{"id":871,"date":"2011-09-06T08:51:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T07:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=871"},"modified":"2011-09-06T08:51:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T07:51:01","slug":"walking-in-a-cultural-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/09\/06\/walking-in-a-cultural-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking in a Cultural Landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had to go to Sweden in the 1980s to hear the phrase \"cultural landscape\" and to listen to discussions about its evolution through time and human social and economic practice. \u00a0Then, the concept seemed almost second nature to my academic colleagues there, but rather alien here. \u00a0The Swedes took it as read that landscape and culture were inseparable, and that they co-evolved. \u00a0They also knew that the cultural included the agri<\/em>cultural, as working the land for human survival, and \u00a0farming more formally,\u00a0were recognised as key components of a continuing human evolution with the land.<\/p>\n

Today the use of cultural landscape<\/em> in the UK is more widespread, with\u00a0an Oxford-based landscape research group<\/a> stressing its significance:<\/p>\n

Cultural Landscape<\/em>: includes not only culture and ecology, natural resources and biodiversity. \u00a0It also embraces historic events, activities, which occur in relationship to soil, slope, water and fertility, climate, flora and fauna. \u00a0The range of human responses to placed conditions define the tangible and intangible values inherent in cultural landscapes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The agri<\/em> is implicit, rather than specific, here.<\/p>\n

Natural England<\/a> seems to prefer the term historic environment<\/em>, but says this:<\/p>\n

Cultural landscapes are areas that include cultural and natural resources associated with an historic event, activity, person, or group of people. They range from thousands of acres of rural land to homesteads with small front yards. \u00a0These landscapes can be man-made expressions of visual and spatial relationships, which include grand estates, farmlands, public gardens and parks, college campuses, cemeteries, scenic highways, and industrial sites. \u00a0Cultural landscapes are works of art, texts and narratives of cultures, and expressions of regional identity. \u00a0They also exist in relationship to their ecological contexts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, the agri<\/em> is more explicit, although, actually, it's hard to see what is not included in this rather all-encompassing view. \u00a0My bird-friendly garden seems to fit \u2013 but then, perhaps it should.<\/p>\n

I was musing on all this whilst walking above Fyfield<\/a> Down on the Ridgeway<\/a> last week (where the agri<\/em> is all around you), wondering what, if anything, children are taught about any of this these days (or ever!). \u00a0Given that the idea of cultural landscape is closely bound up with the meaning that people find in their lives, it probably cannot be taught in any formal sense, so the question, perhaps, is how are young people helped to understand it \u2013 and hence themselves. \u00a0Primae facie<\/em>, it would seem to need a coming together of history and geography \u2013 and future studies.<\/p>\n

Either way, this has to be a core aspect of any education that takes sustainability seriously, given that this involves coming to views of what is important to our lives and the way we (want to) live, with others, and with the land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to go to Sweden in the 1980s to hear the phrase \"cultural landscape\" and to listen to discussions about its evolution through time and human social and economic practice. \u00a0Then, the concept seemed almost second nature to my...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}