A phenomenology of intra-play for sustainability research within heritage landscapes

Abstract

In this article, we explore a phenomenology of intra-play for sustainability research, integral to the processes of transforming both cultural and natural heritage landscapes. Such processes are studied as active - always underway and in flux - across space and time, and through the intra-play between the human and more-than-human world. The authors have developed the exploration of intra-play within the fields of phenomenology and heritage studies with empirical examples of the processes of becoming, especially in experiential landscapes of post-industrial heritage sites. The article presents a phenomenology of intra-play as a haptic and ontogenetic philosophy of landscape studies, inspired by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, and a process methodology, inspired in part by the art of what Rita Irwin calls “a/r/tography”. Our approach animates the different forms, both human and non-human, that co-form heritage landscapes. The article traces these playful ways and discusses possible consequences for sustainability research and change within heritage landscapes.