Re-claiming Lost Landscapes Through Collaborative Ethnography: A Preservation Case Study Centered on Intangible Heritage

Abstract

This thesis shows how collaborative ethnography—as defined by open and deliberate ongoing collaboration between researchers and research participants—can help re-identify lost landscapes through the collection of memory and story and could help former residents strengthen and maintain their place attachment. Memory and story evoke place in ways that more conventional preservation practice often misses. A collaborative ethnography approach to preservation practice can bring places with little to no tangible heritage back into the broader historical narrative and provide richer social, historical, and geographic contexts for places that retain robust tangible heritage.

The case study for this project is the pre-1990 landscape of the Limestone Pony Club (LPC) which is primarily centered around Fayetteville and Manlius, New York. While some portions of this landscape are extant, others have been lost to development or no longer retain recognizable physical signs they were once associated with the LPC. A collaborative approach to collecting memory and story brought these lost portions of the landscape back into the historic LPC narrative.

This study produced two products—first, a framework document for preservation professionals outlining how to apply collaborative ethnography to preservation practice, and second, a three-part LPC History and Memory Toolkit. The toolkit consists of a story map, a Facebook group dedicated to LPC history and memories, and a narrative LPC history from 1963 to 1989, all developed through this collaborative ethnography approach to traditional preservation research. The Facebook group page also served as a digital ethnographic field site and aided in collecting and reviewing LPC memories and stories. This thesis shows how and why a collaborative ethnography approach is beneficial to preservationists seeking a more people-centered focus.