The polysemic texture of landscape

3.3.1 The polysemic texture of landscape

Much depends on how the seer sees. (Massanari 1997: 276) As the concept of sacred land can be found in many indigenous societies, Howitt (2001) concludes that the geomorphic landscape reflects the same cosmological truths that shape the relationships within the living community. This implies that much is in-scribed into and recorded upon the landscape, be it physically or symbolically, which affects resource management practice. In reading such landscapes as »cultured places«, he affirms that even the most learned outsider is reduced to »illiteracy«; the absence of literacy in complex multicultural environments follows as a common source of mis-understanding and conflict (2001: 172ff.). He further writes:

Yet in the worlds of technocratic and scientistic dreaming which characterise so much of the Real-politik of resource management, there is little room for ›sense of place‹ beyond the application of so-phisticated Geographical Information Systems to document exactly what is there to be utilised. Such systems aim to capture local geographies (at whatever scale) in a tight Cartesian framework, where grid references, physical descriptions and quantitative measures of vectors, direction and size suffice for most purposes (2001: 165).

In all resource management systems, Howitt asserts, the perceptions, attitudes, values, ethical standards and aspirations of those involved are fundamental to its structure and operation. By referring to Blay²⁴ who suggested that the most important element in the ecology of an area to be considered is the state of mind of the persons who use it, the author draws attention to different senses of the place that most often underlie geopolitical conflicts. When different stakeholders meet in cross-cultural conserva-tional settings, misunderstandings and tensions may arise due to the encounter of the

»geometries of resources« inherent to the above mentioned Cartesian framework with the more complex »topographies and topologies of places of the heart« of indigenous peoples (2001: 175). The mentioned ›illiteracy‹ in reading landscapes often impedes processes of communication and can also be seen as an explanation for the difficulties to identify underlying obstacles that hinder the successful implementation of even par-ticipatory approaches in development programmes and conservation initiatives. To some extent, Howitt considers, what one sees reflects much of what one already knows or expects to see. Potentially, each viewer will perceive and understand different things in each image and in each place. As the relationship between humans and landscapes proceeds from cultural experience, it cannot be inquired into via questionnaires or short term field visits. It is a process that implies the ability to ›read‹ landscapes, not just as if they were texts but as complex records of interaction and interrelationship constantly changing over time and space. As social and spiritual concerns are embed-ded in the land, this reading cannot be a passive experience; it is, rather, a dynamic

ac-24 John Blay, Part of the Scenery (1984).

tivity that encompasses the landscape. Thus, the process to develop a »multidimensio-nal sense of place«, which most often takes place in a frame largely devoid of verbal communication, requires situated engagement and involves »all the senses and facili-ties of human experience« (Howitt 2001: 165). Similarly, Whiston Spirn (1998) men-tions that a person literate in landscape sees significance where an illiterate person notes nothing. Ironically, the professionals who specialise in reading certain parts of land-scape more deeply than other parts often fail to understand landland-scape as a continuous whole. That the polysemic nature of landscape cannot be recognised easily by outsid-ers has also been emphasised by Posey (2002) who reminds that knowledge, beliefs and practices related to sacred places and sites of certain historical significance in many cases are kept secret. In viewing landscape, it is easy to revert to a naïve com-mon sense as the basis for interpretation and judgement. For many observers, a lands-cape can appear empty when the artefacts of their own culture's presence cannot be seen. Nevertheless, he affirms elsewhere, studies that document the cultural aspects of landscapes can overturn the ›empty land‹ concept and begin to recognise the role of indigenous and local peoples in in situ conservation (1996b: 56).²⁵ Relating to the idea of different ways of envisioning landscapes, Sillitoe gives an example from develop-ment practice, which illustrates different environdevelop-mental perceptions that also tend to come together in intercultural conservational settings:

If we take several people looking at a wooded hillside, they all see the same natural landscape but they may perceive it, know and think about it, entirely differently, according to their culturally conditioned understanding and experiences. A shifting cultivator will see potential swidden sites, assessing their value by a range of criteria such as species composition indicating fertility status [...]. A local entre-preneur might see a tourist location [...]. A forester may see a mature standing crop, calculating its value according to whether it is harvested sustainably or clear-felled, with attendant erosion risks. A western conservationist might see a beautiful natural environment that demands protection against any human depredations, as the habitat of endangered wildlife. When those with different views come to-gether [...] they have to negotiate some shared understandings of each others' perspectives of the hillside or whatever, and reach some consensus about it, with power relationships influencing the outcome (1998b: 206).

