Parochialism – a defence

Abstract

I present a defence of parochialism against the claims of cosmopolitanism and in the context of debates about the relational accounts of place. Against normative claims that local attachments and territorial sense of belonging lead to exclusion and cultural atrophy, the paper suggests that the local, its cultures and its solidarities are a moral starting point and a locus of ecological concern in all human societies and at all moments of history. I explore this idea by reference to art and literature, especially poetry. This analysis suggests that local identities should be understood contextually; there is no necessary relation between local forms of identity and practices of exclusion. The paper shows how the virtue of parochialism is expressed in art with a universal appeal. I conclude, therefore, that we need more detailed studies of real local identities, which avoid a presumption of disdain.

Relational Comparison, Queer Urbanism and Worlding Cities

“…Debates around comparative urbanism (Robinson ) and relationality (Jacobs ) both revolve around the production of a less parochial, Western‐centric and the desire for more cosmopolitan urban studies. However, the issue of whether the striving for a cosmopolitan urban studies is even desirable or achievable remains open to question (see for instance Tomaney's () discussion of parochialism shows that cosmopolitanism is a contested concept (Binnie et al ; Jazeel )). McFarlane (:737) has questioned ‘how realistic is it for academics operating in the context of scarce personal and/or institutional resources (in South and North) to be cosmopolitan?’ McFarlane thereby draws attention to the issue of uneven access to resources for the production of academic knowledge.…”

Dear departed: Writing the lifeworlds of place

“…Recent reflections on the legacies of Kavanagh's doctrine of localism keep faith in its latent radicalism (Tomaney, ). The crafting of a regional tone, or style, even a distinctive aesthetic can be a means to realise fidelity to place.…”

Local history as productive nostalgia? Change, continuity and sense of place in rural England

“…However, this perspective has in turn been challenged as overlooking the tangibility and importance of the local in people's everyday lives, place attachments and sense of belonging (Crouch and Matless, 1996;Tomaney, 2013Tomaney, , 2014. Tomaney (2013) uses references to art, literature and poetry to present a 'defence of parochialism', demonstrating that local attachments can provide a 'progressive mode of dwelling' (Tomaney, 2013, p.5) by prompting a fidelity to place that supports local solidarities and moral commitments -without necessarily denying broader world politics and ethics.…”

“…However, this perspective has in turn been challenged as overlooking the tangibility and importance of the local in people's everyday lives, place attachments and sense of belonging (Crouch and Matless, 1996;Tomaney, 2013Tomaney, , 2014. Tomaney (2013) uses references to art, literature and poetry to present a 'defence of parochialism', demonstrating that local attachments can provide a 'progressive mode of dwelling' (Tomaney, 2013, p.5) by prompting a fidelity to place that supports local solidarities and moral commitments -without necessarily denying broader world politics and ethics. Common Ground's Parish Maps project, discussed by Crouch and Matless (1996), offers one such example of how a focus on the local -in this case through the creation of community maps -can be viewed as a 'positive parochialism' that 'acknowledge[s] the multiplicity of place' but 'resist[s] the temptation to track down an essence' (Crouch and Matless, 1996, p.252).…”