Learning and change in rural regions: understanding influences on sense of place.

Abstract

This thesis is about how people develop attachments to places, and what this means for natural resource management. The concept of ‘sense of place’ is generating strong interest in the domain of natural resource management. In particular, the concept offers considerable potential as a way of integrating social, ecological and economic dimensions of environment. This makes the concept highly relevant to an emerging agenda from a range of disciplines and management approaches concerned with the links between social systems and natural systems at local and regional scales (Berkes and Folke 1998; Cheng Kruger and Daniels 2003; Plumwood 2002).¶ Recent interest in place has led to a research agenda for exploring how this concept can play a greater role in resource management (Cantrill and Senecah 2001). Central to this research agenda are questions of how attachments to places are influenced and how sense of place changes over time. In response to the emerging role of sense of place in natural resource management and the research agenda for exploring this concept, this thesis is concerned with three questions: what are the key influences on sense of place?; what is the relationship between sense of place and activities in practice?; and how do people learn about places and respond to change? To explore these questions, the thesis presents findings from interviews with 40 participants in case studies of the Atherton Tablelands and Woodstock, north Queensland. The research employed a purposeful sampling design with the aim of capturing as many different senses of place as possible within the limits of this study. Participants represented a broad range of land uses, ethnic backgrounds, ages and durations of time in the place of the interview. The data from these interviews were analysed using qualitative methods drawing on grounded theory (Charmanz 2000) and influenced by adaptive theory (Layder 1998). The research included a focus on honouring human experience (Braud and Anderson 1998), and also recognising the importance of prior research on how people develop a sense of place (Piaget 1971; Relph 1976).¶ ...