Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology

Abstract

Widgren, M. 2015. Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 00, 00–00. ISSN 0029-1951

The article analyses and compares two schools of landscape research – post-war European landscape history and Nordic landscape geography – and compares them with political ecology. Each of them developed within a specific political, environmental, and intellectual context. European landscape history developed as curiosity-driven research, but in the shadow of previous ideological misuse of settlement history. Political ecology developed in the context of the Sahel crisis and provided a radical answer to Malthusian simplifications of the desertification and land degradation. In contrast to that, Nordic landscape geography grew as an intellectual critical reaction to a European situation in which post-productivist landscape policies were on the agenda. The article also speculates on challenges ahead and suggests that the epoch when we understand European landscapes mainly from a post-productivist standpoint may be over.

Keywords:

• landscape research
• morphogenetic studies
• political ecology

Acknowledgements – The organisers and participants of the political ecology workshop in Trondheim December 2013, two anonymous referees, as well as Tor Arve Benjaminsen, Michael Jones, and Paul Robbins are all thanked for their valuable input to the article.

Notes

1. An esch landscape has intensively manured infields, subdivided between different farms, which are surrounded by less intensively used lands.

2. Plaggen soils are anthropogenic soils that are rich in organic matter.

3. Bocage landscapes are landscapes with irregular fields enclosed by hedges