ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the main perspectives in recent debates about the nature of place, 'the local' and 'regionality'. It offers a satisfactory account of the formation and content of local identification, attachment and belonging and the role these play in the matter of dwelling. The chapter seeks to rescue local attachments and a sense of belonging from the condescension of the cosmopolites and, instead, to present a defence of parochialism as a mode of dwelling. Parochialism speaks of care for one's parish, including 'the resident alien, settled foreigners and non-native sojourners'. Rather like religious faith, parochialism persists because 'it encodes needs and longings which will not simply evaporate at the touch of tough-minded analysis'. It provides a means of living in the world and transcending the 'grossly reductive binary opposition between atavistic traditionalism and a liberal, pluralist, enlightened world order on the other'.
