Overview

Landscapes are not just backdrops to human action; people make them and are made by them. How people understand and engage with their material world depends upon particularities of time and place. These understandings are dynamic, variable, contradictory and open-ended. Landscapes are thus always evolving and are often volatile and contested. They are also always on the move - people may or may not be rooted, but they have 'legs'. From prehistoric times onwards people have travelled, but the process of people-on-the-move - as tourists, or on global business, as migrant workers or political or economic refugees - has vastly accelerated. How and why do people who share the same landscape have different and often violently opposed ways of understanding its significance? How do people-on-the-move make sense of the unfamiliar? How do they create a sense of place? How do they rework the memories of places left behind? There is nothing easeful about the landscapes discussed in this book, which are often harsh-edged and troubled both socially and politically. The contributors tackle contested notions of landscape to explain the key role it plays in creating identity and shaping human behaviour. This landmark study offers an important contribution towards an understanding of the complexity of landscape.

Full Product Details

Author:   Barbara Bender ,  Margot Winer
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Berg Publishers
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9781859734674

ISBN 10:   1859734677
Pages:   402
Publication Date:   06 January 2001
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, List of Contributors, List of Illustrations, Introduction, 1. The Shadow of the Sacred Rock: Contrasting Discourses of Place under the Acropolis, 2. Matter and Memory in the Landscapes of Conflict: The Western Front 1914–1999, 3. Contested Landscapes in Inner Mongolia: Walls and Cairns, 4. Negotiating the River: Cultural Tributaries in Far North Queensland, 5. Crannogs: Places of Resistance in the Contested Landscapes of Early Modern Ireland, 6. Landscapes of Punishment and Resistance: A Female Convict Settlement in Tasmania, Australia, 7. Cultural Keepers, Cultural Brokers: The Landscape of Women and Children – A Case Study of the Town Dahab in South Sinai, 8. Whose New Forest? Making Place on the Urban/Rural Fringe, 9. The Political Economy of Landscape: Conflict and Value in a Prehistoric Landscape in the Republic of Ireland – Ways of Telling, 10. Bringing Contemporary Baggage to Neolithic Landscapes, Comments on Part I: Intersecting Landscapes, Responses to Julian Thomas’s Comments, 11. Landscape and Commerce: Creating Contexts for the Exercise of Power, 12. Pilgrimage and Politics in the Desert of Rajasthan, 13. Landscapes of Separation: Reflections on the Symbolism of By-pass Roads in Palestine, 14. Rites of Passage: Travel and the Materiality of Vision at the Cape of Good Hope, 15. Landscapes, Fear and Land Loss on the Nineteenth-Century South African Colonial Frontier, 16. Places of Longing and Belonging: Memories of the Group Area Proclamation of a South African Fishing Village, 17. Homes and Exiles: Owambo Women’s Literature, 18. Egypt: Constructed Exiles of the Imagination, 19. Migration, Exile and Landscapes of the Imagination, 20. Hunting Down Home: Reflections on Homeland and the Search for Identity in the Scottish Diaspora, Comments on Part II: Far From Home, Responses to Nick Shepherd’s Comments, Index

Reviews

'[The editors] show that human activities shaped people's landscapes with the material worlds they have created.' New Scientist'Traditional landscape history ignores [the book's] central message at its mortal peril.'Landscape History '...The book succeeds in its presentation of landscape as the instantiation of people's engagement with the material world around them - the social tapestry of everyday life. For it is of everyday life accounts that this book is full. It is this plurality of voices, beliefs, memories, and practices that makes up a noteworthy collection of essays.'Alberto Corsin Jimenez, University of Oxford'[The authors] present a myriad of historical, cultural, political, and geographical viewpoints under a diversity of topics...the essays present powerful accounts of conflict in the human spirit.'Landscape Australia Magazine

'[The editors] show that human activities shaped people's landscapes with the material worlds they have created.' New Scientist 'Traditional landscape history ignores [the book's] central message at its mortal peril.' Landscape History '...The book succeeds in its presentation of landscape as the instantiation of people's engagement with the material world around them - the social tapestry of everyday life. For it is of everyday life accounts that this book is full. It is this plurality of voices, beliefs, memories, and practices that makes up a noteworthy collection of essays.' Alberto Corsin Jimenez, University of Oxford '[The authors] present a myriad of historical, cultural, political, and geographical viewpoints under a diversity of topics...the essays present powerful accounts of conflict in the human spirit.' Landscape Australia Magazine

Author Information

Barbara Bender Professor in Heritage Anthropology,University College London Margot Winer Associate Professor, Saint Mary's College of California and Co-ordinator, SMC Study Abroad Program, University of Cape Town

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