Project Overview
This project has three goals: (a) To “re-story” the received narratives of the Colorado River Basin; (b) to capture subjective experience and local knowledge via an “augmented reality” application programming interface (API); and (c) to help describe, re-store, and sustain hidden cultural practices within the Colorado River Basin.
Using the methodologies of “Participatory Action Research” (PAR) and “Narrative Inquiry,” a cadre of ASU faculty will create a GPS enabled “augmented reality” API (see Augmented Reality page) that explores “hidden dimensions of place” as revealed through historiography, narrative inquiry, participatory GIS, visual ethnography, and speculative fiction. Funding is sought to support travel and equipment for the four faculty engaged in this transdisciplinary project, computer programming/GIS support, plus dissemination of the research through a public forum and publication.
Beyond its relevance to our regional watershed, the broader goal of this study is to understand how user-knowledge of place can be structured to enable and encourage community dialogue and action. It is our contention that an enhanced user interface—via “augmented reality” and social media —to cultural resources, environmental data, and contextual information online, tailored to the unique requirements of particular communities, can help to engender dialogue and action around many place-based topics such as community identity, neighborhood revitalization, healthcare, sustainability, land-use management, and environmental education.
Key to the success of the project will be the transition from reified “spatial” descriptions of particular locations—a pattern of behavior reinforced by our surveillance of the landscape via (for example) Google Earth—to grounded “place-based” stories of real communities.
Place vs. Space: A Brief History
Blending philosophy and geography, Edward Casey, the eminent phenomenologist at State University of New York at Stony Brook, identified a tension—dating at least back to Plato and Aristotle—between Platonic notions of place that reduce certain primal regions to simply geometric portraits, and Aristotelian notions of place that are rooted in pre-metric phenomenon. Where Plato, in his Timaeus, closely identified place with the abstract concept of space, Aristotle, in his Physics, shifted attention away from place as geometry (only) and argued for a fuller account that captures the inner essence and body-felt power of place (Casey, 1997).
Today, a useful description that moves beyond the contested distinctions between space and place can be summed up in the simple equation: “space + meaning = place” (Harrison & Dourish, 1996). Space is the abstract perception of the world around us and place is space as lived and experienced. Where the concept of space encourages a purely mathematical description (Cartesian or otherwise), place requires a more phenomenological, body-centered orientation. Casey (and Aristotle) would argue that space refers to objective geometrical extension and location, and that place describes our subjective experience of being in the world and investing a physical location or setting with meaning, memories, and feeling (Casey, 1997). This essentially Aristotelian idea echoes the conclusions of many field-based studies that have taken a second (and third) look at the American landscape. In the book Third Views, Second Sights, which details the ongoing Rephotographic Survey project of the American West by teams of photographers, project leader Mark Klett writes that “the intimate knowledge of a region by its residents has changed the once common view that the West is empty geography” (Klett et al., 2004, n.p.). The purely instrumental goals of spatial description —the objective basis of much of western science—give way to a deeper place-based understanding informed by generations of human experience.
Yi-Fu Tuan, another pivotal geographer/philosopher, focuses on human experiences and connections to places. His work provides a solid grounding for understanding the concept of place as a humanistic construct. Tuan’s experiential perspective describes place as created by the process of human experience in a physical space. This process is explained through four layers of human experience: physical, social, personal, and cultural (Tuan, 1977). The physical layer is made up of our sensory and haptic experience. The social layer is related to our interactions with other beings. The personal layer is created by our unique memories and expectations while the cultural layer is a result of culturally accepted modes of understanding and perceiving a place.
More recent articulations of place have placed emphasis on situated communities and their relationship to the natural environment.
Sense of place includes how well the community is situated within the natural environment in which it is located; how well it relates to and exhibits its historical and cultural development and uniqueness; and how the people within the community live lives that reflect a sense of community cohesion and purpose. (Lew, 2004, n.d.)
