Narratives of Resilience: Place Attachment in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Abstract

As a contribution to decolonizing discourses, this dissertation examines narratives of place attachment in colonized space as shared by individuals confronting forced displacement, militarized violence, and environmental injustice on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. This study investigates emergent themes in place-based resilience, examining indicators associated with place dependence, social connection, place-based identity, and nature connection in 10 semi-structured narrative interviews. While indicators of place dependence and social connection were weakened during more than 60 years of military operations on the island, the narratives offer evidence of the significance of place-based identity and nature connection enacted through everyday acts of place making and re-making. While Groves (2015) identifies the colonialization of place attachment as an environmental injustice that hampers agency, this study suggests that the survivance of place attachment enables resistance to colonizing forces through acts of inhabiting (Barnd, 2017) that Fullilove (2014) describes as community practices of love.