ABSTRACT
The discipline of cultural anthropology deals directly with questions about the groups of people landscape architects serve. Cultural anthropology's methodological base in ethnography provides deep or ‘thick’ descriptions of the everyday lives of people, providing a rich source of information about patterns of behaviour, common meanings and associations people attach to places, and their values and aspirations for the future that can inform and guide the landscape architect. Anthropological studies often produce unexpected findings. They may reveal order where disorder is anticipated, power where marginality is assumed, negative practical outcomes from contradictions embedded in design ideologies, and unintended consequences resulting from the best laid plans. Cultural anthropology not only provides cultural information but, at its best, a critique of landscape design. It serves to enlighten those who seek to impose a particular vision on the landscape of the hazards involved in such actions. Anthropology has come to its own self-critique as the postcolonial discipline par excellence. For this reason, it lays the foundation for a truly reflexive and ethical regime for assessing how better to respond to functional and aesthetic needs through the transformation of the landscape.