While Lew’s definition of sense of place may impose impossible demands on communities—which are often conflicted, and manifest contradictory missions—it does offer a kind of rubric for balancing a given community’s drive towards growth and change with sustainable models more in harmony with its cultural legacy and the natural environment.
Wendell Berry—farmer, essayist, conservationist, novelist, teacher, poet—emphasizes in his many writings an expanded conception of community inextricably tied to place. For Berry, community equals people plus land plus everything else. “If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking of a community that is merely human,” Berry writes, “We are talking about a neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil, its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it” (Berry, 1993). The great failure of many communitarians, in Berry’s view, is their failure to include nonhumans and the land in their understanding of community.
Considered culturally, a community for Berry is a “placed” people that do good work. This work is not solely the shared work of mutual dependencies. Rather, the community is an order of memories preserved consciously in instructions, songs, and stories. . . . a healthy culture holds preserving knowledge in place for a long time. That is, the essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds the soil. (Berry, 1993).
This layered web of interactions is echoed by a number of environmental writers such as Wallace Stegner, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, and Aldo Leopold.
Methodologies
The research methodologies employed constitute a ‘mixed methods’ approach following the principles of participatory action research (PAR) and Narrative Inquiry. Outcomes include a website detailing the creative, expressive, and personal perspectives on life in the Colorado River watershed and a ‘cultural layer’ (a geo-located “augmented reality” layer with hyperlinked markers to participant websites) hosted by the IT department of HIDA. The project—a cultural intervention—is a strategic supplement to existing on-line resources and a template for future speculations about the region. The method and its products hold promise as advocacy tools for individuals and cultural practices in a variety of settings.
Method 1: Participatory Action Research (PAR)
The primary research methodology employed in this study is Participatory Action Research (PAR) or, as it is variously known, Participatory Research or Action Research. PAR is a recognized form of experimental research that focuses on the effects of the investigator's direct actions of practice within a community of active participants. The goal is actually the improvement of the performance quality of the community or an area of concern (Dick, 2002). Action research involves utilizing a systematic cyclical method of planning, taking action, observing, evaluating (including self-evaluation), and critical reflection in a series of generative research cycles (McNiff, 2002). The actions have a set goal of addressing an identified problem in the workplace or community—for example, reducing the illiteracy of students through use of new strategies . Or, as in the case of the current study, identifying and raising awareness of hidden or suppressed aspects of community knowledge about place. It is a collaborative method to test new ideas and implement action for change. It involves direct participation in a dynamic research process, while monitoring and evaluating the effects of the investigator's actions with the express aim of improving practice (Dick, 2002). At its core, action research is a way to increase understanding of how change in one's actions or practices can mutually benefit a community of practitioners (McNiff, 2002).
Method 2: Narrative Inquiry
"Narrative inquiry rests on the epistemological assumption that we as human beings make sense of random experience by the imposition of story structures (Fry, 2002).” Narrative inquiry makes valuable contributions to the social sciences because of its open-ended, experiential qualities." Narratives are not simply productions of individuals, but rather are "shaped by social, cultural, and historical conventions" and the relationship between the story-teller and recorder (Coffey et al, 2002). Narrative inquiry is conducted with the understanding that stories that people tell are often at the surface of a more complex underlying story. The qualities of narrative inquiry and the potential contextual information that stories may reveal make narrative inquiry beneficial to several disciplines including psychology, anthropology, and education (Fry, 2002).
The technique of narrative inquiry shares some commonalities with the practice of “narrative therapy” and the concept of “restorying” (White & Epston, 1990). The concept of telling one’s story as a technique for healing can be found in indigenous traditions worldwide. Storieshelp us to organize our thoughts, providing a narrative for human intentions and interpersonal events that is readily remembered and told. In some instances, stories may also mend us when we are broken, heal us when we are sick, and even move us toward psychological fulfillment and maturity (McAdams, 1994).
