From Wullie’s Peak to the Burma Naming places at sea
From Wullie’s Peak to the Burma Naming places at sea
The chapter focuses on human-environment relations. It begins with a description of how place names are used during a fishing trip, and how they are marked in digital GPS chartplotters and discussed amongst fishermen. Most of the names discussed are of places at sea not marked by anything visible from the sea’s surface. An account of the working day of a trawler fisherman shows how the intensive sociability of fishing skippers transcends their isolation on different boats. Discussions among skippers are focussed on the material results and affordances of fishing in places and names are generated in these discussions, reflecting Marnie’ Holborow’s Marxist analysis of language. The chapter builds on Tim Ingold’s analysis of place by demonstrating that place names reflect subjective the experience of working in them, as well as searing events of social history and changing fishing practices. An examination of places that are remembered but no longer in use shows that the same location can become a different place. The chapter concludes by emphasising how places are generated through conversations amongst people involved in developing their affordances, and how names for places incorporate many aspects of life experience and resonate through collective social experience.
Keywords: Place, Place names, Naming, Affordances, Tim Ingold, Language, Fishing, Marnie Holborow, The sea, Human-environment relations
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