"Scenophobia", geography and the aesthetic politics of landscape

“SCENOPHOBIA”, GEOGRAPHY AND THE AESTHETIC POLITICS OF LANDSCAPE

© The author 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography

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byKarl Benediktsson

Benediktsson, K.,

2007: “Scenophobia”, geography and the aes-thetic politics of landscape.

Geogr. Ann

., 89 B (3): 203–217.

ABSTRACT. Recent critiques of the nature–culture dualism, in-fluenced by diverse theoretical stances, have effectively destabi-lized the “naturalness” of nature and highlighted its pervasive andintricate sociality. Yet the practical, ethical and political effects ofthis theoretical turn are open to question. In particular, the em-phasis on the sociality of nature has not led to reinvigorated en-vironmental or landscape politics. Meanwhile, the need for suchpolitics has if anything increased, as evident when ongoing and,arguably, accelerating landscape transformations are taken intoaccount.

These concerns are illustrated in the paper with an examplefrom Iceland. In its uninhabited central highland, serious battlesare now being fought over landscape values. Capital and statehave joined forces in an investment-driven scramble for hydro-power and geothermal resources to facilitate heavy industry, ir-revocably transforming landscapes in the process. Dissonantvoices arguing for caution and conservation have been sidelinedor silenced by the power(ful) alliance.

The author argues for renewed attention to the aesthetic, in-cluding the visual, if responsible politics of landscape are to beachieved. Aesthetic appreciation is an important part of the eve-ryday experiences of most people. Yet, enthusiastic as they havebeen in deconstructing conventional narratives of nature, geogra-phers have been rather timid when it comes to analysing aestheticvalues of landscape and their significance, let alone in suggestingprogressive landscape politics. A political geography of land-scape is needed which takes aesthetics seriously, and which ac-knowledges the merit of engagement and enchantment.

Key words:

social nature,

landscape politics,

landscape aesthetics,scenic values, Iceland, Kárahnjúkar power project

Power politics: an introductory story

You do not have to be interested in the high-lands or nature at all – If you are interested inearthmoving machinery, then this is heaven!

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The hills are alive with the sound of diesel engines.At Kárahnjúkar, in the northeastern highland of Ice-land, the visitor is left gobsmacked. Anyone seek-ing tranquility and solitude would feel well and tru-ly out of place here these days. Relentlessly, the yel-low-coloured bulldozers, excavators and dumptrucks work their way through the terrain (Fig. 1).Mountains are being moved – literally. One of thecountry’s most furious, dirty and powerful glacialrivers is being dammed and diverted from its im-

mense canyon through 50 km long tunnels to a val-ley further east, where an underground power sta-tion is under construction. Tall, grey, electricity py-lons are also being planted in that valley, toweringover the humble birch trees. In a fjord not far awayon the east coast, an international army of labourersis constructing a very large aluminium smelter.Owned by the American multinational Alcoa, thesmelter is supposed to bring an abundance of jobsand general well-being to this previously stagnantpart of Iceland. A true “megaproject” is takingshape. It involves large corporate actors such as theUS aluminium company Alcoa and the contractingfirms Impregilo and Bechtel, headquartered in Italyand the US respectively. The “developmentist” Ice-landic state is also a major player,

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promising cheapenergy – and lots of it – to Alcoa, and to the globalaluminium industry at large.

In the process, some remarkable landscapes arebeing irrevocably transformed. Although the larg-est of its kind, the Kárahnjúkar project is only thelatest, albeit probably not the final, chapter in a longhistory of struggle for the landscapes of Iceland be-tween the interests of capitalism and conservation.Most hotly contested are the landscapes of the cen-tral highland. In fact, the scramble for resources hasgreatly intensified in recent years, fuelled by the im-pending privatization of the power industry. Thevalue of those landscapes is being determined inpowerful units that are widely respected: mega/giga/terawatts; and ultimately in monetary unitsthat are widely understood: dollars, euros, krónur.Those arguing for caution and conservation havebeen effectively sidelined by a public relations ma-chine second to none, orchestrated by Lands-virkjun, the national power company.

In a highly competitive market economy underthe conditions of globalization, is there any spacefor alternative visions and valuations of landscapes,besides and beyond the economic bottom line? Iffound to be lacking, can that space be created? Canacademics – geographers, for instance – play a rolein bringing it about?

As for myself, the Kárahnjúkar saga has made

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me think long and hard about these very questions.Let us not beat about the bush. My own personalsentiment is probably clear already, but I will stateit here just in case: I am simply appalled by whatto me seems a short-sighted, unsustainable andrecklessly exploitative project, decided upon in anundemocratic manner, which will in no way guar-antee the socioeconomic future of the communi-ties in whose interest it is purportedly undertaken.I am also, and no less so, appalled by the landscapetransformations wrought in this part of my coun-try, which was not so long ago largely without di-rect evidence of human energies,

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but with the en-ergies of the various forces of nature all the morevisible.

Geographers – myself included – were in factconspicuously absent from debates about the poli-tics of landscape conservation concerning the Ká-rahnjúkar project. Others fought the battle againstthe project – a motley crew of committed environ-mentalists of many persuasions, but not least art-ists, ranging from painters and writers to actors andmusicians. That battle was eventually lost. It seemsto me that part of the answer to the curious silenceof critical human geographers (and many othersfrom the social sciences and humanities, albeit withhonourable exceptions; see e.g. Jónsson 20032004;

°

orgeirsdóttir 2005) lies in the way in whichcritical geography has in recent years tended tosidestep the admittedly complex issue of landscapeaesthetics. To some extent, I would argue, this is

due to the very success of recent (and much-need-ed) theorizing about the ambiguous nature of na-ture.

