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Landscape as form and process

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2
Place as landscape

Richard Huggett and Chris Perkins

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Consider the place shown in Figures 2.1 and 2.2. Use these images to imagine the place, not
as just as a photograph (see Chapter 37) or map (see Chapter 35). You may know the scene.
In front of you is Wastwater, the deepest lake in England; straight ahead is Scafell Pike; close
by is the wettest place in England. This is a landscape of physical superlatives, rocks and relief

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the legacy of the Ice Age and Borrowdale Volcanic geology. But it is also a cultured place.
The small fields on the flatter ground in front of the lake are grazed by Herdwick sheep and

Figure 2.1.

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Figure 2.2.

enclosed by dry-stone walls. These are pastures reclaimed from the wild, forming field
patterns speaking of an age when farming made profits for tenant farmers. On the flat delta
at the top of the lake you can pick out the wooded terrain around the National Trust
campsite. The trees have grown in the last thirty years; the site wasn’t there on the six-inch
scale map excerpt. One of the authors can remember camping there when it was an open
field. And the Lake District is now above all else a place where people take their leisure.
Places change.
Some changes are allowed to happen; others are more carefully controlled. Unsightly
footpath erosion is mitigated, repair teams preserve a particular idea of beauty and
visitors come despite (and often because) of the difficult journey to this most remote and
wildest corner of the Lakes. This place is sold on the back of the romance of imagined
wilderness. But it also hides tensions as well as revealing pleasures. In the distance to the
right are the cooling towers of Sellafield Nuclear Power Station, a legacy of an age before the
North Sea Oil boom when technological progress was less questioned. The more
immediate environment also hides turbulent undercurrents. In 2006 the National Park is
suffering central government cutbacks and may be less able to resist development pres-
sures and less able to support sustainable tourism or land management. The hill farmers and
bed-and-breakfast owners are only just recovering from the catastrophe of foot-and-mouth
disease.

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This chapter is about the relations between place and landscape. It is about the many
different ways places like Wasdale Head may be approached as landscapes. But before con-
sidering landscape, what about the nature of place?

Place and space

Place is a multifaceted notion. At one level, it is simply a specific location identified by a

referencing system or by a name on the map. At another level, individual places may bear
some form of connection or relation to nearby places, forming spatial structures. Then again,
place may connote much more than just a physical location or a spatial structure (e.g. Relph
1996); it may embody the character of a location – what is there – and how human cultures
perceive the location and respond to it. And places like Wasdale are constantly becoming:
rather than just existing they change and respond. So at a minimum, place has four facets:

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locational, structural, cultural, and perceptual and temporal.
As physical locations, places may be identified by reference to some grid system (e.g.
eastings and northings) or by a name – Wasdale, the Mohave Desert, the Scilly Isles, Man-
chester. This locational view disregards scale or type of environment. Australia is a place as
much as Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) is a place. Place names are culture-laden. Many cultures name
places after topographic features. In England, such place-name endings as -dale, -ford, -field
and -ley betray a topographic origin. Wasdale is the valley with the lake. Family names may
become associated with the topographically derived names. Macclesfield was founded by

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Anglo-Saxon settlers, whose headman may have been called Macca, a Saxon personal name,
the place becoming known as ‘Macca’s field’. Cuffley is probably derived from a personal
name, Cuffa, and leah, which is a clearing in a wood.
Structural facets of place concern links or relations between locations. They set places into
wider landscape contexts and encompass the idea of geographical space. Space can be theo-
rized in structural terms such as how flows, slopes, surfaces, networks, migration routes,
trails, lines of communication, and so on, connect places. Physical geographers recognize
many spatial structures – drainage basins, landforms, ecosystems, soil catenae, and so forth.
Human geographers also recognize spatial structures – cities, nations, road networks, and so
on. Throughout the history of geography, and particularly during the Quantitative Revolu-
tion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, spatial concepts have underpinned core areas of their
discipline. For example, Coffey (1981) articulated a general spatial-systems theory arguing
that concepts, rooted in spatial structure and spatial dynamics, underpin explanations of a
wide range of phenomena in human and physical geography: spatial structure, comprising
geometry, topology and dimensionality; and movements in space. Spatial structure and
movements in space have been seen as expressions of spatial process, which involve growth
and organization.
However, such schemes oversimplify the concerns of human geography. Cultural and
social spaces do not lend themselves to a geometrical analysis (e.g. Hubert 1998, 1999).
Cultural facets of place are captured in the following quotation:

natural landscapes are the result of biophysical processes that shape the land and create
the unmistakable differences between one place and another . . . similarly, human
landscapes and settlements are the consequence of culture modifying and imposing its
needs on natural or wild places.
(Hough 1990)

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In Australia, Aboriginal people have many sacred sites – rock clefts, valleys, water holes,
rocks – that serve cultural and religious functions (Chatwin 1998). To the Aboriginals, the
Australian landscape is laden with a cultural significance that is impalpable to people from
other parts of the world.
Landscapes are also perceived and imagined, usually by being seen. They may have ‘scenic’
qualities, in which features of a place may be considered from an aesthetic angle (e.g. Downs
and Stea 1974; Jackle 1987). Places like Wasdale are visited for these qualities. Romantic
notions of scenic beauty emerged from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century enlight-
enment encounters with places just like this (Whyte 2002: 70–121). The next chapter shows
how people form bonds with places, focusing on the relations between individual and social
constructions of places. Two constructs are important here: topophilia, the ‘affective bond
between people and place or setting’, the ‘human love of place . . . diffuse as a concept, vivid
and concrete as personal experience’ (Tuan 1974: 92); and topophobia, its opposite, literally
‘the fear of place’. Take the case of the people who use ‘rail-trails’, which are multi-use

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recreation trails established along disused railways. A study of such users suggested that place
attachment has at least two dimensions: a place dependence, reflecting the importance of the
place in facilitating a user’s activity; and a more affective place identity, reflecting an indivi-
dual’s valuing of a setting for more symbolic or emotional reasons (Moore and Graefe 1994).
But places are not only neutral static backdrops for human actions or imagining. Chapter
5 shows how they may also have agency, with relational qualities. And this agency is
dynamic: places ‘become’ in a reflexive fashion, rather than being fixed and seen (Bender
2001). Places have ‘rhythms’, they shift and morph according to different patterns and

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influences (Mels 2004). Affectual responses bring landscapes into being, instead of simply
working as a response to the place.

Landscape

It can be argued that the notion of landscape marries place with space, setting places within a
geographical context. The term ‘landscape’ has several meanings that reflect views taken
at different times and in different languages and societies. At root, however, core concepts of
‘landscape’ stem from European sources. Most Germanic languages used the word ‘landscape’
(Landschaft in German; lantschap in Dutch) in the early Middle Ages as a counterpart for the
Latin words regio, patria or provincia, meaning area, territory or region. By the end of the
sixteenth century, a landscape also referred to a painted scene, in which the landscape was
the subject of the painting and not merely a backdrop for the foreground figures. Landscape
painting emerged as an art form during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was an
independent and popular genre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Casey 2002).
The first geographical notion of landscapes came from Alexander von Humboldt and
others, who used the term ‘landscape’ to capture the total character of a region, including its
natural, cultural and aesthetic qualities (e.g. Humboldt 1849: 252). This holistic meaning of
‘landscape’ emerged at a time when disciplinary boundaries were fluid and somewhat hazily
defined. During the second half of the nineteenth century, increasing scientific specialization
led to the waning of holistic concepts. However, holistic notions of landscapes enjoyed a
renaissance in the first half of the twentieth century under the strong direction of such
geographers as Paul Vidal de la Blache, Carl Ortwin Sauer and especially members of the
German school led by Siegfried Passarge. For Sauer, a landscape is ‘an area made up of a
distinct association of forms, both physical and cultural (Sauer 1963: 321). Passarge considered

