Exploration Of Place Research Articles

Inside Out: Time and Place in Global Ireland

Inside Out: Time and Place in Global Ireland Michael Cronin The piper, it is said, calls the tune, but in Ireland he is often expected in addition to explain it. The great piper and folklore collector Séamus Ennis was no exception, and he frequently prefaced his tunes with an account of their origin. One such tune was “Cornphípopa na Sióg,” or the “Fairies Hornpipe” and Ennis’s story went as follows. A man returning home from a wedding loses his way and is told “if that happens to any of you, you have but to take off your coat and turn it inside-out and put it on again and you’ll find your way home alright.”1 The wedding reveler does this and he finds himself three fields away from his own house. At the bottom of the long field in which he finds himself there is a fairy host dancing to music played by a piper. Listening to the music, he falls asleep and when he awakes next morning and goes home to tell people what he saw, no one believes him. Only when they hear him play the tune he picked up from the fairies on the pipes do they decide he was not making it up. Thus, ever afterward the tune is known as the “Fairies Hornpipe.” In a twinkling, the wedding guest is transported to the vicinity of his house. The vignette from Irish folklore anticipates the phenomenon of space-time compression in modernity where successive generations find getting people and information from one point to another takes progressively less time. In Ennis’s story, losing your way also is about finding your way, but finding your way involves change, transformation, and inversion—“you have but to take off your coat and turn it inside-out.” The coordinates in the musical parable are space and time. What happens when trying to find out where you are might involve turning your world upside down before the sceptical welcome of home-coming? In contemporary, late-modern Ireland, changes in perceptions and experiences of place and time are having real-world consequences. The Czech novelist Milan Kundera, in his first French-language novel La Lenteur (1995), published in English as Slowness (1996), notes that when people try to remember, they slow down; when they want to forget, they accelerate. He describes a man walking down the street: [End Page 74] At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing too close to him in time.2 For Kundera, place is bound up with pace. The more you seek to get away from a place, the faster you go. Conversely, the slower you go, the more you become aware of place, and more particularly, the more you become aware of the place of memory. Mnemosyne for the writer is the deity of deceleration. It is not surprising, then, that when we go to look at narratives from contemporary Ireland, an exploration of place is going to involve the manipulation of time. In order to provide a properly stereoscopic view of a place at a particular moment, let us begin with two prose narratives, one in English and one in Irish, both published in 2007 and both dealing with the lives and characters of suburban Dubliners. The novels are The Gathering by Booker Prize winner Anne Enright, and Cnoc na Lobhar by Lorcán S. Ó Treasaigh. In Enright’s novel the death in England of a family member, Liam, brings the family together for his funeral, a story narrated principally by his sister Veronica, who is responsible for the repatriation of his body. The protagonist of Ó Treasaigh’s work, Labhrás, is in an old-folks home awaiting in bitter recrimination the inevitable end stop of death. Death and old age bring with them their own rhythms. Both works, then, are studies in the effects of a change in tempo, memories bustling in as a...

A Feminist Literary Cartography of the Canadian North: Women, writing and place in Aritha van Herk's Places Far From Ellesmere

This article examines the idea of North in Aritha van Herk's (1990) Places Far From Ellesmere, a feminist rereading of Anna Karenin that is also an exploration of place—Ellesmere Island—and of gender, identity and belonging. I situate my reading of Ellesmere firstly within feminist literary theory, focusing on the concept of intertextuality and on the implications of the concept, from the perspective of feminist theorists, for the acts of writing and reading. I further contextualise van Herk's work by outlining the growing sensitivity to the complexities of writing Canadian space in Canadian literary criticism. The focus then shifts to Ellesmere, beginning with an investigation of van Herk's representational practices and philosophies, which are organised around a critique of the relationship between writing, gender and power. I argue that van Herk's insistence upon the power of feminist textual rereadings, an insistence that results from her aversion to authority, critically shapes her geographical imaginary, and her understanding of North. By extending the text and thereby the practice of reading to geography, van Herk makes possible a feminist representation or rereading of the North that simultaneously contests the conventions of literature, of place and of gender. Ultimately, I argue that it is van Herk's commitment to investigate the processes of representation in which she is engaged that makes her representation of the North such a valuable text for feminist and literary geographers.

