MacPherson_Space and Embodiment

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Landscape, embodiment and visual impairment: anexploration of the limits of landscape knowledge

HANNAH MACPHERSON and CLAUDIO MINCA*

Newcastle UniversityUK

[email protected]

Paper Presented at the Forum UNESCO University and Heritage10th International Seminar

Cultural Landscapes in the 21st CenturyNewcastle-upon-Tyne, 11-16 April 2005

Revised: June 2006

* Departments of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and Geography, Politics and Sociology(respectively)

IntroductionLandscape has a whole range of meanings and associations. For researchers theuptake of these meanings can depend on disciplinary and professional affiliations aswell as on research goals. In this paper we question some of the ways in whichlandscape has been thought about and conceptualized, with a focus on recenttheoretical developments in the social sciences. In particular we scrutinize ideas oflandscape as a territorial unit, a form of visualization and of interaction. We will then

proceed to show how a combination of landscape concepts has aided research withvisually impaired walkers in the Peak District and Lake District Landscapes of Britain,enabling an exploration of the diverse processes through which the material landscapeis made relevant.

Landscape as a territorial unitFor some scholars landscape is to be conceived as an object, as a material thing. It issomething quantifiable and visible, unquestionably real since its existence does notdepend on the presence of an observer: it may then be a measurable territorial unit ora particular ecological scale. The International Association of Landscape Ecologistsadopts this concept of landscape and on their website under the heading What isLandscape Ecology? they explain: Landscape ecology is the study of spatial variation

in landscapes at a variety of scales. Some of the core themes of landscape ecologyare identified as: the relationship between pattern and process in landscapes and theeffect of scale and disturbance on the landscape (http://www.landscape-ecology.org).

According to this explanation, the landscape is an area or a territorial container withinwhich ecological patterns and processes might be identified.

The idea of landscape as a territorial unit can be traced to the terms use in Germaniclanguages and older forms of English (Mikesell 1968 Olwig 2002). Recently it hasrepresented a common starting point for a range of cross-disciplinary approaches tolandscape (Fry 2001 Scott 2002). Gary Fry, a key figure within landscape studies,argues that there has been an emergence of landscape as a level of organisation in

countryside management and goes on to suggest landscape ecology in its broadestsense would appear to be the most promising candidate for the development ofinterdisciplinary theory applicable to multifunctional landscapes (Fry 2001, 160-163,
http://www.landscape-ecology.org/mailto:[email protected]


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emphasis added). Such approaches to landscape tend to be informed by the idea thatlandscape research is a science orientated toward the solution of problems related tolandscapes. (Tress and Tress 2001, 4). Landscapes are then conceptualised as the

arena or the scale at which problem solving takes place. However, as Yi-Fu Tuanpointed out over two decades ago, Limited to the functional or utilitarian perspective,the concept of landscape is redundant since the more precise terms of estate andregion already exist.(Tuan 1979, 9)

Although a common starting definition may be regarded as a useful strategy whendebating about landscape, the interpretation of landscapes as areas, territory or levelsof organization is highly problematic. In fact, this choice brings with it a clear risk ofreducing the possible meanings of landscape and of forgetting its fascinating historyand its functioning as a spatial metaphor. This limited and essentialised approachtends to conflate landscapes with terms such as territory or region. Furthermore, otherways of knowing landscape such as peoples qualitative and mobile perceptions maybecome reduced to mappable units, as if everything could fit neatly within this particularlandscape-as-container framework1. In his appraisal of UNESCOs cultural landscape

designations, Peter Fowler calls for more fluid conceptions of landscape, reminding usthat landscapes may travel with us in our imaginations and that, in a diasporic world,cultural landscapes with fixed boundaries are unlikely to exist (Fowler 2002).

Researchers from a range of theoretical and disciplinary fields have developedchallenging conceptualizations of landscape which transcend the notion of a territorialcontainer, emphasizing the role of human agency in the understanding of landscapesand the social systems that produce them. The collection of essays The interpretationof ordinary landscapes(Meinig 1979) with contributions from Yi-Fu Tuan, J.B. Jacksonand David Lowenthal, is a prominent example of this concern. Inspired by work incultural studies and humanistic geography, Meinig states in the introduction,Landscape is, first of all, the unity we see, the impressions of our senses rather than

the logic of the sciences(1979, 3). This book develops a set of ideas about landscapewhich interprets it as a cultural expression, able to travel in our imaginary, shapematerial spaces and operate as a selective representation of the world. An idea oflandscape as a form of visualization was emerging.

