
The Anthropology of Landscape
Perspectives on Place and Space
Published on 29. June 1995
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-0-19-828010-1 (ISBN)
Description
Landscape has long had a submerged presence within anthropology, both as a framing device which informs the way the anthropologist brings his or her study into "view", and as the meaning imputed by local people to their cultural and physical surroundings. A principal aim of this volume follows from these interconnected ways of considering landscape: the conventional, Western notion of "landscape" may be used as a productive point of departure from which to explore analogous ideas; local ideas can in turn reflexively be used to interrogate the Western construct.
The Introduction argues that landscape should be conceptualized as a cultural process: a process located between place and space, foreground actuality and background potentiality, image and representation. In the chapters that follow, nine noted anthropologists and an art historian exemplify this approach, drawing on a diverse set of case studies. These range from an analysis of Indian calendar art to an account of Israeli nature tourism, and from the creation of a metropolitan "gaze" in nineteenth-century Paris to the soundscapes particular to the Papua New Guinean rainforests. The anthropological perspectives developed here are of cross-disciplinary relevance; geographers, art historians, and archaeologists will be no less interested than anthropologists in this re-envisaging of the notion of landscape.
The Introduction argues that landscape should be conceptualized as a cultural process: a process located between place and space, foreground actuality and background potentiality, image and representation. In the chapters that follow, nine noted anthropologists and an art historian exemplify this approach, drawing on a diverse set of case studies. These range from an analysis of Indian calendar art to an account of Israeli nature tourism, and from the creation of a metropolitan "gaze" in nineteenth-century Paris to the soundscapes particular to the Papua New Guinean rainforests. The anthropological perspectives developed here are of cross-disciplinary relevance; geographers, art historians, and archaeologists will be no less interested than anthropologists in this re-envisaging of the notion of landscape.
Reviews / Votes
A wideranging collection of ethnographic essays, presents a fine-grained analysis of landscape of great potential value to archaeologists. * Times Higher Education Supplement * The volume has a wide geographical range, with British-based scholars providing accounts of largely nonwestern fields. ... many geographers will find the book a valuable source. * Progress in Human Geography, vol.21, no.2, 1997 *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Oxford University Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
halftones, line figures, tables
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
430 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-828010-1 (9780198280101)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/1995
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€97.49
Available for download
Persons
Eric Hirsch is Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University.
Michael O'Harrlon is Assistant Keeper of the Museum of Mankind, the Ethnography department of the British Museum
Michael O'Harrlon is Assistant Keeper of the Museum of Mankind, the Ethnography department of the British Museum