Cultural landscape

The author of the term “cultural landscape” is the German geographer Otto Schlüter , who understood it as a material unity of natural and cultural objects accessible to human perception. Schlüter assigned a key role in the genesis of the cultural landscape to man. ^[one]

A significant contribution to the development of the concept of cultural landscape was made by the American physical geographer Karl Sauer , who defines the landscape as a spatial reflection of the accumulated evolution of cultures in a certain area, a peculiar projection of cultures on the natural landscape in his book “Landscape Morphology”.

“Culture is an agent (active principle), natural area is a mediator, cultural landscape is a result” ^[2]

The focus on Sauer should be "casts" of lifestyles left by man in the landscape. Moreover, culture is interpreted as the integrity of human experience. Culture is the main force that forms the man-made appearance of the earth's surface. ^[3] According to the Russian geographer V.L. Kagansky , it was extremely important in Sauer’s works that on a similar natural basis different ethnic groups behave very differently, apply different technologies for influencing the environment, choose different lands, which leads to the formation of different cultural landscapes on a single natural basis. ^[four]

As for the Russian scientific school, the fundamental ideas that subsequently led to the formation of the domestic concept of the cultural landscape were expressed by Alexander von Humboldt . ^[5] In the future, its theoretical basis was formulated in the works of famous domestic scientists: V. V. Dokuchaev , L. S. Berg , A. I. Voeikov , S. S. Neustruev, V. P. Semenov-Tian-Shansky , V.I. Vernadsky , B. B. Rodoman . ^[6]

The nature of the interaction and mutual influence of culture and nature is a key point in determining the essence of the cultural landscape. In modern studies of the cultural landscape, this issue is addressed in different ways. G. A. Isachenko identifies three main approaches: informational-axiological, ethnocultural, phenomenological.

Information and axiological approach

In domestic science, the information-axiological approach is developed by the scientists of the Heritage Institute, Yu.A. Vedenin , M.E. Kuleshova . This approach involves understanding the cultural landscape as a landscape, in the formation of which a significant role is played by spiritual and intellectual values ​​transmitted in the form of information from generation to generation, which in turn are influenced by the material components of the landscape. ^[7]

The concept of a “cultural landscape” is based on the information and axiological approach of the “Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” and “UNESCO Guidelines for the Application of the World Heritage Convention” (1992), according to which the cultural landscape is an object of historical and cultural heritage. ^[eight]

Ethnocultural approach

In the framework of this approach, the cultural landscape is an object of study of ethnocultural landscape science, a scientific direction that arose at the intersection of landscape science and ethnology, toponymy, as well as other natural and human sciences, closely associated with anthropogeography. ^[9]

Based on the work of V.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, L.S. Berg, and others, the ethnological-geographical approach forms the idea of ​​landscape as a complex natural and cultural complex, the basic concepts of which are “natural landscape” and “ethnos ( community)". ^[ten]

The phenomenological approach

According to the founder of this approach, Vladimir Kagansky , “the cultural landscape is the earth’s space, the living environment of a fairly large (self-preserving) group of people, if this space is at the same time whole and differentiated, mastered utilitarian, semantically and symbolically.” ^[11] Thus, the cultural landscape appears as a text , structural and semantic education, filled with signs and sign systems. Representatives of this approach are also O. A. Lavrenova and V. V. Abashev .

Schluter and Sauer approaches to the concept of "cultural landscape" determined the development of this direction in the geography of Western academic circles throughout the XX century. But they have not lost their relevance today. For example, V. L. Kagansky links the emergence of new cultural landscapes with the ever-increasing activity of minorities. He believes that the approach of [Sauer] has a potentially considerable future - as long as the future lies with minorities, if the identification of the latter is of an ethnic type; the only question is whether programmers, designers, retailers will form endogamous communities (an attribute of ethnic groups), settle down compactly and form their own micro-landscapes. ^[four]

There is also a version that in the future cultural landscapes should cover the Earth as a whole, torn apart only by a network of protected areas that act as an ecological framework. ^[6] And in this case, the concept of the cultural landscape is close to the idea of ​​the noosphere - the sphere of the mind, which, according to V. I. Vernadsky, should replace the biosphere, being a natural stage of its development. ^[12]

In 1992, the World Heritage Agreement, adopted by UNESCO , became the first international legal instrument to regulate the protection of cultural landscapes. ^[13]

One of the first critics of Sauer's morphological concept of cultural landscape was the American geographer, founder of behavioral geography, Richard Hartshorn , who completely ruled out the concept of landscape, justifying this by the need to avoid confusion in concepts in science. K. Sauer’s definition of landscape as the sum of natural and cultural components, according to Hartshorn, does not give a holistic view. ^[14]

As noted by J. Gold, the main drawback of the school of cultural landscape of K. Sauer is the insufficiently complete consideration of the relationship of man to one or another landscape of symbolic meanings that endow the landscape. ^[15]

Role in Popular Culture

According to the contemporary Russian geographer V. L. Kagansky, the cultural landscape in Russian mass culture is completely incoherent and fragmented, represented by separate disparate, incoherent places; most of the land surface is literally nothing and culturally semiotic does not exist. He believes that places are given purely externally (for example, as points of discovery of old spinning wheels, the residence of cultural heroes, the place of action of works of art and myths).

The landscape (cultural landscape) in popular culture is a collection of points with small and obscure outlines, moreover, this view is centered on the place of constant or recreational stay. ^[sixteen]

Kagansky, on the one hand, notes that the idea of ​​a cultural landscape in mass culture is often superficially sacralized, that is, during mass excursions they tend to perceive the environment as something truly “beautiful”. As examples, he cites the sacralization of the "author" landscape, for example, the landscape of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Shishkin. On the other hand, according to Kagansky, mass culture ignores such generalized images of the cultural landscape, as, for example, in the “Pit” by A. Platonov or “Stalker” by A. Tarkovsky, although they represent the domestic landscape deeply and adequately. ^[sixteen]

• Landscape
• Natural landscape
• Man-made landscape
• Civilization landscape
• Cultural geography
• Humanitarian Geography

• Cultural landscape on the site of the Heritage Institute
• How to preserve cultural landscapes. Interview with Yuri Vedenin (2007)
• Systematics of UNESCO Cultural Landscapes
• Seminar "Cultural Landscape" at Moscow State University
• Community "Geography is also a science" in LJ