature, M, Warnke.

 
  （蕙君）