Carl Sauer 's Notion Of A Cultural Landscape And Why Is It Useful For Understanding The World?

Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Print.

An individuals sense of belonging within society is governed by their perspectives and views towards their environment and landscape,their own ability to adjust and appreciate the environment governs whether they can feel at home with their setting or alienate themselves from new cultures and long for old traditions.Raimond Gaita’s Romulus My Father and Manfred Jurgensen’s Bonegilla 1961 reflect the consequences of negative perceptions and an inability to understand new landscapes which lead to negative consequences.

In Thomas Cole’s Essay on American Scenery, the reader is able to appreciate Cole’s predilection and love for the American scenery. It is his belief this scenery is superior to the European scenery, since the latter’s “primitive features of scenery have long since been destroyed or modified … to accommodate the tastes and necessities of a dense population.” However, Cole presents his audience with a gloomy prophecy about America’s future, which he believes will be the same as Europe’s. Still, while acknowledging that industrialization could eventually take over many natural regions, Cole is hopeful that nature will remain victorious, since it will still be predominant. Because of this, he advises the American people to take advantage of

‘The sheer popularity’ of stimulating nature or using nature as ad space ‘demands that we acknowledge, even respect, their cultural importance,’ suggests Richtel. Culturally important, yes. But the logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of ‘true’ nature— the certainty that it’s not even worth looking at. (Louv lines 9-19)

“It is a vision, a dream, if you prefer, like Martin Luther King’s, and it means clustering on a planetary scale.” (Nash) In Historian Roderick Nash’s essay entitled “Island Civilization: A vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium,” Nash not only proposes the ideology of Island Civilization but also challenges readers to be informed of the rights of nature. Gaining insight on the options of preservation and nature from masterminds like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Wallace Stegner. Nash devises a plan of action for Earth during the fourth millennium. Realizing the illustrate of our worlds “wilderness” Nash educates on the ways in which the natural world will evolve one thousand years from now.

At the beginning of the semester, I read Peirce F. Lewis’s “Axioms for Reading the Landscape.” Lewis interprets landscapes through a set of rules which he calls “axioms.” In weeks four and five, I was assigned to read Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s “High-Tide, Low Ebb,” Rebecca Solnit’s “Little Pieces of Many Wars,” and Raymond Williams’s “Culture is Ordinary.” Within Jelly-Schapiro’s and Solnit’s articles, there are two different maps provided by Shizue Siegel and Ben Pease that illustrate and support both Jelly-Schapiro’s and Solnit’s arguments. Jelly-Schapiro focuses on the demographic and racial changes that transpired during and after World War II in San Francisco Bay, California. While Solnit, examines the historical landscape changes that took

Conservation of our natural environment is of vital importance. Now, people should preserve nature and protect it. In addition, it is imperative to realize that, the survival of humanity and many creatures depends mainly on the state of the environment around us. As matter of fact, science place a relevant part in the conservation of the planet. Moreover, Physical geography is the study of all natural forms and processes in an environment, also, the field covers the cause and effect of human activity on the environment. “Geographers study the location and distribution of things-tangible things such as rainfall, mountains, and trees" (Hess, Darrel, Physical Geography, Third California Edition) For this reason, I decided to visit The Whittier Narrows Center. It is one of the many centers that have been established in US to conserve the most crucial asset that human beings possess, the environment. Those who study geography realize that it is important to conduct a thorough study on the center and its activities to identify what makes it such a unique site. This project is providing an insight of the center by describing its natural settings per Physical Geography. The paper will focus on the center’s location, geographical settings, weather, climate, plants and trees, soils, wildlife, terrain, local history and a site map.

Throughout today’s society there are several different cultural perspectives which form theoretical and practical understandings of natural environments, creating various human-nature relationship types. In this essay, I will describe and evaluate different ways of knowing nature and the impact of these views on human-nature relationships. From this, I will then explore my own human-nature relationship and reflect on how my personal experiences, beliefs and values has led me to this view, whilst highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each and reflecting upon Martin’s (1996) continuum.

How did the interaction between people and the environment shape the physical landscapes of the West in particular?

Geography is rarely a subject regarded with much esteem; even at the collegiate level, geography seems to slip through the cracks as an important subject. Many people don’t consider geography to be important in their fields, and therefore don’t give it much thought—but this is a misconception, a grave error oft repeated that would detract from anyone’s education. What isn’t taken into account is that human geography is not merely cartography—it is the study of the earth, and that includes so much more than landmasses and boundaries, facts and figures. Geography is relevant in numerous and assorted settings, from economics to religion.

In chapters two and three titled “Sites” and “Movements” respectively, Howard makes the case that there is a “dialectical” relationship between the subject and the landscape (both social and physical) and

Carrie Breitbach’s (2009) “The Geographies of a More Just Food System: Building Landscapes for Social Reproduction” revolves around the idea of bringing justice to the food system by rectifying landscape and social reproduction as a solution in South Dakota. In contrast, Peirce F. Lewis’s “Axioms for Reading the Landscape,” focuses on how to read and understand landscapes through a set of rules which he calls “axioms.” In the “Geographic (or Ecological) Axiom,” Lewis argues that studying a landscape outside its location makes no sense in gaining cultural insight on the landscape (1979, 24). While Don Mitchell (2007, 43) in “New Axioms for the Landscape,” presents the idea that the shape of the land provides direction to its social life. He

The cultural landscape of a house of worship reflect the beliefs and practices of a particular religion. Houses of worship have similarities and differences which are evident in the landscape that are reflective of their similarities and differences in beliefs. I found that of all the houses of worship we visited on our field trip, St. Michael’s Antiochian Orthodox Church and St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church seemed to be strikingly similar yet different.

Much of my passion for Geography is derived from the fact that it depicts relevance to all aspects of society. It is dynamic in a sense that my perception and understanding is constantly evolving with the growth in understanding and perception. What intrigues my further pursuit of geography is how Geography unlike other subjects has direct links to both human and physical attributes. By further pursuing geography at a higher education level, I wish to enrich my understanding of the wider significance of issues being faced and how it affects society on a local and global level. It is important to identify and understand the interconnecting aspects of the world around us and apply such knowledge towards a more sustainable future. Geography

In Nature & Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics, Allen Carlson proposes that scientific knowledge can enhance our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. He draws a connection between technical know-how used in the context of natural landscapes and art history or criticism in the context of conventional art forms. In either case, the viewer would find relatively more meaningful experiences of aesthetic appreciation than if one looked at a painting or landscape without any prior knowledge about it. Carlson endorses this point within his larger Natural Environmental Model, which asserts that though the environment is not entirely of our creation, it does not mean that we have to approach it without any prior understanding.