Apr 1, 2005
Poetic Landscapes and Real Environments
In March issue of American Anthropologist, Christopher Fischer and Gary Feinman hypothesize that environmentalists can learn about the degradation of landscape and its restoration from history.
Civilizations have all dealt with changes in the environment that threaten the existence of communities. However, their efforts to recover the environment should not be written off. Despite the trope of environmental decline leading to social catastrophe, in many cases communities perceive degradation and can manage it.
The articles suggest that historical knowledge about the environment can be transformed into knowledge about land preservation. What is necessary is, first,"a common language that can act as a bridge between the various factions pursuing these kings of research paradigms" and second, a shift from the nature as a cultural construct to the environment as the product of human activities (including culture).
Although the article talks about"historical approaches", it is not clear that Fischer and Feinman recommend a dialogue between environmentalist and historians. Landscape, like other types of place, is marginal to historical inquiry; it is, to paraphrase Jane Jacobs,"metaphorically everywhere but often times nowhere."
Nineteenth-century German history provides numerous examples of individuals, both professionals and amateurs, preserving landscape against both modernity and natural erosion. Landschaft, unlike the English equivalent, never lost its complex definition, nor was reduced to the visible world. Nature, politics, and society affected one another, and Landschaft brought them together. Ethnologists like Riehl and geographers like Ratzel looked at the relationship between communities and the environments that surrounded them. The types of plants that grew, the health of the forests, etc., were signs of the morality of the people. They were alarmed by the decline of rural life in the presence of industrialization. At the popular level, hiking, especially by youth clubs and Heimat societies, forced Germans to confront nature and to appreciate its power.
Nonetheless, their culture acted as a prism by which they perceived the loss of environment. Ecological systems were never understood. Marc Cioc notes that the polluting of the Rhine River was often ignored because people had a simple understanding of how the river cleaned itself, believing that filth just flowed into the ocean. Preservation did not try to attack the problem of industry, but sought to negotiate with it, balancing it within rural life. The paths that they hiked took them to unique views and medieval ruins. Finally, the environment was always perceived aesthetically — what should be saved was judged on the basis of what Germans valued, which were the look of the farming community and the drama of nature. They did not look at the environment as a whole, and tended to ignore what was not idealized. The results of preservation were often successful only in that they saved what was culturally valued.
Past successes and failures in environmental manipulation can inform modern land use and serve as potential guides for policy makers, as well as the general public.
Civilizations have all dealt with changes in the environment that threaten the existence of communities. However, their efforts to recover the environment should not be written off. Despite the trope of environmental decline leading to social catastrophe, in many cases communities perceive degradation and can manage it.
The articles suggest that historical knowledge about the environment can be transformed into knowledge about land preservation. What is necessary is, first,"a common language that can act as a bridge between the various factions pursuing these kings of research paradigms" and second, a shift from the nature as a cultural construct to the environment as the product of human activities (including culture).
Although the article talks about"historical approaches", it is not clear that Fischer and Feinman recommend a dialogue between environmentalist and historians. Landscape, like other types of place, is marginal to historical inquiry; it is, to paraphrase Jane Jacobs,"metaphorically everywhere but often times nowhere."
Nineteenth-century German history provides numerous examples of individuals, both professionals and amateurs, preserving landscape against both modernity and natural erosion. Landschaft, unlike the English equivalent, never lost its complex definition, nor was reduced to the visible world. Nature, politics, and society affected one another, and Landschaft brought them together. Ethnologists like Riehl and geographers like Ratzel looked at the relationship between communities and the environments that surrounded them. The types of plants that grew, the health of the forests, etc., were signs of the morality of the people. They were alarmed by the decline of rural life in the presence of industrialization. At the popular level, hiking, especially by youth clubs and Heimat societies, forced Germans to confront nature and to appreciate its power.
Nonetheless, their culture acted as a prism by which they perceived the loss of environment. Ecological systems were never understood. Marc Cioc notes that the polluting of the Rhine River was often ignored because people had a simple understanding of how the river cleaned itself, believing that filth just flowed into the ocean. Preservation did not try to attack the problem of industry, but sought to negotiate with it, balancing it within rural life. The paths that they hiked took them to unique views and medieval ruins. Finally, the environment was always perceived aesthetically — what should be saved was judged on the basis of what Germans valued, which were the look of the farming community and the drama of nature. They did not look at the environment as a whole, and tended to ignore what was not idealized. The results of preservation were often successful only in that they saved what was culturally valued.