| Summary: |
What simple tools are available in any social landscape or built environment for studying meanings of place? How can one metaphorically enter “through the front door” of a spatial study? This illustrated lecture focuses on the eighty islands of Vanuatu, the former New Hebrides in the southwest Pacific, to describe an anthropological, fieldwork-based approach to understanding what places mean to different users. My 1992 article, “Empowering Place,” in American Anthropologist laid the foundation for methods I have developed over the past twelve years. These methods respond to particular fieldwork experiences in places ranging from rural hamlets to national-level colonial housing. The presentation will discuss the theoretical basis for the methods, their use in fieldwork, and their wider applicability. Attention will be paid to ways of accessing social constructions of space through people’s experiences of landscapes and buildings in the present and in the past. Particular attention will be given to memory, to visual images, and to the use of textual materials (letters, archival files, maps, and plans) in accessing contingent meanings of place. The presentation concludes with suggestions regarding the adaptation of this approach to other research situations.
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