Socialized nature and its politics

The sharp distinction between nature and society/culture has been one of the central planks of the sci-entific endeavour for centuries, which is not sur-prising given the self-evident status this distinctionhas occupied during Western cultural history, espe-cially since the times of Descartes and Bacon (Gla-cken 1967; White 1967; Latour 1993; Harvey1996). It is only in the past few decades or evenyears that this dualism has been subjected to extend-ed critique and indeed effectively destabilized in re-cent theorizing (see e.g. FitzSimmons 1989; Mac-naghten and Urry 1998; Goldman and Schurman2000; Haila 2000; Castree and Braun 2001; De-meritt 2002; Castree 2004). The resultant “sociali-zation” of nature has been influenced by a numberof theoretical strands. Roughly speaking, threemain positions may be identified.

The first highlights economic relations: the

pro-duction

of nature (Smith 1984). This is evident inthe valuations placed on nature’s material manifes-tations as resources and as raw material, as well asspace for locating various “productive” activities.Marxist theorists have been among those mostprominent in the new analysis of nature. Somewhatcontradictorily, this is the one part of social theory

Fig. 1. Landscapes transformed:The building of Kárahnjúkar dam,July 2005.Source: www.karahnjukar.is.



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which has always insisted that nature is social(Smith 1984; Pepper 1993; Harvey 1996), yet hasbeen accused of utter neglect of issues relating tothe natural environment, save for nature’s valuesfor economic accumulation processes. For Marx,the application of human labour to nature was a fun-damental process in the formation of social rela-tions, which is the essence of the idea of “producednature”. In practice, analysis of the social – or ratherthe economic – was nearly always foregrounded inMarxist analysis, or, as Castree (1995) puts it, the‘materiality of produced nature’ was underplayed.The important interjection of FitzSimmons (1989)served as a wake-up call which has fed into an in-vigorated political ecology of either more Marxistflavour or less (Bryant 1992; Peet and Watts 1996;Arsel 2002; Hagner 2003; Porter 2004; Trudgill2004).

The second position emphasizes the social andcultural

constructions

of meaning in nature. Theyinclude, of course, a plethora of sociocultural valu-ations, manifested in items as diverse as the orna-mental plants many of us spend a great deal of timetending in our manicured gardens, and the tenderblisters which the highland traveller has to deal withat the end of a strenuous day of hiking.

The social constructionist work about nature hasbeen strongly influenced by the “discursive turn” insocial sciences in general. Instead of taking off froma solid ground of ontological and epistemologicalrealism, it has questioned the “reality” of nature,highlighting instead the diversity of meanings andsymbols associated with and afforded by nature: na-ture is only made knowable through the use of cul-turally coded concepts. Much of the academic at-tention has accordingly been directed towards ana-lysing the historical evolution of the various cultur-al conceptualizations of nature. A particularlypertinent example, given the central issue of this pa-per, is Cronon’s dissection of the concept of “wil-derness”, which has indeed animated much of theconservation discourse in Iceland in recent years(Benediktsson 2000). The “cultural logic” inherentin the spaces of conservation has also been similarlyanalysed elsewhere, for instance, in Sweden (Mels1999, 2002).

As frequently happens, the basic idea of sociallyconstructed nature has been transformed into sever-al distinctive lines of thought. In an attempt to clarifythe debate, Demeritt (2002) usefully distinguishesbetween two major forms of constructionism. Firstof all, he points to constructionist rhetoric beingused simply as a device for unsettling some “truths”

or widely accepted knowledges about the “natural”state of things. This is in itself not particularly rad-ical in terms of epistemology, as it more often thannot entails a realist view of knowledge and its refer-ence to the “real world”. The aim then is simply toreplace an allegedly “false” version with a “true”version of the story in question. Often there is a po-litical agenda, – hidden or explicit, radical or con-servative – behind such accounts. It has certainlybeen put to work in the Icelandic highland debate,both sides accusing each other of misconstruing andmisinterpreting the “facts”.

More fundamental constructionist critiques ofthe concept of nature itself, according to Demeritt,are those that discuss its philosophical underpin-nings. Such philosophical critiques can take manyforms. One type of critique puts stress on the inter-subjective construction of social reality and the in-sistence upon separating that reality from actualphysical conditions. In other words, the concern isto unravel through empirically based exposition theconditions surrounding the varied claim-makingactivities which relate to nature and environmentalissues. A group of constructionists has looked spe-cifically at how scientific knowledge is constructedthrough negotiations taking place within scientificcommunities. Some of these sociologists of scien-tific knowledge have articulated a strong, ontolog-ically idealist position, in effect insisting on thecomplete bracketing of “reality” – physical as wellas social – in favour of conventionalism. Not faraway is a version which Demeritt (2002) calls “dis-cursive constructionalism”. Its advocates pay spe-cial attention to issues of power and discursive prac-tices in the making of stories about nature, as wellas the effects that such narratives have. As for whatkind of progressive politics might follow in thewake of such a deconstruction, suggestions havebeen somewhat modest. A book devoted to the sub-ject (Castree and Braun 2001) thus simply endswith the advice that the inevitability of “paradox”be acknowledged (Proctor 2001; see also Proctor1998).

