Deep ecology‟s relationship with towns and cities can be characterised using notions articulated by Relph. In Place and Placelessness (1976), Relph explores the
complexities and subtleties of the human experience of place, arguing that both a sense of place and a sense of placelessness are of paramount importance for the human condition. He describes seven modes of experiencing place, modes that are held within the fluid divisions of insideness and outsideness. Of these, the current deep ecological relationship with towns and cities is best summarised as that of „existential
outsideness‟. As Relph writes:
Existential outsideness involves a selfconscious and reflective uninvolvement, an alienation from people and places,
homelessness, a sense of the unreality of the world, and of not belonging. From such a perspective places cannot be significant centres of existence, but are at best backgrounds to activities that are without sense, mere chimeras, and at worst are voids… In existential outsideness all places assume the same meaningless identity and are distinguishable only be their superficial qualities (Relph, 1976: 51).
To date deep ecology discourse has found no home within towns and cities and remains alienated from (and potentially alienating of) the diversity of people who inhabit the heterogeneity of these places. It has failed to actively involve itself within
the intricacies and intimacies that are part of the nuanced flux of people inhabiting place, when the place is other than wilderness or „free nature‟. As such, towns, cities and their inhabitants remain at best something of a mystery – an apparition or abomination that makes little sense and within which meaninglessness abounds. At worst they appear as space through which the fall from grace continues at an ever increasing rate.
This experience of place is juxtaposed, by supporters of deep ecology, with that of wilderness where meaningfulness abounds. Upon a rock, beneath a waterfall and across the rolling horizon significances emerge through intimate association and the identity of the experiencer becomes wrapped up within the sense that is made there. For deep ecology, the wilderness experience may be characterised as that of
„empathetic insideness‟:
Empathetic insideness demands a willingness to be open to significances of a place, to feel it, to know and respect its
symbols… This involves not merely looking at a place, but seeing into and appreciating the essential elements of its identity…
To be inside a place empathetically is to understand that place as rich in meaning, and hence to identity with it, for these meanings are not only linked to the experiences and symbols of those whose place it is, but also stem from one‟s own experiences… Identity is not just an address or set of appearances, but a complete personality with which the insider is intimately associated (Relph, 1976: 54-5).
While these characterisations of deep ecology rely upon some neat generalisations, through them an important point emerges. There is a realm of commonality between wilderness and towns and cities, and this realm is bound up within the notion of place. Place emerges as the synergistic means by which these two seemingly incomparable and incompatible places can be drawn together. In fact, it is a notion from which a comprehension emerges that as places wilderness and towns and cities have never
been apart. As places, towns and cities, wilderness, and all that lies in between and beyond, share much more than they keep to themselves. They are all geographies within which it is possible, to state the obvious, to experience place.
There is a smattering of articles emanating from deep ecology that explicitly discuss place and placedness. Deep ecology proponent, Robert Hay (1992), while sitting neatly within the analysis provided above pertaining to the deep ecological
relationship with towns and cities, makes a call for the importance of place and sense of place. He argues for people, including environmentalists, to heed their own placedness or placelessness, as place and the relationality implied are fundamental to being and the possibilities of changing ways of being. However, such works are few and far between6.
It is somewhat surprising that deep ecology, the primary concern of which includes wild places, has not, to any significant extent, engaged with the diverse and growing literature regarding place and the relationship between place and self (Hay, P., 2002a). For example, thinking of space relationally, with its subsequent implications for place and placedness, has emerged as an important theme within cultural geography. Within such relationally oriented discourse, identities are viewed as “constituted in and through those engagements, those practices of interaction” and place – both on the local scale and the global – when considered relationally is reconfigured as “internally complex, essentially unboundable in any absolute sense, and inevitably historically changing” (Massey, 2004: 5)7. Deep ecology‟s supposed preoccupation with the
relational and with place (even if this is dominated by a particular subset of places) seems well positioned to contribute to, and to be contributed to by, such streams of thought.
