This paper focuses on the importance of historic, social, and material connections in belonging to place. Mauss's anthropological concept of a 'gift' is deployed to understand how places are cared for by a community over time. The development of tangible and intangible connections between past, present, and future people and places is explored. On the basis of in-depth, qualitative research with a group of people who have long-standing connections to their local place, memories and life-narratives are unravelled to explore the social and material relationships that place embodies. An understanding of place as an inalienable gift may create a moral duty to nurture and pass on places to subsequent generations. The research takes a phenomenological approach in order to illuminate the largely unconsidered associations between personal biographies and material places. After a brief discussion of the data collection methods used, notably photo diaries, some empirical examples are put forward to demonstrate how the research participants act as current custodians of places. The paper concludes by bringing together the different aspects of belonging in place illustrated by these vignettes and shows how they contribute to belonging in place as a moral way of being-in-the-world; that is, what I term 'an ontological belonging'.
Belonging is usually seen as a taken-for-granted, and perhaps ill-defined, aspect of everyday life. Through looking at the weather, family life and the local neighbourhood, this article argues that belonging should be recognised as an active and rhythmic practice, creating and recreating relationships, or an ‘ethic of care’, between people, place and history. Using elements of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, the article employs a diary written during a week of inclement weather to illustrate how belonging is done through the rhythms and activities of everyday life, such as being a neighbour. This demonstrates how belonging as a way of being-in-the-world, an ‘ontological belonging’, is practical, material and tangible. Repositioning the ‘sense’ of belonging as an everyday activity with tangible consequences brings with it associated responsibilities (an ‘ethic of care’) for place and the people who live there.
Studying change is at the heart of any investigation into social life, whilst continuity is seen as central to a stable identity over time. Change is an unsettling, but inevitable, part of everyday life; continuity speaks of repetition over time, unity and the comfort of belonging. This paper examines how themes of nostalgia and authenticity are evoked in telling family histories in order to negotiate change and create a continuous story of belonging. Three family histories demonstrate how material objects, places and claims of family resemblances are used to create both authentic identities and authentic selves belonging to the wider community. Where there is a break in the family story and the 'world of restorable reach' is no longer available nostalgia creeps in to replace personal stories with communal ones. Through using both nostalgia, to inform a sense of loss and sometimes a shared past, and authenticity, to create a sense of continuity within an overall arc of change, this paper shows how family histories can work to maintain identities over time, retaining a sense of ontological security and belonging in place.
How can the intangible aspects of everyday life be uncovered? A phenomenological approach has its origins in the everyday but also allows everything to be questioned. In studying belonging a phenomenological approach supported by a variety of qualitative methods produced a wealth of ‘insider’ information that could have been missed using more traditional methods. The research was based around multi-generational family groups as a family narrative focuses on relations between different family members over the generations rather than on an individual biography. Biographical interviews in family groups allowed families to talk about their lives together. Diaries put the direction of the research in the hands of the participants thus reversing, to some extent, the traditional power relations between researcher and researched. Through written and photo diaries participants shared details of their daily lives which might have been more difficult to elicit in a formal interview situation. The photos allowed the researcher to ‘visit’ places which are a part of the daily life of participants in a subtle and non-intrusive manner. These research approaches privilege the voices of the participants in research into their lives. Through demonstrating the richness of the data collected this article argues that such approaches could be used more widely.
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