Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Some Implications of Malpas’ Place and Experience for Place Ethics and Education
John I. Cameron
Cameron is a faculty member in the program in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney. This commentary is based on excerpts from a longer article, “Educating for Place Responsiveness: An Australian Perspective on Ethical Practice,” to be published later this year in the academic journal Ethics, Place and Environment. j.cameron@uws.edu.au. © 2004 John I. Cameron.
J.E. Malpas’ Place and Experience (Malpas 1999) is part of a renewal of attention to the subject of place by philosophers (Casey 1993, 1997) and, more recently, by writers on environmental ethics (Stefanovic 2000, Smith 2001).
I had occasion to review Malpas’ work while reflecting upon the ethical and educational implications of place-responsiveness work I have been undertaking in Australia. By “place-responsive,” I mean a society whose institutions and customs nurture and support a rich, deep connection with land and place (Cameron 2001; Plumwood 2000).
As an educator committed to the goal of moving towards a place-responsive society, I have been actively involved in engendering place responsiveness with university students, conference participants, and other members of the public. Through running experientially-oriented courses on sense of place, national colloquia on place, and researching with local community members, I have sought to foster an inclusive love of place as a deep motivation for an environmental ethic.
Coming into this work from a conservationist background and being motivated by a strong environmental ethic has sometimes been a challenge. It has led to three major questions of ethical practice:
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Does it generate positive environmental and social outcomes?
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How to bring depth experience and critical thinking together?
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How to engage with indigenous knowledge?
The philosophical topography traversed by Malpas, especially when considered in combination with Stefanovic’s (2000) place-based ethics, has helped me think about these questions constructively.
Place and Experience
In Place and Experience, Malpas (1999) does not mention directly the word ‘ethics’, but makes such a thorough investigation of the philosophy of place from first principles that it provides a substantial basis for examination of my place responsiveness work.
Malpas contends that much writing about place misses the point by effectively describing place as human response to physical surroundings as distinct from mere location in objective space. In books such as Tuan’s Topophilia (1974), ‘it is not place as such that is important, but just the idea of human responsiveness – a responsiveness that need not itself be grounded in any concept of place or locality at all’ (Malpas, 1999, p. 30). I have encountered this phenomenon also in those students who lost sight of the place itself in the intensity of the personal experiences the encounter with place triggered.
The best way to describe the relationship between place and experience, Malpas suggests, is not to talk of the experience of place as if place were one of a number of things that could be experienced, but that it is the complex structure of place itself that makes experience, any human experience, possible at all.
He carefully maps this structure of place by surveying the interconnected elements that are contained within it – objective and subjective space, self-subjectivity and other-subjectivity, memory and mental states (thoughts, feelings, experiences), action and narrative. He draws out the structural interdependencies of all these elements within place, for example, how memories are nested within each other the way places are nested within other places with multiple and overlapping connections.
Neither objective nor subjective space can be grasped without the possibility of the other, and both are required for the intersubjective space opened up between two people encountering the same object. The narrative structuring of mental states constitutes the self and the possibility of agency. Actions are nested in personal projects that are nested in larger narratives that structure place and are structured by place. As a result:
To have a sense of one’s own identity….is to have a sense, not of some simple underlying self that is one’s own, but rather of a particular place in the world. While the having of such a sense of place consists in having a grasp of a conceptually complex structure – a structure that encompasses different forms of spatiality, concepts of self, of others and of an objective order of things – it is also a sense of place that is necessarily articulated linguistically (p. 152).
While Malpas notes in conclusion that he has not directly discussed the practical, moral, and political implications of his work, he has provided a framework within which they might be considered. For example, he suggests that ‘the complex structure of place…..suggest[s] that the idea of place does not so much bring a certain politics with it, as define the very frame within which the political itself must be located’ (p. 198). If we substitute ‘ethics’ for ‘politics’ in that sentence, it reads just as satisfactorily as a basis for rethinking ethics.
Malpas’ exposition of the complex structure of place itself illuminates why rediscovering childhood sense of place became important for my students. Childhood memories of place are not merely an interesting side issue, far less to be dismissed as nostalgia. They are critical to self-identity, to the narratives we develop about our lives, and to our capacity for self-reflection (pp 182-183).
Malpas also notes that as we age, such places and memories become increasingly significant to us, according to psychological studies of autobiographical memory. It may be no coincidence that most of my students and members of the colloquium are mature-aged, often in their forties or fifties, and it suggests that education for place responsiveness should prioritize work with childhood place memories, especially when working with mature-aged people.
