ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that “common sense” – as experienced by farmers, conservationists, and other land managers in England – denotes several of the factors identified by Veronica Strang as encouraging affective connections with place. Wardens, like farmers, can and do treat their workplace as a common, to which they have certain shared rights and obligations, and where a “common sense” is possible. Echoing the Aristotelean concern for the integration of sensory experience, it is only when all the senses come together that the English common sense, as an attitude towards a common working environment, is possible. The conventional mode of viewing the landscape as mere scenery is critiqued by Strang, who suggests that for White people in her fieldsite, “the land is a stage for human activities, and the available roles could be performed interchangeably in any similar economic or social situation”.
