2. Our Project
O Explore relationships between landscape
and identity by collecting oral testimonies
O Outcomes:
O Touring exhibition
O Article for Cornish story magazine
O “We must understand the whole in terms of
the detail and the detail in terms of the
whole” (Gadamer, 2003)
3. Existing research
O Strong focus on photographs
O Romantic and timeless landscapes
O “Cornwall can still show fragments of the natural
landscape which must have confronted early man.”
(Balchin, 1954)
O Ignores local relationships
O Although some attempts to counter this: Trevor Burston,
The Floating World: 36 Views of St Michael’s Mount
(1995)
4. Change in focus
O Original focus:
O How have the feelings and attitudes towards the cultural
landscape changed over time?
O Found this too restrictive
O Focus adjusted to concentrate on the link between
landscape and identity
O Opened up more topics to discuss
O Photographs – trigger
5. Research methods
1) Selection process:
“...everyone has a history and can be involved
whether he or she is an affluent company
director or the person who stokes the
boiler.” (Howarth, 1998)
6. Research methods
2) Semi-quantitative
O Triangulation “can also capture a more complete,
holistic, and contextual portrayal of the unit(s) under
study.” (Jick, 1979)
O Widens the demographic
7. Sense of Belonging
O A general feeling of ‘home’ and sense of belonging
found in the interviews
O Chysauster
O “typifying, in the visitor’s mind, the ‘true’ Cornwall”
(Burston, 1995)
O Still in the locals’ mind too
O ‘Elective belongers’ (Hawke, 2010)
O Asking students in The Compass
8. Sense of timelessness
O Relating the landscape to ancestors
O “...the whole landscape is a memorial to all our ancestors,
really.” (Loveday Jenkin, 18/02/2014)
O The history and collective memory of towns are “The
physical expression of thousands who have contributed
towards its townscape.” (Pool, 1974)
9. Insider/Outside
O “People choose to identify with Cornwall, even when
they’re not Cornish, um, although they don’t always
understand it, obviously...” (Loveday Jenkin, 18/02/2014)
O Simon Reed – Tom Bawcock’s Eve
O Not necessarily a shared view:
O Helen Musser and Cornish dance
10. “They jumble names and
dates…”
O Oral history criticised for its reliability
O Collective memory less concerned with ‘factual accuracy’
O Semi-structured interview
O Yet ideas “do not proceed from an isolated individual
but from a public point of view.” i.e. Collective memory
(Fish, 2003)
11. Power relations
O Insider vs. outsider
O Living/growing up in Cornwall “the most immediately
tangible claim for having been in history.” (Portelli, 1997)
O Yvonne McKenna (2003)
O The interviewer does not always feel they are in a position
of power
O Age, gender
O “Age can also make a difference in what kinds of
information the interviewer thinks is important.” (Yow,
1998)
12. The exhibition
O “...any copy editing... must be treated with appropriate
suspicion.” (Howarth, 1998)
O Yet we need to pick out specific themes, e.g. ‘home’
O Anna Green – selected ‘representative’ stories and those
deemed appealing to a contemporary audience
O Closing academic-public gaps
O “Bridge the gap between representation and reality”
(Ritchie, 2003)
13. Conclusion
O A ‘sense of place’ is about how people interact and
use the landscape
O Photographs:
O “reconstructing what it was” (Simon Reed, 21/11/2014)
O Collective memory
O different examples, similar themes
14. Bibliography
O Balchin, W. G., The Making of the English Landscape Cornwall, (London,
1954)
O Burston, T., The Floating World: 36 Views of St. Michael’s Mount (Truro,
1995)
O Hannigan, D., Francis Frith’s Around Penzance (1999)
O Holmes, J., Penwith in Old Photographs (1993)
O Howarth, K., Oral History: A Handbook (Britain, 1998)
O Hooper-Greenhill, E., Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture,
(Routledge, London, 2000)
O Leffer, P. K., and Brent, J., Public and Academic History: A Philosophy and
Paradigm, (Florida, 1990)
O McKenna, Y., ‘Sisterhood? Exploring Power Relations in the Collection of
Oral History’, The Journal of the Oral History Society, vol.31, no.1 (Spring,
2003), pp.65-73
O Perks, R. and Thomson, A. (eds.), The Oral History Reader Second Edition,
(Oxon, 1998)
O Portelli, A., The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue,
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
O Ritchie, D. A., Oral History: A Practical Guide, (oxford University Press, 2003)
O Tregidga, G., and Milden, K., ‘Before My Time: Recreating Cornwall’s Past
Through Ancestral Memory’ (2008)
