SYMBOLISM AND THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

ABSTRACT

The cultural landscape is created and transformed by human symbolic action. Environmental symbolism is one means whereby social identity and reality are created. Symbolization must be viewed as a social process. Furthermore, symbolization is shown to be a significant response to cultural stress. The general process of stress-induced symbolism can be understood in terms of accepted principles of evolutionary ecology, and from these, a continuum model of symbolization is presented. The continuum model is explicated through the analysis of the historic preservation movement in Salzburg, Austria since 1860. Specific aspects of the cultral landscape are shown to be particularly potent as sources for symbolization in response to stress. By focusing on the symbolization process and the resulting symbolic forms, the explanatory power of cultural geography can be expanded.

Notes

I venture to interpret the advantage of mankind as resting in environments suffused with manmade symbolism, peerless and imperishable repertoires of the past experience of all the species. Transoformed environments are good alternatives to bigger brains.

the experience [of closed social groups] associates boundaries with power and danger. The better defined and the more significant the social boundaries, the more bias I would expect in favor of ritual … and symbolic performance.

Thus, if stress may follow from stimulus overload, behavioral constraint, or resource scarcity, then whether it does will depend on the meaning attached to these variables in particular situations and the evaluative standards used.

The interests and needs of the society are presented to the individual as his own ultimate interests and needs, and his inconveniences and sacrifices on behalf of the society are rewarded symbolically.

an enemy of Vaterstadt and Vaterland. These people destroy the universality of culture, for the public art works, with their embodiment of special emotion are no less objects of the community than the works of great poets and achievements of science.

[it] connects up the bits of experience and invests the whole with meaning; the people who accept it will only be able to justify their treatment of one another in terms of these ultimate categories. Unless we make the process visible, we are the victims.

1 Ian Hodder, “Economic and Social Stress and Material Culture Patterning,”American Antiquity, Vol. 44 (1979), p. 453.

2 For a contrasting approach to historic preservation, see Larry R. Ford, “Urban Preservation and the Geography of the City in the USA,”Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 3 (1979), pp. 211 38.

3 Full discussion of symbols will be found in the following: Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1973); Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1967), and Victor Turner, “Symbolic Studies,”Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 4 (1975), pp. 145 61.

4 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 60–61.

5 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topohilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 23.

6 Philip L. Wagner, Environment and Peoples (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 44.

7 One taxonomy of symbols has been put forth by Victor Turner, “Forms of Symbolic Action: Introduction,” in Robert F. Spencer, ed., Forms of Symbolic Action. Proceedings of the 1969 Annual Spring Meeting, American Ethnological Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 3–25, with particular reference to ritual symbols. Turner stresses the difference between “uni-vocal” (having only one proper meaning) and “multi-vocal” (having many meanings or significations). In addition, Turner has also identified other structural properties of certain symbolic forms. (See in particular, pp. 8–14.) See Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols, Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Vintage Books of Random House, 1970), p. 29, for a succinct statement of Turner's analysis of condensed symbols. More recently, Abner Cohen, “Political Symbolism,”Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 8 (1979), pp. 87 113, has employed a different taxonomy to discuss a paradigm for the study of political symbolism.

8 Cohen, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 87.

9 See, for example, Ian Hodder, “The Maintenance of Group Identities in the Baringo District W. Kenya,”Social Organization and Settlement: Contributions from Anthropology, Archaeology, and Geography (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports), Vol. 47 (1978), pp. 47–73, and H. Martin Wobst, “Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange,” in Charles E. Cleland, ed., Papers for the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin (Ann Arbor: Anthropology papers, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1977, pp. 317–42.

10 See, for example, Nancy Mitford, ed., Noblesse Oblige, An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1956). Mitford develops the concept of “U” and “non-U,” which is usually underestimated as a source of social change, particularly in more complex and status-ordered societies.

11 Wagner, op. cit., footnote 6, p. xi.

12 Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Chinese City (Chicago: Aldine, 1971).

13 Marie Jean Adams“Structural Aspects of a Village Art,”American Anthropologist, Vol. 75 (1972), pp. 265 79.

14 John M. Fritz, “Paleopsychology Today: Ideational Systems and Human Adaptation in Prehistory,” in Charles L. Redman et al., ed., Social Archeology: Beyond Dating and Subsistence (New York: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 37–60.

15 For other examples of resonance between organizational principles and the cultural landscape, see Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979), and G. Nicolas, “Essai sur les structures fundamentales de l'espace dans la cosmologies Hausa,”Journal de la Societé des Africanistes, Vol. 36 (1966), pp. 65 107.

16 Margaret W. Conkey, “Style and Information in Cultural Evolution: Toward a Predictive Model for the Paleolithic,” in Redman, op. cit., footnote 14, pp. 61–85.

17 David Ley and Roman Cybriwsky, “Urban Graffiti as Territorial Markers,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 64 (1974), pp. 491 505; and F. Boal, “Territoriality on the Shankill-Falls Divide, Belfast,”Irish Geography, Vol. 6 (1969), pp. 30 50.

18 Sally Falk Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, “Introduction: Secular Ritular Forms and Meanings,” in Moore and Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1977), pp. 3–24.

19 David Lowenthal, “Past Time, Present Place: Landscapes and Memory,”Geographical Review, Vol. 65 (1975), p. 12. There is, however, more to conservatism in the face of change than just trying to retain the familiar. Some traditional behaviors may be maintained as a result of deliberate choice and “may offer highly adaptive adjustment to the exigencies of situational change.” See Diane Rothenberg, “Erosion of Power—An Economic Basis for the Selective Conservatism of Seneca Women in the Nineteenth Century,” in Patricia A. McCormack, ed., Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology (special issue, Cross-Sex Relations: Native Peoples), Vol. 6 (1976), p. 106.

