Prelude: Small Stories
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Published:January 2025
The chapter draws largely on the work of intellectuals (often identified as Indigenous) closely associated with emplaced collectives to present life projects. The term emplaced collective denotes the situation in which people cannot be separated from the places they are with; they are one and the same. It is argued that emplaced collectives are the most intense expression of life projects, stories of the good life that are oriented toward nurturing the specificity of place. Both emplaced collectives and life projects are presented as key references for a politics of emplacement. In the process, we learn that emplaced collectives have produced a cosmopolitics avant la lettre that serves as a counterpoint to both modern politics and more recent notions of cosmopolitics that have emerged within the academy.