Deep ecology‟s metaphysical holism is underpinned by the notion that the world is in essence relational; that the world is an interconnected whole (Naess, 1995a: 240). This is an aspect of ecological science from which deep ecology receives significant
evocation, and unlike other aspects of this science that are continuing to undergo revision and renewal it is, as yet, an idea that continues to hold a significant degree of certainty. Yet the sense of interconnectivity that is leading to a plethora of work within other quarters seems, in deep ecology, little more than a worn out cliché. It has
become a mantra so often repeated since the 1970s that it threatens to become a mere echo, rather than the main game. Ecofeminists8, for example, have heavily criticised deep ecology‟s take on relationality. They argue that deep ecology‟s inability to come to grips with the implications of a relational worldview leaves it mired within many of the constraints from which it claims to have broken free. However, there is
acknowledgement within some of these critiques that the work of Arne Naess, unlike that of other prominent deep ecology proponents, offers a coherent and cogent approach to a relational worldview, one that is more closely aligned to an ecofeminist understanding of relationality and the relational self (see for example Diehm, 2002, 2006; Warren, 1999).
While there appears to be no explicit theory of place (or collection of place theories) emerging from ecofeminism, there are a number of ecofeminist writers who discuss place within their work. Judith Plant (1990), for example, writes about what she sees as the common ground between ecofeminism and bioregionalism. In particular, she focuses on the idea of becoming native to place and the role that home – the domestic sphere and its surrounds – can play in moral and behavioural change. She states:
the bioregional view values home above all else… This is not the same notion of home as the bungalow in the suburbs of Western industrialized society! Rather, it is the place where we can learn the values of caring for and nurturing each other and our environments and of paying attention to immediate human needs and feelings. It is a much broader term, reflecting the reality of human cultural requirements and our need to be sustainably adaptive within our nonhuman environments. The word ecology, in its very name,
points us in this direction: oikos, the Greek root of „eco‟, means home (Plant, 1990).
Environmental philosopher, Max Oelschlaeger (1993) is one who argues that a synergy between deep ecology and ecofeminism can be found through the notion of place. He reviews the approaches taken to place by four influential ecofeminist writers – Susan Griffin, Rosemary Ruether, Elinor Gadon and Vandana Shiva – and highlights that both ecofeminism and deep ecology valorise place – “the importance of re-rooting human culture in the specific geographies of life” (Oelschlaeger, 1993: 38).
Oelschlaeger suggests that it is within the philosophical plurality inherent in deep ecology that understandings of place and placedness arise and incorporate concern for others, including women and the more-than-human.
While not necessarily refuting such an insight regarding the relationship between deep ecology and ecofeminism, I contend that with regards to conceptions of place and placedness within deep ecology, it is Naess‟s gestalt ontology – a philosophical aspect of „deep ecology‟ that has received little attention to date – that warrants further exploration. Reflecting upon his relationship with Tvergastein, Naess argues that we are suffering from a „place-corrosive process‟ and that the “movement toward the development of a sense of place… is of prime importance in the deep ecology movement” (Naess, 2008: 47). He describes many of the intricacies of himself within the place that is Tvergastein, including relationships with flora, fauna, substrate, rubbish, chemicals and structure. Tvergastein emerges, not simply as a geographical place and not as a „wilderness‟ place, but as a relational gestalt within which Naess himself is just one enmeshed and fluxing part.
Philosopher Christian Diehm (2003) also points to Naess‟s gestalt ontology as a source of a relational view that has direct implications for place and placedness. In describing a conversation he had with Naess regarding the relationship between himself and the stones of Tvergastein, Diehm writes:
Here the stones are spoken of not as “one” with the self. Nor as beings who have interests akin to the self that elicit an empathic response… To call these beings “alive” is not to demand that we think of them in the same terms as the biologically living; it is to assert that they are active forces in the world, expressive entities that exert a kind of „elemental influence‟ on their surroundings, imposing themselves on the landscape and making certain demands of those in their presence. These are beings that tell different stories and present different perspectives that must be taken into account, navigated, and integrated into the life of self; they are others whose unique patterns and ways of being shape those of the self. And the ecological self is the self that is in dialogue with these differences, the self that does not carve its name on things but is itself carved out by them, “contains” them. This is a self that has „internalised‟ its relations to the world such that it can only be portrayed as a being who has as its very mode of being “being-there-together” (Diehm, 2003: 40-1).
The self is constituted through association with other entities, and it is both the agency of self and the others that participate in this constitution. As the self inhabits place, self is „being-there-together‟ with place, and place is comprehended as „being-there- together‟ with self. Within such a stance there is the possibility of moving beneath and beyond the geographic and nature/culture dualisms that infuse much of the
relationship between deep ecology and towns and cities, and of filling the hole in the holism. It is here that we can begin to make sense of the wild synergy of the ugly, the forbidden and the sacred described within the initiation of this research.