Writing Place

Reflecting on week three's reading which pursue place, I found myself trying to make sense of them categorically: Environmental History, Social History, Cultural History, Urban History and so on. Convinced that all histories belong to a clear-cut category, that historians employed a specific methodology, and that all historians aimed for an objective history, I was surprised to find that categorising them was far from a simple task. I found myself asking why do disciplines blur, and where do sub-disciplines start and finish?

I decided that the only satisfactory division I could apply to histories pursuing place was that historians either use place as a method for writing a history, or used as the subject matter of a history. For example, in Katie Holmes’ “In Spite Of It All, The Garden Still Stands” she pursues the place of two unique gardens as a method of writing a Cultural History of women in Australian society. Graeme Davison, however, pursues the place of Melbourne in his book “The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne” as the subject matter of history, in other words, he writes a history of a specific place.

The nature of ‘place’ as essentially subjective is explored by various historians, directly and indirectly. Stephen Pynes explains in Tom Griffiths’ “Forest of Ash: An Environmental History” that place is subjective because “place without people is an abstract concept”, and as a result, all place has been experienced by people, and is essentially defined by that experience. Indeed, it is this very subjectivity of ‘place’ that makes it a valuable subject matter and method for writing history. Holmes claims that the gardens are sites of meaning, as they are expressions of individual and cultural aspirations. Edward Casey claims that place is a container of experience, thus memory is connected with place, and is almost place orientated. Furthermore that place memory connects with the built and natural environments, thus a “Cultural Landscape” is formed.

However, the subjectivity of place makes problematical the very basis of history as a discipline: Its objectivity. In Mark McKenna’s introduction to “Looking for Blackfellas Point: An Australian History of Place” he explains overtly that he “does not believe that [his] view of the past can be detached from [his] personal life”, and is even pleased to say that he will not loose the ability to convey his deep attachment to Eureka and Blackfellas point! It seems that historians claim to be subject to inescapable subjectivity when they pursue place. It is perhaps a far fetched claim, but I believe that it is even resulting in an increase in narrative forms of history, or at least, their acceptance in the discipline of history. Dolores Hayden states that social memory relies on storytelling, which can be triggered by the urban landscape, Powell refers to being “committed to narrative” in Environmental history, and William Cronon says that historical wisdom usually comes in the form of parables, not policy recommendations or certainties.

If Historians have been using place as method and subject matter for writing history for as long as the discipline has existed, why are we only seeing in recent times such a shift in the attitudes of historians towards place? Graeme Davison first published “The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne” in 1970’s, and in the preface to his second edition in 2004, he admits regretting not including more sights and sounds, smells and textures of the city of Melbourne. Davison has gone on to publish tour books of Melbourne, focusing on walks through the city that highlight Melbourne as experienced. Holmes argues that this recent increase in historian’s interest in place partly results from “the influence of post-colonial and poststructural ideas on the discipline of history”. Hayden argues further that the growing desire of historians to engage with place results from a more grass roots level, that people feel a lack of their own social history in their everyday environment. We may not know the reasons behind the increasing interest historians are having in pursuing place, but we do know that it is having interesting results in both the history that it produces, as well as the challenges it creates to the discipline of history.

References

Holmes, Katie, “In Spite of It All, The Garden Still Stands: Gardens, Landscape and Cultural History”, Cultural History in Australia, eds Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003), pp172-85.

Davison, Graeme, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 2nd ed, (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2004), pp 1-21.

Pyne, Stephen, The Still-Burning Bush, (Melbourne: Scribe Short Books, 2006).

Griffiths, Tom, Forests of Ash: An Environmental History, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Casey, Edward, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

McKenna, Mark, Looking for Blackfellas' Point: An Australian History of Place, (Sydney, NSW: UNSW Press, 2002).

Powell, J, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia: The Restive Fringe, (Cambridge, England; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Cronon. William, “The Uses of Environmental History”, Environmental History Review: A Publication of the American Society for Environmental History, Vol 17, Article 3, (Newark: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Fall 1993).

Hayden, Dolores, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995).