Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of the relations between phenomena within an encompassing space, and the unmod-
ern study of the historical interaction between society and nature, as expressed in
landscape was largely abandoned (Smith, 1989; Olwig, 1996a). Landscape remained
a viable concept within physical geography, but the transformation of human geog-
raphy into the modern science of space created a situation where human and physi-
cal geography became divorced from each other.
The scenic landscape continued to be a focus of study in continental Europe,
particularly in eastern Germany, and this helped give impetus to the emergence of
the discipline of
Landscape Ecology
in the late 20th century (Brandt and Vejre,
2004).
Landscape ecology
, which has attracted the interest of some physical and
cultural geographers, has perpetuated the landscape paradigm, as it involved from
the Renaissance, and maintained its modernism and ties to state planning (Groening,
2007). Landscape ecologists thus tend favor the use of the latest GIS computer
technology to build planning models. The scenic approach to landscape is thus alive
and well at the turn of the 21st century, and this helps explain why it remains an
object of interest to critics of the modernist landscape world picture.
Post-modern versus Circulating Landscapes
It was, as noted, largely through the early work of Denis Cosgrove (1984; 1988;
1993) that geographers were made aware of the relationship between Renaissance
scientifi c developments in the area of surveying, cartography and perspective in the
creation of a modern world picture that, in turn, infl uenced the shaping of the land.
Cosgrove's work was, in this sense, both modernist and materialist with a structural
Marxist inspired dialectic, between scientifi c development, ideology and the progres-
sive material transformation of nature. Cosgrove did not, however, follow up in-
depth on the rich implications of his work for the understanding of the relationship
between human and physical geography, or for geography's approach to environ-
mental issues. Instead, he turned toward a more 'post-modern' position on land-
scape that was in keeping with the growing contemporary critique of modernism
(Daniels and Cosgrove, 1988) - though he later modifi ed stance concerning the
substantivness of landscape (Cosgrove, 2004). From this perspective landscape is a
form of visual representation, not the things represented. Landscape was thus con-
ceived to be a 'simulacrum', to use the term of the French philosopher Jean Baudril-
lard (1988), which is to say a form of representation that takes on a life on its own.
In his later work Cosgrove also was associated with James Duncan, who regarded
landscape as a form of text to be 'read', and who was largely concerned with ideo-
logical issues. While these issues are important, for example with regard to the role
of the scenic spatial approach to landscape in fostering imperialism (W.J.T. Mitchell
1994), they do not speak particularly to geographers concerned with society-envi-
ronment issues, or with the relations between physical and human geography
(Demeritt, 1994).
A process described by Latour as 'circulating reference' (Latour, 1999; Olwig,
2004) provides a way of comprehending the relationship between the landscape
as spatial representation and the material world that recognises the tendency of
representations to become simulacra while, at the same time, granting them a role
in the creation of scientifi c knowledge. From this perspective the application
of a graphic representational system, such as the map, or visual perspective, to
material phenomena may well produce a useful perspective on such phenomena.
