The nature of society: Enmapping nature, space and society into a town-green hybrid

Rice, Louis

Abstract

The paper describes the transformation of derelict land into a ‘town-green’ and the role legislation played in transforming social and natural relationships. Town-green denotes a legal status under the Great Britain Commons Act (2006) that protects certain open spaces from building development; the status requires that a space must simultaneously have a specific social quality (i.e. ‘town-ness’) and a specific natural quality (i.e. ‘green-ness’). This hybrid condition requires an alliance between society and nature in a certain configuration (referred to here as nature2 and society2). In this empirical study it involved the participation and consensus of local residents, volunteer gardeners as well as nature itself; flowers needed to bloom and grass had to grow in order for the hybrid town-green status to be conferred. There are two distinct phases of this transformation; the first is the change in identities and configuration of the constituents of town and green. This involved the production of a modified ‘real’ world with: different plants and flowers; reconfigured spatial arrangements; as well as different social actors. The second phase is a shift from changes in the ‘real’ world towards an ‘enmap’ – a displacement of myriad actors into documentation. This transfer from a complex messy reality into an enmap permitted the legitimation of the new network to be accepted as a ‘town-green’. What the research reveals, other than hints for gardeners and community activists, is how material and non-material; social and natural; spatial, discursive and temporal worlds are hybridised.

Citation

Rice, L. (2014). The nature of society: Enmapping nature, space and society into a town-green hybrid. Culture Unbound, 6(1), 981-996. https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146981

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 23, 2014
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2014
• Journal: Culture Unbound
• Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 981-996
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146981
• Keywords: hybrid, actor-network, space, power, informal, urban design
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146981