Turning now to the third major group of academ-ics working in the borderlands between nature andsociety, the actor-network theorists are in some re-spects the most radical. They go a step further andspeak of active and mutual

co-construction

of so-ciety and nature. In this case, nature is envisaged asan active agent in the strange and hybrid entangle-ments – or

collectifs

(Callon and Law 1995) – ofwhich the world is made, not merely as a neutralobject on which humans can scribble their cultural

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meanings and/or rework into monetary values.These theorists insist on a relational, “flat” ontolo-gy in which humans, plants and animals, and inan-imate things – society and nature – are equal co-constituents of the events that make up the world(Callon 1986; Latour 1993; Callon and Law 1995;Law and Hassard 1999). The attribution of “agen-cy” to non-humans as well as humans is central.Suddenly, a plethora of potential actors/actants, in-animate as well as animate – scallops (Callon1986), trees (Cloke and Jones 2001, 2003, 2004),rivers (Eden

et al

. 2000), walking boots (Michael2001) and so on – appear in an active role in net-worked assemblages which compose an ever-shift-ing world, not merely as a passive backdrop to hu-man actions. Agency is not a capacity possessedbut an outcome of negotiations taking place be-tween heterogeneous participants in networked re-lations.

While the provocative “radical symmetry” of ac-tor-network theorists has not been uncritically cel-ebrated by everyone (cf. Collins and Yearley 1992;Vandenberghe 2002), it is no exaggeration to saythat ANT has stimulated a more nuanced story tell-ing about the world. For the purposes of this paper,the question is not least about its political implica-tions. Castree and MacMillan (2001) reason that ac-tor-network theory would find purely social con-structionist politics of nature just as untenable as therealist politics it seeks to destabilize. Instead, a ‘hy-brid politics of nature’ is advocated, to be based onrelational ethics (Whatmore 2002). Politics of na-ture should not, Castree and MacMillan argue, becentred on a select few purified spaces of definedgeographical extent, such as those officially desig-nated as “wilderness” or other protected areas, as‘these spaces are neither wholly natural nor merelyzones where certain social actors impose their cul-turally specific ideas of what nature is supposed tobe’ (Castree and MacMillan 2001, p. 221). Howev-er, they do not see the strong version of ANT, whichinsists on a completely equal treatment of humanand non-human actors (or actants), as leading to re-sponsible politics of nature. Instead they advocate a“weaker” form of ANT, which admits:

that power, while dispersed, can be directedby some (namely, specific ‘social’ actors)more than others; and that a politics of natureattuned to the needs and rights of both humanand natural entities must ultimately be orches-trated through putatively ‘social’ actors.(Castree and MacMillan 2001, pp. 222–223)

To sum up: in different ways, these varied theoret-ical developments have destabilized the “natural-ness” of nature and highlighted its pervasive and in-tricate sociality. Similarly, many other dualisms fa-miliar to geographers have been exposed as shakyat best or destructive at worst: rural–urban; place–space; subject–object. Dualistic thinking is well andtruly out of fashion, in academia at least, and justlyso in these muddled and postmodern times. For ourpurposes, the absence of concern with the visual isremarkable, however, in discussions of social na-ture.

Landscape in geography: from “scopophilia” to “scenophobia”?

Similar to that supremely important and overarch-ing concept of

nature

, the old geographical chestnut–

landscape

– has been prised open. While German-ic and Nordic usage of the word (i.e.

landskap/Landschaft

) has to some extent retained an earliermeaning of polity, as discussed below, its primaryassociation – certainly in the anglophone world –has been with the visual. The very mention of land-scape automatically led one to think about a vista orscenery. It conjured up an image of someone – ageographer perhaps – standing on a hilltop and gaz-ing into the distance. A sharp distinction was main-tained between the viewing subject and the viewedobject. The re-theorization of nature and dissolutionof the subject–object dualism has led to a markedretreat of the visual paradigm in landscape geo-graphy. The critiques of the visual emphasis havebeen of several different, albeit related, kinds. I willnow present a selective review of these critiques, to-gether with some counter-arguments.

First, the “landscape-as-scenery” approach im-plicit in the above description has been faulted ongrounds of being simplistic and superficial. Accord-ing to many critics, it is a gross oversimplification ofthe complex sensory and experiential encounters be-tween people and landscapes. I agree wholehearted-ly in principle. There is a great deal more to humanencounters with nature in general, and to landscapeappreciation more specifically, apart from and be-yond what the visual sense affords. Even so, I wantto probe this a little. My main reason for concern isthe boundary work often discerned in the writings ofthose who argue in this way, between “us” (academ-ics) and “them” (the public). Quite often, one dis-cerns a touch of elitism in the writings of those whooppose “the scenic” on grounds of shallowness.Take, for instance, the comments made by a person



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who, incidentally, was central in taking up aestheticsof nature as an academic issue in the 1960s:

If we want to attach very high value to the ap-preciation of natural beauty, we must be ableto show that more is involved in such appreci-ation than the pleasant, unfocused enjoymentof a picnic place, or a fleeting and distancedimpression of the countryside through a tour-ing-coach window, or obligatory visits tostandard viewpoints or (should I say?) snap-shot-points.

(Hepburn 2001, p. 1)

This seems to imply that everyday experiences,such as those of the picnicker and – heaven forbid– the coach tourist, cannot be expected to yield thesame depth and quality of appreciation as does morerarefied academic contemplation. The tourist gazeis construed as trivial, not serious (cf. Urry 1990;Crawshaw and Urry 1997).

This essentialization of the tourism experiencehardly does justice to the plethora of practices andperformances found under the rubric of tourism (cf.e.g. Crouch 1999; Coleman and Crang 2002; Bær-enholdt

et al

. 2004; Cartier and Lew 2005). Evencoach tourists can and sometimes do have somequite profound experiences when confronted withunfamiliar and startling landscapes which they findmoving, as my friends who have worked as tourguides have repeatedly told me (cf. Leddy 2005 foran interesting discussion of nature appreciationfrom within the car). As for photography specifical-ly, recent work has shown that this quintessentialtourist activity is all but simple (Crang 1997; Craw-shaw and Urry 1997) – and in fact it is about manythings other than visual representation (Larsen2001, 2005). The act of photographing is an ‘em-bodied experience’ (Crang 1997). We might also dowell to keep in mind that the appreciation of natureand landscapes is

always

mediated by technologyof some sort or other (Leddy 2005), not only sophis-ticated optical or electronic gadgetry, but also moremundane technology such as the boots on one’s feet(Michael 2001; Ingold 2004).