Faulkner and the Ecology of the South

Review: Faulkner and the Ecology of the South Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie (Eds.) Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller San Francisco, USA Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie (Eds.). Faulkner and the Ecology of the South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. 173 pp. ISBN: 1- 57806-782-0. $45.00 (trade cloth). Alkaline paper. From the 30th Annual Mississippi University Faulkner Conference (2003): Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, the editors have collected a group of papers focusing on the social ecology of William Faulkner's (1897-1962) oeuvre. Explored in ten essays is much of Faulkner's canon, which mostly centered on the documentaries depiction of the imagined southern Yoknapatawpha County and its residents. The authors explore Faulkner’s literary depiction of nature, a depiction that includes people in its ecological web. Ecology here is not solely about natural sciences or preservation, but is more broadly defined to include civilization and its denizens. In the introduction Joseph Urgo writes: By ecology we do not exclude the natural world, though what we have in mind is more akin to the idea of a human ecology, the interaction of humans with their environment--made and found, communities as well as habitats. (p. ix) This use of the word ecology expands upon the strict definition of Nature, which is sometimes assumed to exclude human culture. Faulkner, who died before Earth Day, never used the term ecology, and by environment he meant social ecology: human beings in conflict with their nature, their character, their souls, with others, or with their environment. Nature was sometimes part of his exploration of place, and one can find passages in which characters interact with and appreciate the natural world. As the contributors contend, humankind often plays a negative role in the ecology of Yoknapatawpha County. They bring with them a selfish genetic drive, which has caused devastation to land, community, civilization, and psyche. The drive to commit violence to others or the environment is equated with an ecological Darwinian imperative. Here one finds the rationale behind the religious right’s interest in contesting Darwinism, which in Yoknapatawpha County justifies and explains violence, crime, selfishness, and competition. Faulkner described the Snopes of his famous Snopes family trilogy (Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion): like an influx of snakes or varmints from the woods.” Religious teachings offer a

An exploration of place as a process: The case of Jackson Hole, WY

A variety of theoretical positions and frameworks have been advanced to account for how places become “places”—in other words, how places become meaningful. Most existing frameworks share the idea that a place is a complex concept, given life by people attaching meaning to a physical setting in a variety of ways. This paper explores how places evolve as ever-shifting points of meaning that mark changes in people's lives in response to a variety of influences. Data collected from in-depth personal interviews in and around Jackson, Wyoming, are used to explore the conceptualization of place as a process, rather than a static entity. Three key themes or dimensions that were frequently described by interviewees are examined: (1) life stage/course, (2) searching for a feeling, and (3) commitment to a place. Not only did some respondents describe what made places important to them (the components, such as social ties, or favorite activities), they also described how these attributes worked together to create and maintain place meanings over the course of their lives. During the interviews, it was noted that these dimensions and processes were expressed explicitly as well as implicitly.

Home is Where the Art is: Exploring the Places People Live through Art Education

Through an analysis of yard art in a town of upstate New York, the relevance of an ethnographic, cultural studies/visual culture approach to art education focused on issues regarding place is established. In light of art educators' interest in place, it is maintained that researchers should seek out and analyze art in particular places to explore social and ecological issues pertinent to people's lives. The conceptual and methodological tools employed in this study include a socio-ecological theory of place; articulation of the local and larger-than-local context; analysis of class differences within place; and, consideration of place identities in terms of spatial and class distinctions among places. The particular issues investigated ethnographically are recycling and the emergence of consumerism. Finally, it is suggested that the exploration of place indicates the need to locate and incorporate various kinds of art into art education.

Bound for Shady Grove (review)

