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symploke 14.1/2 (2006) 232-251

Literary Criticism for Places
Eric L. Ball
Empire State College

Many scholars and intellectuals argue for a radically alternative socio-ecological future in which places are fundamentally important— e.g., Murray Bookchin's social ecology (qtd. in Luke 177-194), David Harvey's urban anti-capitalism, bioregionalism (qtd. in McGinnis). Even proponents of less radical social change suggest that a thriving corporate-capitalist economy depends on the well-being of particular places, and vice versa. Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class is a case in point. He observes that place is increasingly important in the emerging economic order dominated by a so-called "creative class":

[P]lace solves a basic puzzle of our economic order: It facilitates the matching of creative people to economic opportunities. Place thus provides a labor pool for companies who need people and a thick labor market for people who need jobs. The gathering of people, companies and resources into particular places with particular specialties and capabilities generates efficiencies that power economic growth. It is for this reason that I say place is becoming the central organizing unit of our economy and society, taking on a role that used to be played by the large corporation.

(224)

Yet, while today's creative people choose where to settle down and pursue a career based on the quality of place, they do so in a way that hardly indicates social and ecological awareness. They "do not desire the strong ties and long-term commitments associated with traditional social capital. Rather they prefer a more flexible, quasi-autonomous community—where they can quickly plug in, pursue opportunities and build a wide range of relationships" (220). Moreover, they are largely apathetic to politics and civic engagement, and "naively assume that if they take care of their own business, the rest of the world will take care of itself and continue to provide the environment they need to prosper" (316). Such attitudes do not contribute to social and ecological sustainability and, as Florida recognizes, they are also detrimental to the long-term success of the economy. He asserts, therefore, that [End Page 232] "[u]nless we design new forms of civic involvement appropriate to our times, we will be left with a substantial void in our society and politics that will ultimately limit our ability to achieve the economic growth and rising living standards we desire" (316). He observes that "states and regions across the country continue to pour countless billions into sports stadiums, convention centers, tourism-and-entertainment centers and other projects of dubious economic value," and insists instead that they invest in creative capital, including "the arts and cultural creativity broadly" (320). In short, Florida argues that not only is place crucial to the organization of the emerging economy, but there is an economic need for developing "strong communities" committed to civic involvement and for cultivating literary, artistic, and other cultural resources (324). Academic and other cultural and educational institutions have the potential to respond to this need, and one way they can do so is by advancing approaches to literature and literary criticism that are more sensitive to place(s).

In this paper, I consider the contours of place-based literary criticism aimed at contributing to the social and ecological well-being of particular places. I begin by surveying particular approaches to place in literary criticism in order to situate recent place-based ecocriticism. Place-based literary ecocritics aim to inspire or suggest the importance of a sense of place and emphasize the ecological as well as social aspects of place (especially environmental history and humans' relationship to the environment)—all through a reflexive narrative scholarship comprised of reading literary texts and reflecting autobiographically on themselves as inhabiting the place in question. However, for the most part such texts downplay the inescapably political dimensions of ecological discourse emphasized by constructivist theories which pay particular attention to questions of nature and culture. Not only do these ecocritics tend to avoid discussions of the political ramifications of their goals of...

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