Second, the term

landscape

has itself been ac-cused of serving as merely a visual “masque”, di-verting attention from much more “substantive” is-sues (Olwig 1996). The inherent “duplicity of land-scape” (Daniels 1989) endows the concept with the‘capacity to veil historically specific social rela-tions behind the smooth and often aesthetic appear-ance of “nature”’ (Cosgrove 2004, p. 68; see also

Mitchell 2000). Many authors have seen reason todwell at length on the complex and intriguing his-torical evolution of the landscape concept, from itsDutch/German roots into English and other Ger-manic languages. The most extensive of these dis-cussions are found in Olwig’s work (1992, 1996,2002, 2005). According to Olwig, the originalmeaning of

Landschaft

in the Germanic culturalrealm was that of a territorial polity, which entailedcertain rights and duties for those living within itsbounds (see also Setten 2003 for the “Nordic” con-text); a meaning Olwig terms “substantive” as op-posed to the scenic (by implication insubstantial?)meaning which later took hold, especially in Eng-land, i.e. of a visual representation of a particularkind, or a ‘way of seeing’ (Cosgrove 1984).

This analysis is a highly pertinent and valuablereminder of the complexities which frequently lurkbehind apparently simple and straightforward con-cepts. However, a rather restricted geographicalreference is noticeable in the writings of Olwig andothers about these conceptual developments, asthere has been little discussion of correspondingconcepts in non-Germanic languages, let alonenon-European languages. This renders much of thisdiscussion rather one-sided and even self-centred incultural terms. I also profess to having some doubtsregarding the continued need for extended etymo-logical expeditions, at least in rather well-mappedNorthern European linguistic territory. Philologicalinterests notwithstanding, a present-day scholar inthis part of the world has to confront the fact thateveryday understanding of the landscape conceptamong the common folks

does

tend to emphasizethe scenic aspect.

It may be helpful to put this in my own culturalcontext. Taking Germano-centric linguistic analy-sis a little further while we are at it, the emphasison visual characteristics may be even more pro-nounced in the use of the term

landslag

in the Ice-landic language than with

landscape

in English,and certainly more so than in the case of the Ger-man

Landschaft

. Although the

-lag

suffix does in-deed relate to the legal sphere (cf. Olwig 1996),those antiquated connotations have been ratherthoroughly forgotten by the people who are puttingthe concept of

landslag

to use in various ways incontemporary Iceland. What matters for an analy-sis of the present, I argue, is not only the genealogyof the concept and its varying trajectories in thepast, but also how that concept is put to work “onthe ground” in contemporary society, through eve-ryday use and practices.

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The third set of criticisms of the visual under-standing of landscape relates to the pretensions in-volved in attempting to achieve a “detached” as-sessment of landscape by analysing its scenic char-acteristics. Such presumptions about detachmentand objectivity have been accused of woefully eras-ing the history which is surely always part and par-cel of the landscape. Past power struggles and ideo-logical meanings associated with the landscape areoverlooked. Such an approach therefore, it is ar-gued, has a disempowering effect on local inhabit-ants, at worst obliterating them from the history ofthe landscapes in which they live and from whichthey make their living.

History provides many instances of this. A par-ticularly good example of such analysis is providedby Cronon’s (1996) careful interrogation of theconcept of “wilderness” – a concept which has an-imated conservation practices particularly in NorthAmerica and Oceania, but also to some extent inEurope. Probing its meaning in the North Americancontext, Cronon traced the intricate cultural historyof this concept, which has come to stand for any-thing but culture in the conservation discourse. Farfrom being a space somehow beyond human soci-ety, “wilderness” was shown to be laden with a vio-lent past and some very particular ideologies, mostnotably that of the “frontier”. This analysis toucheda raw nerve, provoking a host of less than sympa-thetic responses from conservation-minded people(see e.g. Cohen 1996; Hays 1996; Curry 2003; Crist2004), many of whom saw his work as a disablingand dangerous critique. It might be noted that thepaper was written at a time when the blatantly eu-phemistic concept of “wise use” was being toutedby corporations eager to get their teeth into hithertorelatively pristine areas in public ownership in theUSA.

Cronon’s argument about wilderness is veryclearly a social constructionist one. It might be not-ed that the emphasis on scenic beauty of landscapehas also been attacked from the opposite position –that of natural science and ecosystem analysis

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– asunable to serve as a guide to responsible treatmentof landscapes. Ecosystemic health of a particularlandscape may have nothing at all to do with theaesthetic pleasures afforded by that landscape. So,the reasoning goes, we might simply have to forgothe aesthetic in favour of the ecological; an ‘“eatyour spinach” mode of persuation’ as Saito (2004,n.p.) aptly puts it. Alternatively, taking their cuefrom Aldo Leopold’s “land aesthetic”, which runsparallel to his “land ethic” (Callicott 1989), some

theorists argue that it is the aesthetic judgement thatis wrong. Our culture should learn to appreciate aes-thetically those landscapes that are ecologicallysound. Leopold’s land aesthetic thus:

emphasizes less the directly visible, scenic as-pects of nature and more the conceptual – di-versity, complexity, species rarity, species in-teractions, nativity, phylogenetic antiquity –the aspects of nature revealed by evolutionaryand ecological natural history.

