Dwelling Perspective Research Articles

Dwelling in unsustainability: tourism landscapes and modern roads in a remote part of Finland

The paper discusses tourism landscapes in a remote region of Finland where tourism, nature conservation and industrial land-use coexist in tension. It illustrates deep problems with the language of sustainability but suggests that applying the dwelling perspective (Ingold) to analysing tourism landscapes is an illuminating route to appreciating the unsustainable features of modern life generally, like technical infrastructures and the unsustainable practices they support. Through an analysis of how modern roads have shaped landscapes and livelihoods, the paper makes a case for the strengths of the dwelling perspective as long as sufficient emphasis is put on the wider economic and political conditions within which local life can be reproduced and (ecological) sustainability negotiated. It shows that nature tourism involves different ways of being unsustainable but that it also contributes, as policy makers over decades have hoped, to sustaining local livelihoods.

Women’s Active Engagement with the Sea Through Fishing in Fiji

ABSTRACT Fiji’s iTaukei (Indigenous) women contribute significantly to small-scale coastal fisheries, and are therefore integral to successful fisheries (co-)management, yet their role still remains underestimated. This paper explores an original pathway to highlight iTaukei women’s role in Fiji’s small-scale coastal fisheries; a pathway that, through a ‘dwelling perspective’, emphasises the socialities that are inseparable from this role. It is based on data collected during two distinct fieldwork periods, 2003–2004 and 2016–2018, in a village located on Gau, Fiji’s fifth biggest island, in Lomaiviti Province. An overview of the fishing practices of the iTaukei women living in this village shows that fishing can be seen as both a gender-differentiated and a more-than-human, dynamic field of sociality. Furthermore, we argue that fishing is these women’s main mode of active engagement with their marine environment, conceived as inseparable from land, and all its sentient constituents. This mode of engagement reflects the relational ontology inherent in the iTaukei all-encompassing concept of vanua, which includes a sense of environmental responsibility and stewardship. This mode of engagement and its ‘procurement’ dimension are adjusted over time through ‘friction’ with conservation regulations and ideas that are both internal and external to the fishing community. These conservation regulations and ideas are related to community-based marine resource initiatives, as well as to national fisheries management concerns and measures (including species-specific fishing bans). They give a supplemental dimension to women’s interactions and engagement with the sea and its sentient constituents, far from reducing those to a mere divide between ‘nature’ and society/sociality.

Uncommemorated Sites of Past Violence as Landscapes of Manhunts

The article discusses uncommemorated sites of violence in the framework of landscape theories. In particular, it asks how the sites of past violence can be understood through the lens of the ‘dynamic’ theory of landscape offered by Tim Ingold in his seminal The Temporality of the Landscape (1993). The ‘dwelling perspective’ he proposes to understand sites as dynamic ‘taskscapes’ allows us to inscribe past violent actions and engagements of local users into today’s meanings of sites of trauma. This conceptualization is further operationalized in relation to George Chamayoux’ philosophical history of manhunts (or more broadly: cynegetic practices, 2012). In the article it has been asked: how can a landscape be ‘pregnant with the past’ – as it is claimed in Ingold’s approach – if the past actions involved tracking, hunting and killing people who tried to escape death in ghettos or camps? How can we ‘read the past’, ‘remember it’ or ‘call back an internal image’ of previous actions developed in the area, if the activity co-constituted an act of genocide? Are we able to read today the past threat of a perpetrator–predator searching for victims, and, if so, with what tools? Can environmental studies help us to understand the uncanny relation to landscapes that connote past manhunts, and violent deaths on killing sites? The author will propose the concept of cynegetic landscapes to approach landscapes of manhunts.

