The Difficulty to Define “Landscape” or “Cultural Landscape” in a Generally Accepted Way

Abstract

Instead of striving to define ‘landscape’ and ‘cultural landscape’ universally, the contribution highlights the multiple perspectives from which these terms might be regarded: They are valuable in academic and practical contexts exactly because they can carry heterogeneous meanings, because they evoke positive connotations and because they can tie together diverse approaches in spatial research. The article is intended to identify and describe central positions by pairs in the semantic fields of ‘landscape’ which are fraught with tension. The elements of each pair, e.g. normative versus descriptive or subjective versus objective notions of landscape, are to be understood as opposed poles between which productive frictions can arise. Furthermore the semantic differences between ‘landscape’, ‘cultural landscape’ and the related terms ‘space’ and ‘culture’ are discussed. The authors adopt a moderate constructivist perspective, which can be characterized as discourse-analytical in a wider sense: By analyzing and systematizing how other scholars employ ‘landscape’ and ‘cultural landscape’ and how they define them in relation to other terms, the authors present second-order observations. One finding is that the constitution of the meaning of the words ‘landscape’ and ‘cultural landscape’ always is a matter of perspective: It is crucial from which academic perspective (second level of observation) which processes of ascribing meaning (first level of observation) are studied.