Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography: Series Number 18: Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of some Places in the Past

Landscapes of material are also landscapes of meaning: praxis is itself symbolic, and all landscapes are symbolic in practice. Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective draws together fifteen historical geographers to examine landscapes as messages to be decoded, as signs to be deciphered. The range of examples is wide in terms of period, from the medieval to the modern, and of place, embracing the USA, Canada, Palestine, Israel, South Africa, India, Singapore, France and Germany. Each essay addresses a specific problem, but collectively they are principally concerned with the ideologies of religion and of politics, of Church and state, and their historical impress upon landscapes. The book is introduced by an essay which explores the dialectical understanding of landscapes, and landscapes as expressions of the connection of an ideology to a quest for order, to an assertion of authority and to a project of totalization. The issues raised by landscapes and their meanings – issues of individual and collective action, of objective knowing, of materialist and idealist explanation – are fundamental not only to historical geography but to any humanistic study, and render the geographical study of landscapes of interest to scholars in many disciplines.