Landscapes

Ways of Imagining the World

Hilary P.M. Winchester

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317888529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Landscapes is a timely and well-written analysis of the meaning of cultural landscapes. The book delves into the layers of meaning that are invested in ordinary landscapes as well as landscapes of spectacle and power. Landscapes is a powerful and vivid application of the new cultural geography to case studies not previously visited within cultural geography texts.

Chapter 1

Cultures and landscapes

1.1 The desire for cultural landscapes

The discipline of geography has long maintained a focus on cultural landscapes. Curiosity with landscapes and peoples continues to constitute an important impetus for geographical inquiry today. Populist and political support for the discipline was founded on the ‘discovery’ of, and reporting back on, ‘new’ places and peoples. For example, governments in western countries have funded scientific expeditions to the so-called New World since the fifteenth century, and geographical societies have continued this tradition for the last 200 years. Geographical discovery and exploration facilitated and legitimated territorial claims and opened up new lands (Hartshorne, 1939:35–48; Powell, 1988), as an integral part of the colonial enterprise.

Geographers involved in all these expeditions produced texts about the cultures and landscapes they encountered and early cultural geographers were particularly interested in the diffusion of cultures. Geographical interest in cultural landscapes, of course, emerged even before the rise of western colonialist geography, in the form of explorers in the Middle Ages (see Box 1.1). Some of the texts were used to amuse and titillate an increasingly literate public with

Box 1.1 Capturing landscapes: the pre-European colonialists

It is generally assumed that the Middle Ages were largely typified by a lack of geography (Park, 1994:8). This conclusion ignores a rich vein of Islamic geography, particularly between the ninth and fourteenth centuries AD (Ahmad, 1947; Sharaf, 1963). The Islamic realm during this period contained great centres of learning, in which the Greco-Roman tradition was preserved, and from which large parts of Asia, Africa and Europe were mapped and described and new ideas in astrology, climatology and navigation developed (Jones, 1993:13, 24, 26; Rosenthal, 1965:xvi; Sharaf, 1963:60). Islamic scholars developed Ptolemy's ideas on geography and astronomy (Rosenthal, 1965:214–23; Sharaf, 1963:83). They advanced ideas about erosion, landforms and the folding of mountains, many of which were counter to Christian creationism (Sharaf, 1963:84, 111). Symposia on meteorology, climatology and other aspects of geography were held and the annual pilgrimage to Mecca ‘itself fostered the exchange of geographical information’ (Sharaf, 1963:70–1, 84). Al Maqdisi was a populariser of geography in the tenth century. He introduced the use of symbols and colours to cartography in an attempt to broaden academic interest in the discipline as well as to make the subject more accessible to the ordinary people (Sharaf, 1963:91–2).

Muslim explorers traversed much of south and central Asia, as well as the archipelagos and peninsulas of southeast Asia (Sharaf, 1963:76–8). Muslim traders were firmly established in China at least by the ninth century and Muslim armies had entered Sinkiang in 714 AD (El Erian, 1990:90). Islamic geographers ventured north through central Asia to the Volga region and Siberia, as well as through contemporary France, Germany and Denmark (Sharaf, 1963:74–5, 132). Muslim cartographers compiled ever greater maps and directories of the(ir) known world. The Book of Routes and Kingdoms (Ibn Khordathabak, 846) outlined all the principal routes of the Islamic world, including descriptions of passageways through central Asia and to the Chinese border and Silk Road. The islands of Sumatra and Borneo and other parts of what are now Malaysia and the Philippines were at least vaguely known to the Muslims during the tenth century AD (Ahmad, 1947:ii, 47; Sharaf, 1963:76–8, 141).