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the landscape to be geography’s primary object of study and a synthesis of natural and cul-
tural qualities of a region (see Antrop 2000). In the UK, the enormous influence of H.C.
Darby led to a whole generation of geographers’ becoming concerned with the empirical
description and reconstruction of past cultural landscapes (e.g. Darby 1956, 1977). Mean-
while, W.G. Hoskins (1955) began the popularization of local historical studies in the UK
and implicitly focused upon the description of the evolution of local cultural landscapes.
Such work emphasized the case study, rather than seeking theoretical explanation.
The rebirth of holistic landscape concepts was short-lived. Academic disciplines continued
to fragment during the twentieth century and holistic ideas faded. In their place evolved a
range of different views, each serving the designs of a particular discipline. These views
emerged in other natural and social sciences, in the humanities, and in the arts: aesthetics and
art, ecology and soil science, history and archaeology, philosophy and psychology, geography
and land survey, landscape architecture and planning. Each discipline concerned with land-
scapes has tended to develop its own applications and concepts. Approaches vary.

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Landscape historian Richard Muir (1999), for example, identifies landscape history and
heritage, the structure and scenery approach, landscapes of the mind, landscape politics and
power, landscape evaluation, symbolic landscapes, landscape aesthetics, and landscape and
place, but ‘he largely ignores the more applied and empirical aspects of the practice of
landscape ecology, landscape architecture and planning’ (Huggett and Perkins 2004: 225).
His account stresses the profound differences between those who view landscape as an
objective reality, and those who use more subjective approaches.
In geography, some of the most influential ‘scientific’ approaches to landscape in the second

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half of the twentieth century came from Germany. In 1939, Carl Troll saw the landscape as a
mixture of human enterprise and natural features and processes. This view harked back to
the Humboldtian vision. We can trace two key concepts back to this root: Landschaftsökologie,
linking geography and ecology, and Landschaftshaushalt. In French, Landschaftshaushalt has
been translated as économie de paysages (landscape economy), and signifies the idea that a
people look after a landscape (Haushalt means ‘household’). This therefore implies a degree
of management. Indeed, today the term ‘landscape ecology’ often includes landscape
management. The International Association for Landscape Ecology’s mission statement certainly
conveys this impression: ‘Landscape ecology is the study of spatial variation in landscapes at a
variety of scales. It includes the biophysical and societal causes and consequences of land-
scapes heterogeneity’ (IALE Executive Committee 1998).
It was in the Netherlands that a holistic view of landscapes that was born in the 1970s.
Antrop (2000) argues that new challenges in natural, ecological, cultural and social issues
which emerged in this period were a justification for a new cross-disciplinary and holistic
landscape agenda More recently, there have been attempts from many different disciplines,
including geography, to consolidate a cross-disciplinary approach to landscape that relies
upon holistic understandings integrating natural sciences, human sciences and the arts under
the umbrella of a systems approach (e.g. Décamps 2000; Naveh 2000; Naveh and Lieberman
1994; Tress et al. 2001). Technological advances towards the end of the century encouraged
this holistic revival. Digital aerial photography, remote sensing and geographical information
systems (GIS) facilitated a landscape-ecological approach that stresses the interactions between
people and landscapes and focuses upon change. Indeed, it has been argued that this stress reaffirms
a core concern for geographers and offers a unifying theme for future geographical enquiry,
drawing together physical and human elements in the context of landscape form and process
(Huggett and Perkins 2004). The reason for this is simple: ‘Landscape is the prime sphere,
where the combined effects of society and nature become visible’ (Bürgi et al. 2004: 857).

