ABSTRACT
The idea of cultural landscape continues to inspire researchers, philosophers, poets, policymakers and others, increasingly in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas. This focus does not ignore the difficulties that the terminology raises (see e.g. Jones and Daugstad 1997; Roe et al. 2008) but, as suggested in Chapter 2 (Taylor and Francis), there is now a substantial body of academic literature discussing how cultural landscapes might be defined, identified and managed, and many other means to express what cultural landscapes mean to ordinary people.1 In conceptual terms, the influence of human cultural systems on ‘natural’ systems in the landscape can be illustrated as a continuum (Figure 14.1) with the types of landscape most often labelled as cultural usually seen as those more dominated by human activities. In the past, landscape categories often include ‘wilderness’ or areas which supposedly exhibit no human impact or interaction (Figure 14.2). The enduring use of wild and wilderness as concepts linked to ideas of a ‘pristine’ nature (with no human interaction) do not seem to be h elpful in a world where there is little evidence to suggest such a state presently exists. Within a holistic concept of cultural landscape, landscape is no longer seen simply as a view or scene, a static background within which activities and actions occur or a tableau upon which change is imposed. Although change has become a useful focus in many
different disciplines to conceptualise and understand landscape (Muir 2003), the vibrancy that change in the landscape brings is still not always reflected in the way management and policy is devised in Western countries in particular. Chapter 2 (Taylor and Francis) provides the basis for asking if a more dynamic and holistic understanding of landscape could be gained, how would this affect our relationship with it and our perception of it?