Malpas’ emphasis on the primacy of narrative in structuring experiences, a sense of self, taking action in the world, and place itself provides a philosophical foundation for working with story in place education (Cameron, Mulligan & Wheatly 2003; Hay 2001; Mulligan 2003). In addition to validating my use of ‘a storied sense of place’ in classes and workshops, his work suggests the value of exploring the interconnections between self, place, and action.
It is not simply a matter of place containing and being structured by stories – our very sense of who we are as individuals is a narrative connected intimately with place, Malpas says, and the possibility of our being able to take action is structured by narrative and place. Thus there may be value in encouraging students to consider notions of selfhood and capacity for action in narrative terms, and then relate those stories to significant places in their lives – something that some of them have done already.
More generally for education, Malpas’ work suggests that whatever else place education does, it must begin to draw out the consequences of place being the structure that enables any human experiencing to occur. Place education becomes broadened and deepened by the understanding that coming to terms with the structures of our dwelling places, past and present, enables us to grasp how we structure our lives and sense of ourselves, as individuals and as members of a culture.
As Malpas’ critique of Tuan implies, it is not enough to treat place as a vehicle for developing human responsiveness – the ability to listen, to engage deeply in relationship with other beings, to open the imagination and all the physical senses to another, and so on.
These abilities can be cultivated in a variety of ways, and it is a worthy thing to do, but it’s only half the battle. The other half is to acknowledge the particular quality of the structure of place; any place, that is, and not just special sites. The challenge, perhaps, is to give practical expression to the view that the idea of place redefines the very frame within which education itself must be located.
Towards an Ethic of Place
Malpas’ work, viewed in this way, might provide a philosophical grounding for Ingrid Stefanovic’s (2000) place-based ethics that was recently reviewed in this newsletter by Kenneth Maly (2001). She is one of several recent writers who have explicitly considered what an ethics of place or a philosophy of place and experience might be (Callicott 1994; Fox 1990; Plumwood 1003, 2002; Salleh 1997; Singer 1975).
In rethinking sustainability, Stefanovic introduces the notion of ‘place’ into environmental ethics. She arrives at a place-based ethic that ‘aims to guide us in our actions, not through the imposition of static principles and rules, but instead by teaching the meaning of attunement to a balanced fitting relation between human beings and their world’ (p. 117). This ethic ‘respects the bonds that tie us to our dwelling places but [is] one that allows for continuing dialogue as we collectively reflect on environmental questions of right and wrong’ (p. 135).
Because I have journeyed through environmentalism to the phenomenology of place, I am particularly interested in Stefanovic’s attempt to bring phenomenology to environmental ethics. It is noteworthy that she advocates an ethic that provides guidance through teaching the meaning of attunement and right relationship with the world.
She establishes the centrality of educational processes in a place-based ethics, and thus demonstrates the significance of place responsiveness work for an understanding of what an ethics of place might be in practice. She includes a section on phenomenology and environmental education that considers how to promote grounded ecological values, and takes up the relationship between critical thinking and place awareness.
In his review of Stefanovic’s book, Maly (2001) draws out the tension in her work between attunement to being-in-place and environmental questions of right and wrong. Calling for an ethic to do both these things might be considered to be glossing over the inherent difficulties, except for the fact that Stefanovic provided specific examples of how this might be done.
Her third case study is particularly informative and describes involving the community of Short Hills Park in developing a ‘bottom-up’ environmental code of ethics for the park. She discusses her role as a phenomenologist in drawing out converging images of the park as well as critically analysing the value-laden and conflicting claims of participants. She concludes that:
the iterative process of evolving a code of ethics for Short Hills Park does suggest the possibility that ethics is neither a linear product of philosophical theorizing nor merely a sociological accumulation of viewpoints. Rather, what emerged on this project was a role for philosophy of mediating between concrete place-based needs and critical thinking about the broader implications of how best to collectively reconcile those needs (p 169-170).
If the place-based needs are understood to arise from attunement to being-in-place, and the need for mediation stems out of critical thinking about different experiences and values regarding the park, then Stefanovic is working with the same dynamic between experience and critical awareness that I have been raising.
It is interesting to note that it is not a simple oppositional dynamic. As her discussion of education reveals, critical thinking about taken-for-granted experience is required in order for students to move beyond the ‘natural attitude’. That is, depth experience and critical awareness are in creative tension, sometimes necessary for each other, sometimes apparently pulling students in different directions. Stefanovic’s case study provides an example of how to work with this tension in a practical ethical setting.