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However, artistic ideas of landscape as a human construct have also become more popular
over the last thirty years. In the 1970s, geographers reacted against notions of spatial science
by offering more humanistic approaches. They began to write about landscape as imagined as
well as real, and humanistic approaches to landscapes became increasingly popular (e.g.
Appleton 1975; Meinig 1979; Casey 2002).
Following the cultural turn in the 1980s, geographers began to adopt a more theoretical
approach to landscape, one inspired by social theory. Attention shifted away from the forms of
landscape and towards contested meanings of the processes underpinning their creation and
reading (Huggett and Perkins 2004). Human geographers came to analyse power and inter-
pret landscapes as texts imbued with symbolism (Duncan 1990; Cosgrove and Daniels 1988).
In this kind of approach, the interpretation of a landscape depends upon one’s worldview
and varies across time, space, culture and belief (Bender 1993). For example, Aboriginal
notions of the ‘Dreaming’ or ‘Dream Time’ could be seen as views of ‘landscape’, but also
reflect a significantly different belief system, in which time is no longer separated from space

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and where creation myths are become embodied in the landscape (Morphy 1993).
So despite pleas for unity from landscape ecologists, social scientists increasingly contest
the ‘landscape’ as a concept and, moreover, the reading of landscape is consequently
increasingly ‘polysemic’, open to multiple and contested interpretations (Huggett and Per-
kins 2004). These different readings are developed later in the chapter.
Landscapes admit of physical or cultural interpretations. Geomorphologists, landscape ecologists,
pedologists and others are primarily concerned with the physical description and classifica-
tion of landscape form and with landscape dynamics. Researchers concerned with the cultural

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landscape, with landscape history and with landscape architecture have also sought to recognize
and to classify the landscape elements created by people and the processes occurring within them.

The forms and structures of landscape

Physical landscapes
Scientists from disciplines concerned with aspects of biological and physical landscape all tend
to have their own conception of place and space. Geomorphologists, ecologists, pedologists
and hydrologists conceive the landscape in different ways. Geomorphologists tend to see
large structural units (mountains, plateaux, plains) or functional units such as drainage basins,
hillslopes and dune systems. Pedologists focus on soil pedons (profiles) and large functional
units (catenas, soil-landscapes). Hydrologists focus on drainage basins at various scales. Ecol-
ogists tend to focus more on landscape elements – patches, corridors and matrices – and
large-scale units such as bioregions, which incorporate many elements of landscapes and have
implication for sustainability (e.g. Bailey 2002). A practice shared by all these scientists is the
identification of a set of basic landscape elements that in combination form various levels of
regional landscape units. Geomorphologists combined landform elements (or a super-
abundance of equivalent terms) to form regional units such as sections, provinces, major
divisions and continents (e.g. Linton 1949). Pedologists unite soil profiles or pedons to form
polypedons and soilscapes (e.g. Buol et al. 1980). Hydrologists combine low-order drainage
basins to form high-order drainage basins. Landscape ecologists combine patches, corridors
and matrixes to form landscape mosaics and regions. In addition to these spatial landscape
units, landscape ecologists identify landscape structures, which are sets of interrelated land-
scape elements (systems) that function as a whole. Examples are drainage networks, transport
systems, urban settlements and agricultural systems.

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Landscape ecology is hugely successful as a means of exploring spatial aspects of ecological

systems. It forms a powerful model for viewing the structure and function of the physical
landscape that, to some extent, integrates landforms, soils, hydrology and ecology, though it
is primarily an ecological construct. At its core lies the patch–corridor–matrix model, which
sees a heterogeneous mosaic of habitat islands connected by corridors and surrounded by a
‘hostile’ environment. This has had extraordinary success in explaining many features of
species patterns and dynamics (e.g. Huggett and Cheesman 2002). Patches, corridors and
matrixes – the landscape elements – are themselves made of individual plants (trees, shrubs,
herbs), small buildings, roads, fences, small water bodies, and the like. Moreover, they
include natural and human-made landscape components, so the patch–corridor–matrix
model integrates the biological and physical aspects of landscapes. Patches are uniform
(homogeneous) areas that differ from their surroundings – woods, fields, parks, ponds, rock
outcrops, houses, gardens, and so forth. Corridors are strips of land that differ from the land
to either side, such as roads and roadsides, powerlines, trails, hedgerows and rivers. They link