This project has three goals: (a) To “re-story” the received narratives of the Colorado River Basin; (b) to capture subjective experience and local knowledge via an “augmented reality” application programming interface (API); and (c) to help describe, re-store, and sustain hidden cultural practices within the Colorado River Basin.
Using the methodologies of “Participatory Action Research” (PAR) and “Narrative Inquiry,” a cadre of ASU faculty will create a GPS enabled “augmented reality” API (see Augmented Reality page) that explores “hidden dimensions of place” as revealed through historiography, narrative inquiry, participatory GIS, visual ethnography, and speculative fiction. Funding is sought to support travel and equipment for the four faculty engaged in this transdisciplinary project, computer programming/GIS support, plus dissemination of the research through a public forum and publication.
Beyond its relevance to our regional watershed, the broader goal of this study is to understand how user-knowledge of place can be structured to enable and encourage community dialogue and action. It is our contention that an enhanced user interface—via “augmented reality” and social media —to cultural resources, environmental data, and contextual information online, tailored to the unique requirements of particular communities, can help to engender dialogue and action around many place-based topics such as community identity, neighborhood revitalization, healthcare, sustainability, land-use management, and environmental education.
Key to the success of the project will be the transition from reified “spatial” descriptions of particular locations—a pattern of behavior reinforced by our surveillance of the landscape via (for example) Google Earth—to grounded “place-based” stories of real communities.
Place vs. Space: A Brief History
Blending philosophy and geography, Edward Casey, the eminent phenomenologist at State University of New York at Stony Brook, identified a tension—dating at least back to Plato and Aristotle—between Platonic notions of place that reduce certain primal regions to simply geometric portraits, and Aristotelian notions of place that are rooted in pre-metric phenomenon. Where Plato, in his Timaeus, closely identified place with the abstract concept of space, Aristotle, in his Physics, shifted attention away from place as geometry (only) and argued for a fuller account that captures the inner essence and body-felt power of place (Casey, 1997).
Today, a useful description that moves beyond the contested distinctions between space and place can be summed up in the simple equation: “space + meaning = place” (Harrison & Dourish, 1996). Space is the abstract perception of the world around us and place is space as lived and experienced. Where the concept of space encourages a purely mathematical description (Cartesian or otherwise), place requires a more phenomenological, body-centered orientation. Casey (and Aristotle) would argue that space refers to objective geometrical extension and location, and that place describes our subjective experience of being in the world and investing a physical location or setting with meaning, memories, and feeling (Casey, 1997). This essentially Aristotelian idea echoes the conclusions of many field-based studies that have taken a second (and third) look at the American landscape. In the book Third Views, Second Sights, which details the ongoing Rephotographic Survey project of the American West by teams of photographers, project leader Mark Klett writes that “the intimate knowledge of a region by its residents has changed the once common view that the West is empty geography” (Klett et al., 2004, n.p.). The purely instrumental goals of spatial description —the objective basis of much of western science—give way to a deeper place-based understanding informed by generations of human experience.
Yi-Fu Tuan, another pivotal geographer/philosopher, focuses on human experiences and connections to places. His work provides a solid grounding for understanding the concept of place as a humanistic construct. Tuan’s experiential perspective describes place as created by the process of human experience in a physical space. This process is explained through four layers of human experience: physical, social, personal, and cultural (Tuan, 1977). The physical layer is made up of our sensory and haptic experience. The social layer is related to our interactions with other beings. The personal layer is created by our unique memories and expectations while the cultural layer is a result of culturally accepted modes of understanding and perceiving a place.
More recent articulations of place have placed emphasis on situated communities and their relationship to the natural environment.
Sense of place includes how well the community is situated within the natural environment in which it is located; how well it relates to and exhibits its historical and cultural development and uniqueness; and how the people within the community live lives that reflect a sense of community cohesion and purpose. (Lew, 2004, n.d.)
