Linda E. Kruger

The Creation and Maintenance of Sense of Place in a Tourism-Dependent Community

This paper examines the theoretical intersection of place attachment and community through a study of the place attachment of residents who live, work, and play in a tourism-dependent community. Using a qualitative photo-elicitation technique best described as “resident employed photography,” we asked 25 residents of Seward, Alaska, to share images and stories of important places in and around their local community. The findings suggest that place and community are intertwined, as evidenced by the use of community as a frame of reference for describing nearly every example of attachment to place. This suggests that place attachment can serve as a factor in the development “of” community, defined as a heightened engagement in collective actions that help people meet their day-to-day needs. It could also influence ones development “in” community, directing the behaviors that affect how people both participate in communities and seek to change their position within them.

Understanding concepts of place in recreation research and management.

Over a 3-day weekend in the spring of 2004 a group of scientists interested in extending understanding of place as applied in recreation research and management convened a working session in Portland, Oregon. The purpose of the gathering was to clarify their understanding of place-related concepts, approaches to the study of people-place relations, and the application of that understanding in recreation management for the purpose of integrating perspectives from different disciplines, discussing approaches to understanding and measuring sense of place, and other questions around the study and application of place-related concepts. Topics that generated the most discussion included how social processes influence place meanings, how place meanings are shared and negoitated within social groups, and when and how place meanings and attachments focus, reduce, or avert conflict in natural resource planning and management. This collection of papers is a result of that meeting.

Place-based conservation : perspectives from the social sciences

The chapters of this book describe various perspectives from the social sciences of place-based conservation. The prescriptive implications are often close to the surface and become entangled with them. This chapter highlights four overlapping approaches to the practice of place-based conservation and acknowledges the difficulty of separating descriptions from prescriptions: (1) a planning process, (2) an emergent process, (3) an organizing concept, and (4) a framework for policy. Yet to be considered are the incorporation of cultivating new communication channels, developing civic capacity, identifying appropriate roles for expertise, integrating multiple geographic scales, and customizing governance strategies. Addressing these challenges will support transitions to place-based conservation.Place-oriented inquiry and practice are proposed as keys to overcoming the persistent gap between science and practice. This chapter begins by describing some of the reasons science fails to simplify conservation practice, highlighting the challenges associated with the social and ecological sciences of multi-scaled complexity. Place concepts help scientists and practitioners address the inevitably incomplete, plural, and uncertain character of all knowledge and suggest productive ways forward that not only embrace this pluralism but find greater efficacy and advantage in the multiplicity of context-dependent positions occupied by scientists and practitioners, each differentially shaped by individual life history. The chapter then highlights a growing body of literature in sociology and public administration that has begun to address the broad challenge of governing complex social-ecological systems. These emerging theories recognize that much of contemporary governance takes place outside formal government institutions and bureaucracies and involves increasingly complex linkages and collaborations among multiple public and private organizations. In governing complex systems informed practice can be conceived as guided by the emergent wisdom of networked actors and institutions governing complex systems, each informing one another in a collaborative form of rationality that operates both horizontally (place to place) and vertically (upwards and downwards in scale).Place has emerged as a significant topic within conservation research and practice. The transformative changes connected to contemporary conservation are related to recognition of multi-scaled, social-ecological dynamics; emergent, multiscaled governance structures; and rising importance of place-specific meanings and local knowledge. These transformative changes are central to place-based conservation and closely tied to the social sciences. There is no singular approach to. placebased conservation; however there are ways to organize the complexity of related ideas. This chapter overviews the purpose of the book as a resource for researchers and practitioners to build the conceptual grounding for place-based conservation, including characterizations of the meaning of place, their relevance to conservation, and an explanation for the organization of the book.1: The Emergence of Place-Based Conservation Daniel R. Williams*, William P. Stewart, and Linda E. Kruger Part I: Conceptual Issues of Place-Based Conservation 2: Science, Practice and Place Daniel R. Williams* 3: Conservation That Connects Multiple Scales of Place Courtney Flint* 4: Organizational Cultures and Place-Based Conservation Patricia A. Stokowski* 5: Community, Place, and Conservation Gene L. Theodori* and Gerard T. Kyle Part II: Experiencing Place 6: Sensing Value in Place Herbert Schroeder* 7: Place Meanings as Lived Experience James R. Barkley* and Linda E. Kruger 8: Personal Experience and Public Place Creation Tyra Olstad* 9: Volunteer Meanings in the Making of Place Ben Amsden*, Richard C. Stedman, and Linda E. Kruger Part III: Representing Place 10: Integrating Divergent Representations of Place into Decision Contexts Damon M. Hall*, Susan J. Gilbertz, Cristi C. Horton, and Tarla Rai Peterson 11: Sharing Stories of Place to Foster Social Learning William P. Stewart*, Troy D. Glover, and James R. Barkley 12: Rural Property, Collective Action, and Place-Based Conservation Paul Van Auken* and Shaun Golding 13: Whose Sense of Place? A Political Ecology of Amenity Development Patrick T. Hurley* Part IV: Mapping Place 14: Participatory Place Mapping in Fire Planning Michael Cacciapaglia and Laurie Yung* 15: Participatory Mapping of Place Values in Northwestern Ontario Norman McIntyre*, Perrine Lesueur and Jeff Moore 16: Place Mapping to Protect Cultural Landscapes on Tribal Lands Alan Watson*, Steve Carver, Roian Van Ness, Tim Waters, Kari Gunderson, and Brett Davis 17: Place Attachment for Wildland Recreation Planning Neal Christensen* and James Burchfield 18: From Describing to Prescribing: Transitioning to Place-Based Conservation William P. Stewart*, Daniel R. Williams, and Linda E. Kruger

Community and landscape change in southeast Alaska.