(Callicott 1989, p. 240)

Therefore, what is needed is a reformed “aestheticof the unspectacular”. A noble thought for sure, forwhich I have great sympathy, but a great deal of“cultural engineering” would probably be requiredto achieve such a goal. This applies both to ethicsand aesthetics – as Harvey (1996, p. 120) has some-what wistfully observed, ‘Leopold’s land ethicwould necessarily entail the construction of an al-ternative mode of production and consumption tothat of capitalism’.

This apart, considerable ecological knowledgewould be needed to discern between aestheticallyworthy and unworthy landscapes under such an aes-thetic paradigm. Who should be the judge? Sepän-maa (1993) proclaims that ‘the correct basis [for en-vironmental aesthetics] is given by contemporaryscientific knowledge’ (p. 78) and that ‘lay opinioncannot carry the weight of that of an expert’ (p. 88).This is also the gist of the well-known “natural en-vironmental model” of aesthetics advanced by Carl-son (1997, 2001), who assigns a central role to nat-ural scientists in matters of aesthetic judgementabout nature: to properly appreciate a landscape’svisual appearance, one has to know the formativeprocesses which brought it into being. This is muchtoo narrow from my point of view. Apart from beingphilosophically questionable as several authors haveshown (Carroll 1993; Heyd 2001; Brady 2003; Led-dy 2005), it carries the very real possibility of exclu-sion of those from non-scientific backgrounds, evenif such “lay” and/or local people may have intimateknowledge of, and deep moral connections with, thelandscape in question. Farmers are an obvious casein point (cf. Setten 2002, 2004, 2005).

Last but not least, the fall from grace of the vis-ual paradigm in landscape studies has been rein-forced by a forceful criticism of geography’s long-standing “ocularcentrism” from a feminist stand-point. More than a decade ago, Rose (1993) fa-mously accused geography in general of “aesthetic



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masculinism” and, specifically addressing the cen-trality of landscape, asserted that ‘[t]he pleasuresgeographers feel when they look at landscape arenot innocent … but nor are they simple’ (Rose1993, p. 88). She linked the geographers’ “phallo-centric gazing” at landscape to an exercise of malepower over feminized nature. Needless to say, thisblunt critique proved uncomfortable to many ge-ographers. One might, however, note that otherfeminist geographers have warned of the essential-ization inherent in assuming a single male/femalegaze (Nash 1996).

Don’t get me wrong: I do think that all the cri-tiques mentioned above have a valid point to make.The dualism of nature–society and the hegemony ofthe scenic had to be dethroned. Yet there may – asalways in conceptual critique – be a danger of suc-cumbing to the baby-bathwater syndrome. Geo-graphers seem to have flipped over from rampant“scopophilia”

5

to rather pusillanimous “scenopho-bia”. The socialization of nature has had the unfor-tunate side-effect of stifling serious discussionamong geographers about the aesthetic politics oflandscape.

There is no denying the importance of the visual.What is more, there is no escaping the inherently

political

quality of the visual; of imagery; scenery;landscape (cf. Mitchell 2000). As an eminent geo-grapher (although not speaking specifically of land-scape) puts it, ‘images are a key element of spacebecause it is so often through them that we registerthe spaces around us and imagine how they mightturn up in the future’ (Thrift 2003, p. 100).

My contention is that a serious engagement withthe visual, couched in the terms of a more generalphilosophy of aesthetic engagement, should actual-ly be an indispensable part of a landscape geogra-phy which purports to have something to say aboutthe politics of landscape. The question I would liketo pose next is: What kind of aesthetic philosophymight best further the cause of an invigorated poli-tics of landscape?

Reasserting the importance of landscape aesthetics

A fine mess we’re in, JackieA clearing in the bushThe trees are all tangled up,and they’re the wrong shade of green.

(Don McGlashan: ‘Jackie’s Song’.The Mutton Birds,

Rain,Steam and Speed

1999)

A number of possible options are open to geogra-phers for getting themselves out of the fine messthey’re in with regard to the politics of landscape.The simplest of course would be to put up an am-biguous grin, continue with suitably opaque textualgymnastics designed to impress fellow academictravellers, and let the great roadshow of capital-driven landscape transformations continue its glo-bal tour unchecked. Landscape is just a matter ofdubitable social constructions anyway, isn’t it? Asthe reader should have gleaned by the reading thusfar, I consider this path of “academic least resist-ance” to be untenable and equal to playing dead inboth an ethical and aesthetic sense.

Another option, and one which has received con-siderable attention, consists of following Galileo’sfamous dictum, to ‘make measurable that which isnot measurable’. Notwithstanding the contradictioninherent in this exhortation, repeated attempts havebeen made to establish an aesthetic reference forlandscapes in observable and recordable “facts”.The Visual Resource Management methods devisedin the United States for managing federal lands area case in point (Bureau of Land Management 2003).They involve the delineation and mapping of geo-graphical units that are rated and ranked accordingto various criteria pertaining to scenic quality, sen-sitivity to change, viewing distance and so on andanalysed through overlay techniques. Similar meth-ods have been devised in other countries, includingCanada (cf. critique in Dakin 2003) and Australia.

In Iceland, this option for dealing with landscapehas, belatedly, gained some momentum. In 1999,work towards a ‘Master Plan for Hydro and Geo-thermal Energy Resources in Iceland’ was started,modelled on similar planning undertaken earlier inNorway. Under the watchful eye of the Ministry ofIndustry, four groups of experts started assemblingdata about potential energy projects, and their en-vironmental and socioeconomic impacts (Land-vernd 2004). One of these groups – dealing withnatural and cultural heritage – took up the formida-ble challenge of assessing landscape values and im-pacts. The group consisted mostly of natural scien-tists. A complex methodology ensued, based in parton methods for scenery management developed inthe USA. Numerical values were systematically as-signed to various landscape features, which wereintended to reflect aesthetic values (Rammaáætlunum n

=

tingu vatnsafls og jar

√

varma 2002). Thesewere combined into a single “rating” which wasthen weighed against four other criteria with thehelp of a formal decision-making methodology –

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the Analytical Hierarchical Process – to arrive at arelative measure of the importance of natural andcultural heritage in the areas that would be affectedby the proposed projects. The various alternativescould then be objectively compared, or so it wasreasoned, in terms of their landscapes.

