I haven't been updating for a few days because I've just had to study for and write two essays in a very busy week of rowing preparation. It's Torpids week at the river Isis, which means I've been racing 'bumps' today and will be everyday til Saturday; then I can relax... until the Women's Head of the River Race (WeHORR) next weekend in London. Busy busy busy!
All this rowing doesn't mean to say I haven't enjoyed reading and writing for the essays. I just got one back on space, place, and landscape for anthropology - was so pleased to see my tutor really liked it! The question was whether space and landscape were cultural constructions. I argued that they shouldn't be dichotomised as either 'cultural' or 'natural' (a very debated topic in the "nature-culture debate"). Instead, after reading the books and articles, and being especially influenced by Corsin Jiménez's article on space in Antofagasta in Chile, I argued that space is a temporal pathway in relation to social relationships. If this sounds a bit crazy, it's probably because it is, but after reading theories written in the 1990s on space, place and landscape like Tilley, Bender, Hirsch and O'Hanlon, it probably won't sound so silly!
The idea is that space and landscape are not merely geographical locations. We see the world around us as how we perceive it, and create our own spaces (like houses, churches) which create, and are simultaneously created by, social relationships. A lot of people see landscape as an idyllic, picturesque rural scene, and it's not hard to see why: the word 'landscape' originates from the word 'landshap'(Dutch) via 'landskip'(English) used in Dutch paintings in the 17th century. It's been passed down over time, and is still used today when people say they're a 'landscape painter' or a 'landscape photographer' and produce idealised scenes. Barbara Bender used the example of a British Rail intercity poster, which likened English landscape art to the view out of a train window.
Now if you take the train regularly into any major town or city in Britain, you will have probably noticed that not everything you see is aesthetically pleasing. In fact, the space of the train compartment may not be either. Someone talking on the phone, the seats are a bit grotty... But the train itself is a landscape. The seats have been worn down by the passage of other human beings; you're travelling the same route as many other people. You could compare this to an Aboriginal landscape, where parts of the rocks and ground have been worn away by the passage of other people; you're walking in a pathway your ancestors made. The relations you make along this past with living, or past, peoples arguably creates the landscape at the same time as you create it. It's this pathway you travel that becomes the space or landscape; it's not entirely physical, as it occurs through time too. I proposed that the more you travel on this pathway, the more landscape is created, and the more it creates your social relations.
Obviously, you could say I'm being too airy-fairy, and that a rock is a rock. That's it; no more. But Aboriginal Australians certainly don't think Ayers rock is just a rock! They and anthropologists might ask: But doesn't this rock change over time? Does your view of this rock change over time? It's a very interesting question. I think I'll wrap it up; I've spent too long writing, and the space I've created is far too long.
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