20 Bernard Siegel“Defensive Structuring and Environmental Stress,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 76 (1970), pp. 11 32.

21 Siegel, op. cit., footnote 20, p. 13.

22 Douglas, op, cit., footnote 7, p. 33.

23 Amos Rapoport“Culture and the Subjective Effects of Stress,”Urban Ecology, Vol. 3 (1978), pp. 241 61.

24 Rapoport, op. cit., footnote 23, p. 257.

25 Siegel, op. cit., footnote 20, p. 30.

26 Gregory Bateson, “The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution,”Evolution, Vol. 17 (1963), pp. 529 39.

27 Lawrence Slobodkin and Anatol Rapoport“An Optimal Strategy of Evolution,”The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 49 (1974), pp. 181 200.

28 Slobodkin and Rapoport, op. cit., footnote 27, p. 198.

29 Groups on social margins tend to be the most innovative with symbols. Or, in other words, “liminality is the mother of invention,” Turner, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 10. Also see Victor Turner, “Passages, Margins and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas,”Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 231–71.

30 Elman Service, “The Law of Evolutionary Potential,” in Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service, ed., Evolution and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 93–122.

31 Service, op. cit., footnote 30.

32 Ramon Margalef, Perspectives in Ecological Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 29–30.

33 Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldridge, “Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,”Paleobiology, Vol. 3 (1977), pp. 115 51.

34 Cohen, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 87.

35 Cohen, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 87.

36 Roy Rappaport, “The Sacred in Human Evolution,”Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 2 (1971), p. 26.

37 Although the 1967 Salzburg law was the first in central Europe to protect a complete inner city, this law was predated by French legislation, the 1962 Loi Malraux. that offered financial incentives and legal protection for “safegurarded sectors” in more than twenty French cities. See Peter Leisching, “Neue Weg der Denkmalschutzgebung in Frankreich,”Oesterr. Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege, Vol. 18 (1964), pp. 118 21.

38 Archival research consisted of examining newspapers, pamphlets, and correspondence of the period found in the Museum Carolino Augusteum, Salzburg, Austria.

39 Hans Hangler, “Die Landeshauptstadt Salzburg: Geschichtliches, Statistisches,”Der Aufbau, Vol. 16 (1961), pp. 490 92.

40 Quoted from Salzburger Zeitung May 1860; taken from Wilhelm Schaup, Altsalzburger Photographien (Salzburg: Salzburger Verlag Für Wirtschaft und Kultur, 1967), pp. 88.

41 Franz Fuhrman, Salzburg in Alten Ansichten (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1963), p. 348.

42 Wobst, op. cit., footnote 9.

43 Abner Cohen, Two-Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

44 A. S. Romer, Man and the Vertebrates (New York: Penguin, 1954. First published in 1933), in particular see p. 43ff. For a discussion of Romer's rule applied to the evolution of culture, see Rappaport, op. cit., footnote 36.

45 Erich Griessenböck, “Aus der hundertjährigen Geschichte des Stadtvereins,”Die Bastei (no volume number, 1962), p. 6.

46 Max Dvorak, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege (Vienna: Julius Bard, 1916).

47 Dvorak, op. cit., footnote 46, p. 10.

48 Otto Demus, “Die Oesterreichische Denkmalpflege,” in 100 Jahre Unterrichts Ministerium. 1848–1948, Festschrift des Bundesministeriums für Unterricht in Wien (Vienna: Oesterreichischer Bundesverlag, 1948), pp. 391–402.

49 Demus, op. cit., footnote 48, p. 401.

50 For example, see Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich. Memoirs by Albert Speer (New York: MacMillan, 1970), p. 56.

51 Heinrich Siegler, Austria: Problems and Achivements Since 1945 (Vienna: Siegler and Co., 1964).

52 Hodder, op. cit., footnote 1.

53 Griessenböck, op. cit., footnote 45.

54 Hans Sedlmayer, Die Demolierte Schönheit (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1965).

55 Sedlmayer, op. cit., footnote 54, p. 78.

56 Salzburger Altstadterhaltungsgesetz, LGBL number 54, 10 May 1967.

57 The relationship between tourism and historic preservation is an interesting one and demands further study. Few would argue that a prime consideration behind some preservation projects, both in the United States and Europe, is enchancing tourist traffic. However, in researching 120 years of preservation activity in Salzburg, we find tourism becomes a promotional strategy only in the last twenty years and, more importantly, this argument is advanced with caution and ambivalence, for city residents are extremely sensitive to the prospect their town will become nothing else than a tourist-oriented, open-air museum. Our interpretation of archival material suggests the tourism-preservation link was presented to only a small number of Altstadt business people to gain support for old city protection. We conclude that restating the goals of the intended preservation legislation for unconvinced commerical interests was a translation into secular terms of an already sanctified symbol system.

58 Marvin W. Mikesell, “Tradition and Innovation in Cultural Geography,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 68 (1978), p. 5.

59 Cultural geographers should ponder this statement by a well-known archeologist: “In fact, I believe we can profitably do without the concept “culture,” since it appears to be unoperational in analysis …I feel that the concept “culture” has outlived its usefulness, and now serves as an important barrier to the accomplishment of specific, operational research. Instead of attempting to describe “cultures,”“culture-change,” and so forth, I believe it will be more productive to emphasize the solution to specific problems and the testing of hypotheses that are of interest to us. James N. Hill, “Systems Theory and the Explanation of Change,” in Hill, ed., Explanation of Prehistoric Change (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), p. 103.

60 Leach, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 33.

61 Douglas, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 10.