B 7.3 Landscapes as overall social units

[TERCUD]

"As shown by Kenneth Olwig fifteen years ago, the term landscape – or its earlier forms, landskip for instance – where coined and used before the revolution in painting brought about by the rediscovery of perspective and the birth of landscape as a genre of painting (Olwig, 1996). In some areas, especially along the North Sea shores, in Schlewsig-Holstein for instance, landskips were coastal settlements chararterized by specific environments – coast line, sand, moors – and a high consciousness of their originality. They were more or less autonomous political units: they had the right to manage their environment according to their needs and to the idea they had of the preservation of its resources and balance.
In such a context, landscape was more than the totality of the things which could be seen from a point. It was the expression of a social group which used it as its habitat and managed it according to its long-term interest. In a time when it appears increasingly urgent to imagine sustainable forms of development, this model of landscape is seducive.
More recently, Kenneth Olwig has gone further in his exploration of the social and political dimension the idea of landscape may integrate (Olwig, 2002).
Would this conception of landscape as an overall social and political unit be useful for resolving the contemporary crisis of identities and the problems of sustainable growth? This is the main issue at stake at the Lisbon-Obidos PECSRL 2008 Conference."

(This is an excerpt from the text by Professor Paul Claval “THE IDEA OF LANDSCAPE”)