GEOG 1F90 Lecture Notes - Cultural Landscape, No Alternative, Algonquin Provincial Park
Cultural landscape
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The characteristics of a particular landscape especially as created by human activity
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Geography
Interpretation
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Shared beliefs, norms, and values
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Once in place, it is often difficult to change until a new set of values emerges
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Ordinary, whole way of life
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The rules and resources for negotiating life
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A negotiation or long conversation
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Dynamic and changes over time
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Culture is a complex term typically referring to the way of life of the members of a society.
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Now the tricky part
Our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our
aspirations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form. We rarely think of landscape that way,
and so the cultural record we have “written” in the landscape is liable to be more truthful than
most autobiographies because we are less self-conscious about how we describe ourselves.... All
of our cultural warts and blemishes are there, and our glories too; but above all, our ordinary day-
to-day qualities are exhibited for anybody who wants to find them and knows how to look for
them
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So What?
Everything matters
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We don’t often see it because we take the values, the norms, the belief system for granted
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Key Points
Cultural value and landscape feature
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Groups of people develop values, attitudes, assumptions
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Cultural values lead to a particular organization of space
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Rules that limit the way we act
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This influences the way we act and can act
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Individual mode of transportations
Every time we do it correctly, we reinforce the cultural value
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Making Culture: “Culture is historically constructed and actively contested” (James Clifford)
Week 10- Geographies of Culture
GEOG 1F90 Page 1
Document Summary
The characteristics of a particular landscape especially as created by human activity. Culture is a complex term typically referring to the way of life of the members of a society. Once in place, it is often difficult to change until a new set of values emerges. Our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form. We don"t often see it because we take the values, the norms, the belief system for granted. Making culture: culture is historically constructed and actively contested (james clifford) Cultural values lead to a particular organization of space. This influences the way we act and can act. Every time we do it correctly, we reinforce the cultural value. Normal: comes from somewhere, there is a definition that is constructed, so when we see people who are abnormal it is obvious. Failure to conform is obvious and often gets a response.
