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Greenbeat Magazine looks at the stories in Barton Springs Interactive

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Scott Swearingen is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas. His work specializes in Urban and Community Sociology and he has authored two academic papers on the relationship between people and their environment. Photo: Jeanine Sih

Mr. Swearingen writes:
"I grew up swimming in Barton Springs like my parents and their parents did. As a teenager, I remember how I found out about other parts of Austin by meeting people from all over town at the pool. Meeting so many new and diverse people really gave me a sense of my larger community.

"Today, in my academic research, I study classic sociological questions such as: "What makes a community?","What holds people together as a group?" and "How do people and communities interact with their natural and urban environments?"

"A great deal of my work revolves around what is called "a sense of place." This is the underlying feeling that individuals or groups experience as emotional and/or psychological attachment to their environment. Essentially, they come to attach their own meaning to that environment.

"My research about Barton Springs generally tries to figure out how this sense of place occurs. I study this by researching the history of the Springs, the history of the city, and interviewing people who have taken part in efforts to protect the natural environment of Austin. Asking people about their feelings for their city, nature in general, and Barton Springs in particular helps me understand more about the ways that people develop a overall sense of community.

"Sociologists know that in order for people to consider themselves a cohesive society, they must be somehow integrated together. My research points to Barton Springs as a solid example of a place which has this integrating effect.

"Barton Springs is a potent symbol for Austin. To be made into a meaningful symbol of a community, people must have what sociologists call a shared civic space. Private spaces are privately owned, but civic space is communally owned. Since Barton Springs is a park and therefore communally owned, it can act as a civic space in which people from all over the community can interact together.

"This integration is easy to observe down at the pool. Just watch the diving board area on a hot summer day and you will see a mixture of ages, races, and groups that make up a substantial part of the community of Austin. You can spend the day, swimming, playing, diving with people you've never met; Barton Springs atmosphere give us all a common ground, a community integration space.

"The integration factors I study can also become very strong when people band together in social movements and try to preserve something they find valuable. This experience brings people together and makes them feel part of something larger than simply a collection of individuals. You have probably felt that way yourself at some point, when you really felt like you were part of a group that was trying to achieve a goal, perhaps as a member of a sports team or in a religious service.

"In the last couple of decades in Austin, a social movement has been formed to protect Barton Springs. This movement has attracted many people who feel that the central environmental and communal aspects of Barton Springs are vital to their community. By engaging in a traditionally American social movement (the community political process) that is trying to protect the Barton Springs, and using Barton Springs as a symbol of this movement, people who are part of the movement may feel even more integrated into the community of Austin."

This story is made possible in part through support from
The National Environmental Education Training Foundation.

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