Životné prostredie (Apr 2018)

Kultúrna krajina ako kultúrny a časovo-priestorový fenomén/Cultural Landscape as a Cultural and Temporal-Spatial Phenomenon

  • Vladimír Ira,
  • Ana Uher

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 52, no. 4
pp. 195 – 199

Abstract

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Cultural landscape is a broad concept which increasingly resonates in a number of scientific disciplines and many areas of contemporary life. It is also a very complex phenomenon because of both its assemblage of physical features and its reflection of human activity and cultural values. The cultural landscape is a human establishment with specific spatial and temporal organisation and it was a principal object of study of cultural geography. The initial 1920’s approach to landscape studies focused mainly on the description of rural areas and centred on cultural products rather than processes. However, geographers changed their approach in the 1960’s and 70’s due to significant demographic, socio-cultural and economic changes. Representational cultural geography emerged in an era where landscape symbols, signs and their meanings and the processes of cultural landscape formation became important considerations. The following era then saw a dramatic change in human geography cultural direction which has promoted a greater degree of pluralism and methodology and encouraged the use of a wider range of interpretative and qualitative methods. At the beginning of the 21st century cultural geography considers not only landscape physical structure but also the roles that issues of sustainability, quality of life, ethnicity, religiosity, identity, home, sense of place, cultural diversity, power and inequality play in the landscape. This paper briefly presents views on the cultural landscape as a feature of cultural geographical research, and it especially emphasises the importance of the temporalspatial dimensions of the cultural landscape.

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