The Dictionary of Human Geography

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returns to issues of dwelling and the relation-

ship of people, but not peoples, to places

drawing inspiration from post-Heideggerian

and Deleuzian philosophy. It challenges a

preoccupation with representational forms

and meaning leading to the social construction

of identities. Instead, it focuses upon the

connection of material and social process in

forging identities in practices and actions.

These current debates promise to be as unruly

as previous developments, drawing widely

from outside the discipline and speaking to

topics across sub-disciplines. mc

Suggested reading

Anderson, Domosh, Pile and Thrift (2002);

Atkinson, Jackson, Sibley and Washbourne

(2007); Blunt, Gruffudd, May. and Ogborn

(2003); Crang (1998); Mitchell (2000); Shurmer-

Smith (2002).

cultural hearth The place of origin of a cul-

tural system. This concept was introduced into

Americancultural geographybyCarlOrtwin

Sauer (1952; see also 1969) and was important

in the early work of theberkeley school.Sauer

borrowed it from late-nineteenth-century

Germananthropogeography, along with the

related notions of culture area,cultural land-

scapeand cultural diffusion. For many in the

Berkeley School, the term was used primarily

to refer to the originary point of agricultural

systems that had subsequently diffused out-

wards. For others, it represented the heart

of cultural regions more broadly defined

(Wagner and Mikesell, 1962). jsd

Suggested reading

Leighly (1969).

cultural landscape Conventionally, a princi-

pal object of study incultural geography.

The classic definition is Carl Ortwin Sauer’s

(1963b [1925] – see figure):

The cultural landscape is fashioned from

a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Culture is the agent, the natural area the

medium, the cultural landscape is the result.

Under the influence of a given culture, itself

changing through time, the landscape

undergoes development, passing through

phases, and probably reaching ultimately

the end of its cycle of development.

This definition reflects not only Sauer’s

personal context and scholarly concerns

(seeberkeley school), but also theoretical

issues that remain critical to discussions of

cultural landscape. His description of cultural

landscape as subject to evolutionary change

echoes W.M. Davis’ cycle of natural landscape

evolution, but Sauer was explicitly concerned

to counterenvironmental determinismand

drew upon German studies ofKulturlandschaft

that stressed the mutual shaping of people

(Volk) and land in the creation of dwelling

(Heimat)(Olwig, 2002). Sauer thus stressed

cultureas a geographical agent, although

the physical environment retained a central

significance as the medium with and through

which human cultures act (seeculture area).

Hence such elements astopography, soils,

watercourses, plants and animals were

incorporated into studies of the cultural land-

scape insofar as they evoked human responses

andadaptations, or had been altered by

human activity.

Today, Sauer’s neat distinction between

natureandculturehas been largely aban-

doned in favour of a ‘social nature’ (see also

production of nature): thetabula rasaof a

‘natural landscape’ upon which ‘culture’

inscribes itself ignores the constancy of envir-

onmental change, and the dialectic of ‘nature’

and ‘culture’ is historically constructed. All

landscapesare at once natural and cultural

(Cosgrove, 1998 [1984]). Furthermore, con-

temporarycultural ecologyhas deepened

our understanding of the complexities of cul-

tural landscape change, andpost-colonial-

ism has reworked perspectives on the

landscape impacts ofcolonialism(Sluyter,

2001, 2002; Mitchell, 2002e [1994]). In con-

sequence, greater attention is now given to

grids ofpower, to cultural contestation and

to the active role played by the diverse

‘insiders’ of landscape, so that Sauer’s idea of

a climax cultural landscape swept away by a

rejuvenated one has been replaced by notions

of a more mediated,hybridand transcultural

landscape (see alsotransculturation).

The emphasis on landscape’s representa-

tional and semiotic qualities, particularly in

studies informed by art history andicono-

graphy, has led to calls for renewed attention

to its substantive aspects: its materialities

and continued significance forlifeworlds.

While cultural landscape remains closely iden-

tified with the tangible, visible scene, land-

scapes are increasingly read by geographers

as moments in a networked process ofsocial

relations that stretch acrosstimeandspace

(seealsosense of place). Closely connected

to these developments, a nuanced use of

phenomenologyis apparent in some recent

studies of landscape in which narrative

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 133 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CULTURAL LANDSCAPE