This book explores intersections between sense of place, the formation of identity, indigeneity and colonisation, literature and literary study, the arts, and a revisioned school curriculum for the Anthropocene. Underpinning the book is a conviction that sense of place is central to the fostering of the change of heart required to secure the survival of human life on earth. It offers a coherent overview of seemingly disparate realities on a geographically and historically sprawling canvas.
The book is a work of literary non-fiction, drawing on a range of sources: literary works and criticism, theoretical research, empirical studies and artworks. Of its very nature, the book enacts an extensive cultural critique. After establishing a cross-disciplinary foundation for “sense of place”, the book describes its relationship to identity with reference to such terms as attachment, dispossession, reclamation and representation. It shows how a hopeful narrative for planet stewardship can be developed by the uptake of indigenous and traditional discourses of place. It concludes with the envisioning of a place-conscious curriculum, and ways in which an activist agenda might be pursued in the Anthropocene.