Modes of Food Production in Arctic Yakutia (the Case of Allaikhovskii Ulus)

Using assemblage theory, this article, based on field work conducted in the Allaikhovskii Ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in 2019, describes how the activities of local residents in food production change depending on different spatial conditions: in the village, at the “tundra dacha,” and in the fishing area. It investigates specific forms of “dwelling perspective assemblages” in different spatial contexts deploying theoretical tools developed by Tim Ingold and Manuel DeLanda. Food production is considered not as an isolated practice but as a result of a set of actions, material and social conditions in which the population of the Allaikhovskii Ulus lives. The processes of food production employ different modalities of the environment and include many components: from wood and metal to spirits and ritual actions. The question of the connection between different assemblages turned out to be significant. Empirical material shows that the isolation of assemblages is not always possible, and complete isolation is most likely impossible. The fewer resources, people, “delegates” to whom tasks are passed on, the less structured assemblages fill the space. Depending on the change in spatial conditions, such characteristics as “inflating the assemblage,” “shifting the center of the assemblage,” and “overlapping assemblages (intensification)” were identified. They reflect different strategies of food production. “Dwelling perspective assemblage” to some extent deprives a person of subjectivity; however, the actor does not disappear but expands and redefines themself. The actor stops being a figure separated from the processes taking place around them; subjectivity expands beyond the boundaries of the biological body and fixed objects. It fills and structures the space of relations that arise in the process of activity. Food is not only an act of consumption but is a complex of relationships in the environment; it is a metaobject, within which subjectivity/objectivity is in an elusive unity of intertwined processes. Article in Russian

Dwelling in campervans: homemaking and mobile neighbouring on the move

ABSTRACT This article is concerned with tourist dwelling and mobile neighbouring in Volkswagen campervans. It takes notions of dwelling and neighbouring to the spaces that tourists inhabit away from home, extending philosophical debates on dwelling-in-mobilities to the actual temporary dwellings of tourists. A dwelling perspective focuses the attention on the binding acts of homemaking and neighbouring on the move, rather than on the bounded spaces of home, transforming home from a noun into a verb. For dwelling to be relevant to tourism mobilities, however, a more lineal and processual approach to habitation is necessary, which emphasises how dwelling emerges during travel, alongside others. This article reports on empirical findings from ethnographic and autoethnographic research on Volkswagen Campervan, filling a gap in knowledge concerning mobile homes in lifestyle mobilities. The article unpacks the domestic rituals, homely feelings and family memories that are contained within these vehicles. We also explore the social relations that are formed and performed on the move, as being is always being-with others. The case of campervans shows that home is a journey as well as a place, a question of becoming as well as emplacement.

‘Terres vaines et vagues’: Ecocriticism and Breton Wastelands in Visual and Literary Representation

Despite their long histories as a culturally valuable commons and sites of biodiversity, the Breton landes were frequently depicted by nineteenth-century authors, travellers and administrators as wild, unproductive wastelands. While the architects of France's ‘interior colonization’ identified such areas as an ugly, infertile expanse to be cleared and put to use, many visual artists were producing a compelling counter-narrative, representing the landes and zones humides as places of beauty and reverie. This article examines the work of artists such as François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé and Henri Rivière from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that their work contributed to a discourse of preservation by encouraging new ways of seeing the land, not for its extractive utility but as a space of unexpected splendour and enchantment. Far from a regressive form of nostalgia, these images encourage a unique ‘dwelling perspective’ which uses aesthetic beauty to reveal the area's ecological potential and to articulate a call for responsible environmental stewardship.

「棲まう者の観点」からの津波避難行動の検討 民俗学と防災学の協働の試み

「棲まう者の観点」からの津波避難行動の検討 民俗学と防災学の協働の試み

Organisational strategy making and first-line manager challenges: a building and dwelling perspective

Organisational strategy making and first-line manager challenges: a building and dwelling perspective

The Edibility Approach, Chemical Ecology and Relationality. Methodological and Ethnobotanical Contributions

