A Sense Of Place Ethnographic Reflection On Two Palestinian Life Histories

There is a labyrinth of complex social connections between people and places that deserves careful anthropological reflection. People do not simply occupy places; they experience them, infusing them with life and social meaning. Basso (1996:53) argues that ethnography has reported little about the complex ways in which people are “alive to the world around them.” Anthropology is currently experiencing a resurging emphasis on place that seeks to account for its remarkably social features. Rather than primarily thinking about place when determining a location for fieldwork, emerging anthropological reflection shows the discipline is repositioning itself to explore the complex and often fantastic ways people experience, conceptualize, and confer meaning to their natural surroundings. In anthropology, the phrase “sense of place” captures these ideas. The phenomenological approach has emerged as the theoretical centerpiece for this effort, promising to open extraordinary new pathways for qualitative exploration. This thesis uses the life history methodology to explore how two female Palestinian immigrants to Central Florida experience and confer meaning to their ancestral homeland and place of birth. Data collected through a series of life history interviews highlight the texture of Palestinian senses of place, including the presence of what I describe as an eschatological sense of place