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inextricably with patches. Matrixes are the background ecosystems or land-use types in
which patches and corridors are set, and are normally the dominant ecosystem or land-use – forest,
grassland, heathland, arable, residential, greenhouses or whatever – in an area. Above the
level of landscape elements are landscape mosaics, within which there is a range of landscape
structures. These structures are distinct spatial clusters of ecosystems or land uses or both.
Although patches, corridors and matrixes combine in sundry ways to create landscape mosaics,
landscape ecologists recognize six fundamental types of landscape: large-patch landscapes,
small-patch landscapes, dendritic landscapes, rectilinear landscapes, chequerboard landscapes

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and interdigitated landscapes.
Some landscape ecologists take the cultural landscape as their primary focus and do not
use the patch–corridor–matrix approach. Instead, they classify form in relation to function.
For instance, Willem Vos and Herman Meekes (1999) distinguish different landscape types,
according to the intensity and nature of human control – ‘industry’, ‘supermarket’, ‘historical
museum’, ‘ruin’ and ‘wilderness’. They show how intensification has resulted in landscapes
devoted to industrial production; in areas with increasing urban populations, landscapes
increasingly support a wide range of functions serving urban consumption, including food
production, industry, recreation, housing, mineral resource extraction and nature conservation.
More traditional landscapes that have escaped intensification may survive where land is less
suitable for production. In the most marginal areas like the Lake District, formerly cultural
landscapes may be reverting to Nature. Natural landscapes survive as relicts, or have reverted
from one of the other types. They also identify landscape elements that may be associated
with each of these types. For example, the marginal ‘ruined’ landscapes are likely to be
characterized by deserted settlements and disused field systems, whereas multifunctional
landscapes in western urban hinterlands are most likely characterized by new elite housing
estates, recreational land uses, second homes, specialist agricultural production and nature
reserves.

Cultural landscapes
Elements of the cultural landscape may be described in a similar morphological and func-
tional approach to that relating to the elements of biophysical landscapes. Muir (1999) shows
how rural landscapes comprise surfaces linked by networks with nodes and argues these
create local landscape distinctiveness. He identifies the use of land, boundaries, monuments
and human constructions and settlements. In an English rural landscape fields might be

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enclosed or open, be irregular or geometric in shape, be organized locally or at a larger scale,
be fenced, walled, hedged or ditched. Their form may reflect current practices or they may
survive as a relict of the past. Other land uses might include woodland. Boundaries here may
define ownership or responsibility for territory, and may be hierarchically organized (Muir
1999). They may alter how the land is used and reflect past cultural practice or environ-
mental influences.
Cultural networks such as tracks, paths, roads, railways, canals, pipelines and other route-
ways, carrying traffic, information or material goods allow the landscape to function. The
form of the network is also likely to reflect past functions. At the nodes of this network may
be cultural features such as settlements. Village forms and functions have for long been a
productive focus of geographical research (e.g. Roberts 1987). Researchers have traced
changing patterns of settlement and explored reasons for growth or decline. Settlement pat-
terns have also been related to agricultural practices, and village functions and hierarchies
charted. Monuments and features have been distinguished and characterized, such as houses,

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cemeteries or types of church. Indeed, this kind of emphasis has been central to the Berkeley
School’s approach to landscape (see Chapter 14 for a critique of this superorganic notion of
culture).

