Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope (Environmental Humanities)

Ecologies of Affect offers a synthetic introduction to the felt dynamics of cities and the character of places. The contributors capture the significance of affects, including desire, nostalgia, memory, and hope, in forming the identity and tone of places. The critical intervention this collection of essays makes is an active, consistent engagement with the virtualities that produce and refract our idealized attachments to place. Contributors show how place images and attempts to build communities are not abstractions but are fundamentally tied to and resolve around such intangibles. We understand nostalgia, desire, and hope as virtual; that is, even though they are not material, they are nonetheless and must be accounted for. In this book, the authors take up affect, emotion, and emplacement and consider them in relation to one another and how they work to produce and are produced by certain temporal and spatial dimensions.

The aim of the book is to inspire readers to consider space and place beyond their material properties and attend to the imaginary places and ideals that underpin and produce material places and social spaces. This collection will be useful to practitioners and students seeking to understand the power of affect and the importance of virtualities within contemporary societies, where intangible goods have taken on an increasing value.

Tonya K. Davidson is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Alberta. Her dissertation research is on the dynamic social lives of a series of monuments in Ottawa.

Ondine Park is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Alberta and is interested in urban and cultural studies and social theory. Her most recent research focuses on the idea and promise of the suburb.

Rob Shields is the H.M. Tory Chair in the departments of Sociology and Art and Design at the University of Alberta. He is co-editor of the journal Space and Culture, and his most recent works include What Is a City? Rethinking the Urban after Katrina (ed., 2008) and Building Tomorrow: Innovation in Construction (ed., 2005).