While Lew’s definition of sense of place may impose impossible demands on communities—which are often conflicted, and manifest contradictory missions—it does offer a kind of rubric for balancing a given community’s drive towards growth and change with sustainable models more in harmony with its cultural legacy and the natural environment.
Wendell Berry—farmer, essayist, conservationist, novelist, teacher, poet—emphasizes in his many writings an expanded conception of community inextricably tied to place. For Berry, community equals people plus land plus everything else. “If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking of a community that is merely human,” Berry writes, “We are talking about a neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil, its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it” (Berry, 1993). The great failure of many communitarians, in Berry’s view, is their failure to include nonhumans and the land in their understanding of community.
Considered culturally, a community for Berry is a “placed” people that do good work. This work is not solely the shared work of mutual dependencies. Rather, the community is an order of memories preserved consciously in instructions, songs, and stories. . . . a healthy culture holds preserving knowledge in place for a long time. That is, the essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds the soil. (Berry, 1993).
This layered web of interactions is echoed by a number of environmental writers such as Wallace Stegner, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, and Aldo Leopold.
Methodologies
The research methodologies employed constitute a ‘mixed methods’ approach following the principles of participatory action research (PAR) and Narrative Inquiry. Outcomes include a website detailing the creative, expressive, and personal perspectives on life in the Colorado River watershed and a ‘cultural layer’ (a geo-located “augmented reality” layer with hyperlinked markers to participant websites) hosted by the IT department of HIDA. The project—a cultural intervention—is a strategic supplement to existing on-line resources and a template for future speculations about the region. The method and its products hold promise as advocacy tools for individuals and cultural practices in a variety of settings.
Method 1: Participatory Action Research (PAR)
The primary research methodology employed in this study is Participatory Action Research (PAR) or, as it is variously known, Participatory Research or Action Research. PAR is a recognized form of experimental research that focuses on the effects of the investigator's direct actions of practice within a community of active participants. The goal is actually the improvement of the performance quality of the community or an area of concern (Dick, 2002). Action research involves utilizing a systematic cyclical method of planning, taking action, observing, evaluating (including self-evaluation), and critical reflection in a series of generative research cycles (McNiff, 2002). The actions have a set goal of addressing an identified problem in the workplace or community—for example, reducing the illiteracy of students through use of new strategies . Or, as in the case of the current study, identifying and raising awareness of hidden or suppressed aspects of community knowledge about place. It is a collaborative method to test new ideas and implement action for change. It involves direct participation in a dynamic research process, while monitoring and evaluating the effects of the investigator's actions with the express aim of improving practice (Dick, 2002). At its core, action research is a way to increase understanding of how change in one's actions or practices can mutually benefit a community of practitioners (McNiff, 2002).
Method 2: Narrative Inquiry
"Narrative inquiry rests on the epistemological assumption that we as human beings make sense of random experience by the imposition of story structures (Fry, 2002).” Narrative inquiry makes valuable contributions to the social sciences because of its open-ended, experiential qualities." Narratives are not simply productions of individuals, but rather are "shaped by social, cultural, and historical conventions" and the relationship between the story-teller and recorder (Coffey et al, 2002). Narrative inquiry is conducted with the understanding that stories that people tell are often at the surface of a more complex underlying story. The qualities of narrative inquiry and the potential contextual information that stories may reveal make narrative inquiry beneficial to several disciplines including psychology, anthropology, and education (Fry, 2002).
The technique of narrative inquiry shares some commonalities with the practice of “narrative therapy” and the concept of “restorying” (White & Epston, 1990). The concept of telling one’s story as a technique for healing can be found in indigenous traditions worldwide. Storieshelp us to organize our thoughts, providing a narrative for human intentions and interpersonal events that is readily remembered and told. In some instances, stories may also mend us when we are broken, heal us when we are sick, and even move us toward psychological fulfillment and maturity (McAdams, 1994).