Now, in pragmatic political terms there is muchto be said for this sort of work. The basic sentimentis laudable: the process was obviously intended togive landscape a “weight” hitherto denied in thecorridors of decision-making. Questions loomlarge, however. To the social scientist, the “objec-tivity” of a process such as this is obviously highlydebatable, as the methods clearly mask a greatnumber of subjective judgements. Once again,numbers were supposed to work their magic of ob-jectification (cf. Rose 1999). Landscape values ar-rived at through “disinterested” methods couldhence be brought to a table at which more classicmeasures of Nature’s worth, such as measures of bi-odiversity, had been allocated a seat already.

But even if objectivity was the goal, the expertgroup stopped short of attempting to translate thisevaluation into economic calculation. The exercisenevertheless generated considerable interest andwas well received – by nearly everyone except forthe power industry and its political protagonists.The overall political effects were somewhat lessthan spectacular. The authorities in fact seemed tolose interest as soon as the results of the first phaseof the master plan had seen the light of day: thoseprojects already started or supposed to be the nextin line actually came out the worst in this evalua-tion, all things considered.

6

In my reading, this story serves to illustrate thatplain empirical realism does not seem to offer muchpromise for a philosophically sound and politicallyastute geography of landscape, any more than doesslick constructionism. For that, geographers need alanguage which would enable them to converse withthe general public about heartfelt aesthetics matters.Visual values are bound to be central in such a con-versation. Shorn of simplistic emphasis on “the pic-turesque”, the visual sense will continue as one ofthe major ingredients in an aesthetic appreciation oflandscapes, if not

the

major ingredient, given theeveryday flavour of the landscape concept.

As an academic problem, the aesthetics of Na-ture and landscapes is a field of many contested the-ories, but several threads of discussion are found inenvironmental philosophy which may be very help-ful for that purpose. Some have already been men-tioned. Broadly speaking, philosophers working

with environmental aesthetics have adopted eithera stance of “disinterested” judgement, often associ-ated with Kant ([1790] 2000; see also Lothian 1999;Brady 2003), or an opposite pose of “engagement”and “existential insiderness” (cf. Bourassa 1991).The evaluation methods described above obviouslypresuppose that aesthetic judgements are made bydetached observers who do not allow non-aestheticinterests to intrude. But how reasonable is such apresupposition? Many people think it is not reason-able at all (e.g. Bourassa 1991; Berleant 1992,1997; Heyd 2001; Fenner 2003). Instead of theKantian ideal of “disinterestedness”, many of theseauthors look to American pragmatist philosophy fora basis, notably that of Dewey (1929, 1934).

Dewey’s project is holistic; he argues against theseparation of body from mind, or of humans fromnature (McDonald 2002). Shusterman (2000) drawsattention to the central importance of what he terms“somatic naturalism” in Dewey’s approach: in asimilar vein as Nietzsche, Dewey emphasizes thebodily or somatic basis of the aesthetic. Shustermanalso sees his views as compatible in this regard withthe work of Foucault and Merleau-Ponty, for both ofwhom the body was central. Central in his theory isthe concept of “aesthetic experience”, which has acommon-sense, intrinsic appeal, although some-what complex and difficult to pin down precisely.Such an experience has a beginning and an end:Dewey speaks of aesthetic experiences as “consum-matory experiences” which offer a deep apprecia-tion of the relatedness of things and persons:

Experience … is heightened vitality. Instead ofsignifying being shut up within one’s own pri-vate feelings and sensations, it signifies activeand alert commerce with the world; at its heightit signifies complete interpenetration of self andthe world of objects and events. Instead of sig-nifying surrender to caprice and disorder, it af-fords our sole demonstration of a stability that isnot stagnation but is rhythmic and developing.

(Dewey 1934, p. 23)

An aesthetic experience is moreover made up ofmany strands of sense and emotion. It follows thatit is not tenable to attempt to isolate single strandsof the aesthetic experience as a whole and assign tothem a specific role as carriers of aesthetic signifi-cance, as attempted, for instance, in the various “ob-jectivist” landscape assessment methods that havebeen devised. On the contrary, the aesthetic sensecannot be divorced from everyday life and practic-



211

es. In opposition to Kant, Dewey does not think thatjudgements of aesthetic beauty can or should be re-moved from all considerations of function and use.Instead he reasons that aesthetic value lies in:

satisfying the live creature in a more globalway, by serving a variety of ends, and aboveall by enhancing our immediate experiencewhich invigorates and vitalizes us, thus aidingour achievement of whatever further ends wepursue.

(Shusterman 2000, p. 9)

Dewey himself was mainly concerned with art,but subsequent authors have taken his ideas inseveral distinct directions. Particularly notewor-thy, in my judgement, is Berleant’s phenomeno-logically based “aesthetic of engagement” (Berle-ant 1992, 1993, 1997; see also Bourassa 1991;Brady 2003), which has strong affinities withDewey’s pragmatist aesthetics. Berleant insiststhat aesthetics be “participatory”, and strongly op-poses the separation between subject and object.The appreciator should be acutely aware of thecontext in which s/he interacts with the landscape,not in order to eliminate this context, but to high-light the value of deep and varied relations indi-viduals have with landscape and nature.