The notion of different spatial perceptions, which implies that all lies in the eye of the beholder, may be applied to an example of changing landscape features in the Guate-malan highlands. Even the same landscape at different times of the year may evoke different associations in the same observer (Fig. 3.1 and 3.2).

25 Posey is referring here to the concept of terra nullius used in the past by colonial administrations as a legal doctrine to dispossess indigenous populations of their ancestral lands. This was accomplished by declaring the territories as uninhabited and thus unowned prior to colonial rule. For post-colonial governments, the terra nullius concept offered an ideal basis for the establishment of state-owned protected areas on traditional lands based on a public ownership model, which became the corner-stone of protected areas legislation (Oviedo 2002: 27).

Fig. 3.1 A landscape shaped by human resource use in the Guatemalan highlands

Fig. 3.2 The same landscape a few months later

The finding that different perceptions, values and ways of seeing underlie many of the geopolitical conflicts that have shaped and continue to shape social experience on all levels has been discussed by Oviedo and Brown (1999). Referring to protected area management, they stress the aforementioned sacredness of natural sites as an issue of particular importance to be acknowledged. In general, the sacredness of natural sites is

1263).

a religious or mythological expression of the recognition of its vital functions. Simi-larly, social regulations determine active management when degradation occurs and exclusion rules in terms of taboos tend to be established in relation to especially valued species and other elements of nature, thereby creating a sense of respect and care.²⁶ With emphasis on biodiversity conservation, the role of restrictions in regard to the use of sacred sites has also been referred to by Schaaf (2000). As they have served as important reservoirs of biodiversity, preserving species of plants, insects and animals, taboo associations attached to particular trees, groves, mountains, rivers, caves and temple sites should continue to play an important role in the protection of particular ecosystems by local people.²⁷ As inextricable elements of the cultural landscape, such places are widely found in societies throughout the Americas, in Australia, as well as in Asian and African countries. Schaaf suggests that they may provide an alternative and innovative approach to environmental conservation. Due to access restrictions, such sanctuaries serve to maintain ecosystems in landscapes that people otherwise would have transformed into agro-ecosystems. As they contain important reservoirs of ge-netic and species diversity and often play a major role in safeguarding the hydrological cycle of watershed areas, they can help to protect ecosystems against environmental degradation. In this way, the transdisciplinary nature of the interface between cultural perceptions and scientific rationale in the effective protection of bio-cultural diversity found in sacred sites provides compelling models for integrated conservation-development programmes (2000: 341f.).²⁸ This observation might also have led Mauro and Hardison to apply the term »ecocultural landscapes« (2000:

Taking into account the above considerations on the untenable distinction be-tween nature and culture and the polysemic texture of landscape, a concept for bridg-ing the gap between the natural and the cultural has been developed aimbridg-ing at the conservation of »bio-cultural diversity« (Oviedo et al. 2000). With an emphasis on in situ conservation of biological and cultural resources as interdependent phenomena, it indicates »the crucial complementarity for achieving an alternative, less exploitive phi-losophy of nature and the environment for improved sustainable natural resource management and conservation« (Slikkerveer 2000: 174).²⁹

26 Taboo is derived from the Polynesian context, where the concept was established to protect re-sources considered particularly vulnerable; overfished reefs, orchards of unripe fruit or overhar-vested wild plants and animals would be declared taboo until they had recovered to be haroverhar-vested again.

