Landscapes of Challenge and Change: Contested Views of the Cairngorms National Park

Abstract

Abstract The Scottish model of national parks reflects wider changes in the management of special or protected landscapes. This paper uses Ingold's dwelling conceptualisation of landscape to reflect on how material and cultural processes affect stakeholders' perceptions of the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, UK. Important to understanding different views, is the separation, unique to the Cairngorms, of ‘the park’ from its management organisation. The paper argues that this separation creates a conceptual space for the negotiation of contested claims regarding the park. Such claims reflect not only the relationship between people and place, or as Ingold (2000) puts it, the landscape as it is known to those who dwell in it; they also represent vested interests and regimes of power concerning what happens in specific places. These claims do not reproduce simple splits between, for example, public/private or conservation/development but show a more complex picture.