I grab this opportunity to address you in the spirit of a workshop with the intent to present thoughts in the making, rather than presenting you a ready-made dish. The basis is a paper on landscape change” (developing ideas presented in a paper published this year called “Landscapes Lost” (Arnesen 1998)). This workshop gives me an occasion to discuss some topics I believe are important to the study of landscapes.

Landscape defined

I am not pretending to say that this work is unique or extremely interesting. My intention is to present my paths into the topic we are gathered to discuss here today and tomorrow, the connection between politics, the environment (or nature) and ideology. All these three concepts, politics, nature and ideology, is themselves extremely vague. They may be vague, but I still think that they are all relevant to landscape research. In fact, in is often seen as the very strength of landscape research, that in the scale landscape research operates we can study peoples interaction with the environment at the level they intend to interact (while  global interactions or small scale local interactions mostly are second hand). This is why connecting politics (and with politics comes ideology - or vice versa) and environment seems so promising on a landscape level. This leaves us with one obvious problem, that of defining landscape. This is not a straightforward thing to do. With the term landscape I do not refer to any particular place or scenery. It is not like “ehh - the landscape is over there”. Every area has its landscapes, wether the area is urban, rural, rurban or whatever. More to the point is that by refering to a landscape we refer to a scale - and like Forman (1997) we could refer to “the human scale” measured in kilometres, while regions are measured in hundreds of kilometres and continents are measured in thousands of kilimeters. On this kilometre-scale, landscapes contain both natural and cultural elements. This precision in definition will have to do. 

Politics not defined

As stated above, the three concepts, politics, nature and ideology, are themselves extremely vague.  What is politics, where is it, who talks politics, who does politics, where does it start, where does it stop? Politics is a land of many shadows. To Plato, as you well know, it even remained forever in the land of shadows: Not real, not cognizable, and not and object for intelligent man to get stuck in. We on the other hand, have to get dirty, and take politics serious, face on. But I think I will leave the problem of delimiting politics untouched, and only appeal to our intuitive understanding of what we are looking for.

Nature (first time)

The concept “nature” is also quite extreme and wild. Kate Soper ( 1995) has written a book called “What is nature”, and she introduce her topic with in this way:

” Nature is one of the most complex words in language. Yet its complexity is concealed by the ease and regularity with which we put it in to use in a wide variety of contexts. It is at once both very familiar and extremely elusive: an idea we employ with such ease and regularity that it seems as if we ourselves are privileged with some ‘natural’ access to its intelligibility; but also an idea which most of us know to be so various and comprehensive in its use as to defy our powers of definition” 

Well put by Soper. It makes it obvious why the word ‘nature’ has such a tremendous appeal in the economy of political of communication. Referring to nature, and having an environmental policy (which may amount to nothing more than what Luhmann calls “loose talk”) has been a “bureau de change” in politics, refer to nature and lazy becomes busy (parties must have a policy, but who cares about things actually done?) , bad becomes good (economic growth becomes allegedly sustainable economics by applying rhetorical means only), and so forth.
 

Metonyms

Rhetorical theory operates with both metaphors and metonyms. Metaphor is the Greek word for what in Latin is called ‘translation’ - we all know and use the metaphor. Nature is a powerful metaphor, but it is also and more importantly a powerful metonym. A metonym is used to express, not “likeness” as a metaphor does, but a connectedness, a closeness, a mother-child or farther-son connection, a convertibleness, a birth-relation. One form of metonymy is used to put effect for cause, or the other way around. Wanting to sort out some administrative problem I might have at the seminar right now, I could say “I am going to Joachim to sort it out”, instead of saying “I am going to the organizer of our seminar“. Another form of metonymy is when we exchange something abstract for something concrete or specific. Cicero himself offered an example here: “Africa shivers from fear”, where a thing takes the place of persons. Money is another important example of a metonymic tool in the modern world, obsessed as we are of the idea that everything can be converted to something else by money and still retain, even refine and often define essence (metonymy is ofter used in enquets: “How much money would you be willing to pay for “this or that””). “Nature tells us...” is a good example of a metonymic formula. Because the metonym rhetorically invites the thought to assume the very intimate relation in origin and identity, or the idea of being able to convert from one state to another without loss of basic identity, the metonym is very powerful in political terms and more powerful than the metaphorical use of nature. After all, who you are is more important that who you might look like or pretend to be (pretending to be someone is being someone metaphorically).
 

