Where the Horses Are Buried: An Autoethnographic Account of Topophilia, Solastalgia, and Exurbanization

Background and Purpose: As social work seeks to address environmental justice, further research is needed to understand the psychosocial effects of environmental change on vulnerable people. This autoethnographic study analyzes an experience of topophilia—love for and attachment to a place (Tuan, 1974)—and the loss experienced when that place is transformed by environmental change. The resulting suffering, known as solastalgia (Albrecht, 2005), is increasingly understood as a form of disenfranchised grief often excluded from collective mourning and remembrance (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018). This study offers a critically reflective account of the researcher’s topophilia and solastalgia for a farm in the Midwestern US. Beginning the 1980s, Columbus, Ohio and its suburbs grew rapidly in response to economic boom, transforming surrounding farming communities into “desirable” residential and commercial developments—a transformation considered a quintessential example of exurbanization (Ban & Ahlqvist, 2009). Specifically, this study asks: Given changing access and claim to land, what are the psychosocial effects of disrupting affective bonds with loved rural places? What characterizes topophilia and solastalgia for an ordinary (not ecologically spectacular) rural place? And, how can a clearer understanding of solastalgia sensitize social workers to disenfranchised suffering among rural clients?

Methods: This study employs moderate authoethnography (Wall, 2016), which strategically combines analytic (Anderson, 2006) and evocative (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) autoethnographic approaches to data analysis and presentation, to convey meanings of lived experience and reveal their connections to structural processes. This study analyzes the researcher’s recollections, creative writings, and photographs related to working on a failing horse farm which was transformed by exurbanization. This source of data is critically examined in concert with public records and historical documents related to the farm property.

Results: Topophilia and solastalgia, developed through working on the farm between 1987 and 1998, contributed to the formation of my working-class identity. The farm was an object of profound devotion and attachment, even as its impending destruction increasingly exposed me to an inchoate grief for which no recognizable construct existed. I consider this experience of solastalgia alongside the property’s history of dispossession and acquisition—from the US Military District Act of 1796, which granted land to White Revolutionary War veterans, to the forced removal of Wyandotte and Lenape (Delaware) people in the early 19th century, to the 21st century development of the “Wildcat Run” luxury housing development. This study finds that topophilia and solastalgia are possible even for places not designated as environmentally unique or culturally important, and that such experiences may be central to individuals’ identity development and mental health.

Conclusions and Implications: This study deepens understanding of how environmental change produces individual suffering by disrupting crucial developmental attachments to place. It suggests the importance of attending to environmental and economic justice in the rural US and to acknowledging solastalgia as a powerful form of suffering not currently well-understood by social workers. Recognition of solastalgia may help link the experiences of poor and working-class rural Americans with social movements for economic and environmental justice.