27 This point has been made by a number of authors. See for instance Gadgil et al. (1993), who pro-vide numerous ethnographic examples in their account on Indigenous Knowledge for Biodiversity Conserva-tion. Although sacred sites undoubtedly contribute to biodiversity conservation, Laird (2000) ques-tions whether the complex condiques-tions that have created and maintained such areas may be opera-tionalised as conservation tools.

28 In particular, Schaaf relates to a programme initiated by UNESCO aimed at cultural landscapes and their link with the conservation of biodiversity. Established in 1992 within the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, this category recognises the complex interrela-tionships between humans and nature in the construction, formation and evolution of landscapes.

29 Anthropologists not only focused on differing representations of landscape in the frame of re-source management, but also extended discussions towards the accounts by colonial administrations of how they perceived local landscapes through ›imperial eyes‹. For an example, see Misreading the

As human engagement with landscapes is rooted in historically constituted social rela-tions, landscapes also form part of the way in which identities are created. Not only are economic, social and environmental systems deeply implicated in cultural land-scapes but also those in which human identities are shaped. By analysing the relation-ship between identity and space, Hernando Gonzalo (1999) argues that landscape re-fers to symbolically constituted spaces that are conceived only through personal ex-perience. In this sense, space forms part of the basis of identity and individual person-ality; colours, smells, sights and sounds define space in our childhood and thus be-come part of ourselves and provide a vital but unconscious source of security and protection. It is essential to understand the cognitive and affective bases that define models of self-consciousness in other societies in order to be able to evince our own cultural and historical reality. Like the aforementioned authors, she concludes that land or space cannot be differentiated from landscape. As space is experience, all na-ture or land is landscape. That the relationship with the landscape is essential, giving substance to human relationships, has also been noted by Lovell (1999). In her intro-duction to Locality and Belonging, she underlines the idea that belonging to a place is in-strumental in creating identities:

Belonging to particular locality evokes the notion of loyalty to a place [...]. Accounts of how such loy-alties are created, perpetuated and modified are of relevance to an understanding of identity at individ-ual and, more importantly, collective levels, since belonging and locality as markers of identity often extend beyond individual experiences and nostalgic longing for a particular place. Belonging may thus be seen as ›a way of remembering‹ [...]. Locality and belonging may be moulded and defined as much by actual territorial emplacement as by memories of belonging to particular landscapes whose physical reality is enacted only through acts of collective remembering (1999: 1f.).

Drawing on Appadurai³⁰ who argues that identity may also appear deterritorialised through experiences such as migratory movements or forced displacement and thus may be located between places rather than being bound to particular homelands, Lov-ell writes that locality may become »multivocal«, and belonging itself can be viewed as a »multifaceted process« (1999: 5). That home may be multiple has also been noted by Stewart and Strathern (2003). For them, it may not be just one place, but numbers of places that show correspondences of association and relationships attached to them.

rican Landscape by Fairhead and Leach (1996). In their analysis, they found that colonial stereotypes of supposedly destructive land management had long guided the formulation of research questions and the interpretation of findings. Beyond such discussions on the ›imperial eye‹, including accounts by conquerors and explorers of what they ›saw‹ in colonial settings, anthropologists have developed landscape studies to map the politics of unequal encounters in contemporary contexts. Among other recent works, Chapin and Threlkeld (2001) examined projects on mapping indigenous land use.

Based on the notion that mapping lands and land uses is a necessary step in the process of assisting indigenous people to secure rights to both land and resources and in maintaining ethnic identity, it is argued that participatory mapping, because it is a political process, also enhances the chances that they will have both the ability and the will to engage in sustainable resource management.

30 Arjun Appadurai, Global Ethnoscapes. Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology (1991).

The sense of community that is established through emplacement may encompass the living and the dead as well as the spirit world. This embeddedness within local, mythi-cal and ritual landscapes is bound to an inner emotional landscape that merges the perceived experience of the place with the imagined symbolic meaning to the individ-ual. This ›contestation‹ of landscape depends on images that are based on memories and associations that feed into ideology but are based primarily in subjectivity and experi-ence. Everything depends on how ›the heart‹ sees them as ›inner landscapes‹ (2003: 8f.).

