Resisting and Reconciling Big Wind: Middle Landscape Politics in the New American West

Abstract: While critical geographers have addressed how place politics impacts rural landscapes, less attention has been paid to the particular ways in which rural landscape identities are being impacted by the new energy economy. The nascent US wind energy opposition movement is evidence of broad, organized resistance to the landscape impacts associated with the re‐sculpting of rural energy geographies. Drawing from cultural landscape and place theory, this article examines the shifting terrain of wind opposition in the “New American West”. The article argues that wind energy opposition is fundamentally about who speaks for and negotiates conflicting social commitments to technology, economic values and an imagined American pastoral identity. By examining a case study of wind development in Nevada, this article considers how renewable energy development can constructively acknowledge the important role the “middle landscape” continues to play in American constructions of rural space.     

Capturing spatial patterns of rural landscapes with point cloud

Over the past few decades, rural landscapes have been the subject of increasing international cultural heritage research, and one of the most important issues under investigation at both theoretical and pragmatic levels concerns how to identify the spatial character of rural landscapes for conservation purposes. This article establishes an innovative approach adopting a cultural landscape perspective with the support of point cloud technologies to capture spatial patterns of rural landscapes. This approach was explored by reference to Tunpu villages in Guizhou, China—these being a specific kind of military fortress settlement. Cultural landscape values and landscape characters of Tunpu villages were identified using historical research and document analysis. Aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry and laser scanning systems were combined to collect and process spatial information at environmental, village, and architectural scales. Point cloud models can quantitatively represent villages' spatial patterns and inform the interpretation of their heritage significance. We conclude that the strengths of point cloud technologies could meet the requirements of rural landscape heritage documentation from a cultural landscape perspective. This mixed‐technology approach could also greatly improve the efficiency and precision of traditional rural landscape documentation, which has the potential to change methodologies applied to rural landscape research and management.     

Mongolian Deer Stones,European Menhirs,and Canadian Arctic Inuksuit: Collective Memory and the Function of Northern Monument Traditions

Northern peoples and those living in the Arctic and environments with broad vistas created cultural landscapes with distinctive monument traditions that supported their cultural and political systems. This paper explores three societies in different geographic regions and time periods during the past 10,000 years that used stone monuments to humanize their landscapes and invoke or honor gods or spirits, mythological ancestors, or deceased leaders. Canadian and Greenland Inuit and their predecessors of the past thousand years marked their lands with abstract human figures known as Inuksuit; Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans built megaliths, henges, and passage graves; and Mongolian Bronze Age nomadic pastoralists populated the central Asian steppe with burial mounds (khirigsuurs) and anthropomorphic deer stone monuments. Each tradition contributed in different ways to shape and perpetuate the society’s values by invoking spirits, ancestors, or heroic leaders. The enduring presence of these creations reinforced cultural or ethnic identity through ritual, group ceremonialism, landscape values, communal enterprise and labor, and collective memory. This paper identifies commonalities and differences between these traditions and how they functioned. We also see how successive societies perpetuate, change, reinterpret, or invent new uses and meanings for ancient monuments and their landscape settings to create new ethnicities and histories for their own times.     

Emergent Complexity,Changing Landscapes,and Spheres of Interaction in Southeastern South America During the Middle and Late Holocene

Newly created academic programs at Brazilian universities have provided the impetus for new archaeological projects in southeastern South America during the last two decades. The new data are changing our views on emergent social complexity, natural and human-induced transformation of the landscape, and transcontinental expansions and cultural interactions across the Río de la Plata basin during the Middle and Late Holocene. We concentrate on six major archaeological traditions/regions: the Sambaquis, the Pantanal, the Constructores de Cerritos, the Tupiguarani, the Southern Proto-Jê, and the middle and lower Paraná River. Diverse and autonomous complex developments exhibit distinct built landscapes in a region previously thought of as marginal compared with cultural developments in the Andes or Mesoamerica. The trajectories toward increased sociopolitical complexity flourished in very different and changing environmental conditions. While some groups were pushed to wetland areas during a drier mid-Holocene, others took advantage of the more humid Late Holocene climate to intensively manage Araucaria forests. The start of the second millennium AD was a critical period marked by an increased number of archaeological sites, the construction of ceremonial architecture, and the intensification of landscape transformation; it also was marked by the rapid expansion of influences from outside the La Plata basin. The Amazonian Tupiguarani and Arawak newcomers brought with them significant changes in technologies and social and political structures, as well as novel landscape management practices.     

