ABSTRACT
Environmentalists today worry about a newly felt sense of impermanence around places in which we live, arguing that we live in archipelagic, disconnected dwelling places in a time of increasing travel, migration across and among continents, and the construction of mass-market ‘non-spaces’ (Buell 2005: 63) such as fast-food joints and airports, indistinguishable one from another. Ecologists insist on the importance of seeing the environment not as a static background for human actions but as a system in flux. Post-colonial theorists point to the problems with treating not only places but also humans themselves as ‘resources’ for the fulfillment of other people's desires.
