and clashes between agrarian and hunter–gath-
ering societies are all examples. The geograph-
iesoftheseoftenviolentreworkings(Pelusoand
Watts, 2001), and associated forms of resist-
ance (Peluso, 2005), have been compellingly
documented. nkb
land use and land-cover change (LULC) A
component of contemporary studies of global
environmental change that focuses on both
land cover (i.e. the land’s physical attributes,
such as forest, grassland etc.) and the purpose
for which those attributes are used and/or
transformed by human actions. Large-scale
international research programmes into land
cover (making extensive use of data obtained
viaremote sensing) have been undertaken re-
cently under the auspices of the International
Geosphere–Biosphere Programme and related
institutions. The goal is not only to establish
the nature and pace of land-use cover change,
at a variety ofscales, but also to understand
its causes, thereby facilitating modelling
of likely future change, in the context of
searches forsustainable development(cf.
sustainability). rj
Suggested reading
Gutman, Janetos, Justice et al. (2005).
landscape A cardinal term of human geog-
raphy, landscape has served as central object
of investigation, organizing principle and
interpretive lens for several different gener-
ations of researchers. Through periods of
both ascendancy and eclipse, landscape’s
constancy lies in its function as a locus for
geographical research into culture–nature and
subject–object relations.
The etymology of the English word ‘land-
scape’ is complex. Many sources (e.g. Jackson,
1984; Schama, 1995) refer to the Dutch word
landschap as having migrated into English
usage through the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, with ‘landscape’ gradually coming
to refer to both the visual appearance of land,
most often countryside, and its pictorial depic-
tion via perspectival techniques for represent-
ing depth and space. The association of
landscape with visual art, and with rural or
natural scenery, is cemented in its contempor-
ary colloquial definition as, (a) a portion of
land or scenery which the eye can view at
once, and (b) a picture of it.
In partial contrast, Olwig (1996) notes that
the Old Dutchlandskaband the Germanic
landscha ̈ftboth also connote legal and admin-
istrative notions of community, region and
jurisdiction: landscape as customary adminis-
trative unit. Landscha ̈ft was also the term
adopted by American geographer Carl Ortwin
Sauer (1963b [1925]) in his seminal mono-
graphThe morphology of landscape. This sought
first to establish a definition of geography as a
field science of landscape and, second, to
define landscape itself in terms of interactions
between human cultures and natural environ-
ments (seemorphology). Thus landscape
was conceived as a cultural entity, the distinct-
ive product of interactions between people
and topography. Sauer’s argument that ‘cul-
ture is the agent, the natural area is the med-
ium, the cultural landscape the result’ (1963b
[1925], p. 343), oriented several decades of
American cultural geography towards the his-
torical reconstruction of cultural landscape
forms throughfieldworkand archival study.
However, Richard Hartshorne’s (1939)
influential The nature of geographynotably
critiqued landscape’s incorporation of both ob-
jective and subjective elements (the landand
land-as-perceived), concluding that the term
could not serve as the basis of a properly scien-
tific geography. The subsequent rise of regional
and then spatial science paradigms following
the Second World War thus saw something of
a decline in landscape’s purchase and salience
as an organizing term for human geographers.
In this period, most notable and innovative
geographical writing on landscape appeared
the journalLandscape, founded in 1951 by J.B.
Jackson. Through his own extensive writings,
Jackson defined landscape in terms of the ma-
terialworldofordinaryeverydayor‘vernacular’
life – in postwar America an often-bypassed
world of garages, motels, neon-lit strips and
backyards. Jackson’s writing also extended the
empirical emphasis of Sauerian cultural geog-
raphy through attending seriously to the sym-
bolic and iconic meanings of landscape. This
vision of landscape as at once an everyday,
lived-in world and a repository of symbolic
value chimed with the agenda of North Ameri-
can humanistic geography in the 1970s, and
found its clearest expression in a volume of
essaysonThe interpretation of ordinary landscapes
(Meinig, 1979).
A raft of innovative writing on landscape
emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
constituting a significant element of the
cultural turn in Anglo-American human
geography as a whole. The work of Denis
Cosgrove (1998 [1984]) and Stephen Daniels
(Daniels and Cosgrove, 1988) in particular
advanced an influential definition of landscape
as away of seeingand representing the world.Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_L Final Proof page 409 31.3.2009 2:44pmLANDSCAPE