It is significant that it was an iterative process, requiring the moving back and forth between identifying images and needs and reflecting upon emerging conflicts. It also was a mediated activity, necessitating someone outside the immediate community being able to hold the power of people’s experiences and expressed needs as well as the conflict. The latter confirms our experience in the local research and the colloquia, and the former is a valuable addition to the criteria for successful place-based processes.
Narratives of Place
Narrative emerges from this discussion as a ‘central organizing principle’ of place and identity, although as Malpas reminds us, place both structures and is structured by narrative. The narratives that are embedded in a culture’s landscapes and memory can be viewed both as stories that connect us and stories that make us different. Each point of view is helpful in breaking down the potential for local place relationships to be devalued by the experience of extraordinary places that appear to have their own special characteristics.
The fact that all places and all cultures have their narratives (about how country came into being and is maintained, how humans and non-humans are related, how conflicts are resolved, and so on) might be a starting point for a discussion about which narratives are dominant and why, and whether new narratives can be enacted.
Critical environmental and social awareness is clearly important to an ethical process that can occur at many different levels, from a code of ethics for a local park to national debates on reconciliation and place – which of the stories we tell ourselves and implicitly live by, or would like to live by, are more likely to lead to ecological sustainability and the flourishing of difference?
The central role for place education in any movement towards a sustainable society has been well established by Stefanovic. The tension in educational practice between facilitation of deep place experiences and reflecting upon them while maintaining critical awareness of their broader environmental and social implications, proves to be a significant and creative tension in the emerging field of place ethics.
Individual and collective learning need to take place, from experience and critical awareness of the structural issues, and both have to be included in an ethical place education.
A way forward is suggested by Stefanovic’s mediated iterative process for group work and the suspension of outcome orientation and judgment to allow the experience to speak for itself prior to critical reflection for individual work.
Malpas observes that it is insufficient to use place experiences in an education for general human responsiveness. By implication, a genuine, ethical place education must enable students to learn the ways in which place itself makes human experience possible. A starting point is to accord childhood place memories greater significance in educational development and self-understanding.
An equally important step is to make more conscious those personal and cultural narratives that often subconsciously structure our sense of personal identity and sense of place. Such educational initiatives, like the practical experience of philosophers such as Stefanovic with local park residents, will assist in working through what an ethics of place might be in practice.
This review of Malpas’ work and its connection with Stefanovic’s research has focused only on its implications for place ethics and education. If indeed it is the complex structuring of place itself that makes any human experience possible at all, the implications for all fields of human endeavour are profound. This is not a simple deterministic view that we are creatures of place, but an understanding of the structural interdependencies of subjectivity, experience, memory and action within place.
It is something to become aware of, not to be taken for granted. What we do with—and in—the places within which we dwell and raise our children has everything to do with our humanity and our future.
References
Callicott, J. (1994) Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Cameron J. (2001) Place, belonging and ecopolitics: Learning our way towards the place-responsive society, Ecopolitics, 1 (2), 18-34.
Cameron J. (2003) Responding to place in a post-colonial era: An Australian perspective, in Adams, W. and Mulligan, M., eds., Decolonising Nature, Earthscan, London.
Cameron, J., Mulligan, M. and Wheatley, V. (2003) Building a place-responsive society through inclusive local projects and networks, paper accepted for publication in Local Environment [forthcoming].
Casey, E. (1993) Getting Back into Place, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.
Casey, E. (1997) The Fate of Place, University of California Press, Berkeley, California.
Fox, W. (1990) Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambhala, Boston
Hay, P. (2001) Writing Place: Unpacking an Art Exhibition Catalogue Essay in Cameron, J. ed., Changing Places: Reimagining Sense of Place in Australia, University of Western Sydney, Richmond.
Malpas, J. (1999) Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Maly, K. (2001) Finding a way to rethink sustainability, Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter, vol. 12, no. 2, pp 12-15.
Mulligan, M. (2003) Feet to the ground in storied landscapes, in Adams, W. and Mulligan, M., eds., Decolonising Nature, Earthscan, London.
Plumwood, V. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London.
Plumwood, V. (2000) Belonging, naming and decolonisation, Ecopolitics, 1(1), 90-106.
Plumwood, V. (2002) Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason, Routledge, London.
Salleh, A. (1997) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern, Zed, London.
Singer, P. (1975) Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for the Treatment of our Animals, Random House, New York.
Smith, M. (2001) An Ethics of Place: Radical Ecology, Postmodernity and Social Theory, SUNY Press, Albany, New York.
Stefanovic, I. (2000) Safeguarding our Common Future, SUNY Press, Albany, New York.
Tuan, Y-F. (1974) Topophilia, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
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