annotated bibliography

Cresswell uses political geographer John Agnew’s definition of place as the basis for his own definition and work. He says that places are spaces that people have made meaningful or have attached to in some way. Every place includes three things; location, locale, and sense of place. Location is the actual location of the place (think coordinates). Locale refers to the physical shape of a place – the walls of a room, the buildings in a city. And sense of place is the attachment that people have to space, fulfilling place’s necessity “to have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning.” Sense of place is the most important of the three because it gives us a way of understanding the world. Places come in many forms and can cause certain negative effects (racism), but they are what allow us to contextualize our world and make it ours. Cresswell then discusses space and landscape and their relationships to place. First it is important to acknowledge that space is just as important as place, because in a way, it is place. It is everything that is in between our places. To Cresswell, landscape is not place because we are not in it, or apart of it. We give landscape meaning and attach to it, but we are not actually apart of it and interacting with it.

In this narrative, Laura first talked about the independence of the fishermen in West Point. They lacked political power to seek help from the government, and the government officials were ignorant of their suffering. She mentioned herself being “inside” of such a kind of life and did not notice the hardship of living in this place or the “going back to nature.” Then she said she did not see women’s liberation either in her life. She described how she had to do everything that men were doing in lobstering because her husband broke his leg and there is a family to support. In the end, she emphasized the nature of independence and uniqueness of the lobstermen. She said:”The government must realize that we can’t be made into a chorus. Fishermen must remain independent.”

In this excerpt from his book Islands in Time, Phillip Conkling examines the history and significance of Muscongus Bay.  Muscongus (the abenaki word for “fishing place”) likely originated from the native’s smelt fishing, and the name holds true today as the whole bay is covered with lobster pots.  Conkling delves deeper into the history of settlement around Muscongous Bay, specifically relating to the settlers conflict with the Native Americans.  George Waymouth stayed on Allen Island for 2 months in the spring of 1605.  He and other European settlers, including John Smith, were responsible for the kidnapping and enslavery of Native Americans.  As a result of the Native Americans code of law that made a whole tribe responsible for the acts of one of its members, the Native’s had no trust for the settlers.  After almost 70 years of growing hostility, the first Indian War broke out in 1675.  The conflict continued into the 1700s, with the fourth Indian War lasting from 1722-25.  Although the last of the Indian Wars did not end until 1760, Maine’s Indian tribes were nearly exterminated by 1725.  This allowed for increased settlement of islands across mid-coast Maine.  This caused island settlement was slow to develop during the Indian Wars because colonists feared to venture far from the Pemaquid Fort on the mainland.