Auto-Ethnography: Connecting to the Nearby

Abstract

This project delves into the establishment of place attachment in evolving landscapes through an interdisciplinary lens. It starts with the interpretation of the story of A-Fei, a mushroom forager in Yunnan, China from the perspective of multispecies ethnography, revealing that place attachment is tied to the nearby, where everyday interactions with the surrounding landscape can evoke memories of hometown and generate meanings of a new residence. Extending these insights, this project adopts auto-ethnography to examine the author’s experiences in the multicultural city of Toronto to explore how she as an immigrant builds an attachment to the local landscape. Through sensory engagement, cultural observation, and interviews of the other immigrants, how magnolias facilitate a new sense of belongings has been found. This project aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries and expand the realm of landscape architecture to anthropologic perspectives. By emphasizing the co-evolution of human and non-human lifeways, it seeks to explore how individuals perceive landscape and build relationship with it and proposes “ethnographizing landscape architecture” as a value-centered approach for socially impactful and contextually relevant design.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Auto-Ethnography / Multispecies Ethnography / Place Attachment / Landscape Perception / Storytelling

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2024 Higher Education Press