Discipline and Devolution: Constructions of Poverty, Race, and Criminality in the Politics of Rural Prison Development

Abstract:  The soaring expansion of the US prison population is transforming the geographies of both urban and rural landscapes. As the trend in mass incarceration persists, depressed rural spaces are increasingly associated with rising prison development and the increasing criminalization of rural communities of disadvantage. Drawing on in-depth archival and interview research in rural communities in the Northwestern states of Idaho and Montana, this paper explores how cultural productions of poverty and exclusion intersect with rural prison development. I examine how representations of poverty and criminality are entangled with processes of economic restructuring and the localization of economic development and social welfare. I explore the ways in which the rural prison geography of the Northwest is linked to the material and discursive construction of those in poverty and how these narratives are produced through local relations of race, ethnicity, and class. I suggest that the mobilization of these constructions legitimates rural prison expansion, increasingly punitive social and criminal justice policies, and the retrenchment of racialized and classed inequality. Further, I argue that these discursive imaginations of the poor work to obscure the central dynamics producing poverty under the neoliberal restructuring of rural economies and governance.     

Multiculturalism and the immigrant “Irish woman” after the Celtic Tiger: marginalisation,gender-based violence and family dysfunction in Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls

This article breaks new ground in examining how “new Irish” immigrant women have responded to the collapse of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy and the different forms of gender discrimination and marginalisation they face both within their minority ethnic communities and the Irish host society. It approaches Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls (2013) as an exemplary work of fiction which exposes unresolved injustices and inequalities suffered by immigrant women. Akpoveta creates a narrative that complicates previous representations of cultural encounters between newcomers and long-established members of Ireland’s host society, not least because her Nigerian female protagonist arrives as a postgraduate student rather than an asylum seeker or refugee. She fictionalises female experiences of marginalisation, gender-based violence and family dysfunction within an all-Nigerian family that outwardly appears to be a model of integration and social inclusion in an open and welcoming Irish multicultural society.     

The Amenity Complex: Towards a Framework for Analysing and Predicting the Emergence of a Multifunctional Countryside in Australia

There is growing consensus among academics, regional development organisations and rural communities that the future growth and development of rural regions is increasingly dependent upon their ability to convey, to both established and prospective residents, the ‘amenity’ of their local physical, social and economic environments. However, little research to date has sought to identify exactly what comprises ‘amenity’ in the rural context, or has examined how this conceptually slippery quality is distributed across rural Australia, or how it influences local demographic, socio‐economic and land use change. This paper attempts a broad scale investigation of rural amenity in the south‐east Australian ecumene, identifying its core components in this context, mapping its distribution and assessing the nature of its influence over in‐migration rates over the past three decades. The paper finds that, at a macro‐scale, amenity tends to follow a general gradient from high to low according to distance from the coast, and that its relationship with in‐migration rates has increased substantially between 1976–1981 and 1996–2001.     

