Published work

Published works

Ecologies of Belonging in Lamu - Basel Anthropology Papers

In our engaged research as part of the Critical Urbanisms program at the University of Basel, we used drawings and maps to explore the ecological relationality of belonging. Someone’s sense of belonging cannot be easily pinned on a map or represented in a drawing, yet the practice of drawing together with our research participants allowed us to grasp the complex links between places and people.

Our work took place in Lamu, an ancient node of the Indian Ocean trade famous for its coral stone architectural heritage. The town is undergoing rapid urban development, and the building of new coral stone houses raises pressing questions about who belongs. Our urban research with community organizers, stone masons, house builders, home owners and neighborhood residents combined hand drawing with photography, mapping, interviews and ethnographic walks. This dialogical process of creating something together allowed us to better understand what it means to belong.

Drawing to locate ourselves in the present and to look at the past: While walking, we began to draw an environment with our mobile phones. The students and community organizers geolocated places and took pictures to remember objects, houses and materials that make up the environment. This first step into visual representation established a solid foundation in the present, enabling us to comprehend the physical backdrop in which belonging unfolds. We first drew this environment in the form of a physical map that brings narratives to life in a spatial form. The proximities and distances between the visualized elements of discourse allowed us to explore the intricate web of connections between people and their surroundings. Through intertwining past experiences into the initial drawing, interviewees established a stronger connection to the present. This enabled us to gain deeper insights into how past encounters shape one’s sense of belonging. Through this exercise, we realized that each story has its own rhythm and frame. Drawing provides a gateway to the reverberations of past events in individuals’ present lives, revealing how fundamental the concept of ecology is to locate space-time at the core of the understanding of the sense of belonging.

Drawing and imagining the future: Drawing on the map allowed us to delve into individuals’ desires, dreams and un/certainties. The interviewees took the pen and offered a glimpse into the anticipation of sweeping economic changes in the town, and the impact these had on their personal lives and intimate aspirations. Simultaneously, the drawings uncovered a desire to create and prosper by building more permanent structures, juxtaposed with an underlying fear of sudden loss of their present homes due to their possible destruction. The drawings on the map provided insights into individuals’ envisioned futures within their current environment, shedding light on whether living in the quarry area serves as a transient stopover, an anchor point, or perhaps both.

Drawing and understanding belonging as something fundamentally relational: The drawing allowed us to take up the salient aspects of the narratives to tell life stories without fixing belonging to a particular place or moment in life. Instead, drawing empowers interviewees to traverse time and space in a non-linear way. Consequently, it provides a more comprehensive perspective, by considering space, time and relationships simultaneously. Animated visual narratives go beyond surface level storytelling of people’s sense of belonging by vividly depicting complex subjective experiences, memories, aspirations and their connections to the environment. By empowering research participants to draw, we were then able to visualize their uniquely traced experiences, providing invaluable insights into the intricate ecologies of belonging.

Cristina de Lucas Espinosa, Maèva Yersin, Kenny Cupers, Nasba Mohamed & Ruth Lozi