Contested Geographies Terrains disputés

To live in St. John’s, Newfoundland during 2000 was to inhabit contested terrain. At the time residents of the city were caught up in an intense debate about the impending construction of The Rooms, a much needed heritage facility to house the provincial art gallery, museum and archives. The decision to build The Rooms over the ruins of an eighteenth century fort had split the cultural community into camps: those who felt that the dire need to adequately protect the province’s art, artefact and manuscript collections outweighed any reservations about site choice, and those who could not get past the irony of destroying archaeological remains in the name of preserving provincial heritage. The controversy became a lightning rod for the discussion of government mishandling of other issues and of earlier injustices. Hard feelings surfaced as pleasant dinner conversations quickly erupted into heated debates when the topic of The Rooms was raised. It was a time to tread carefully and yet amidst intense local media coverage, it seemed almost impossible to do so. Bitter disagreement about The Rooms split apart families and divided heritage supporters who had long worked together on preservation projects. This special issue of Ethnologies has its genesis in this debate as we reflected on our personal negotiations of a very tricky terrain. The articles that follow challenge the very concept of geography in explorations of sites as diverse as The Rooms heritage facility: Romanian agricultural policies; a Nova Scotian Celtic festival; Filipino Balikbayan boxes; competing discourses of humanitarianism in Québec; an Ontario hospice room; and contemporary legends of women alone in the urban landscape. They show that, as feminist geographer Linda McDowell has written, We begin this special issue with two articles that examine facets of the heritage controversy that first sparked our interest. In the opening article, Peter Latta recounts the history of The Rooms debate, drawing attention to processes of public decision making and in particular, questioning the role of public consultation in government decision making around heritage matters. The second article to address The Rooms dispute takes a different tack. Here Johanne Devlin Trew focuses on the controversy to explore constructions of Newfoundland as an Irish place, and shows how this local discourse of space and place is grounded in two competing narratives of the Newfoundland nation: Republican and Confederate. The focus moves from urban to rural settings with the next two articles. Sabina Stan examines agricultural policy frameworks in Romania and competing visions of socialism. Stan reminds us that one’s position determines one’s memories and that in remembering we also look forward. Our version of the past informs our present and future and, as Stan argues in the case of Romanian farming collectives, visions of the past are not simply reconstructions but also commentaries on the types of societies in which we wish to live. Adrian Ivakhiv identifies Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours International Festival as another site where historical and geographical claims are contested. Here, cultural identities and natural landscapes come together in a construction of both Celticity and ecology. Ivakhiv argues that views of nature and culture intertwine as products of social, economic and ecological practice. The gaze widens further to the transnational with Jade Alburo’s consideration of Filipinos living in the United States. The gifts they bring to relatives and friends in the Philippines, known as Balikbayan boxes, become symbolic of the ties these immigrants have to their families and their homeland. The gifts, as well as souvenirs that the immigrants bring back to their new homes in the United States, reflect their sometimes competing identities as native Filipino and new …