This paper combines ethnographic and ethnobotanical fieldwork with the edibility approach (EA), chemical ecology and Ingold’s ontology of dwelling. The EA aims to “push harder onto and through the boundaries between edible plants and the human-animals that eat them to consider the outcomes produced as a result of these interacting materials” (Attala 2017, 130). This approach places ingestion in the light of multispecies entanglement. As proposed by Attala, this is still a philosophically “open” concept, of limited operational use in ethnographic (ethnobotanical) study. Our article argues for an expansion of the EA, based on this combined perspective and giving more attention to cross-species interactions placed in an environmental context. Our cases are about how people live with plants, exemplified by foraging practices of agriculturists in Ukraine, Daghestan and Argentina. The everyday social relations of our interlocutors are more-than-human interactions, and in these relations we pay a close attention to non-cultivated edible plants. We present two modes of writing ethnographies, in which we focus respectively on a single plant taxon or a group of plants, and where both people and plants are protagonists. We argue that incorporating the dwelling perspective and chemical ecology into the EA is one of the potentially fruitful approaches to the analysis of plant – people relations. The use of language and of the tools of ecology in an attempt to present different aspects of co-dwelling of people and plants, although it may seem anchored in Cartesian dualism, in fact allows for a deeper understanding of the relations among protagonists and their co-dwellers in the environment, and hence goes against dualisms. The relations and the ways through which organisms co-create their environment are the very essence of ecology. The close collaboration of anthropologists, ethnobotanists, ecologists and chemical ecologists is postulated in the article.

Existentially understanding tourism in locale: A dwelling perspective

This study draws heavily on Heidegger's post turn thinking of dwelling to provide a philosophically informed approach to comprehend host perceptions of tourism. The philosophical premise of dwelling, including (to) poetically dwell and the fourfold, existentially conceptualizes the host community and destination site as a oneness where host perceptions are formed and tourism-created consequences occur. A hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation of a village-based tourism initiative in China demonstrates that guanxi as the manner of dwelling fundamentally frames how a local destination community perceives tourism; in turn, the ongoing tourism development has profoundly influenced the hosts' existential condition (i.e., the fourfold), leading them to unpoetically dwell.

Ecotourism discourses in Bhutan: contested perceptions and values

Ecotourism has often been characterized and employed as a panacea for sustainable development. Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom, follows suit promoting ecotourism within the framework of Gross National Happiness (GNH), a home-grown development philosophy derived from a Buddhist ethic and Bhutanese values. The investigation of three ecotourism ventures in Bhutan provides ethnographic evidence of divergences from previous social and human–environment relations. These divergences are representative of an underlying neoliberal logic and discourse driving the ecotourism sector. Departing from conventional analyses of ecotourism that emphasize its material nature, we treat it as a discursive process that has critical sociocultural implications. Employing a dwelling perspective [Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge], we conceptualize evolving perceptions of Bhutanese communities that engage in the sector, finding that ambiguity related to the GNH concept allows a neoliberal logic to infiltrate local understandings and practices. Part of this entails promotion of a particular environmental subject [Agrawal, A. (2005). Environmentality: Technologies of government and the making of subjects. London: Duke University Press] that manifests in local people’s evolving perceptions of the environment.

Theatricality and the Construction of ‘Skill’

This article offers a counterpoint to recent proposals to renew contemporary British theatre through a ‘turn to the crafts’, in which emphasis is placed on the capacity of all artists to reflect on and reimagine the structures in which they are embedded, just as artisans find themselves thinking through the material with which they work. These proposals understate the extent to which theatre is distinguished from other art forms by the degree to which the framing of actions before an audience holds any such synthesis of the material and the conceptual at bay, however slightly. In the contemporary moment, theatre’s most distinctive function might be to provide a space where ideas of skill are isolated and constructed, not merely executed. This argument is developed by highlighting the role that theatricality already plays in recent (and otherwise more general) theories of skill. For Richard Sennett, theatrical encounters are paradigmatic of the way in which collaborative social relations depend upon participants recognising the distinct, codified skills of others. In contrast, Tim Ingold’s anti-theatrical prejudice is born of a desire to refuse the need for such abstraction and codification, in favour of reviving a ‘dwelling perspective’. To recognise, instead, that theatrical works are inevitably interventions within an inhabited environment, as well as interventions in it, suggests that Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ is always-already compromised and commodified. This analysis provides the context for an interpretation of Secret Theatre’s 2014-15 devised performance A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts, to assess the extent to which the collaborative reskilling that explicitly informed the show’s production was carried over (and was intended to be carried over) into its reception by audiences. The conclusion draws on Michael Fried to suggest that an ambivalence towards ‘the crafts’ in recent British theatrical culture is indicative of an ongoing ambivalence towards modernism.