The above assumptions of an intimate and complex set of inner and outer place-oriented relationships also imbue the work of Strang (1997). In her study concerned with cultural landscapes and environmental values, she considers landscape as a me-dium through which social issues and ideas about identity are formulated, illustrating how socio-spatial placement contributes significantly to the construction of values that people inculcate and express. The question of identity – in the sense of personal and collective identity – is central to the socio-spatial equation, and the ›placement‹

that people feel is one of the strongest influences on their environmental beliefs and values. However, identity is a complex concept. It is grounded in relations with others;

it grows through interaction with people, places and things, and through forms of self-expression, responsibilities, creativity and knowledge. It feeds on beliefs, values and ideas and it is rooted in particular places, by birth, family or professional involvement, spiritual attachment and sentiment. It is fluid, multifaceted and, above all, an essen-tially social product (1997: 59). With reference to indigenous perceptions in the Aus-tralian context, Strang argues that identity arises specifically from the spiritual and his-toric ties to a particular place and the affective response that these engender. Through the collection and analysis of ethnographic data, she explores the dynamics of envi-ronmental relations, using the concept of landscape to examine the ways in which an emotional response to the land is culturally constructed. By applying this concept she shows how different values are located in the land according to social, cultural, his-torical and ecological factors. Visible methods of land use and the spatial ordering of people and landscape are only outward manifestations of a dynamic interaction with the land in which underlying social structures and cultural concepts are as crucial as economic and environmental pressures. Indigenous identity comes primarily from the land linked through ancestral connections. The nature of this identification with land creates an »unparalleled collective sense of belonging« (1997: 159f.). Thus, for aborigi-nal people, who they are and where they are from are not divisible. Strang raises crucial questions about how people make different places, how the human environmental re-lationship is constructed, about environmental values and in particular, what encour-ages or discourencour-ages the development of affective values inherent in a specific vision of the land. According to her, the intimate, long-term relationship between aboriginal people and their country may be the only kind of interaction that could possibly lead to a complex and thoroughly integrated use of the physical environment as a central medium and, in consequence, to a high degree of affective concern for the land.

This ›withinness‹ has been identified by Weber Nicholsen (2002) as a prerequisite for contact; no contact is possible if one is not within the same context. Further questions concerned with experiences of identification with landscape have been discussed thoroughly by the author. In her book The Love of Nature and the End of the World. The Unspoken Dimensions of Environmental Concern she explores the emotional and sensorial significance of the experience of nature, which the next section will turn to.

3.3.3 Of emplacement and emotional involvement

The way we conceptualise nature and the manner in which we manage our relationship with the natural world reveals a great deal about ›who we are‹. (Nakashima 1998: 22)

In contrast to the aforementioned authors, Weber Nicholsen takes a different view, looking beyond considerations of ›cultural constructions‹. From a philosophical point of view, she discusses human relation to the natural world in terms of a »void that is beyond«. This is specified as an encompassing feeling of belonging to the land that is saturated with a sense of continuity through time, which she views as an unformed space that is spiritual rather than material. Instead of conceptualising ›mental models‹

or ›imagined geographies‹, she develops ideas about a »deep receptivity to the nonhu-man world« which is experienced »as a merging with other life« (2002: 23). This rela-tion evolves in an unspoken way: »We may speak of other human beings or to our-selves about our encounter with the natural world, but the encounter itself does not transpire in the medium of language« (2002: 19). She further specifies this encounter:

We can meet nature in its creative vitality only with our direct presence, only by opening our interior selves to it. [...] When we open to the depths within us, we become receptive to the language of nature.

Nature speaks to us and we hear her. [...] To hear nature speak in this way is not a matter of un-derstanding the specific cries of the animal or bird. Nor is it a matter of mere superstition or of

Nature speaks to us and we hear her. [...] To hear nature speak in this way is not a matter of un-derstanding the specific cries of the animal or bird. Nor is it a matter of mere superstition or of