| This thesis concerns the relationship between community and landscape or people and place. This relationship is of critical importance because its outcomes are always located, affecting human communities, broader ecological communities and the landscape itself. Specifically, this thesis presents the variety of ways that the NAU (Northern Arizona University) community understands and engages with the SSLUG (Students for Sustainable Living and Urban Gardening) Garden. To assess the reciprocity of this relationship, this thesis frames understanding of and engagement with the SSLUG Garden as a conversational or dialogic process. Interviews conducted in and participant-produced illustrations of the SSLUG Garden suggest that participants' relationships with the SSLUG Garden are contingent on individual and collective sociocultural positions. However, this inquiry also produced results that suggest that this sociocultural contingency dissipates during immediate local and specific experiences in the SSLUG Garden, thereby promoting more reciprocal dialogue with landscape. Keywords: landscape, dialogue, reciprocity, place, space. |
