"The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the American Scene"

"The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the American Scene" (Dec 1997)
By Richard Schein (from Annals)

Synopsis: Although there is much ongoing debate as to what a cultural landscape is, all definitions have two major points: 1) they look at cultural landscape as a material object, and 2) "all are cohered by a loosely defined set of commonly accepted key works" (661). Basically, "the cultural landscape is produced and is ultimately implicated in the ongoing reproduction of social and cultural life" (662). Cultural landscapes are "discourses materialized" (663), and are potentially liberating mediums for social change as they are constantly "implicated in the ongoing reconstitution of a discourse" (664). Uses the example of the Kentucky suburb of Ashland Park (designed by Olmsted) to show ways in which landscape architecture, insurance mapping zones (Sanborn maps), zoning, historic preservation, the neighborhood association, and consumption all work to create discourses which shaped and were shaped by Ashland Park. Thus, "the cultural landscape serves to naturalize or concretize - to make normal - social relations as embodied in the various discourses and their combinations" (676). Thus, "the human agent is both object and subject" (676). [Hmm - talk about dialecticalism!]. We should look at the material and symbolic , and the interplay of actors as objects and subjects.

Interesting Specifics:

Cultural landscapes contain many different meanings and have "nodes' at the intersection of various different knowledge networks.

This article is the one that includes the cool Sanborn map description.

Contains an interesting discussion of zoning too.

The Federal Register was established in 1966 along with the Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

The American landscape is a "paradox between ideals of liberal individualism and the cultural landscape's disciplinary capabilities" (676).

Interacts With:

Debate as to what cultural landscape is about, but seems to fall in line with neither "old" or "new" cultural geography.
Basically, support idea that we need to look at both symbolic and material.