Conversations with Landscape

Conversations With Landscape moves beyond the conventional dualisms associated with landscape, exploring notions of landscape and its relation with humans through the metaphor of conversation. Such an approach conceives of landscape as an actor in the ongoing communication that is inherent in any perception, recognising the often-ignored mutuality of encounters between human and non-human actors With contributions drawn from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, geography, archaeology, philosophy, literature and the visual arts, this book explores the affects and emotions engendered in the conversations between landscape and humans. Offering scope for an original and coherent approach to the study of landscape, this book will appeal to scholars and researchers across a range of social sciences and humanities. The central theme is clear and persuasive, the focus on northern landscapes fascinating throughout. Conversations With Landscape offers a consistently excellent set of essays which will be welcomed and widely read by anthropologists, cultural geographers, visual and aesthetic theorists, and, in particular, the wide interdisciplinary community of landscape scholars and students John Wylie, University of Exeter, UK Collectively the essays of Conversations With Landscape create an innovative landscape of their own, refusing to take landscape and human engagement with it for granted. Indeed, there is much to explore. These are fascinating tales - theoretical, ethnographic, and historical - about the moving landscape. Not only is it forever changing, it touches people in a variety of ways Gisli Palsson, University of Iceland, Iceland