Book Reviews199 Boundfor Shady Grove by Steven Harvey The University of Georgia Press, 2000 157 pages, cloth, $24.95 This collection of essays about the South and its music is weU crafted, lyrical , written by a keen observer of humankind. Steven Harvey clearly loves the Appalachians, the people and the music. One reviewer has said that Harvey "writes what's on his mind, but what's on his mind always seems to lead to somewhere else." I couldn't agree more. Yet there are times when where we start out is, itself, just fine. Harvey uses the seven modes of the diatonic scale—Ionian, Mixlyodian, Dorian, AcoUan, Phrygian, Lydian, and Locrian—to hold the essays together. Each section is prefaced by an explanation ofthe emotional constructs ofits associated scale. It seemed to me that this organization was more intrusive than organic—that it was distracting in an otherwise strong coUection of essays. Some of the best essays in Boundfor Shady Grove are "The Big Scioty," which is a very fine fiddle tune, and"Mountain Minor," which concerns the making and playing of an old time banjo. As someone professionaUy involved in the folk music scene, these are matters in which I have an interest , and they are also less subject to digression than some ofthe other works. In "Mountain Minor" Harvey writes, "With a banjo we are never more than a note away from woe." Happiness is fleeting, and reminders ofmortality are everywhere in the hard-fought lives of the Appalachian people. Harvey writes about songs that sing of murder, revenge, rebeUion, and retribution. The everyday matters of ordinary folk. Ifwe are but a note away from desperation and despair, we are also but a note away from its opposite: "... we lay our burden down when we kneel at the bank of a song," writes Harvey in "Dulcet Melodies." For a reader unfamiUar with the Ufe and culture of the Southern mountains , these essays paint a vivid and accurate picture. Harvey has a talent for sketching characters, from friends who bring him road kfll on a too-frequent basis (for instrument making, not eating), to boys buying guns, he creates pictures one does not soon forget. Enjoyable, too, are the snippets ofsong lyrics that pop up throughout the book. For me, they were old friends not recendy heard from. The title of the book comes from a great traditional banjo tune, with lyrics that change from region to region, and musician to musician. A 200Fourth Genre favorite version I learned twenty or so years ago fromJean Ritchie was sadly not in the book: "Wish I had a big black horse/Corn to feed him on/Pretty Uttle man to stay at home/Feed him when I'm gone . . . /Bound for Shady Grove." Throughout Boundfor Shady Grove Harvey aUows us to see that music offers more than a way to express our sorrow—it offers consolation and joy. Reviewed by Ruby Hoy A Stranger's Neighborhood by Donald Morrill Duquesne University Press, 1999 250 pages, cloth, $24.95; paper $16.95 Most travel literature aims toward an exploration ofplace, oflandscape and landmark, ofculture and human encounter. Ifjourneys ultimately begin and end with the self, however, as they do in Donald MorriU's A Stranger's Neighborhood—a book whose essays navigate the terrain not only of place, but of childhood, relationships, and emotion—the act of travel marks the traveler sooner than he can trace the wiggly lines on his map. Morrfll notes in "Shoes at Giverny" that "[t]he shoes of the travel writer are not those of the traveler, since travel literature is, ultimately, more about literature than travel." MorriU's book, in this sense, represents the best of travel narratives. It not only maps the places and people he has known, but it maps identity; it explores how the places we run from, and the places we run to, come to Ue at the core of who we are. MorriU's own travels spawned, he teUs us, from a compulsion to escape his place oforigin—Des Moines, Iowa—but they inevitably lead back to his familial terrain, to the most personal, sensitive landmarks ofhis experience. In his recountings...

Wisconsin Land and Life

Rolling green hills dotted with Holstein cows, red barns, and blue silos. The Great Lakes ports at Superior, Ashland, and Kenosha. A Polish wedding dance or a German biergarten in Milwaukee. The dappled quiet of the Chequamagon forest. A weatherbeaten but tidy town hall at the intersection of two county trunk highways. Ojibwa families gathering wild rice into canoes. The boat ride through the Dells. The upland ridges of the Driftless Area, falling away into hidden valleys. . . . These are images of Wisconsin's land and life, images that evoke a strong sense of place. This book, Land and Life, is an exploration of place, a series of original essays by Wisconsin geographers that offers an introduction to the state's natural environment, the historical processes of its human habitation, and the ways that nature and people interact to create distinct regional landscapes. To read it is to come away with a sweeping view of Wisconsin's geography and history: the glaciers that carved lakes and moraines; the soils and climate that fostered the prairies and great northern pine forests; the early Native Americans who began to shape the landscape and who established forest trails and river portages; the successive waves of Europeans who came to trade in furs, mine for lead and iron, cut the white pines, establish farms, work in the lumber and paper mills, and transform spent wheatfields into pasture for dairy cattle. Readers will learn, too, about the platting and naming of Wisconsin's towns, the establishment of county and township governments, the growth of urban neighborhoods and parishes, the role of rivers, railroads, and religion in shaping the state's growth, and the controversial reforestation of the cutover lands that eventually transformed hardscrabble farms and swamps into a sportsman's paradise. Abundantly illustrated with photos and maps, this book will richly reward anyone who wishes to learn more about the land and life of the place we know as Wisconsin.