This is clearly a very different viewpoint fromthat of the emphasis on scientific knowledge foundin Carlson’s “natural environmental model”, out-lined above, and indeed from the objectivist lean-ings of much current landscape appreciation workin political circles. A consistent political corollaryof the aesthetic of engagement would be the crea-tion of a discursive space where multiple, nuancedand inevitably contextual stories and appreciationsof landscape are respected. Fenner, comparing the“detachment” position with that of “engagement”,is sure that the latter holds more political promise:

[I]f the point is to move aesthetic attenders torealise obligations on their part to defend andprotect natural areas and objects, then clearlythe greater call to action, or constraint of ac-tion, is found through the model of greater in-timacy, interest and relationship between na-ture and humans.

(Fenner 2003, p. 7)

Similar themes to those of Berleant are taken up byHeyd (2001), who makes compelling claims formulti-vocal story-telling. He believes there is a very

real danger of closing the doors for meaningful andethical politics of Nature, if the natural science mod-el of appreciating landscapes becomes entrenched:

[I]n many cases scientific knowledge may beneutral, or even harmful, to our aesthetic appre-ciation of nature, because it directs our atten-tion to the theoretical level and the generalcase, diverting us from the personal level andparticular case that we actually need to engage.

(Heyd 2001, p. 126)

Carroll (1993, p. 254) likewise stresses the capacityof Nature to provide moving emotional experiencesof considerable richness, ‘where our cognitions donot mobilize the far more formal and recondite sys-temic knowledge found in natural history and sci-ence’. Thus, we need ‘an account that focuses on ourcapacity to become emotionally moved by nature’(Heyd 2001, p. 125). It is not reasonable, however,to demand that all senses are equally engaged atonce (Leddy 2005). Without necessarily prioritizing“the scenic” in general terms, it is perfectly possibleto refer to a particular sense – the visual – in account-ing for why one is emotionally moved in a particularcontext.

So, the world needs more stories of Nature andlandscapes – stories which could and should havepolitical significance by virtue of their very exist-ence (cf. Cronon 1992); stories that have their rootsin a diversity of sensual experiences in nature: vis-ual, aural, olfactory, somatic. Geography is itself ariotous discipline of many and diverse narrative tra-ditions. Geographers should be well placed to tellsuch stories about the beauty of landscape, and, justas importantly, to argue for their being respected inthe halls of political and economic power.

I now want to get back to Kárahnjúkar in thenortheastern highlands of Iceland, and considersome of the stories which were told about naturalbeauty in the struggle between conservationistsand developers – stories in which the visual land-scape figured prominently.

Kárahnjúkar: visual stories and their effects

Solemn silence reigns in Iceland’s highest andmost rugged wilderness … the birds fly silent-ly across, they have nothing to seek there andso speed across the deserts. It could be saidthat nature is dead and fossilized, with neitheranimal nor plant life able to persist.

(Thoroddsen 1908, p. 165)

KARL BENEDIKTSSON


212

It is enough to look at photographs of theland which is to be submerged to feel pain inthe heart. This pain is not measurable, whichmay be irritating for the men with the meas-uring instruments. Without wanting to deni-grate measurements, not everything is meas-urable. We have neither been able to measurethe length of love nor the circumference ofGod.

(Jökulsdóttir 2002, p. 38)

Nearly one hundred years separate these two quo-tations. Basing his assessment on his extensive trav-els in the highlands of Iceland in the late nineteenthcentury,

°

orvaldur Thoroddsen

7 tells of a bleaklandscape – a “wilderness” of biblical propor-tions, with characteristics of terror, mystery andintrigue. Writer and environmental activist Elísa-bet Jökulsdóttir, writing in an Icelandic newspa-per during the height of the Kárahnjúkar contro-versy, also invokes religion, albeit in a very dif-ferent manner, in order to show the folly of one-dimensional engineering evaluation.

The photographs that moved Jökulsdóttir’sheart occupied quite a central role in the nationaldiscourse for a while. Some of the country’s mostprominent photographers joined in the debate onthe side of conservationists, telling visual storiesof a part of the highlands which very few Iceland-ers had actually visited. Particularly notable wasthe work of Jóhann Ísberg and Ragnar Axelsson.Outdoor enthusiast and nature photographer Ís-berg systematically photographed much of thearea in 2002. His photos were published on a spe-cial website (Iceland Nature Conservation Organ-isation 2002) and have been widely used by thoseattempting to mobilize resistance to the Kárahn-júkar project. He has now turned his attention toother parts of the highlands that are being consid-ered for hydropower development. Axelsson, anacclaimed photographer and photojournalistworking at Iceland’s largest newspaper Morgun-bla√i√, prepared a photo essay entitled Landi√sem hverfur (The land that will disappear). Theessay was published late in 2002 in three Sundayissues of the newspaper, the photos accompaniedby short captions highlighting both the landscapeand biological conditions, and what would be lostif the project went ahead. The photographs weresubsequently exhibited in Reykjavík’s majorshopping mall. They generated a lot of public in-terest and commentary, such as that by Jökulsdót-tir quoted above. Many people seemed to be gen-

uinely moved. Even the editor of the conservativenewspaper was moved as well, judging from edi-torials he wrote following the publication.