Organisational strategy making and first-line manager challenges: A building and dwelling perspective

This study explores challenges confronted by first-line managers as strategy-makers within organisational frontline contexts, referred to as sites where customers and clients as end-users are served on a day-to-day basis. In the study, Heideggerian building and dwelling perspectives are used as conceptual foundations. A building perspective implies deliberate strategy making based on goals usually determined by upper-level management. From a dwelling perspective on the other hand, strategy making is conducted non-deliberately by actors immersed in a relationally constituted nexus of social activity, as practical coping. Challenges confronted by first-line managers as strategy-makers within organisational frontline contexts as dwelling contexts are discussed, and implications for organisational strategy making as well as for the education of strategy-makers are elaborated.

Dwelling and tourism: embracing the non-representational in the tourist landscape

ABSTRACTThe dwelling perspective outlines that landscapes are the product of embodied actions and practices. Landscape scholars studying tourism and tourism scholars studying landscapes have neglected to apply this perspective to local realities. Tourism most often represents an activity to integrate to the landscape, rather than a complex socio-spatial phenomenon. When embodiments are studied, it is generally to speak of the tourist experience. I propose using the dwelling perspective to infuse tourist landscapes with the non-representational ethos of materiality and embodiment. My proposition acknowledges the socio-cultural complexities that the tourist system imposes on local people, and addresses landscape as a material realm where there is constant interplay between localised practices and tourism dynamics. This perspective centres scientific conversations on the complex, yet mundane, experience of inhabiting tourist landscapes. Scholars should consider the impacts of tourism on living spaces as they contribute to the formation of language influencing planners and politicians.

The Wrath of Zemi

Drawing on more than twenty years of research and long-term in-depth field experience in the Neotropics, this article argues for an indigenous methodology for predicting the arrival of hurricanes in the Caribbean. The archaeological site under study is Anse à la Gourde on Guadeloupe (French West Indies), here discussed in conjunction with a theoretical underpinning in Indigenous Amazonian cosmologies and ethnoastronomy. The conceptualisation for this study goes back to an experience that the author had during archaeological field school in 1995, and it is through a paradigm-shifting "dwelling perspective" that the author has been able to make sense of his original perceptions. During the further development of this innovative hypothesis on hurricane prediction by the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus emerged an alternative hypothesis for a momentous dividing moment in Caribbean archaeology, namely the end of the Saladoid around AD 800.

Den topografiske vending og læring i praksis

The educational research and practice field usually does not incorporate concepts such as space, place and materiality in the understanding of learning in any concerted way. Traditionally learning has instead either been understood as a cognitive phenomenon or a socially constructed process. In particular, the cognitive understanding of learning has gained influence in our education system. Drawing on British anthropologist, Tim Ingold’s Heidegger-inspired understanding of learning as dwelling, this article presents an alternative to the cognitive understanding of learning. The article reports from an ongoing research project at an agricultural school for young students with learning difficulties. Videorecorded observations of a student with learning difficulties learning to milk in a milking pit are presented and used to discuss learning from a dwelling perspective. It is argued that students’ participation and active engagement in authentic learning settings both facilitate their learning and professional identity development.