Landscape processes

Landscape elements and regions are linked by flows of energy and materials, seeds, spores and

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individuals. As cultural landscapes, the political, legal, social, economic and cultural context
is also always fluid. Interconnections occur at all levels and change is continuous.
Scientific approaches regard the landscape as a hierarchy of spatial structures and
circulations – natural and human-made – that are constantly readjusting to one another and
to changes in their environment. These circulations occur at local, regional and global scales.
Wind and water transport involve mass flows driven by thermal and gravitational energy
gradients. Wind and water carry heat, sound, gases, aerosols and particles within and
between places and regions. Animal, human and machine transport involve the locomotion
of ‘individuals’ using their own internal energy. The canalization of the flow of animals,
people, machines and information leads to dispersal routes, migration routes, animal trails,
human trails and transport and communication channels, described in Chapter 13. These
routes help to tie landscapes and regions together. For instance, a city is a source of people,
vehicles, goods and information that move out on radiating transport and communications
systems, whilst rural people, water and agricultural products flow into the urban area. The
spatial arrangement of landscape elements affects the landscape functions. Some flows are
concentrated (such as water, silt or pollutants in rivers); other flows are dispersed (such as
erosion, seeds and atmospheric pollutants). Some move fast; some move slowly. Landscape
boundaries act as filters where movement rates change markedly. Different boundaries have
different ‘permeabilities’ that regulate movements between different systems. Landscape pat-
terns have a major effect upon regional flows; and, in turn, regional flows influence the
landscape patterns.
The spatial structures and circulations in a landscape involve, and are created by, natural
and cultural forces. Indeed, the different kinds of places described in Chapters 25–33 can all
be seen as outcomes of a range of cultural and biophysical forces, acting at different time
scales. For example the landscapes of places like Wasdale Head are preserved for the qualities
of their physical landscape, but also as part of the Lake District National Park where

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romantic notions of the very idea of landscape itself were first articulated by poets such as
Wordsworth. So landscape dynamics could be a highly eligible topic on which human and
physical geographers could collaborate. Such a synergetic endeavour would build upon the
venerable geographical tradition of landscape studies. Efforts in this direction are already
proving rewarding. For instance, a recent major text explores how landscapes are produced
by environmental change and population pressure; how humanized landscapes have evolved
through such processes as woodland clearing, agriculture and the growth of urban–industrial
complexes; and the ways in which landscapes at once represent and participate in social
change (Atkins et al. 1998).
There have also been dynamic considerations of the cultural landscape. Vos and Meekes
(1999: 8) argue for investigating of the role of ‘involution’ and ‘replacement’ in this process
of change. They see change taking place in an organic way in traditional systems with
abundant labour power but limited technical resources, whereas elsewhere more advanced
technology has allowed outside replacement of locally sustainable systems. More critical studies

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of the dynamics of change focus upon the work that the landscape itself achieves.
Mitchell (1994: 1) for example, argues that we should investigate the political process by
which social and political identities are formed and how these might be related to landscape.

Reading the landscape

The question of what these forms and processes might mean has long concerned geo-

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graphers. How should we read the landscape? Approaches to landscape may best be
explained through metaphor (Cosgrove and Daniels 1993), and the variety of approaches and
meanings explored through stories currently being told about landscapes.
Landscape ecologists employing scientific methods have sought to explain the form and
function of landscapes as a machine or system. Whilst their ideas have often been applied to
the physical aspects of landscape, the cultural context can also be explained in this way (Vos
and Meekes 1999). The systems approach described above offers a unifying framework.
Many of these scientifically grounded approaches to landscape rest upon assumptions about
sustainable development, and normative notions of progress. Thus, landscape ecologists
increasingly justify their call for transdisciplinary studies with references to aesthetic, ethical
and environmental concerns for the future (e.g. Naveh 1995). Empirical studies of the values
of practitioners, however, paint a more pragmatic picture. Ian Thompson (2000) concluded
that landscape architects in practice often seek technocratic accommodation, instead of fol-
lowing normative principles. The other central feature of the systems-based work is that it is
self-protecting. Little attempt is made to critique the metaphor, or to question the applied
focus that is one of its major virtues.
Physical and cultural landscapes may also be explained by analysing the processes that have
created them over time. Landscape historians and many archaeologists approach cultural
landscapes as offering evidence of the past (e.g. Muir 1999; Whyte 2002). This kind of
approach describes elements of the past that survive in present landscapes and sees the land-
scape as a palimpsest, ‘whose real or authentic meanings can somehow be recovered with the
correct techniques’ (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988: 8). The cultural landscape itself becomes
the focus of empirical attention, but is often divorced from any critical argument about social
process or reading.
Aesthetic approaches to landscape and to representations of landscape continue to be used
by landscape architects to justify approaches to management and construction of landscapes

