Understanding Cultural Landscapes

Rachel Hunt is a Senior Lecturer in Geography in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.Ben Garlick was a Senior Lecturer in Geography at York St John University from January 2017 to October 2024, during which time he taught a module on ‘Culture and Landscape’.

“In times of increasing socio-environmental conflicts and crises, landscape has become a crucial but also contested terrain for exploring our interplay with the material world. Understanding Cultural Landscapes provides a unique and insightful guide into the ever more complex field of cultural landscape studies, spanning from traditional approaches within human geography to its current critics and the most recent theoretical explorations in the field. With its clear structure and pedagogic layout, it offers a much needed introduction into the field.”Professor Mattias Qviström, Professor at the Department of Urban and Rural Development; Landscape architecture Spatial planning, SLU the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences"This excellent, wide-ranging and accessible text is a joyous celebration of landscape’s ‘unruliness’. It guides the reader through landscapes for analysis, landscapes in process, landscapes felt, experienced and lived. Drawing on an impressive variety of geographers, historians, philosophers, poets, literary critics, feminist thinkers, decolonial theorists and more, this book will help any student think differently about and with landscape." Dr. Pauline Couper, Associate Professor in Geography, Associate Head: Geography and Liberal Arts, York St John University“Understanding Cultural Landscapes is a significant statement of renewal. It considers why a key concept continues to matter in human geography and cognate fields. Its co-authors have compiled an open and searching treatment of landscape, demonstrating a readiness to unsettle as much as secure what is known. The insights and challenges they offer make this a critical text for students and educators alike.”Professor Hayden Lorimer, Chair of Human Geography, University of Edinburgh

• Introduction: Understanding Cultural Landscapes 1. A Landscape Perspective 2. Landscape as a Way of Seeing 3. Landscape and Labour 4. The Landscape as a Text 5. Moral Landscapes 6. Landscape and Empire 7. Decolonising Landscape 8. Bodies in the Landscape 9. Feeling the Landscape 10. Vital Landscapes 11. Hauntings and Absence 12. Therapeutic Landscapes 13. Into the Landscape