The poetry of identity statements

When Mari Boine, an Norwegian artist from Sami édnan, the land of the sami people, sings her tributes to goaskinviellja - or eaglebrother - she is not referring to likeness. She is not saying that her brother looks like an eagle. And when she sings “Eaglebrother, when will I fly with you again”, she is not hallucinating, not making wild statements about her physical capabilities. She is not in a metaphoric mode at all. She is in a metonymical mode of language, or sign-use. She is communicating how she (and her brothers and sisters in the altruistic sense of the words) understand dependency on nature, how identity is “convertible” and expressed in landscape terms, how identity is convertible into the landscape with not only the preservation of the identity intended to be expressed, but even with the refinement and deepening of the understanding of identity and community. I belive it is called politics in other settings.

If we assume that language has such a deep structure, that somewhere in its basement and in the realm of shadows it has to strive with the almost impossible task of expressing existential issues concerning the unity of man and landscape, then we have to look for it in contemporary political communication too. And there is another point to be made here, there is no point in asking for clear statements, these are issues of extremely complex nature - but nonetheless important to the extent we are seeking an understanding of how identity is expressed in landscape terms we are often left with these kinds of poetic expressions (but they certainly do not have to be interpreted in the romantic tradition). This probably explains why the issues identity always will have lousy conditions in formal public political debate, while at the same time retaining a motivating and organizing force released in public unformal artisitc settings and gatherings.
 

Nature (second time)

I am not going to define nature, just as I declined defining politics. A sad start may be, for a speaker on this particular seminar. And when I tell you that I am not going to define ideology either, I guess you will start to throw eggs at me. So I better hurry to say that I still find the topic interesting and fruitful. And I do believe that ideology is an important factor in environmental politics. This is precisely the point I tried to make covertly, may be, when the introducing the metonymical quality of nature and the environment in all political communication: Environmental politics is communication about who we are - and this is an important aspect of the approach to analysing landscapes. 
The popular approach leads to many worlds

It is popular these days to focus on the landscape as an arena for doing environmental management. Environmental management is in many countries, Norway included, “the baby of the biologists”, and biologists are among the cheerleaders of the landscape  approach. And obviously, the landscape is an aspect of nature and culture that intuitively seems to address human needs in particular. After all, it is on the landscape level we experience nature, we perceive nature, and we have a very concrete interaction with nature. So, the landscape may appeal to those who look for an arena in which society may meet nature, and “talk to” nature. In the book "Land mosaics", by Richard Forman (1997), Edward Wilson in the foreword issues an early warning to those who approaches landscapes with a simplistic attitude - he especially address the natural scientists and the planners (- but I think it should be taken seriously by other groups to):

"In the cloistered tradition of the scientific specialization, most ecologists think the world narrowly, as a system of natural environments beleaguered by human activity. They live ... in a world of wounds. ... In their own speciality, planners and landscape designers tend to in their larger and wholly different world. For them, the bulk of land has been given over to humanity; and now, they say, people must redisign it to their liking”

There are undoubtably these “wholly” different worlds - or views - of what a landscape is. Let us explore this phenomenon a bit more. 
 

Landscape is politics

Landscapes become the most general and publicly accessible and shareable aides-memoire of a culture’s knowledge and understanding of its past and future (Küchler 1993).  This reinforces or express the metonymic quality of the landscape for given social groups. Because of this, landscapes, and memory of landscapes lost, may serve as an important focus for political organization and controversy. This controversy may even be seen over ancient landscapes not even “there” any more. Withers (1990) have shown how the meaning of landscapes lost formed the basis for violent rallies over rights and injustice in societal organization in the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century. A landscape is not something external to society (and it is not something present in nature either, is it?).  It is part of society and identity. Cosgrove et al (1996) has shown how landscape and identity is interconnected in a study of a large-scale water control project in mid-England, and how the identity linked to landscapes are group-specific. This  gave rise to a conflict between  local identity and national identity addressing the same area but defending different congruent landscapes.

But landscapes, both existing and lost, do not only act as memory-banks. As Bender (1993) reminds us, landscapes can be both close-grained, worked-upon, lived-in places, but they may also be distant and half-fantasied in both time and space. This distinction between reality and fantasy, if you will, is important precisely because it undermines itself. 

