Organic cosmopolitanism: challenging cultures of the non-native at the Burnley Millenium Arboretum

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of cosmopolitanism in contemporary cultural theory which has not been embraced in modern ecological discourses and practices committed to legislate against cosmopolitan landscapes made up of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ plant species. These tensions are examined through the example of the Burnley millennium arboretum, where three thousand non-native trees form part of the urban arboretum. The Burnley arboretum is examined in the context of local authority initiatives set up by central government to address and enable racial cohesion in this region since the race riots of 2001. The organic cosmopolitanism represented at the site of the arboretum challenges the orthodoxy of contemporary ecological categorisations of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’. The arboretum also represents a site where, through materialised memory and cultural dialogue, a new civic pride and citizenship is being forged for this multicultural community. Visual methods have been used to chart the memories of past landscapes and the contemporary experiences of place that British Muslims have had in Pakistan and do have with the Burnley landscape. The community’s sense of feelings of isolation, exclusion and fear are recorded on canvas. The paper concludes with a re-evaluation of the possibilities for cosmopolitan values for both diasporic communities and environmental communities in contemporary Britain.