Paper short abstract:

Experiences of time vary between groups of people across the world, the various tasks we undertake in our daily routines and the stages of life we go through. This paper will address how the plurality of time factors into perceptions of wind turbines in the Orkney Islands, UK.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will examine three different people's perceptions of wind turbines in the Orkney Islands, an archipelago of approximately 20,000 residents off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The turbines are a recent introduction, and provide a crucial opening into how the various residents perceive both the Orcadian landscape and its position in time. Combining the phenomenological approach to landscape with a symbolic analysis, I explore how the turbines can be seen as symbols that are constituted and reconstituted throughout time. In so doing I demonstrate the myriad temporal perceptions and experiences people in Orkney have; although singular the variety in experiences allows for a plurality of this place, which itself is intimately tied to a plurality of both time and meaning. These pluralities, which I frequently refer to as different 'Orkney imaginations,' allude to a range of values associated with the turbines, themselves intimately tied into differing notions of the relationship between nature and sociality.