Ju/'hoansi Lodging in a Namibian Conservancy: CBNRM, Tourism and Increasing Domination

Following Ingold's dwelling perspective, the world comes into being because an organism/person is continuously interacting with his/her environment through bodily activity. Ingold contrasts dwelling with building; in the latter, people construct the world cognitively before they can live in it. In this paper, we add the concept of 'lodging' to refer to a situation in which people live in an environment that contains increasing dominating powers. Under the influence of conservation and the implementation of a Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme, with a strong focus on tourism, the environment of the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia has changed dramatically. In this paper, we use various examples to show how the environment has become more dominant, often in very subtle ways. We argue that the Ju/'hoansi do not dwell as they used to, but lodge instead in an environment that is increasingly influenced by CBNRM and tourism activities. Some of the Ju/'hoansi's agency has become limited to acquiescing; they passively adapt to and cope with the changes in their environment, while others have shown a more active adaptation strategy.

Disease as Dwelling: Sustaining Life with HIV in Post-displacement Northern Uganda

ABSTRACTIn this article, I draw on an ethnographic study focused on the experiences of internally displaced people living with HIV/AIDS in northern Uganda between 2006 and 2013; in particular, I explore the ways in which they have navigated the effects of conflict, displacement, and post-conflict return movements. Here, I argue that disease, more than simply a vulnerability or a social identity, became a way of dwelling with displacement and in the post-displacement landscape. I argue here that a dwelling perspective, derived and adapted from the work of Tim Ingold, provides a lens into understanding the intertwined embodied, social and environmental concerns of people living with HIV in the post-conflict situation. Sustaining life with HIV requires securing food and medication, ensuring networks of care, but also orientation in a changing material and social landscape; without these the disease could be terminal even with access to treatment. This is a particular concern for HIV-positive women who are often denied access to land. In making these arguments I seek to move beyond a dominant public health perspective on HIV and post-conflict return – focused on ‘vulnerability’ and health services - and show that disease becomes integral to social and territorial relations. The perspective of disease as dwelling also aims to advance anthropological perspectives on HIV by focusing on the ways in which sustaining life with HIV/AIDS involves an embodied encounter with a wider landscape, itself formed through natural and political forces.

LA DWELLING PERSPECTIVE COME CRITICA DELL’ARCHITETTURA MODERNA NEL PENSIERO DI TIM INGOLD

This essay focuses on Tim Ingold’s philosophy of architecture, with particular reference to ideas such as “flexibility”, “complexity” and “ecology”, which are crucial to understanding the «dwelling perspective» developed by the author. The dwelling perspective is the attempt to reconsider architectural practices from the inhabitant’s “experiential” point of view, beyond the purely architectural interest in forms and aesthetics. This perspective is based on a phenomenological and pragmatical approach to arts and human practices which is meant to achieve the viewpoint of the everyday life’s «ordinary hero» (de Certeau): the common man. This is an alternative vision to modern architecture’s “top down” model. In the present contribution I also maintain the affinity of Ingold’s thought with the classical philosophical anthropology in order to better contextualize his perspective on human nature from which derives also his dwelling perspective.

Paisajes urbanos, diferencia y desigualdad. El caso de La Boca en Buenos Aires

El propósito de este artículo es reflexionar críticamente en torno a la noción de paisaje y sus vinculaciones con modos -diferenciados y desiguales- de imaginar y habitar la ciudad. El análisis se sustenta en un estudio de caso en La Boca, un barrio de la zona sur de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, donde confluyen procesos de reconversión urbana y déficit habitacional. Desde un abordaje etnográfico junto al uso de fuentes secundarias, el trabajo explora las principales características y transformaciones socioespaciales del barrio en relación con el resto de la ciudad. El artículo focaliza en prácticas de habitantes y usuarios, en diálogo con distintas aproximaciones al concepto de paisaje, y con estudios que destacan la relación entre una estetización de las ciudades contemporáneas y un modelo exclusivo de ciudad. Desde una perspectiva del habitar -centrada en las prácticas urbanas- el enfoque propuesto procura tomar en cuenta las tensiones e imbricaciones entre los “paisajes urbanos cotidianos” de sus habitantes y los “paisajes culturales” orientados a un consumo visual, incorporando en el análisis las relaciones desiguales de poder.