Landscape as a form of visualization

The work of historical geographer David Lowenthal is considered to have been key inpreparing the way for approaches to landscape which begin to consider it as a form ofvisualization and a way of structuring knowledge about space (Olwig 2003). Lowenthal,initially in his work with Hugh Prince, analyzed the impact of class and national identityon the creation of material landscapes (Lowenthal and Prince 1964). This work beganto show the socially constructed ways in which space is perceived and comprehended

as landscape. The idea that landscape is not a thing, quantifiable and real, but rathera culturally mediated construction, has become popular across the social sciences and,particularly, in human geography (where landscape made its first appearance as ascientific concept in the mid Nineteenth century). The most prominent geographer toadopt and develop this cultural perspective on landscape is geographer DenisCosgrove.

Denis Cosgroves Way of seeing approach has had a major influence on Anglo-American Cultural Geographers throughout the eighties and nineties. Cosgrovesuggests that: Landscape is not merely the world we see, it is a construction, acomposition of that world. Landscape is a way of seeing the world. (Cosgrove 1984,13). He interprets landscape as a form of visual ideology, his analysis being inspired byWestern Marxist thought and earlier work on representation such as that of RaymondWilliams (1973). Cosgrove traces the development of the concept of landscape back to
http://fox.rollins.edu/~jsiry/Bateson.htmhttp://fox.rollins.edu/~jsiry/landskip.html


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the Italian renaissance and suggests that a particular landscaped way of seeingemerged as a response to European capitalism of the 17th Century, which had createda demand for new techniques of spatial ordering and control over society andenvironment (Cosgrove 1984). This work formed part of a wider concern with theconditions of visualization and the material production of landscape, and hisperspective has become influential in the social sciences, particularly within culturalgeography (Barrel 1990 Barnes and Duncan 1992 Daniels 1993 Mitchell 1994

Agnew 1998 Casey 2002).

Work on landscape as a form of visualization has begun to show the processesthrough which landscape can operate as a cultural and political device. However, thiswork has been criticized for placing too strong an emphasis on representation, at theexpense of considering our material interactions with the world (Rose 2002). Taken toa postmodern extreme, such theorisations have, in some cases, led to completelyimmaterial conceptualizations of landscape (cf. Clarke and Doel 1994). Cosgrovesway of seeing approach and the work it has inspired, is thought to deny theconnectivity of representations to the world outside (Olwig 2003), downplaying the

importance of the relationships between the material world and its representations. It isalso considered to have privileged the sense of sight at the expense of other sensorymodalities and ways of experiencing landscape (Okely 2001). This is an argument towhich Cosgrove himself now subscribes (Cosgrove 2003).

Anthropologist Tim Ingold explicitly rejects Cosgroves representational or way ofseeing approach to landscape. This forms part of Ingolds challenge to conventionalaccounts of landscape and environment. He suggests that the paradox at the heart ofwestern scientific thought is that it tends to rest on a separation of humanity fromnature: a position which may eventually undermine ecological and sustainabilityconcerns. Contesting an understanding of the world which divides it into subjects(minds) and objects, he advocates an alternative mode of understanding based on the

premise of our engagement with the world, rather than our detachment from it(Ingold2000, 11). In short, Ingold suggests that landscape is a part of us it is felt. Forexample, in his discussion of the painting The Harvesters he asks the reader toimagine herself/himself as a physical participant in the scene: Through the exercises ofdescending and climbing, and their different muscular entailments, the contours of thelandscape are not so much measured as felt - they are directly incorporated into ourbodily experience. (Ingold 1993, 166)

Ingolds work provides a way of rematerializing the conceptualisation of landscapesand a route away from approaches merely concerned with the social and culturalimplications of landscape representation. His work has had a significant impact oncontemporary landscape studies in geography and many scholars have begun to link

his ideas of landscape with ideas about embodiment, experience and representation(Cloke and Jones 2001 Rose 2002 Wylie 2002 Lorrimer and Lund 2003). Forexample, Lorrimer and Lund (2003) echo Ingolds perspective when they find in theirresearch on Munro-bagging in Scotland that an understanding of the body andlandscape is felt through the physical terrain. In a similar vein, geographer Mitch Roseargues that the engine for the landscapes being is practice: everyday agents callingthe landscape into being as they make it relevant for their own lives, strategies and

projects. (Rose 2002, 457)

The ResearchThe content of the contemporary debates on the nature of landscape has inspired thedecision to research visually impaired walking groups as part of my PhD thesis. In thisresearch it seemed important to consider: the idea of landscape as something felt, thesocial, cultural and political processes which structure the visualization of landscape


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importantly, the interviews carried out so far show that not all interactions with, andknowledge generated of, the territory is classed as landscape by interviewees.Landscape tends to be understood as something either for experts to talk about -archaeologists, botanists, geologists - or something so visual as to be meaningless topeople with no sight. It seems Doreen Massey is correct when she points out that"embodiedness has to be on certain terms to result in meaningfulness" (Massey2004, 8).