In daily day life and politics there is no clear-cut distinction between landscapes as they are, as they were, and as we recall them. In the way landscapes function in social processes, there is no clear-cut distinction between the factual and the normative. Landscapes “seize upon and validate social memories” (Küchler 1993). They contain not only a mixture of descriptive and normative elements, but the landscape-concept seems to have the magic to bridge the gap between the factual and the normative, between what is and what could be, ought to be or not to be. In this sense landscapes enter life and politics, and touch upon important aspects of social life like shared memory and validation, group identity and acceptance.

As a topic in politics, some landscapes will be considered valuable and desirable  by certain groups, dispensable or ‘ok-to-transform-as-a-price-paid-to-development’ by other groups. Be alert! This could seriously change your identity, remember the metonymic quality of landscapes! For example, relict’s industrial landscapes would often be considered as ok to lose, but some may consider them valuable as a vital part of a certain experience and set of values (Demarest and Levy 1983). Harvey (1991) shows how understanding of what is considered beautiful or not, is very contextual indeed.

So, this is the message: Landscape is a way to bridge in practical life the normative and the factual ... a magic not given to many concepts. It certainly is what politics is about - it certainly is about nature and the environment - and it must be about ideology?
 

Semiotics and ‘landscape’

We got this feeling that we are in a landscape, when we make an observation of where we are. What are landscapes? They are not the observer himself. It is not me., Neither are they nature itself, or the material object(s) observed. In important ways, the dam builder and I observed different things when we stood at the foot of the Lunde glacier, watching the rivers cascading towards us. My job was to look at outdoor recreation, her to look at hydro-power.The area or nature in itself, or the object we looked at, was a substratum for different landscapes. What we need to do, it to look closer at cognition. All cognition is embedded in interpretation. All landscapes are interpretations when seen as something by somebody.  Landscapes are semiotic entities, signs. The iconic quality of the landscape as a sign is obvious and appreciated, and often exploited in landscape research addressing the issue on communication on landscape development in society (O’Riordan, Wood and Shadrake 1993, Emmelin 1996). For Charles Sanders Peirce the sign (in this context: a landscape) represents something (here: an area with all its “furniture” of mental and material objects) for somebody in a certain respect or capacity (here: a given set of actors in a certain respect or capacity, for example the farmer, the local citizen,  the tourist, or as a citizen of a certain national state). 

The landscape is a sign. It is not the object, it is not the observer (and their private perception). The landscape as a sign, then, has its meaning for those who interpret it (what Peirce calls the interpretant) as something (a resource for example) in a certain respect or capacity (inter alia production, planning, protection, survival, biotope and leisure). A sign must, according to Peirce, be understood as “a sign in actu, by virtue of its receiving an interpretation” (CP 5.556). A sign, a landscape, must be understood in semiosis, which is “an action ... which is ... a cooperation of a sign, its object and its interpretant” (CP 5.484). The landscape is according to this an action, and receives its meaning in relation to a certain mode of doing or way of living. It is not something that can be understood and represented without reference to the actors fulfilling their particular goals and equipped with their universe of instruments. This is beautifully demonstrated by Normann Henderson (Henderson 1994, 1996) and his use of “replicating travels” as an effective heuristic tool to understand the basic life conditions of indigenous landscapes  to the extent “navigare neccesse est” - to travel is a necessity. 
 

The landscape is a sign for a mode of life.

A landscape is “something” referring to an area for an interpretant. Yet there is no simple one-to-one relation between area and landscape in the following sense: A landscape must refer to one area (or an area-category), but one area can contain many landscapes covering exactly the same area. These may be landscapes that are congruent or incongruent in their areal extention. This follows from the semiotic approach. It is not different from the fact that any object, like the object ‘horse’, certainly can be addressed with many signs. If the landscape is a sign and the sign-object relation is constituted in relation to somebody in a certain respect or capacity, then one object will be representable by more than one sign, meaning different things in different communicative and life situations. This has some peculiar consequences. If the number of landscapes present in an area may grow, decline and alter both in content and in terms of the number of actors involved with its “ semiotic universe”, then a landscape may in principle be lost without any material change, if a certain interpretative tradition vanishes. This is part of the situation that Henderson explores when he studies landscape and travel on the Northern Plains through actually move through an area with a given technology in order to rediscover the landscape understood as the way the area should be interpreted as an ancient landscape (Henderson 1994, 1996). Another consequence is that new landscapes may emerge in harmony or in conflict with existing landscapes (still without presupposing any material change), and that a given society may develop or erode landscapes as cultural assets. Material changes (wether by nature or human made) in an area may or may not be considered a change in, or a threat to, a given set of landscapes. Material change does not, according to this approach, necessarily imply  a landscape change. The object of a sign is one thing, its meaning another. Wether or not material change is understood as landscape change, is dependent on the way the material change affects the landscape as a sign that is what conceivable practical effects for a given interpretant the material change in the object has. This is the core of pragmatic meaning theory, the Peircian brand (Apel 1973). If the change has no conceivable practical effect within an interpretive tradition, or if the practical effects are considered unimportant by the same interpretive tradition, material change may not alter a landscape. The reference to practical effects connects  to technology, since any judgement of possible action and possible practical effects must refer to technological horizons within which we generate or discard ideas of how lives could be lived. In this way a landscape is something within a technological context. 
 

