Landscape: The Lowenthal Legacy

Abstract

The concept of landscape is enjoying a period of scholarly development in contemporary geography that has spread to, and enriched, disciplines ranging from anthropology, archaeology, and sociology to history and philosophy. This development is occurring despite the fact the concept of landscape was once effectively dismissed, by an influential geographical theorist, as being of “little or no value as a technical or scientific term” in geography. This article argues that the contemporary analytical power of landscape derives in important measure from the timely ability of David Lowenthal to turn the critique of landscape on end. He did this by transforming the very contradictions embodied by landscape, which made it a liability as technical or scientific term, into a phenomenon for epistemological inquiry.

Key Words:

• Political landscape
• environmental perception
• David Lowenthal
• Carl O. Sauer
• George Perkins Marsh

Notes

1. Lowenthal, of course, was not alone. For other contributions to this discourse, see, for example, Tuan (1974), Meinig (1979), Jackson (1984), and Wagner (1972).

2. Recent works in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, philosophy, and history that derive, I would argue, from the epistemological approach to landscape pioneered by Lowenthal include Hirsch and O'Hanlon (1995), Bender (1993), Urry (1990), Casey (2002), and Schama (1995).

3. For a more detailed analysis of landscape's etymological meaning, see Olwig (1996, 2002).

4. Marsh, it should be noted, did not just contribute to discourse on the environment through his effort to shape public opinion; he also took a professional philological interest in language and text as the stuff of discourse (Lehtinen 1991).

5. The term “political landscape” specifically refers to the meaning of “area of activity” as being synonymous with the word “scene.” The word “scene,” in this context, means, “sphere of activity” (Merriam-Webster 1995).

6. It is this concern with the political landscape that has inspired my own work on the subject (Olwig 1980, 1996,; 2002) and that, in turn, has also helped inspire a younger generation of scholars, such as Don Mitchell (2000) and Tom Mels (1999, 2002).

7. This could be seen, for example, in the multidisciplinary contributions to the three sessions dedicated to Lowenthal at the 2002 meetings of the AAG in Los Angeles.

8. These observations are based on personal experience as a participant observer in a number of seminars held with Lowenthal in Scandinavia.