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- Convenors:
-
Ólafur Rastrick
(University of Iceland)
Ingrid Martins Holmberg (Department of Conservation, University of Gothenburg)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- HERITAGE
- Location:
- Room H-201
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
People have experiences in and of places and remember past experiences as emplaced. Such encounters can translate to emotional relations with places. The panel is open for theoretical, methodological and case-specific contributions focusing on people-place relations in the historic urban landscape.
Long Abstract:
People form emotional relationships with places, not the least places that in different ways are seen to embody the past. Such relations do not only emerge with sites of assigned heritage value, but also with ordinary landscapes of the everyday environment, relations determined by repeated encounters that impact the meaning of place for a person or collective. People have experiences in and of places and remember past experiences as emplaced. Such experiences and acts of remembering are often influenced by received knowledge and values, but importantly they are also induced by affective engagement with the historic landscape.
In the wake of calls for reassessment of the balance between what is valued and who ascribes value to historic urban landscape this panel is focused on exploring people-place relations. This will include reflexions on place attachment, a notion adopted to heritage studies from environmental psychology and humanist geography to examine how a more people-centred approach to built heritage could be developed for an enhanced understanding the emotional ties that people form and cultivate with place. The panel seeks to draw together innovative studies exploring why and how people form emotional attachment to historic urban landscapes. It is open for papers focusing on methodological, theoretical and case specific examinations of urban heritage and people-place relations. These include papers on sensory methodologies, emotional attachment to ordinary historical landscapes and the role of place in processes of remembrance and communal heritage negotiations.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines three research projects that used Visual Research Methodologies (VRM) to understand emotional engagement and sense of place in urban Australia. It argues that VRM allow the recording and sharing of micro interactions with ‘ordinary’ heritage often obscured by traditional methods.
Paper long abstract:
Community-driven involvement in heritage practice has been advocated through a number of key texts and case studies, chronicling not only its successes, but also the pitfalls and limitations of grass-roots participation. However, according to Beilin (2005), participatory approaches provide a way of recognising the ‘everyday’ through which most social worlds are created and sustained. This ‘everyday’ is constituted through engagement with place, and there is a long history of research into the cultural production of meaningful places in a variety of disciplines. However, new questions are being asked about the relationship between technical knowledge, and historical and heritage expertise, and how social and popular media forms be harnessed to find new ways of engaging communities around heritage places and issues. Such engagement is cognitive, emotional and behavioural (Ponzetti 2003 in Smith 2017) and multi-sensory (Crang and Toila-Kelly 2010) which raises issues related to the ability of traditional ‘talk only’ methodologies to understand the complexities of these engagements (Middleton 2010).
This paper critically examines three recent research projects that have used Visual Research Methodologies (VRM) to understand emotional engagement and sense of place. It argues that VRM provides a way of recording and sharing the micro interactions with ‘ordinary’ heritage places that are often obscured by traditional methodologies. As such VRM enhance our understand of the interrelationships between place, heritage, and identity, and contributes to contemporary debates about ideas of surface and depth in our affective attachment to place.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to analyze how inhabitants from four districts, build during Soviet era (Dainava, Kalniečiai, Eiguliai, Šilainiai) perceives and remembers the material environment of the public spaces through the senses of their body. These experiences impacts the formation of their urban identities.
Paper long abstract:
The paper aims to analyze the characteristics of public spaces in the memories of inhabitants from four post- Soviet districts (Dainava, Kalniečiai, Eiguliai, Šilainiai) of Kaunas city - second biggest city of Lithuania.
The inhabitants of these microdistricts perceives the material environment of the public spaces of the district through the senses of their body. These sensual and emotional experiences are being transformed into memories that help to identify with or separate from the urban environment.
The analysis of the narratives of 115 respondents revealed that living in these post-soviet parts of the city, which lack visible signs of important events of collective memory, impacts the formation of their identities related to these specific parts of the city and allows for the formation of an indefinite or displaced identities.