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(Herzog et al. 2000). But landscape taste and values can also be used in a more critical way to
question shared cultural values and how they are embodied in differing landscapes (e.g.
Setten 2001). Here the story focuses on the ways in which form, function and meaning of
landscapes are constructed and contested (Egoz et al. 2001).
In a series of papers in the 1980s, Denis Cosgrove argued that landscapes could be theo-
rized as a ‘way of seeing’, and that the concept reflects élite views grounded in the applica-
tion of science and the rise of capitalism in early modern Europe (Cosgrove 1984, 1985;
Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). This tradition of research drew upon artistic notions of land-
scape described in Chapter 36, and emphasized how a landscape comes to represent different
sets of social and cultural values. This focus on landscape as a way of seeing drew attention to
the role of vision in the construction of meaning, and the role of the observer. It has,
however, been argued that earlier studies ignored the importance of gender in the con-
struction of such élite views (Rose 1993; Nash 1996), and that focussing upon painterly
traditions privileged Western and élite discourses (Cosgrove 1998).

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In the 1980s and 1990s, social theory began to have an impact upon landscape research.
Landscapes came to be seen as integral to social and political processes, and to represent
social relations (Mitchell 1994). Researchers came to focus not only on the landscape as a
backdrop for social action, but also on the active role it may play in the maintenance of
power and the construction of identity (Wolch and Dear 1989). Research interrogated dif-
ferent aspects of power, varying widely across mode of production, social relations, cultures
and landscapes. A plethora of research is now available, in which the complex relationships
are mapped out between landscape and the state (e.g. Cartier 1999), class (e.g. Williamson

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and Bellamy 1987), ideology (e.g. Duncan 1990), gender (e.g. Rose 1993), ethnicity (e.g.
Kaups 1995) and sexuality (e.g. Brown 2001). Most of these studies are grounded in material
processes and many implicitly argue for a dialectical landscape (Mitchell, 2002). Very few are
concerned with charting the morphology of the landscape, and there has also been a shift
away from earlier rural obsessions towards a much more diverse range of contexts.
The shift towards social theory also led to increasing attention being paid to how a land-
scape might be interpreted. Literary metaphors became increasingly popular in studies of
landscapes (Duncan, 1990). The discursive construction of landscape, and the deconstruction
of what this might mean, continues to be an important part of post-structuralist approaches
to geography (see Barnes and Duncan 1992). Earlier studies in this tradition tended to draw
upon semiotic approaches, but work that is more recent has focused upon the value of her-
meneutic interpretations (e.g. Duncan and Duncan 2004), or upon the potential of allego-
rical readings (Auster 1997).
In the 1990s, an increasing focus in research across many disciplines came to investigate
how identities were constituted in landscapes, and how landscapes themselves impacted upon
the cultural identities of people. Religious belief was one important focus of attention (see
Chapter 23; Cooper 1994; Jackson 1979). National identity formed another focus of study
(e.g. Matless 1998; Kellerman 1996). Social and cultural historians continue to explore the links
between changing national identities and human landscapes, focusing for example on land-
scape, myth and memory (e.g. Schama 1995), or landscape and the aesthetic and recreational
experience in places like the Lake District (e.g. Darby 2000). Landscape can also be a com-
modity with an active role in the exercise of local élite identities (Duncan and Duncan
2004). While a Marxist emphasis upon the production can still be seen in this work, the
cultural turn has led to an increasing emphasis upon the consumption of landscapes.
Bender (1998) argues that landscapes might best be understood as a result of activities rather
than representations. Recent emphases in cultural geography have drawn upon the more