This observation raises a number of further questions about how landscape operates tostructure knowledge about space: how do the felt dimensions of experiencing theterritory become translated into meaningful landscape experience by visually impairedwalkers? And what is the role of sighted guides and other interpretative materials in thisprocess? It seems that to be losing sight or to be without sight, yet living in apredominantly sighted world which, in Britain, privileges particular cultures of landscapeappreciation, positions the visually impaired walker at a number of junctures. Inparticular they are positioned between a collective visual cultures with particularnorms of landscape appreciation and their own personal embodied identities and

perceptions of areas such as the Peak District.

Contact author: Hannah Macpherson

1See for example Alister Scott attempts to incorporate public perception of landscape data into

a layer of GIS for the Countryside Council for WalesLANDMAPprogramme Scott, A. (2002)."Assessing public perception of landscape: The Landmap Experience." Landscape Research27(3): 271-290.

ReferencesAgnew, J. (1998). European landscape and identity. Modern Europe: Place,Cuture,

Identity. B. Gaham. London, Arnold:213-233.Barnes, T. J. and J. S. Duncan (1992). Writing Worlds: discourse, text and metaphor in

the representation of landscape. London, Routledge.Barrel, J. (1990). The public prospect and the private view: the politics of taste in

eighteenth-century Britain. Manchester, Manchester University Press.Casey, E. S. (2002). Representing place: Landscape Painting and Maps. Minneapolis/

London, University of Minnesota Press.Clarke, D. and M. Doel (1994). "The perfection of geography as an aesthetic of

dissapearance." Ecumene1: 317-23.

Cloke, P. and O. Jones (2001). "Dwelling,place and landscape: an orchard inSomerset." Environment and Planning A33: 649-666.Cosgrove, D. (1984). Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. New Jersey, Barnes

and Noble Books.Cosgrove, D. a. D., S. (2003). Landscape and the European Sense of Sight - Eyeing

Nature. The Handbook of Cultural Geography. London, Sage.Daniels, S. (1993). Fields of Vision. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers.Fowler, P. (2002). World Heritage Cultural Landscapes, 1992-2002 a Review and

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Fry, G. L. A. (2001). "Multifunctional landscapes--towards transdisciplinary research."Landscape and Urban Planning57(3-4): 159-168.

Ingold, T. (1993). "The temporality of the landscape." World Archeology25(2): 152-173.


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Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment : essays on livelihood, dwellingand skill. London, Routledge.

Lorrimer, H. and Lund (2003). Performing facts: finding a way over Scotland'smountains. Nature performed: environment, culture and performance. B. H.Szerszynski, W. and Waterton, C. London, Blackwells.

Lowenthal, D. and H. Prince (1964). "English landscape tastes." Geographical Review 54: pp309-346.

Massey, D. (2004). "Geographies of responsibility." Geografiska Annaler86(B): 5-18.Meinig, D. W. (1979). The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays.

New York, Oxford University Press.Mikesell, M. (1968). Landscape. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. D.

S. Sills. New York, Crowell, Collier and Macmillan.8:575-80.Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Landscape and Power. London, University of Chicago Press.Okely, J. (2001). "Visualism and Landscape: Looking and seeing in Normandy." ethnos

66(1): 99-120.Olwig, K. R. (2002). Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic: From Britain's

Renaissance to America's New World. Madoson, University of Wisconsin Press.Olwig, K. R. (2003). "Landscape: The Lowenthal Legacy." Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers93(4): 871-877.

Rose, M. (2002). "Landscape and labyrinths." Geoforum33(4): 455-467.

Scott, A. (2002). "Assessing public perception of landscape: The LandmapExperience." Landscape Research27(3): 271-290.

Tress, B. and G. Tress (2001). "Capitalising on multiplicity: a transdisciplinary systemsapproach to landscape research." Landscape and Urban Planning57(3-4): 143-157.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1979). Thought and Landscape. The Interpretation of OrdinaryLandscapes: Geographical Essays. D. W. Meinig and J. B. Jackson. New York,Oxford University Press.

Williams, R. (1973). The Country and the City. London, Chatto and WIndus.Wylie, J. (2002). "An essay on ascending Glastonbury Tor." Geoforum33(4): 441-454.

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