ABSTRACT

In the sociology of space landscape is an unusual theme. A volume of collected essays on the subject of landscape perception edited in 1990 by Gröning and Herlyn (Gröning and Herlyn 1996) contains works by a number of prominent sociologists, including Georg Simmel (1957), but the work of these scholars is marginal and moreover plays scarcely any role in sociology in general and in urban and regional sociology in particular. Landscape is a key concept one will find only in the work of Lucius Burckhardt – especially his short article about landscape as a transitoric space which has been rather influential in the German discussion (Burckhardt 1992). The only book about sociology of landscape I have been able to identify is written by Kaufmann (2005). The books and articles written in English concentrate more on specific issues like the change of land use, the ways of perceiving landscape or the development of tourism. Sometimes landscape is used as a metaphor for the historical meaning of specific geographical areas and time periods.