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A geographer looks at the landscape, once more: Toward a posthumanist political ecology approach
Author(s) -
Pries Sean Jeffrey
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
geography compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.587
H-Index - 65
ISSN - 1749-8198
DOI - 10.1111/gec3.12401
Subject(s) - geographer , politics , political ecology , sociology , agency (philosophy) , environmental ethics , scholarship , landscape archaeology , narrative , ecology , epistemology , landscape design , geography , social science , political science , law , environmental resource management , philosophy , economic geography , linguistics , environmental science , biology
Abstract Though it has been both celebrated and disparaged throughout its rather tortured existence in geography, the landscape concept remains a valuable means of critical inquiry. Landscape studies have been dismissed as mere description, criticized as voyeuristic, chastised for failing to address the political and ethical and encouraged to better attend issues of justice. Adapting in response, the landscape concept remains vibrant. Across time, landscape scholarship has focused on a historically grounded, multi‐scalar approach to understanding places through the analysis of the individual observer. Contemporary works focus on the individual's experience of landscape and include recognition of the agency of non‐human actors and a posthumanist decentering of human concerns. A future path for landscape study lies in combining the historical and narrative‐based phenomenological accounts of scholars based upon a posthumanist approach with the critical lens of political ecology. This approach recognizes landscapes as constituted by the intra‐actions among a diverse array of entities while simultaneously interrogating the political implications of those interactions and the landscapes they create.