Module 3 Readings – Journal Articles on Social Science Approaches to Reading Cultural Landscapes II
- About Module 3: Social Sciences Approaches to Reading Cultural Landscapes II (1 of 8)
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- Module 3 Podcasts – How One Anthropologist Reshaped How Social Scientists Think About Race (3 of 8)
- Module 3 Podcasts – Is Civilization Natural? (4 of 8)
- Module 3 Videos – Understanding how cultural landscapes can be studied (5 of 8)
- Module 3 Assignment - Archaeology Near You (6 of 8)
- Module 3 Discussion – Social Sciences Approaches to Reading Cultural Landscapes II (7 of 8)
- End of Module 3 (8 of 8)
These readings are required for this module:
Articles
The readings for this third module provide an additional sampling of research methods in the Social Sciences related to cultural landscapes that will help you with your research project. Following the articles please revise and update your Cultural Landscape Project Proposal.
Landscape: Representing and Interpreting the World Download Landscape: Representing and Interpreting the World
This article provides a short exposition of the ideological implications of landscape and of current stakes of Marxists, post-structuralists, and feminist geographers involved in landscape studies, which are important ideas to consider when studying landscapes.
The Place of Landscape Download The Place of Landscape
This article presents a conceptual framework for interpreting cultural landscapes in the U.S. through the example of a residential suburb. The particular landscape is presented as the tangible, visible articulation of numerous discourses. Several examples of a “discourse materialized” in the landscape—landscape architecture, historic preservation, neighborhood associations, insurance mapping, zoning, consumption—are employed to demonstrate how the landscape at once constricts and is constructed by individuals who live in a particular place. U.S. cultural landscapes ultimately are viewed as material phenomena, reflective and symbolic of individual activity and cultural ideals, as they simultaneously are central to the constitution and reinforcement of those activities and ideals.
Place: Connections and Boundaries and Boundaries in an Interdependent World Download Place: Connections and Boundaries and Boundaries in an Interdependent World
Places are not what they used to be. Hartshorne, one of the most influential geographers of his generation, famously argued that geography's principal aim was the study of 'areal differentiation'. The world, he argued in The Nature of Geography (1939), was a rich and fascinating mosaic of places, and the geographer's task was to describe and explain this 'variable character' in both its human and physical dimensions. Writing on the cusp of a new millennium, the geographer and sociologist Castells sees things very differently.
Space: Fundamental Stuff Human Geography Download Space: Fundamental Stuff Human Geography
"Space" is often regarded as the fundamental stuff of geography. Indeed,so fundamental that the well-known anthropologist, Edward Hall, once compared it to sex: "It is there but we don’t talk about it. And ifwe do, we certainly are not expected to get technical or serious about it" (Barcan and Buchanan, 1999: 7). Indeed, it would be fairly easy to argue that most of the time most geographers do tend to get rather embarrassed when challenged to come out with ideas about what the supposed core of their subject is, and yet they continue to assert its importance. Rather like sex, they argue, without space we would not be here. So is all this just mass disciplinary hypocrisy? Not really. It is more about the extreme difficulty of describing certain aspects of the medium which is the discipline’s message.