Paper short abstract:
Rap’s performances provide a sense of locality, authenticity and belonging to urban landscapes. The Finnish rap scene from Espoo connects to global scenes by using tropes from local and global conversations. In which ways can rap form different affective attachments between places and people?
Paper long abstract:
Hip Hop was born in New York and its neighbourhoods, which have provided a blueprint for rappers all around the world to follow when telling their stories. Urban landscapes form multifaceted relationships between places and people that are present in the different performances produced by the artists. Rap and Hip Hop have been a part of the Finnish cultural landscape since the 1980s. Finnish rap has grown from an underground genre into the mainstream and has a following spanning all aspects of society.
Rap provides tools for processing various affects that space and place can provoke. Artists can e.g. use tropes to indicate their love/hate relationships with the places they grew up in in their performances, or write about specific space/place experiences. The meaning of place in rap is connected to other local and global spaces through Hip Hop’s global authenticity conversations. The Finnish locality discussion also touches on a strong sense of belonging and the idea of a home (or lack thereof).
My dissertation investigates these conversations within the second largest city in Finland, Espoo. Artists from the city negotiate the meanings of space and place in their performances by using e.g. humorous elements, global tropes and local knowledge. Performance provides a sense of locality, authenticity and belonging for the local and national audiences. The presentation explores the ways in which rap can form different affective attachments between places and people.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will focus on specific experiences related to Pārdaugava (district of Riga) that are emphasised by people involved in dance in their daily lives. Although it might seem that only the process of dancing is important, the place in the urban environment is also crucial.
Paper long abstract:
In 2021 Archives of Latvian Folklore started a research project "Urban Experiences: Narratives, Memories and Place Heritage", that focuses on Pārdaugava – the historical Riga's district of the left bank of river Daugava. In the first phase of the project, we interviewed residents of the city to hear how they see the city, what words they use to describe it, which are the most important places in the neighborhoods, how they perceive historical sites in the city. One part of this project is also the Latvian dance scene, that includes folk dance and stage folk dance.
I will focus on different places that are important for folk dance and stage folk dance representers. What words do the representatives use to describe the urban environment, which is an essential part of dancing. Dance rehearsals are mostly held in cultural centres and educational institutions. However, more unusual urban venues also emerge in the interviews – “Sun circle”, a hill in the park etc. Historical buildings appear in the stories of the informants as key places where important events took place. They are emotionally attached to them, despite the fact that sometimes the buildings are not in the best condition to dance in. All that shapes the narratives of the city, which is important to be aware of today, as the majority of society still lives in cities. This presentation will focus on specific experiences that are emphasised by people involved in dance in their daily lives.
Paper short abstract:
Introducing case studies from Iceland, the paper discusses how ethnographic understanding of emotional engagement and attachment to historic sites and urban heritage can contribute to community dialog and involvement in decision-making on the safeguarding of cultural heritage.
Paper long abstract:
People form different attachments to built environment. This applies to places that are seen to embody the past or are commonly regarded as heritage. Though such subjective issues can be seen as foundational for a sense of belonging and community they tend to be ill suited to fit the ways urban areas are managed. Both cultural heritage management and urban planning are highly regulated fields and although participation has become the buzz-word of the day, authorities and specialists dominate all decision-making processes. But how do authorities attempt to incorporate the different attachment and engagement that people form with the urban landscape and cultural heritage into their administrative processes?
The paper introduces an ongoing doctoral research project examining participation with respect to safeguarding cultural heritage of the urban environment. Two different cases from Iceland are examined by way of in-depth interviews and observational fieldwork identifying different perspectives and values people attach to urban heritage. The project also analyses the legal framework around cultural heritage as well as the approaches that authorities take to identify and interpret cultural heritage and its safeguarding.
Drawing on the cases the paper addresses if and how authorities have succeeded or failed to facilitate community dialog and involvement regarding safeguarding of urban heritage. In conclusion, the paper argues that an ethnographically informed understanding of how people engage with and attach meaning to urban heritage is imperative for enhancing participatory model in heritage management, designed to attract and facilitate participation from heritage communities in negotiating the urban landscape.