Symbolic Landscapes presents a definitive collection of landscape/place studies that explores symbolic, cultural levels of geographical meanings. Essays written by philosophers, geographers, architects, social scientists, art historians, and literati, bring specific modes of expertise and perspectives to this transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary study of the symbolic level human existential spatiality. Placing emphasis on the pre-cognitive genesis of symbolic meaning, as well as embodied, experiential (lived) geography, the volume offers a fresh, quasi-phenomenological approach. The editors articulate the epistemological doctrine that perception and imagination form a continuum in which both are always implicated as complements. This approach makes a case for the interrelation of the geography of perception and the geography of imagination, which means that human/cultural geography offers only an abstraction if indeed an aesthetic geography is constituted merely as a sub-field. Human/cultural geography can only approach spatial reality through recognizing the intimate interrelative dialectic between the imaginative and perceptual meanings of our landscapes/place-worlds. This volume reinvigorates the importance of the topic of symbolism in human/cultural geography, landscape studies, philosophy of place, architecture and planning, and will stand among the classics in the field.

An absorbing study of how early man imposed order on the landscape.

Table of contents

Jessica Matloch examines the importance of regional cultural landscape for their residents using the approach of willingness to pay. She identifies that almost each resident of every region prefers water landscapes. Furthermore, landscape perception is often influenced by education and by the resident’s relationship with nature. The impact of the relationship to the region differs between regions and resident groups. Regarding the involvement in or for the landscape, the results suggest that specific groups of residents are more willing to volunteer in and for regional landscapes than others. The analyses illustrate that the region is used the most to relax and the least for cultural purposes.

How do we re-theorize tourism? By drawing less on the Foucauldian notion of 'tourism as gazing' and instead focusing on the social construction of meaning in the landscape, this insightful book provides an innovative and compelling new approach to tourist studies. Arguing that in any view of the landscape and in tourism generally there is a multiplicity of insider and outsider meanings, the book grounds tourism studies within the framework of social theory, and particularly in the social theoretic approaches to landscape. Bringing together specialists in tourism and landscape studies to discuss the relationships between the two, it finds that issues of identity are a common thread and are raised with regard to the social construction of landscape and its portrayal through tourism. The international studies range in scale from regional to national, personal to political, and from local residents to international tourists, highlighting the multiplicity of interpretations and meanings between these scales.

Time and space can take on a sacred nature in both Judaism and Christianity accompanied by a permanent critical attitude towards the sacred. Conceptions of sacredness imply a conception of community and of society at large. This study investigates the different attitudes toward sacred time and space from an interdisciplinary perspective, ranging from the Biblical period through Qumran, Patristics, Rabbinics, archaeology and theology to modern and even to post-modern rituals. This approach offers a fascinating insight into both the common heritage of Judaism and Christianity and their mutual differences.

One of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity and belonging. A common feature in this is human attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a remarkable flowering of interest in, and understanding of, cultural landscapes. With these came a challenge to the 1960s and 1970s concept of heritage concentrating on great monuments and archaeological locations, famous architectural ensembles, or historic sites with connections to the rich and famous. Managing Cultural Landscapes explores the latest thought in landscape and place by: airing critical discussion of key issues in cultural landscapes through accessible accounts of how the concept of cultural landscape applies in diverse contexts across the globe and is inextricably tied to notions of living history where landscape itself is a rich social history record widening the notion that landscape only involves rural settings to embrace historic urban landscapes/townscapes examining critical issues of identity, maintenance of traditional skills and knowledge bases in the face of globalization, and new technologies fostering international debate with interdisciplinary appeal to provide a critical text for academics, students, practitioners, and informed community organizations discussing how the cultural landscape concept can be a useful management tool relative to current issues and challenges. With contributions from an international group of authors, Managing Cultural Landscapes provides an examination of the management of heritage values of cultural landscapes from Australia, Japan, China, USA, Canada, Thailand, Indonesia, Pacific Islands, India and the Philippines; it reviews critically the factors behind the removal of Dresden and its cultural landscape from World Heritage listing and gives an overview of Historic Urban Landscape thinking.

At the same time a reading of Kenneth Burke and of tourist landscapes in America, Gregory Clark explores the rhetorical power connected with American tourism. Looking specifically at a time when citizens of the United States first took to rail and then highway to become sightseers in their own country, Clark explores how the symbolic experiences have helped residents of a vast and diverse nation adopt a national identity.

Over the Rainbow shows how Dorothy's passage from Kansas to Oz and back again recapitulates paradigmatic stories of both America and Christianity. Defining human identity on three symbolic levels (individual, collective, and cosmic), Nathanson shows that The Wizard of Oz has come to be a "secular myth."

Approaches to Landscape introduces and explores the main perspectives in this increasingly popular field of study. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout with relevant photographs, maps and diagrams, it provides a comprehensive review of the literature and key concepts for Landscape Studies.