‘They Have Different Ways of Doing Things’: Cemeteries, Diversity and Local Place Attachment

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how local place attachment and group identity are conceived by those who manage civic cemeteries, and those who, by their memorial practices, co-create them. Engaging with debates about (post)colonialism and belonging, the paper presents evidence from both interviews and photographs, conceptually framing the meaning of these with reference to Lefebvre’s spatial triad: of space as perceived, conceived and lived. It identifies a disjuncture between the way cemetery managers view group and individual identities, and the way this manifests in memorial practices. Formal ‘representations of space’ are influenced by neo-colonial narratives of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ whereas greater diversity and categorical transgressions are apparent in spatial practices. This has implications for the management and articulation civic identity and contemporary understandings of belonging beyond as well as within public places of memorial and remembrance.