Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Unlike social constructionism, dwelling stresses the physical, relational, sensual,
performative orchestration of body and space/environment. It differs from ANT in
that it retains a topographical interest in place, and bodies in place, whereas ANT
takes a more markedly topological approach that focuses on newly measured spa-
tially extended networks. Also the biology of the body is interpreted differently.
Dwelling is more focused on living organisms as a grouping than ANT (but is
interested in technologies as means of dwelt life). Given the remarkable vitality and
complexity of living things, set against human-generated technologies (still pretty
crude albeit with rudimentary vitality and complexity), this seems important.
Recent sociologies of nature suggest that dwelling overcomes confl icts between
(dualised) 'realist' and 'idealist' approaches to nature and environment (Macnaghten
and Urry, 1998). Franklin (2002) places it at the heart of a new anthropology of
nature focused on 'practice, practical knowledge, things, technologies and embodied
sensual experience' (p. 80). He pushes dwelling towards a more animated, turbulent
vision of the world unfolding in a burgeoning, far-reaching (in time and space)
interfolding of processes:
The basic building blocks of this anthropology are unmediated perceptual knowledge,
practical experience and knowledge of the world, the technologies that link humans
and non-humans, the aesthetic and sensual composition of experience and the cultural
choices that are made in reference to these (pp. 71-72).
Recent uses of dwelling in geography problematise the dwelt/authentic - undwelt/
inauthentic life dualism present in Heidegger. Also problematised is the dualism
between bounded space and network, showing how places can and need to be
understood as continuously articulated in both senses (Cloke and Jones, 2001).
Wylie (2003, p. 146) suggests that Ingold's approach 'offers a potentially fruitful
means of reconfi guring cultural geographies of landscape within the ambit of em-
bodied practice and performativity', which scramble a range of settled dualisms.
Understandings of dwelling have undoubtedly been bound-up with the notions
of home, local and (rural) rootedness and accordingly can be accused of endorsing
a naïve, pre-modern and quasi-romantic politics, as Ingold (2005) himself admits.
It apparently sits uneasily with the mobile, speeded-up, stretched-out nature of much
contemporary (urban) life. But in such life, and in all life, specifi c time/space deep-
ened experience, articulated through bodies and biophysical processes, remains
inevitable. Dwelling offers a kind of mirror image of the strengths and weaknesses
of ANT. It focuses on body-in-(immediate)-environment and thus perhaps struggles
to deal with the topological consecutiveness of networks in which bodies fi nd them-
selves. It is for precisely this reason that Thrift (1999) uses ANT and dwelling in
combination (thus illustrating the multi-theoretical approach fl agged-up earlier).
Thrift does so in his development of 'ecologies of place', and it is to such new ideas
of place that we turn.
Places (and landscapes) as entanglements
After nature entanglements can be usefully grounded in developing notions of places
(and landscapes). Places and landscapes have been variously seen as the outcome
of combinations of elements of culture and nature in
local
relations - as in US
geographer Carl Sauer's famous idea of the 'cultural landscape'. In more humanistic