There is a colonialist arrogance and pervading sense of superiority in the Islamic geographers' depictions of African and European places on the edges of, or beyond, the Muslim realm. They described the economies and the ‘backward cultures’ they encountered. Ibn Jubeir, born in Valencia, made a scathing critique of the Bega tribes people of southeast Egypt. He was annoyed at what he saw as their cruelty and greed and that they went naked but for a loin cloth. Sharaf (1963:120–1) recorded that he considered them ‘without mind, character or manners and, in his opinion, [they] should be cursed’. Like the Muslim explorers before him and the European colonials afterward the Tangier-born Ibn Battuta was by no means a cultural relativist. All the societies he encountered were judged by the standards he learned in the cultural centres of the Islamic realm. He described the town of Sayla in Somalia as the dirtiest and most boring on earth. He was particularly critical of societies in which women were unveiled and accorded too high a status (Sharaf, 1963:137, 143–4). Islam was practised in Iwalaten but he was irritated by the prejudice against white people that he encountered and he ‘did not like their food’ (Sharaf, 1963:144)! In the Maldive Islands he was appointed as a judge, but he soon made himself unpopular and had to leave. He had tried to compel the citizenry to follow a more ‘civilised’ way of life, insisting that they attend religious services at the mosque and compelling all women to wear clothes (Sharaf, 1963:140). Clearly, the great Islamic ‘discoveries’ and discoverers were as ethnocentric and as arrogant as the Christian explorers of European colonialism (although many centuries earlier). They also demonstrated the certainties and assuredness of modernist scholars.

tales of the exotic. More recent historic examples include Captain Richard Butler's search for the source of the Nile River in Africa and the Burke and Wills trek into Australia's interior. A contemporary manifestation would be the documentaries that result from expeditions funded by National Geographic, Discovery Channel and other media corporations. This book thus contributes to a long lineage of inquiry into cultural landscapes.

1.2 Defining ‘culture’ and ‘landscape’

Two specific terms have a centrality in this book: ‘culture’ and ‘landscape’. Most people would have an intuitive understanding of what is meant by these terms. Indeed, they are terms used in ordinary conversation by everyday people. But these seemingly straightforward terms have complex histories and multiple meanings. In Chapter 2, we will demonstrate how changing conceptions of both these terms have influenced the work of geographers. For now, we briefly review the definitions of ‘culture’ and then ‘landscape’.

The term culture has come to have a range of meanings, many of which are inconsistent. In its classical use, culture was a synonym for civilisation. A cultured person was someone who had achieved a finery in their habits and tastes, such as appreciation of the fine arts of opera, theatre and literature. These pursuits were referred to as ‘high culture’. In opposition to high culture was ‘low culture’ or the ‘uncultured’, including popular sports or mass-consumed television programmes. The behaviour associated with low culture was considered to be base or even savage. In this classical conception of culture, the common people, the working and middle classes, were deemed as culturally lesser than the elite. In this book, alongside our discussion of the extraordinary and the spectacular, we have an abiding interest in the ordinary cultures of everyday landscapes and we reject the portrayal of such culture as lesser or base. A second common definition is where culture is a synonym for ethnicity or the more problematic notion of race. Culture by this definition refers to distinct ethnic groups, categorised by language, religion, nation of birth, notions of race or indigeneity. This definition excludes gender, sexuality, class and other ways of life from analysis. Often, this definition of ethnicity was used to sort and categorise people. Indeed, race has been a particularly potent and problematic means for the categorisation of people. As we show in Chapter 2, the notion of racial groups was historically used to construct racial hierarchies. These hierarchies accumulated particular legitimacy — and therefore impact — from the supposed naturalness of those categories. According to this definition, culture was a sort of ethnic container into which people were born. Our view is that culture is much more dynamic and individualised than that definition allows and, further, that we are able to change our own culture and influence that of our children and peers.

In Chapter 2, we outline the debates surrounding this conception of culture within geography. Culture for us is best described as a ‘way of life’. We imagine culture to be individually lived, dynamic and unique. At the same time, we recognise that culture is shared: it is a group phenomenon. Group affiliation and participation is one of the central means by which cultural groups are reproduced. Our central theoretical position, as articulated in the following chapter, is that culture is (re)produced — it is not ‘natural’. Humankind are not born into static cultural groups that we cannot transcend. We hold culture to be socially constructed — a dynamic product of individuals and groups, both past and present (see also Chapter 2).

In this book, our focus is on cultural landscapes. Our interest is not so much with natural landscapes, if such landscapes even exist. Even those landscapes that are relatively unmodified (and therefore ‘natural’) are invested with cultural meaning through representations of them. But the landscapes that are modified and utilised by humans are those which most engage our geographical interest. In this book, we sometimes refer to the environment, sometimes singling out the built environment for attention. Environments are broader than specific landscapes and include associated biophysical and social contexts. Likewise, the term cultural landscape refers to more than just the surface of the earth. The cultural landscape includes buildings of various forms, such as houses, factories, monuments, barriers and so forth. At other times in this book we talk about places. Places are much more than cultural landscapes; they include the people and the relations between them. Places also comprise the images of those people and their landscapes; their senses of place and loyalties.

