"Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape"

"Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape" (Dec. 1996)
By Kenneth R. Olwig, (article in Annals)

Synopsis: Shows that the concept of "landscape" in geography is seen as both its most important contribution, andone of its more contested ones. He argues that the term can still be useful today, and is perhaps best understood as "a nexus of community, justice, nature, and environmental equity" (631). Spends a lot of time on the etymology of "landscape," especially as connected through the German Landschaft, and also traces its use in Old Europe. Main argument seems to be that even landscape as scenery is never devoid of cultural and historical meaning. Viewing landscape both reflects and shapes out views of the world. Argues that the American geography use of "landscape"is a mix of the British scenic idea and the "German romantic ideas concerning the relation of culture to nature as expressed in the physical landscape" (645). We should study landscape as more than a scenic text - we need a substantive understanding that recognizes the interplay of city and country, culture, law, etc.

Interesting Specifics:
Excruciatingly dull

The origin of "landscape" is Landschaft (German).

The construction of landscape in art influenced the way the English court saw itself in relation to the country (636).

The science of surveying helped pave the way for the commodification of land into private property parcels (638).

"Rural landscaping created the scenic image of the country community ideal, while helping to undermine the customary law upon which it was based" (640).

"The scenic concept of landscape provided both the template for the transformation of l and into natural parks and the world view or picture that became the mark of education for the ruling elite" (640).

The "Jena circle" was a group of German artists "characterized by a 'universal romanticism' that sought a holistic conception of art, science, and natural law" (641).

Interacts With:

Says new cultural geography is British oriented.

Supposedly, Landschaft geography is very important to the field, and Sauer started this ball rolling.

Seems to interact with Price and Lewis's little squabbling piece about the methods and approaches of geography today. Also interacts with the articles that were in response to that one.

[Apparently I thought that this article seemed to defend Sauer against New Cultural Geography attacks.]

Geographical Imaginations

Geographical Imaginations
By Derek Gregory (1994)

Synopsis: This book details various episodes in the history of geography and does so by showing the ways they interact with other histories. It also focuses on "the problematic of visualization," or the way in which sight has come to dominate the modern era (15-16). By the end of the nineteenth century, it was common for "European ways of knowing to render things as objects to be viewed " (34), which basically served to create a distance between the observer and the observed - a main definer of modernity. His book focuses mostly on a history of different understandings of space. Spends some time on postmodern thinkers as well. Talks a lot about Harvey (actually seems to summarize a lot of his work) and criticizes him for being too Western-centric and lacking in feminist perspective. Talks also about Lefebvre and his view that the visual has taken over, leaving an absence of any bodily dimension (392). Ends with idea that we need to come up with a more holistic and true human geography.

Interesting Specifics:

Says David Harvey and others view Haussmann's redo of Paris as a triumph of bourgeois values, making the public spaces akin to bourgeois private spaces (222).

Mapping American Culture

Mapping American Culture (1992)

Eds. Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner

Asks us to reground American studies in place. A compilation largely indebted to the work of Yi-Fu Tuan. Book includes ideas that support American dichotomy of restlessness/mobility and home/rootedness.

Yi-Fu Tuan:

Place and culture are “inextricably intertwined” (29)

Geographers and anthropologists just foreground different things

Humans have a seen to see order and patterns

Humans area unique and isolated, and place and culture “are a salve…for the threatening awareness of being alone in a world that is ultimately unresponsive” (39).

We are basically intensely alone.

Mondale:

Describes the experience of a first-generation migrant from a Tuanian-perspective (54).

“Clustering” as a strategy for those leaving home

Wants someone to further explore the experiences of those who migrate by force or by choice

Schultz:

How do we reconcile the tension immigrants feel between the Old World and the New World?

Rolvaag’s book is infused with a folkloric landscape; “physical landscape as repository of supernatural power” (100).

Question is, to maintain or lessen the culture’s heritage and traditions?

Allen:

Focuses on Southern identity and black gospel culture

How do Southern rural black transplants to urban places maintain a “southern/rural” identity?

Urban/North, Rural/South dichotomy is still strong

Authentic Southerness as backward-looking (129)

Old South as a state of mind that can be transferred to other locales

Souther-style Black religiosity as social capital transportable to new urban situations; used to increase a feeling of connectedness

“Aspects of traditional and modern social identity are simultaneously expressed in public performance, as this community of southern, rural church people strives to bring meaningful order to the northern, secular urban environment they now call home” (133).

Scheese:

*This is a good one*

Connection between mental and physical space

“Because they are alienated, inhabiters and travelers often separate themselves from society and seek transcendence in the natural world.” (143).

Thoreau felt one could not find wildness without unless it exists within.

“What takes place in mental or verbal space is as important as what occurs in physical space” (145).

Meyer:

Writers of 18^th-19^th century sought to mentally possess land as the new settlers had physically; hence such literary tradition “enacts a desire for landscape as both whore and virgin – the eternally possessible and the eternally unpossessed” (154).

Poetic representation as a an act of ownership

Wallace:

Concerned with way “language structures and articulates experiences of place” (170).

Lake Wobegon

What about diff between myth and reality?

Davis:

Landscape photography

Walker Evans and use of photos as vehicles of thick description

Evans’ work as canonization of the Depression-era landscape

FSA project as changing how we viewed landscape; took voice away from those who actually lived the situation

New Topographers as unsympathetic to reality of inhabitants

Postmodern anthro as giving back the insider voice

Bill Owen’s inclusion of quotes as example of polyvocality

AMS scholars should blend technique of photographers and anthropologists

Simon:

Shopping mall as formal garden of today, as gardens represent the ideal society of the time [so consumption is out ideal now???]

The new flaneur has “turned the city back into a place of play” (via consumption) (247)

Hales:

Manhattan Project; all site steeped in Am. Landscape mythology

Labels: Place, Yi-Fu Tuan, photography, appropriation, migration