Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment

TLDR

The landscape reflects the self‑definitions of people in a cultural context and highlights how physical environments are transformed into symbolic landscapes that evolve with changing self‑definitions. The paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand how a cultural group defines and relates to nature and the environment. The framework adopts a social constructionist lens, incorporating phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, and is illustrated through sociology and anthropology case studies that show how landscapes are symbolically constructed. The paper concludes by discussing the framework’s applied implications for social impact assessment and its broader relevance to the global power struggle over competing landscapes.

Abstract

Abstract A theoretical framework is provided to understand a cultural group's definition of and relationship with nature and the environment. The framework draws on a social constructionist perspective that includes aspects of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism to define “landscape” as the symbolic environment created by a human act of conferring meaning on nature and the environment. This landscape reflects the selfdefinitions of the people within a particular cultural context. Attention is directed to transformation of the physical environment into landscapes that reflect people's definitions of themselves and on how these landscapes are reconstructed in response to people's changing definitions of themselves. Case studies from sociology and anthropology illustrate the social construction of nature and the environment. A discussion of the applied implications of the theoretical framework in social impact assessment and the global implications in the shifting power struggle over competing landscapes concludes the paper.