ABSTRACT
It is true that the original catalyst for the development of this text was the observation of individuals who felt they were not a part of the landscapes they occupied. They thought they were not valued participants in the processes of those landscapes. Neither were they convinced they had contributed meaningfully and were invested in membership. In fact, they often complained bitterly that what they offered was never taken seriously. They described their disappointment with such pathos that their complaints stayed with me a long time. Some talked about not belonging at work, at school, or in professional organizations. Others expressed the discomfort about being out of place in the middle of a concert, when they looked around, listened carefully to the music, and surveyed the audience again. Then they got up and walked out, mumbling to themselves about what they could possibly be doing amid such a group. I even remember a friend once telling me about his visit to Paris. He got into a taxi and found the driver insistently addressing him in French, even though he did his best to make clear he only understood English. The encounter made him decide there and then that he couldn’t deal with France. He didn’t belong there, and he rushed off to London for the reassurance that he knew could come from a country with a language he could call his. He’d had enough of all that foreign stuff. I did not take these complaints to mean that their authors were always justified in what they had to say. It is self-evident that I was hearing only one side, and all stories may have multiple angles. But the richness 226of the accounts made me think deeply about belonging and its provenance.
