People “see” different things when they see landscapes – they look through a cultural filter – obvious parallels with photographic filters and concepts such as rose-tinted spectacles.
Our understanding of nature … cultural expressions used to define who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be at this place and in this space (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:2&15)
“Meanings are not inherent in the nature of things” (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:2)
For Soja and other postmodern theorists, space or the physical environment is not a given; it is socially constructed to both ‘reflect and configure being in the world’ (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:5 after Soja 1989:15)
Authors discuss healing powers or rivers and angry rock spirits – interestingly although these will seem alien to many modern cultures (and I do not believe in them) they may function as far more successful belief systems for a sustainable future than our current set of codes.
Our attitudes to natural resources are currently being re-assessed beyond commodities to be traded and used up,
Need for human mind to organise (name, etc.) “these intersubjective definitions of the situation, rather than the situations per se, constitute reality for the group of people” (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:6 after Thomas and Thomas 1928)
Negotiating the landscape – travelling through it, settling borders, social construction of symbols and meaning that define it.
“Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world. … Human meanings are no longer understood as world-producing but as being, in their turn, products of the ‘nature of things'” (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:8 after Berger and Luckmann 1967:89).
- Reification
- The act of treating something abstract as if it were real
- (computer science) The creation of a data model
The authors conclude that this means we see “the landscape” as something natural, not an idea fixed by a group – even if different groups will have a different concept. This also explains how the concept of nature changes through time, as the group renegotiates its definition of itself. It is also noted that this is not the same thing as saying the natural environment changes, although (in my opinion) in the Anthropocene such changes often result.
This idea appears to me to be very tied up with context. If you like it is another expansion beyond the object model – which frames and focuses on the art object to the exclusion of everything around it. This is extended via sculpture and architecture to include the landscape for environmental art and the aesthetics of nature. This needs further adjustment as it is realised that the meaning of this is created through a cultural filter.
Interestingly the cultural meaning of fire as a landscape management tool – favoured for example by Aboriginal people and Native American Indians, but viewed differently by park rangers. Even within the forestry profession the authors comment on how fire has gone from being adversarial to an inevitable natural occurrence (using the example of Yellowstone).
There is also an extended discussion of various other sociocultural conventions regarding landscape and its elements, for example water. However, in common with other writings, there seem to be two possible scenarios – that a change in the landscape is understood/accepted/contested according to the prevailing cultural framework, or that the change may precipitate a renegotiation of this framework. In practice I am sure it is not one or the other but a dynamic combination. For example a truly massive, life-changing alteration to the landscape would probably result in a cultural adjustment.
Example of Bali priests allocating water resources on rotation to allow irrigation or let the fields lie fallow, in the name of the water Goddess DewiDanu. In fact this maximised the sustainable yield. Higher yield projects recommended by the Asian Development Bank failed. It was only when computer simulations tested scenarios they found the original scheme to be the best. These simulations use randomness and the scan a large number of possibilities quickly, effectively mimicking the evolution of a strategy over many hundreds of years – which is exactly what had already happened!
As the threat from global warming ramps up, the authors discuss a definition of power as “the capacity to impose a specific definition of reality which is disadvantageous to others…” (Greider & Garkovich, 1994:17 after Lamont and Wuthnow 1990:295). On the subject of power when negotiating landscapes they state 3 factors:
- Ability to construct knowledge
- Ability to control knowledge
- Ability to mobilise support
The conclusion is perhaps that where nature and even reality is a cultural definition then it is a change in culture – human behaviour – that is needed to manage the environment sustainably.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Greider, T. & Garkovich, L. (1994) Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment. Rural Sociology, 59, 1-24
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