1.3 Moving through Landscapes

In reading this book, readers will be aided if they bear in mind that we have purposefully emphasised six themes. The degree of attention given to these themes varies within each chapter. We ask only that readers be cognisant of these themes as they traverse our examinations of landscapes.

1.3.1 Multiple cultures and landscapes

In Landscapes we explore a vast array of ways of life. Ethnicity is a powerful influence on groups and individuals and we examine the impact on the landscape of ethnic and relatedly, religious groups in a variety of local and national contexts, ranging from groups who are culturally dominant to others which work doggedly to assert their presence. Identity and group affiliation occurs through the landscape and this dynamic construction of culture is often perceptible. Ways of life are profoundly affected by gender relations and gendered constructions, and hence we look at masculinities and femininities, including the landscape impacts of dominant heterosexuality, notably as it affects and is resisted by gays and lesbians. Landscapes is also profoundly imbued with notions of class, including the distinct and related cultural landscapes of the elite and the marginalised poor. Our discussions of culture are often about hierarchies of power, in which some groups have become privileged as compared to others. The subjective and fluid nature of cultures does not discount the rise of new dominant and oppressive cultural forms and their spatial reflections. Such hierarchies span the axes of ‘race’, gender, sexuality, religion and class. Many texts have discussed the issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and elitism that underpin these hierarchies. In Landscapes we show how such politics are embodied, reflected and reinforced by the cultural landscape.

1.3.2 Landscapes and power

Explorers of the Middle Ages (see Box 1.1) provided the detailed descriptions of the places they ‘discovered’ (Sharaf, 1963:75–6). These records often involved criticism, of cultures in India, China and elsewhere (Ahmad, 1947:133–53; Sharaf, 1963:77, 111, 139). These peoples and their cultural landscapes were judged as either civilised or heathen, from the ethnocentric standpoint of the colonial geographer (see Box 1.1).

Of course, these ‘new’ peoples occupied land with which they were entirely familiar. The land had been discovered long ago by their ancestors. Indigenous Australians had encountered the Australian landmass at least 60,000 years before Captain Cook of the Royal British Navy and the earlier Dutch explorers (Flood, 1995). But to the colonial mind, these places came into existence when they became known within the ‘civilised thinking’ of Islamic or western society. The colonialism underlying geographical interest in cultural landscapes brings to the fore the issue of power. Power, control and resistance, are core foci of our discussions about landscapes. Cultural landscapes are part of a process in which hierarchies are reproduced and challenged.

1.3.3 Landscapes and texts

We are aware of many more places in the world, many more landscapes, than we have actually visited (Zonn, 1984:35). This awareness comes from texts, which take many forms. For example, feature films, television programmes and newspapers are fundamentally involved in mediating information about cultural landscapes (Burgess, 1985; Dunn and Winchester, 1999). Our individual stocks of such information can be as much informed by representations of cultural landscapes as they are by direct experience. Knowledge about cultural landscapes is produced through direct experience (tourism, trekking, fieldwork, passing through) as well as consumed from media (documentaries, travel brochures, lifestyle television) (see Zonn, 1984:36). The media and other mass cultural products are central to the generation of group identities and can be forceful tools in oppressions such as cultural imperialism (Said, 1978). Geographers have examined who is represented within media about places and who is excluded, how issues and interests are portrayed and the roles of media in political matters, such as contested notions of national identity (McManus and Pritchard, 2000:384). The gathering of geographical knowledge, and its conversion into texts, is central to the transmission of information about and (re)construction of cultural landscapes. For this reason, our discussions necessitate an inclusion of the texts on, or representations of, landscapes.

Representations of landscapes that have been produced by geographers are also texts. The records made by colonial geographers, and their governmental and populis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Boxes
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Cultures and landscapes
• Chapter 2 Changing geographical approaches to cultural landscapes
• Chapter 3 Landscapes of everyday popular cultures
• Chapter 4 Landscapes of power
• Chapter 5 Landscapes of conflict and resistance
• Chapter 6 Landscapes on the margin
• Chapter 7 Landscapes of the body
• Chapter 8 The role of Landscapes
• References
• Index