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complex and performative potential of landscape (Cresswell 1996; Nash 1996, 2000).
Drawing upon anthropological work, landscapes, like places, can be seen as becoming and
reflexive, rather than fixed and seen (Bender 2001). Attention in this metaphor shifts towards
change, motion and action. No longer is human agency or social process separated from
backdrop. Affectual responses bring landscapes into being, instead of simply responding to
the place.

Conclusion

These examples relating to the reading of landscapes are mostly drawn from geographical
research in the Anglo-American tradition and from contemporary scholarship. The anecdote
with which this chapter started is itself part of this tradition, placed, just as much as the
landscape it depicts and narrates, in an academic tradition in England in the year 2005.

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Metaphors are themselves social and cultural constructs and reflect changing times and
places. The same researcher may use a number of different metaphors telling her or his story:
identity, power, representation and aesthetic stories are, for example, often woven together in
critical landscape research. Approaches to landscape and place are, however, often under-
pinned by core ‘meta-narratives’ that allow these different metaphorical notions to speak
authoritatively about places and in so doing reveal the continuing complexity and power of
the landscape concept.
Scientific approaches to landscape emphasize a search for order and pattern, in which

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unique places might be understood, explained and managed. They imply a normative con-
trol over place, privilege the role of the expert and offer practical, distanced and knowable
ways forward for researchers, in which human knowledge progressively advances, a landscape
of research that denies subjectivity and argues for disciplinary unity under the umbrella of
applied scientific progress. To save and manage the world and its landscapes we must colla-
borate and share scientific knowledge.
The relations between nature and culture form another core area in landscape studies.
Differences between ‘interpretation’ and ‘fact’ also play an important role in helping us
understand these stories. The physical geographer is more likely to employ the scientists’ tool
kit to explain nature and the world, whilst the human geographer emphasizes culture
through interpretation, meaning and reading. Nature and culture may be seen as separate
entities, with physical and cultural landscapes studied in isolation. It has been argued that
neither approach is sufficient: both are necessary (Huggett and Perkins 2004); and indeed
that increasingly landscape is best understood as a hybrid category (see Chapter 51).
Questions of scale are also critical to almost all of the metaphors described above. The
notion of landscape allows a bridge to be made between local places and bigger units, that
are less unique, such as the region and the nation, or even to abstract notions of space and
location.
The process by which landscapes are made and used is also central to these stories. A
continuing interest in the cultural politics of landscape reflects this core concern. On the one
hand, it can be argued that structural forces creating landscapes need to be apprehended; on
the other hand individual human agency may be important in determining the cultural
reception of a particular place.
There is likely to be a continuing debate around these issues and around the best way
forward for those wishing to study landscape like Wasdale. Perhaps a recognition of diversity
will allow us to begin to tackle the grander scheme of harmonizing the artistic and scientific

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views of landscape, so building on the Humboldtian geographical tradition established
around two centuries ago.

Further reading

Atkins, P., Simmons, I. and Roberts, B. (1998) People, Land and Time: An Historical Introduction to the
Relations between Landscape, Culture and Environment. London: Arnold.
Mitchell, W.J.T. (ed.) (1994) Landscape and Power. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Muir, R. (1999) Approaches to Landscape. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Naveh, Z. and Lieberman, A.S. (1994) Landscape Ecology: Theory and Applications, second edition. New
York: Springer.
Whyte, I. (2002) Landscape and History. London: Reaktion.
Winchester, H.P.M., Kong, L. and Dunn, K. (2003) Landscapes: Ways of Imagining the World. Harlow:
Pearson.

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