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Mapping Across Academia pp 209–222Cite as

Landscape: The Thing About Landscape’s Nature: Is It a Creature/Monster of the Map?

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Abstract

Is the nature of landscape something that can be mapped, or is the landscape itself a thing or creature of the map? Or perhaps even a “monster” of the map? These are questions around which landscape studies have revolved in recent years. In this chapter I trace the two sides of the question and provide a capsule history of contemporary geographical scholarship, focusing on the contributions of Carl Sauer and European geographers. This landscape approach still dominates much of continental and especially German geography , but in Anglo-America it has declined and landscape has come to be seen not so much as some thing you can map, but rather as a thing of the map, that is, a creature born of cartography. I suggest a third alternative, which opens up new ways of thinking about things, nature, landscape and mapping. Maps are foundational pieces in the study of traditional and also postmodern and “non-modernist” landscape which in contemporary geography is concerned with the social bases for things governing and historically developing inter-relationships between society and nature—this is the thing about lansdscape.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

    Kenneth R. Olwig

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  1. Kenneth R. Olwig
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Correspondence to Kenneth R. Olwig .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kentucky Dept. Geography, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

    Stanley D. Brunn

  2. Geography, School of Environment and Dev, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Martin Dodge

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Olwig, K.R. (2017). Landscape: The Thing About Landscape’s Nature: Is It a Creature/Monster of the Map?. In: Brunn, S., Dodge, M. (eds) Mapping Across Academia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_11

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