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6 Local Matters, EcoJustice, and Community 81

phenomena, such as sense of place and ecojustice, are related to embodied knowing
and emotion. In this article, I use photographs to communicate more than a success-
ful approach to teaching in rural settings. One of my purposes is to produce a gut-
level understanding of what these places are like where I have taught and to which
I have developed a deep sense of emotional belonging, awe, and responsibility. I am
growing here the food I eat, and I contribute to the maintenance of an environment
that also is my dwelling on which I depend. But these specific places I inhabit are
only placeholders, metonyms for the world we inhabit more generally and in which
we ought to take the place of caretakers rather than of abusers. There are other
places, where through my actions I can contribute to ecojustice and a sense of place,
by buying organic and fairly traded products (e.g., clothing from organically grown
cotton and bamboo, organically grown and fairly traded coffee). I abandoned my car
and now do everything by bicycle and bicycle trailer. We cannot just write about
changing the world, we must change it both through action and by example. Place,
ecojustice, and rural community ought not remain (empty) slogans and lines in the
manuscripts we compose but have to be taken up in the way we conduct our lives.
Michael Mueller (2009) suggests, we must not take “ecological crisis” as the
lynch pin of our arguments on ecojustice or sustainability. I agree. My own sense
for ecojustice and caring for the environment emerged when I was a child. My
mother often talked to us about the hoopoe – which, because it defecated in its own
nest, was to stink to such an extent that “stinking like a hoopoe” has become a
familiar expression – when she wanted to make sure that we did not litter and make
sure we were clean. Ever since those days, the image of human beings on earth like
the hoopoe in its nest – we pollute our own place of dwelling. It is out of this sense
of dwelling and the care it needs that my own sense of place and ecojustice has
evolved rather than out of a sense of environmental crisis and sustainability (which
may in fact not be possible when viewed on a global scale).

Acknowledgments The research for this article was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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