Ways to lose a landscape

It also follows that landscape change must be kept analytically separate from material change in the area. The landscapes as a sign is to some extent a construct or model, a perspective, filter or a cognitive aspect in which we focus on and fix certain stable features in a continuously changing object, as representing a special value or attracting attention for someone in a certain respect. Landscapes as signs may be lost in at least two ways due to changes in the areal object they represent for the interpretant in a certain respect or capacity: 
* The area may change into the unrecognizable without any or only marginal attention paid, and the sign as such lose its reference. I will call “faded out”.
* The area may change into the unrecognizable and the landscape lost, in a legitimate fight  over how development should take place or unsuccessfully preserved in spite of concerted efforts.  I will call “lost in battle”.

How landscapes are lost, is an important issue in social and political life. Losing landscapes is losing memory banks. Losing landscapes is threatening social cohesion and identity in the affected groups. Losing landscapes may produce  "landscape induced alienation". Whether the loss of landscapes will produce alienation and destructive conflict, is not a question of change per se. It is rather a question of the quality of the social and political process  ultimately causing, or reacting to, a change is. If the process is unfair, done by illegitimate means, manipulative, insensitive to minorities, only sensitive to certain interpretive traditions or suffers from similar weaknesses, landscape induced alienation on group level may occur. To that extent, the socio-psychological damage inflicted on the affected groups might be considered a cost of landscape change. The way landscapes are lost is therefor important.
Thank you for your attention.
 

Litterature:

Apel, K.-O. (1975) Der Denkweg von Charles S. Peirce (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M.)
Arnesen, T (1998) Landscapes Lost in Landscape Research, 23 (1) 1998 . pp 39-50 
Bender, B. (1993) Introduction - Landscape: Meaning and Action in Bender, B. (ed) Landscape - Politics and Perspectives. (Oxford, Berg Publishers) (pp. 1-18).
Cosgrove, D., Roscoe, B. and Rycroft, S. (1996) Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water Tran Inst Br Geogr 21  pp534-551
CP - Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, 1931-35: vols. 1 - 5 Hartsthorne, C. and Weiss, P. (eds.), 1958: vols. 7 - 8 Burks, A (ed.). References show volume and paragraph (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press).
Emmelin, L. (1996) Landscape Impact Analysis: A Systematic Approach to Landscape Impacts Policy. Landscape Research 21-1 pp 13-35
Forman, R.T.T. (1997) Land Mosaics. The ecology of landscapes and regions (London, Cambrigde)
Henderson, N. (1991) Heritage Landscapes’: A New Approach to the Preservation of Semi_Natural Landscapes in Canada and the United States PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, Norwich.
Henderson, N. (1994) Replicating the Dog Travois Travel on the Northern Plains Journal of the Plains Anthropological Society 39-148 pp145-159 
Küchler, S.(1993) Landscape as Memory in Bender, B. (ed) Landscape - Politics and Perspectives (Oxford, Berg Publishers) (pp. 85-105).
O’Riordan, T., Wood, C. and Shadrake, A. (1993) Landscapes for Tomorrow, J. Environmental and Planning and Management 36-2 pp. 123-147 
Soper, C. (1995) What is Nature (London, Blackwell)
Withers, C. (1990) Give Us Land and Plenty of It: The Ideological Basis to Land and Landscape in the Scottish Highlands,  Landscape History 12, pp. 46-54.