Abstract Since the early 1970s, social science research has addressed issues concerning the nature and distribution of values and uses associated with natural resources. In part, this research has tried to improve our understanding of interconnections between resource management and social and cultural change on the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. In 1997, scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW) initiated a number of social science studies in response to information gaps identified while developing the Tongass Land Management Plan. Results presented here summarize findings from studies of traditional ecological knowledge, subsistence use of natural resources, tourism trends and the effects of tourism on communities, and social acceptability of alternative timber harvest practices. Management implications are discussed along with suggestions for further study.

The interplay of governance, power and citizen participation in community tourism planning

This research examines a unique case of tourism planning and explores the relationships between governance, power, and citizen participation in community decision-making. In less than two years, the community of Sitka, Alaska, undertook two separate tourism-planning processes in response to proposed tourism development. The first plan followed a participant-led governance structure; the second plan a council-led governance structure. The participant-led governance structure produced a plan through a collaborative process that empowered citizen participants and sought to limit growth, while the council-led structure utilized an external consultant and produced a more pro-growth plan that downplayed citizen concern for maintaining quality of life. The council-led plan was adopted as the guiding document for the community. Ultimately, the power over plan adoption and implementation lay in the hands of the local government, creating a stressful community environment for many involved in both planning processes. Evidence of the advantages and disadvantages of citizen participation in each planning process is presented.

Improving the Integration of Recreation Management with Management of Other Natural Resources by Applying Concepts of Scale from Ecology

In this article, we examine how issues of scale affect the integration of recreation management with the management of other natural resources on public lands. We present two theories used to address scale issues in ecology and explore how they can improve the two most widely applied recreation-planning frameworks. The theory of patch dynamics and hierarchy theory are applied to the recreation opportunity spectrum (ROS) and the limits of acceptable change (LAC) recreation-planning frameworks. These frameworks have been widely adopted internationally, and improving their ability to integrate with other aspects of natural resource management has significant social and conservation implications. We propose that incorporating ecologic criteria and scale concepts into these recreation-planning frameworks will improve the foundation for integrated land management by resolving issues of incongruent boundaries, mismatched scales, and multiple-scale analysis. Specifically, we argue that whereas the spatially explicit process of the ROS facilitates integrated decision making, its lack of ecologic criteria, broad extent, and large patch size decrease its usefulness for integration at finer scales. The LAC provides explicit considerations for weighing competing values, but measurement of recreation disturbances within an LAC analysis is often done at too fine a grain and at too narrow an extent for integration with other recreation and resource concerns. We suggest that planners should perform analysis at multiple scales when making management decisions that involve trade-offs among competing values. The United States Forest Service is used as an example to discuss how resource-management agencies can improve this integration.

The Emergence of Place-Based Conservation

Place has emerged as a significant topic within conservation research and practice. The transformative changes connected to contemporary conservation are related to recognition of multi-scaled, social-ecological dynamics; emergent, multi-scaled governance structures; and rising importance of place-specific meanings and local knowledge. These transformative changes are central to place-based conservation and closely tied to the social sciences. There is no singular approach to place-based conservation; however there are ways to organize the complexity of related ideas. This chapter overviews the purpose of the book as a resource for researchers and practitioners to build the conceptual grounding for place-based conservation, including characterizations of the meaning of place, their relevance to conservation, and an explanation for the organization of the book.

Recreation as a path for place making and community building 1

Abstract Social science researchers who study natural resource based rural communities are increasingly interested in the attachments people form with natural landscapes and the actions that result from those relationships. Recreation, encompassing outdoor leisure activities engaged in by tourists, seasonal and year‐round residents, involves a relationship with the land where the activity takes place. This paper highlights trends resulting in increased recreation participation and presents an overview of literature on place, community, and the phenomenon of amenity migration. The paper closes with a socioculturel conception of place that informs our understanding of place making and community building.

Identifying Indicators of Behavior Change: Insights from Wildfire Education Programs.

Environmental educators are challenged to document behavior changes, because change rarely depends solely on outcomes of education programs, but on many factors. An analysis of 15 communities in the United States that have increased their preparedness for wildfire allowed us to explore how education programs encouraged individual and community change. Agency-sponsored adult educational programs helped communities change their philosophy about firefighting, pass ordinances that restrict individual property rights, and empower residents to reduce their wildfire risk. This article explores several outcomes of these programs and offers suggested indicators of change that might be useful for education program evaluation.

Sense of place and community: Points of intersection with implications for leisure research 1

Abstract Our paper explores the points of contrast and intersection between two theories that have been used to understand the relationships between people and locales: sense of place and community theory. We distil crucial elements from each approach: for sense of place we include setting characteristics, behaviours, symbolic meanings, and evaluations such as attachment and identity. We use the interactional approach to represent community theory, and thus include ecology, society, and action components. We create and introduce a matrix that intersects these elements and find that much common ground exists: there is significant potential for cross fertilization between the approaches. The utility of the approach is illustrated using public participation as an example topic of interest to resource and recreation managers.