Walking the Land: Aboriginal Trails,Cultural Landscapes,and Archaeological Studies for Impact Assessment

Aboriginal people have occupied northern Alberta since the end of the last ice age. For most of that time they travelled across the land by foot, producing complex networks of trails, many of which may have great antiquity. Aboriginal people also modified the landscape extensively by the use of controlled burning. Lastly, they are immersed in and “read” the land as places with multiple cultural meanings, which in turn helped shape their cultures and identities. Together, these elements indicate the existence of a series of overlapping cultural landscapes for which the cross-country trails and waterways provide the grid. This article addresses the importance of traditional trails for identifying the cultural landscapes of northeastern Alberta and points to the rapid disappearance today of knowledge about such trails. It considers how archaeological investigations done in Alberta for Impact Assessment purposes fail to consider either trails or cultural landscapes in their surveys or to consult with Aboriginal people. As a result, government Review Panels making recommendations for whether or not an industrial project should be approved are basing their findings on incomplete information about Aboriginal land uses and meanings.     

A history of changing aesthetic values in the Yarra Valley landscape,Victoria

Aesthetic responses to landscape may be emotional, sensory, or experiential, or a combination; it is a difficult value to identify and assess. This paper considers changing perceptions of the aesthetic values of the Yarra Valley landscape using a heritage methodology that involves examining artistic, creative, and published sources accounting for a lengthy period of changing land use. Scenic quality mapping, where available, is used as a support, and extensive reference is made to Australian impressionist art. Artworks for Yarra Valley landscapes may be considered as being among the cultural heritage indicators of significance and there is a new aesthetic of land art in private venues for the visiting public. The paper also illustrates how aesthetic values have been more broadly recognised in the post‐World War II era and become the domain of planning authorities as well as artists. It is for regional planners to be aware of and maintain these aesthetic values in the landscape.     

我国历史文化村镇保护的内容与方法研究

历史化村镇是我国遗产保护体系的重要组成部分,随着第一批中国历史化名镇(村)的命名公布。遗产保护工作又进入了一个崭新阶段。我国历史化村镇保护研究较国外起步较晚,相关研究也欠深入全面。导致在当前城镇化快速发展过程中,一些颇具价值特色的古村镇没有得到很好保护。本首先回顾了国内外历史小城镇、村落保护的演变发展,然后指出历史化村镇保护在价值特性方面,不同于历史化名城;在保护内容方面,要在以往偏重于物质化遗产保护的基础上。进一步加重非物质化遗产的保护;在保护方法方面,要综合运用历史学、地理学、建筑学、社会学、景观生态学等方法,才能达到较好的保护效果。     

旅游对传统地域文化景观影响的研究进展及展望

传统地域文化景观是传承地域文化的物质载体,是人类宝贵的文化遗产和景观财富。作为新兴的重要发展力量,旅游正在不可逆转地改变着传统地域文化景观的演变进程。本文从物质文化景观、非物质文化景观、文化景观地方意义等方面综述了旅游对传统地域文化景观影响的研究成果,对现有研究进行了述评。最后从亟须解决的关键科学问题、研究内容两个方面进行了未来研究展望。     

Aspects of Archaeological Heritage in the Cultural Landscapes of Western Anatolia

Throughout the course of time, environments built within landscapes have been transformed into conserved archaeological heritage sites through natural, but mostly anthropogenic, forces. Today, cultural heritage is the product of visual and spatial features of architectural material and landscapes created through conservation, but also through social and economical needs and interests. In Western Anatolia, archaeological heritage sites with ecologically rich areas, countryside, coastlines and seascapes are the most essential visual, spatial and structural features of cultural (historical) landscapes. Moreover, western Anatolian landscapes have retained their authentic character regarding intangible cultural diversity, ecology, rural traditional systems and agricultural practices. However, rapid changes and developments due to urbanisation and mass tourism have made their impacts on cultural historical landscapes in recent years. In this paper, an attempt is made to explore the cultural heritage within the evolution of cultural archaeological landscapes in Western Anatolia and to propose a sustainable approach for development and conservation options for cultural heritage and their landscapes.     

