| Summary: | This thesis explores the racialised aspects of English landscape representations of ‘Black’ bodies through the lived experiences of people of ‘Black’ African ancestry in two English cities (Sheffield and Derby) through the lens of the Peak District National Park, Britain’s first National Park created in 1951 as part of the post-war reforms. It considers how appearances of ‘Black’ bodies in the English landscape influences perceptions of some white people’s own racialised identities of those considered as ‘Others’ as not belonging in the English countryside. This study emerged from autoethnography and readings of literatures that suggest ‘Black’ and other racialised subjects are excluded from the English landscape such as National Parks. ‘Black’ and other racialised subjects remain underrepresented in English National Parks’ history, with histories of ‘Black’ people erased from the English landscape culminating in the present-day lack of their sense of belonging in these spaces. This erasure is deeply rooted in the historisation and constructions of the English landscape as a ‘white space’, impacting on the way ‘Black’ people are perceived or feel perceived in National Parks.
This thesis therefore explores the nature of representations of ‘Black’ bodies with the racialised aspects of the hypervisibility of ‘Black’ people historically within these spaces. ‘Race’ and Non-representational theories have been applied as frameworks to guide and interrogate the phenomenological paradigm of “Black ontology” within the English landscape. Qualitative research methods of walking ethnography, a focus group interview, semi-structured interviews with white and ‘Black’ stakeholders and participant observation have been applied to collect data for this study.
The findings of the study have uncovered that anti-black structures though ‘invisible’, exist in National Parks embedded within past white supremacist ideologies that remain intertwined within the production of hierarchical and hegemonic differences in natural spaces where ‘Black’ people as subjects are subjugated but also have their histories erased. Accordingly, the notion of the English national identity rooted in ‘whiteness’ has emerged which has dominated racialised thinking and discourse that prescribe the English landscape as a white space where ‘Black’ people are either marginalised or feel unwelcome. This thesis concludes with the argument that British colonialist, imperialist attitudes and practices still persist and remain ingrained in English National Parks Authorities’ management practices. To address these long-standing racial disparities, this thesis recommends that ‘Race’-based epistemologies are adopted by English National Parks eco-systems to help decolonise and deconstruct the historization and constructions of the English landscape as a ‘white space’ in the quest to achieve more equitable outcomes in the representation and participation of ‘Black’ people in English National Parks.
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