The notion of place being contested is one that is familiar with us all. We need only to look as far as our daily newspapers and television reports to enable us to have an understanding of the many world-wide conflicts currently occurring over place, whether it is over something as large-scale as land the size of a little country, or small as simply a landmark or monument that represents a rich cultural heritage. Place being contested is nothing new, as much of the worlds history is entrenched in battles for the takeover of land, the fight for a symbolic representation of a historical struggle, or even merely something to recognise a people’s culture and its experiences. The power of place has resonated for centuries now, and to this day, the significance of a people’s history and culture, as well as mankind’s natural desire for influence, means that the battle for place is sure to continue for years to come.
Despite what the place actually being contested is, something that I’ve found to be concurrent in almost all contests for place is the inability of either party to step back and rationally view the perspective of the opposing party. Too often, contests over place are not resolved equitably, as opposing parties are either ignorant of, or reluctant to, search for compromise, or at least examine the conflict from the others viewpoint.
If we look at a written piece in Dolores Hayden book titled The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, she documents an argument between a leading urban sociologist, Herbet J. Gans, and Ada Louise Huxtable; a distinguished architectural critic. Their argument escalated when Gans attacked New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, for what he called "rewriting new York’s architectural history", by preserving only the “elite portion of the architectural past”. Huxtable was quick to reply and was staunch in her defence of the commission, warning that “to stigmatize major architectural monuments as products of the rich… is a perverse and unserviceable distortion of history.” And from there, the argument was born.
As their verbal war goes on, it becomes more and more apparent that the two parties were either unable, or completely unwilling, to understand the other’s perspective. They essentially spoke different languages; Gans arguing his way through the social implications of preserving ‘elite’ buildings whilst failing to recognise lower-class history, and Huxtable firing back with her own architectural justifications. Hayden argues that even the word ‘architecture’ has a completely different meaning for both of them.
The very essence of their argument further exemplifies the uncompromising nature of contested place around the world. Both Gans and Huxtable would seemingly completely ignore the others response and perspective on the argument, and simply fire back further verbal ammunition in favour of their own argument. They really may as well have not waisted their time, as each of their responses simply fell on deaf ears.
These implications of the argument between Gans and Huxtable got me thinking of a relative example, and I needed look no further than the present day issue of the Arab/Israeli conflict, a battle for place spanning a century that at this stage seemingly has no feasible solution and is set to continue for many years to come.
Without delving too intensely into the actual debate, it basically centres around an ongoing dispute between two peoples- Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians, that both claim the right to sovereignty over the Land of Israel/Palestine, in whole or in part. At the forefront of this battle are extremists, and it is through these extremists beliefs where we are once again confronted by an attitude towards the conflict that is so uncompromising. When one reads the solutions to the dispute put forward by Gush Emunim, an Israeli political movement, and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organisation, their opinions are the same- it’s our way or no way. When the same area becomes a shared but contested place, we see that it can become violent, as it has in this conflict.
In some cases it may be too few resources, in others, too many memories. Historical ties with place can run deep, whether it is a religious connection with an area of land, or a cultural connection with a particular architectural building or monument. It may be the descendents of the warfies who toughed it out on the docks of Sydney in the Great Depression, fighting to keep the name ‘The Hungry Mile’ given to the strip of dockland steeped in the desperation and struggle of their forefathers. It may be Islamic extremists relentlessly fighting for land they uncompromisingly believe is rightfully theirs. Or it may merely be two critics arguing over the preservation of architectural constructs. Regardless of the actual conflict, there’s little doubt the issue of contested place is an exceptionally relevant one, and with the obdurate approach taken in so many of these disputes, solutions have, and will continue to be, few and far between.
Bibliography
Bard, Mitchell. Middle East Conflict. (Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 1999)
Citron, Sabina. The Indictment: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Historical Perspective. (New York & Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2006)
Falk, Avner. Fratricide in the Holy Land: A Psychoanalytic View of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)
Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), pp3-13
Jackson, Peter and Penrose, Jan, eds. Constructions of Race, Place, and Nation (London: University College London Press, 1993), extract from introduction, pp12-13
Sivaramakrishnan, K and Cederlöf, Gunnel eds. Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, & Identities in South Asia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), extracts from the introduction: pp1-10, 29-40.
Comments
Chris, it's certainly true that a lack of willingness to compromise perpetuates the contested nature of certain places. The Israeli/Palestine example you gave vividly illustrates this. Obviously, if people compromised they would put an end to conflicts over place. But it's not as if conflicts are just fuelled by stubbornness or a lack of empathy. They're also fuelled by any no. of other things: by the desire to monopolise scarce land and resources, by the fact that ideas about place are tied up with individual and social identities, by long histories of colonial oppression which lead to the kind of hatred Jamaica Kincaid writes about in the short story we read in class. All of this makes it a little too simplistic to simply talk of reaching a solution by getting both parties to be 'rational' and change their positions accordingly. More focus on the range of issues which fuel conflict over place would thus have added to the complexity of your discussion here.
Posted by: Melissa Bellanta | May 30, 2007 11:16 AM
Chris, like you, I also saw the failure of opposing parties to compromise and talk ‘with each other’ rather than ‘at each other’ to be a major factor perpetuating place contestation. However, the ability to rationally and diplomatically discuss issues of contested place raises a plethora of difficult problems. Obviously, different groups fighting for a particular place are likely to represent different languages, cultures, religions, histories and beliefs. Is it a realistic goal to expect groups with opposing values to seek resolution through compromise? If one culture values the land for its sacred and religious connotations, and another group contests the same place for its natural resources, whose beliefs/desires should be given legitimacy? Additionally, like Claire wrote in her paper, ‘it is not ‘place’ which is often contested, but the ‘rights to place’’ that cause such antagonistic disputes and awful violence around the world.
It would have been interesting if you had further analysed the differences between macro and micro history contests of place and whether the same issues are involved in very different scenarios. For example, would two siblings fighting over the same bedroom in a house reflect similar issues (but on different scales of size and importance) to those surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict? Much greater analysis would need to be applied to do justice to such a question, but I suspect that issues of identity, individual and collective memories, religious belief in the right of ownership, natural beauty of the place, potential for utilisation and exploitation, historical associations with the area, and in some cases obstinate desires to exert and demonstrate one’s power are issues that are potentially relevant to both micro and macro contests of place.
Posted by: Anna Sambell | June 11, 2007 06:50 PM