江苏省地理景观与美丽乡村建构研究

乡村审美空间蕴含着内在和深刻的人地关系理念内容,比经济效应有更深的自然情怀,是可持续发展的思想感情基础,也是现代景观规划的重要研究课题。城市化发展过程中自然地理脉络破坏对于乡村景观是致命的。探讨以多尺度层面的地理景观建构乡村审美空间:在区域大尺度范围内设计地理视域观赏空间;在镇域中尺度范围内将生态文明和社会经济发展要求安排在景观空间格局配置中;在乡村小尺度范围内造就素雅含蓄的村落景观。江苏省乡村具有四千年的历史,留下珍贵的人地关系文化遗产和审美烙印。从地理景观形态结构、格局演化进程与机理响应对照乡村审美空间景观,建构和谐安宁的画面境界;最终造就广阔地域的"美丽乡村"。     

A Comparative Analysis of the Late Woodland–early Mississippian Settlement Landscape in Northern Georgia

To understand the development of complex socio-political phenomena, we need to study not just the origins of central places, but also their emergence. This can be accomplished by taking an historical perspective where we position ourselves before the occurrence we wish to study. Data from the Georgia Archaeological Site File are presented to explore the Late Woodland and Early Mississippian (ca. A.D. 600–1,100) settlement landscape which contextualized the emergence of two prominent Mississippian mound centers: Macon Plateau (also known as Ocmulgee) and Etowah. Our results suggest that the Etowah River valley supported a denser population who had formed attachments to particular points in the landscape compared to the region surrounding Macon Plateau during the Late Woodland to Early Mississippian transition. These social landscapes provided different contexts for the origins of each Mississippian center and influenced later trajectories of cultural development and settlement in each region.     

Re-Envisioning Tarascan Temporalities and Landscapes: Historical Being,Archaeological Representation,and Futurity in Past Social Processes

We apply a phenomenological perspective on landscape and geographic information system (GIS) applications in order to theorize how human perception and agency were likely implicated in processes of the formation of the late pre-Hispanic Tarascan State of West Central Mexico. The relatedness of landscape features in space or place-based perception has been well theorized; here, we further consider the relationality of places through time. In the changing landscape of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, the demographic and political core of the Tarascan State, temporality must have been vitally important to inhabitants of the basin. Utilizing GIS, we construct not only map-based analyses of the changing environment but also create viewsheds of past landscapes in order to see what past inhabitants of the basin would have seen in order to demonstrate that temporality would have been easily mapped in the landscape and its features. Finally, we discuss the role of temporality and cultural memory in an embodied landscape to model the various lake levels that past peoples could have anticipated through time based on their perceptions and memories.     

Cultural landscape protection in Australia: The Wingecarribee Shire study

Abstract

The concept of cultural landscapes as remarkable windows onto the past, and rich historical documents that can be read has gained increasingly wide acceptance in Australia over the past few years. Allied to this, and informing it. is the way in which landscape as a cultural construct plays a major role in attachment to place and sense of Australianness. The understanding of cultural landscapes as a setting where human history is on display is a community movement as well as a professional one. This paper reviews one particular study which focused on heritage evaluation of an historic rural landscape and moves for its protection.     

Secularization,sacralization and the reproduction of sacred space: exploring the industrial use of ancestral temples in rural Wenzhou,China

This paper offers a nuanced understanding of different social groups’ roles in the reproduction of sacred spaces. Drawing on the analysis of the transformation of sacred ancestral temples into private factories in rural Wenzhou, China, it problematizes the underlying division of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ actors and their opposite roles. It shows how lineage groups and factory owners, in spite of their distinctive social identities, work together and facilitate the secularization and sacralization of temple landscapes. On the one hand, both groups of people deploy discursive strategies and re-interpret the significance of ancestral temples and economic production, thereby rationalizing and prompting the conversion of temple spaces. On the other hand, traditional sacred temples are constantly reproduced through lineages’ ritual performances and factory owners’ worship and daily protection. As such, the roles of lineage communities and factory owners are diverse and change in specific contexts. This paper foregrounds the multiple and flexible agency of different social actors in relation to the production of the complex sacred–secular entanglement, and reflects on the changing traditional cultural landscape in rural China.