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The spatial and temporal dimensions of a rural landscape: the Yucatec Maya k'ax
Author(s) -
BROWN DENISE FAY
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the canadian geographer / le géographe canadien
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.35
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1541-0064
pISSN - 0008-3658
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2007.00167.x
Subject(s) - maya , conceptualization , temporality , antithesis , geography , sustainability , indigenous , environmental resource management , agroforestry , ecology , archaeology , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , environmental science , biology
This article presents a case study of rural landscape concepts found in the indigenous Yucatec Maya area of Mexico. Of particular interest in this article is the contrast between the Maya conceptualization of the forest as essential to sustainable agriculture and a Western notion of the forest as the antithesis of agriculture. The former has created a tropical forest that is a product of Maya management and the basis of a sustained Maya society, whereas the latter leads to practices that destroy this forest producing a non‐sustainable system. Cyclical landscape processes in the former contrast with linear landscape processes in the latter. In order to compare and contrast the landscapes, a model that identifies embedded concepts is used. It is proposed that the Maya system has an element of verticality and temporality leading to sustainability, a feature lacking in the Western conceptualization .