ABSTRACT
Place is a vital part of our human existence. It is the ground on which we stand, the home we defend, and the earth into which we might place the bodies of our deceased kin. In many respects it is also our kin, so central to humanity that without it we might be said not to exist. Despite this dependency and in spite of the intimacy that links people and place, there is a realisation that human action, as conflict, causes great harm to place via the destructions of war, the violence of ethnic tension, environmental strife and ecosystem degradation. Witnessing violence and the wounds that exist in place prompts reflection on the moral ecology of contemporary life; asking, what is it that we humans owe to the place world? This calls for reflection on what comes of place when it absorbs the violence of human conflict.
