Telling stories about places for sustainability : a case study of the Islands in the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Geography, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Sparrow, Vanessa
issued: 2011-03-12T00:23:59Z
issued: 2006
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis is about the ways in which people tell stories about places and the importance of those stories to a community's capacity for adaptation and sustainability. I argue that the traditional discourse of sustainability is embedded within a rationalist, techno-scientific paradigm that precludes the inclusion of subjective, contextualised knowledge. If genuine sustainability is predicated on social and environmental justice, as I argue it is, then it requires an inclusive, ethical framework that can value beliefs, imagination, desires, experiences and relationships. The concept of place, seen as an articulation of the dynamic relationships between the material, cultural and experiential, offers a powerful basis upon which to develop such an approach. Drawing on the theoretical relationship between narrative and place, my aim is to investigate the potential of artistic community mapping to offer an engaging, inclusive form of story-telling and place-making for sustainability. I do this by presenting a case study of the Islands in the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project, which took place in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia's Strait of Georgia between 1999 and 2004. This project worked with local artists and coordinators on 17 of the most populated islands to engage local communities in identifying and documenting via handcrafted maps what they valued about their home places. How this was achieved, the successes, limitations and further possibilities of this way of working with communities to tell stories about their places, are the concerns of this research. By reviewing the theoretical foundations of this project, together with undertaking interviews with coordinators, artists and other participants, it is my aim to present not a comprehensive evaluation, but a detailed case study of how concepts of community story-telling and placemaking can be realised "on the ground" and effectively used to help us in the work of sustainability. Specifically, my objectiv…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/32401
note: Telling Stories about Places for Sustainability: A Case Study of the Islands in the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project by Vanessa Sparrow Bachelor of Arts, University of Western Australia, 1991 Postgraduate Diploma of Psychology, Curtin University, 1993 Master of Public Health, University of New South Wales, 2003 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (Geography) UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH C O L U M B I A December 2006 © Vanessa Sparrow, 2006 Abstract This thesis is about the ways in which people tell stories about places and the importance of those stories to a community's capacity for adaptation and sustainability. I argue that the traditional discourse of sustainability is embedded within a rationalist, techno-scientific paradigm that precludes the inclusion of subjective, contextualised knowledge. If genuine sustainability is predicated on social and environmental justice, as I argue it is, then it requires an inclusive, ethical framework that can value beliefs, imagination, desires, experiences and relationships. The concept of place, seen as an articulation of the dynamic relationships between the material, cultural and experiential, offers a powerful basis upon which to develop such an approach. Drawing on the theoretical relationship between narrative and place, my aim is to investigate the potential of artistic community mapping to offer an engaging, inclusive form of story-telling and place-making for sustainability. I do this by presenting a case study of the Islands in the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project, which took place in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia's Strait of Georgia between 1999 and 2004. This project worked with local artists and coordinators on 17 of the most populated islands to engage local communities in identifying and documenting via hand-crafted maps what they valued about their home places. How this was achieved, the successes, limitations…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0101153
language: eng
degree discipline: Geography
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/32401