Local Heritage, Global Context Cultural Perspectives on Sense of Place

'Sense of place' has become a familiar phrase, used to describe emotional attachment to a particular location. As heritage management policy and practices increasingly attempt to draw on the views and expressions of interest amongst local communities, it is important to have a better grasp of what people mean by this concept, and to assess its uses and implications. Here, a range of practitioners from NGO, agency, cultural heritage and archaeological backgrounds review the meanings of 'sense of place', and where it is useful in the context of heritage management practice. This volume breaks new ground in specifically addressing place attachment from a cultural heritage perspective, and drawing on local and national interests from a diversity of cultural situations. Illustrated with case studies from around Europe and Australia, the book addresses key themes, including the rootedness amongst communities in the past; policy-making for accommodating senses of place within planning and management, for land- sea- and city-scapes; official versus unofficial views; and the often difficult balance between planning policies that extend from regional to global scale, and local actions and perceptions.

Contents: Preface; Sense of place in a changing world, John Schofield and Rosy Szymanski; Local distinctiveness: everyday places and how to find them, Sue Clifford; Marketing sense of place in the Forest of Bowland, Cathy Hopley and Paul Mahoney; Memory and the value of place in Estonia, Gurly Vedru; Being accounted for: qualitative data analysis in assessing 'place' and 'value', Stephen Townend and Ken Whittaker; 'Counter-mapping' heritage, communities and places in Australia and the UK, Rodney Harrison; Exploring sense of place: an ethnography of the Cornish mining world heritage site, Hilary Orange; Maastricht-Lanarkaveld: the place to be?, Anne Brakman; Between indigenous and Roman worlds: sense of place in the North-Eastern Iberian peninsula during the Roman period, Paula Uribe; A scent of plaice?, Antony Firth; Sense and sensitivity - or archaeology versus the ’wow factor’ in Southampton (England), Duncan Brown; Ilhna Beltin: locating identity in a fortified Mediterranean city, Rachel Radmilli; Topophilia, reliquary and pilgrimage: recapturing place, memory and meaning at Britain's historic football grounds, Jason Wood; Index.

John Schofield, Dr, Director of Studies, CHM, University of York, Department of Archaeology, UK and Rosy Szymanski, English Heritage, UK