APPROACHING PLACE
An interdisciplinary subject, the history of place, as we concluded in this week’s seminar, may be considered from a variety of methodologies and perspectives. Be it micro, macro, environmental, cultural or political, historians have analyzed the history of places through a great range of approaches. In our review of articles written by historians Tom Griffiths, Dolores Hayden, Judith Walkowitz, Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna, we explored five unique interpretation of place history. It is my belief that there exists no superior approach among them and that each account retains its own purpose and provides its own insight. In his approach to Aboriginal history, Mark McKenna writes, “We should try to understand, but we should also accept that there are some things we do not understand.”(McKenna, p8). This applies to all accounts of place history for it is only when we consider places from different historical perspectives and recognize their differences, do we glean a perception as to their significance.
METHODOLOGIES
In maintaining their own unique methodologies, each of the five authors we studied this week challenges our understanding of place history. While Tom Griffiths in Forests of Ash: An Environmental History, traces the origins of the historical study of the environment in an attempt to define it, Judith Walkowitz in Curriculum Vitae traces the transformation of the urban landscape of Central London in order to demonstrate its evolution. In comparing these two articles alone, a great discrepancy between Griffith’s sweeping social science analysis and Walkowitz’s detailed cultural geographic account is evident. Historian Dolores Hayden adopts both a micro and macrocosmic approach to place history in chapter three of her book entitled, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Focusing on place memory and preservation, Hayden presents several examples of community-based public history projects in an attempt to demonstrate how communities everywhere “can reclaim history and recover memory.” (Hayden, p52). In their works entitled, In Spite of It All The Garden Still Stands and Looking for Blackfellas’ Point, both Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna explore what the land reveals about specific groups in early Australian society. While Holmes identifies gender roles and limitations by comparing the personal accounts of two Australian women and their experiences working the land, McKenna seeks to portray the “true stories of human contact” on the frontier in southeastern New South Whales by comparing the stories of settlers with those of the indigenous peoples (McKenna, p7).
CHANGING PLACE
Fundamental to the study of place history is the acknowledgement of place transformation – that is, the realization that places inevitably change throughout history, taking on various meanings to various groups of people. While at one point in history the southern part of a small island in North America was the site of a sacred burial ground designated for an enslaved African community, a century later that same place has transformed into multicultural center of American wealth and commerce. Considering this example alone, a great variety of methodologies may be adopted in relation to its study. A delineative or evolutionary approach such as those employed by Tom Griffiths and Judith Walkowitz may be used to trace the meaning of sacred space throughout history and the transformation of a sacred space to that of an urban center. While the application of a ‘micro methodology’ would allow for perhaps an in depth understanding of the history of the African community to whom the burial belonged, a ‘macro methodology’ might allow for broader exploration as to why the burial ground ceased to exist or whether the transformation of the burial ground site speaks to general patterns with regards American place history. Methodologies similar to those of Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna would allow for a consideration of how the meaning of the land changed over time through comparative analysis of African and American accounts. Of course, many other approaches including archaeological and political analyses exist and may be implemented to explore further elements of place history.
UNDERSTANDING PLACE
Depending on their motive or purpose for writing about a specific place in history, historian’s methodologies vary. It thus remains the reader’s responsibility, when studying place history, to consider the historian’s methodology and recognize any limitations, biases, advantages or insights that transpire as a result. While all forms of place history seek to identify a place in time, each interpretation maintains a unique approach and provides its readers with a specific understanding of a certain place. Whether or it is necessary to actually visit a place in order to understand it, as we discovered in this week’s seminar, may be contested however, the consideration of a place and its history from various perspectives is essential to gaining a full understanding of it. As McKenna so adequately puts it, we may not always understand the various perspectives and interpretations of place history, but we as students we must consider them if we are to comprehend the significance of a place.
Comments
Sam, this is a really good paper. I think that you discuss the significance of a variety of historical methodologies and approaches to place really well. I agree with your point that historians must have an appreciation of the changes and transformations in the meanings of a place over time and I liked the example of the different meanings of the “southern part of a small island in North America” that you used to illustrate this point. But your conclusion – that there are a range of historical approaches to place, that we must consider all the various perspectives in order to comprehend the significance of place – didn’t quite satisfy. I think perhaps you were a bit too diplomatic in the way you handled the different approaches. I was waiting for you to decide which one you thought to be the most unique, which one you liked, which one you hated, and which methodology or aspects of a methodology you would follow if you were to write your own history of a place. Do we really get a ‘full’ understanding by considering all the various perspectives on place? Aren’t we sacrificing depth for breadth?
It’s interesting that you quote McKenna to make your argument that we need to appreciate a variety of historical perspectives on place: “We should try to understand, but should also accept that there are some things we do not understand.” I read this passage very differently. I didn’t read his acknowledgement that there are some things ‘we cannot understand’ as confirmation of the need for a variety of historical approaches to place. I read it as a sign of McKenna’s humility. I might need to explain this a little further…
Now McKenna certainly wants to express his understanding of the meaning of ‘Blackfellas Point’ in both the past and the present. He wants to understand the place from both an indigenous Australian and a white Australian perspective. And he wants to show the intersections and relationship between the two understandings of place. But as an historian, he is not claiming a superior understanding of this particular place that transcends past and present, white and indigenous perspectives. It would be profoundly arrogant of him to assert that he fully ‘understands’ this place. He can try to understand what the place meant to its Aboriginal inhabitants in the past – and he has a moral obligation to do so --- but as a white Australian writing today, he can never fully access what it meant to them then or what it means to them now. ‘Understanding’ as well is such a loaded term: it is just as much about knowledge and appreciation as it is a way of asserting dominance, a ‘true’ interpretation. Historians should try to understand places, but should never claim true ‘understanding’ of them. By acknowledging this, I think McKenna demonstrates profound humility. Something for all historians of place to aspire to.
Posted by: Luke Heffernan | April 11, 2007 08:08 PM
I really appreciated your attempt to relate the different historical approaches you’d encountered in this week’s readings to a specific example – that of the Afro-American burial ground. (I also appreciated the way you used that same example to contribute to class discussion during the seminar). You used the term ‘methodology’ a little loosely here, though – a more general term such as ‘historical perspective’ or ‘approach’ would have better suited your purposes. Methodology refers more to the nuts and bolts of what an historian does than simply their overall approach to a topic: it refers to what kind of primary sources they choose to use, the actual practices they engage in (whether it’s fieldwork, archival research, archaeological excavation or the like), and the rationale which governs their choice of those sources and practices over others,
Ultimately, Sam, I felt that you spent too much time summarising the various historians’ approaches rather than offering your own insights about them. The key point of a seminar discussion piece is to offer your own point of view about something raised in the readings (and/or in class), not just to tell us again what they said. To begin by saying ‘I don’t think the approach of any of the historians we read is superior to the other’ is a bit of a cop-out, I think, because surely there were particular readings which you preferred over others. Why not go out on a limb a little and offer a stronger opinion? It certainly makes for a more interesting read (and for a higher grade) when someone does that, especially if they give persuasive reasons for it.
Posted by: Melissa Bellanta | May 9, 2007 12:25 PM