The pictures taken by both of these photogra-phers went beyond the conventional representa-tions of the picturesque and the sublime; of grandvistas, formidable canyons and waterfalls foundin all pictorial accounts of the highlands (Haf-steinsson 1994). While amply illustrating thelarge-scale land forms and the overall scenic char-acter of these landscapes, the photographers jux-taposed this with smaller and gentler features,their photos revealing a great variety of colours,natural forms and forms of animal and plant life.This surprised many viewers who had not had anyclose encounters with the area and assumed thatit was simply a grey and lifeless desert – a some-what similar assessment to that of Thoroddsen inthe early twentieth century, but without the mys-tery. Rock formations, rivers, birds and animalsappeared in these haunting photographs asglimpses of violated landscapes, the visual lan-guage silently exposing the shaky ideologicalpremises of the hydropower project. A philoso-pher and cultural critic observed that Axelsson’sphotos really were:

a reflection on a world that was – nature al-ready sentenced to death in the name of inter-ests which nobody is totally certain are thereal interests in the long run. … The decisionhas been made, but the sacrifice is neverthe-less obvious: a sacrifice of life. It thereforelooks as if those who make the decision –those who speak for rationality, those whospeak for industry and economy – have tomake a leap of faith in the end: carry out thesacrifice in the blindness of one who reallydoes not know what the future holds yet putstrust in one’s religious conviction.

(Ólafsson 2003, pp. 80–81)

One photograph, or rather one motif, proved par-ticularly capable of moving hearts and minds. Thiswas a very distinctive rock (Fig. 2), situated right onthe bank of the river, at the bottom of the future res-ervoir behind the dam at Kárahnjúkar. Located in aspot very seldom visited by human travellers, thisrock formation had been almost unknown previ-ously except to a few farmers from the valley be-low. Axelsson’s photo effectively highlighted theanthropomorphic features of the rock. The captionto the photo invoked a connection with folklore:


© The author 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 213

The mean-looking stone troll is one of nature’smany artworks in the area. The troll, who is alittle higher than a human, is on the westernbank of Jökulsá and looks towards the east.

(Axelsson 2002, pp. 10–11)

The photo became an instant hit. Conservationistsfound in this visually arresting figure a potent icon-ic symbol; a silent spokesperson who turned out tobe particularly effective in conveying the messagethat the Kárahnjúkar project was an affront againstNature and landscapes. The anthropomorphicstone figure who “stood guard” on the river bank in-vested the landscape with a moral purpose. Inter-estingly, following the initial publication of Axels-son’s photo,8 the figure was not generally presentedas a ‘mean-looking stone troll’ but was referred toin somewhat gentler terms as ‘Einbúinn vi√ Jöklu’(the hermit at river Jökla) or ‘Gljúfrabúinn mikli’(the great gorge dweller), hinting at mental forti-tude and invoking romantic sentiments, with strongreferences to the old visual category of the sublime.This was “romancing the stone” through photo-graphic means.

Now, it would be simple to dismiss these sen-timents as irrational emotion brought forth bysimple photographic propaganda techniques, and/or as yet another example of how landscape and itsrepresentations are never an “innocent” tabula ra-sa, but always a social construction (Hafsteinsson1994; Friday 1999). But this would be to miss thepoint somewhat. Indeed, a critical deconstructionis both possible and appropriate. The power of the

photographs was the result of plain scenic attrac-tiveness of the landscape seen through the eyes ofthe general Icelandic public, as well as of refer-ences to natural history, mythology and national-ism. A particular space was being produced andanimated through their conscious use. But what Iprecisely wanted to highlight was the power of astory of landscape told with visual means to bringabout deep emotional feeling (which is not to betaken lightly, even if that is all too often the case)and to activate moral sentiments of care. A storywhich, for a while, provided an effective andmuch-needed counterpoint to the reductionist sto-ries of engineering prowess and economic returns,that had dictated the terms of the debate aboutthese landscapes.

But back to the stone hermit by the river. Con-servationists and their opponents alike werestunned when Morgunbla√i√ told its readers inMay 2005 that he had ceased to stand his guard,felled by the river itself some time during the pre-vious winter. To many, this seemed highly symbol-ic of the defeat suffered by Iceland’s conservation-ist movement in its struggle against the corpora-tions and “power politicians” during the Kárahn-júkar conflict.

ConclusionWhat I have tried to argue in this paper is that, de-spite dubious past connotations with superficialityand lack of substance, critical geographers cannotafford to dismiss the importance of the “scenic” – of

Fig. 2. ‘The hermit by the river’. Source: Published with the permission of photographer Ragnar Axelsson.

KARL BENEDIKTSSON

© The author 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography214

sensing and interpreting Nature in visual ways –when thinking and writing about landscapes. Ratherthan shy away from the visual substance of land-scapes on grounds of a timid and ill-founded “sceno-phobia”, a geography of landscape is needed whichtakes visual values seriously, while simultaneouslyacknowledging the experiential complexity of land-scape appreciation. The “scenic” is an indispensablepart of a more comprehensive aesthetic of naturewhich, in accordance with the Deweyan approach,does involve all senses and indeed the body as awhole (cf. Lund 2005). Attendance to the visualdoes not necessarily have to lead down the well-trodden path of objectification and detachment. Onthe contrary, it is a necessary part of democratic andinclusive politics of landscape where there is roomfor various interpretive takes. This is not to argue fora new metanarrative about universal aesthetic valuesand how to account for them. On the contrary, I con-cur with Godlovich (1998, p. 184), when he states:

[t]here is no one final fitting affective or in-tellectual response, no definite hedonic orcognitive payoff, and with that no authorita-tive prescriptions from some master-race ofnature critics and connoisseurs to be fol-lowed obediently by some underclass of adu-latory bumpkins.

An “aesthetic of engagement” in the manner pro-posed by Berleant (1992, 1997) does acknowl-edge the emotional part of the aesthetic experi-ence, which is subjective through and through.But does this translate well into a politics of land-scape? Well, it could and should: ‘Emotions pro-vide us with a vital means of attunement… to a sit-uation. And they have a message. They are whatmatters’ (Thrift 1999, p. 314). Part of the projectof a politically astute landscape geography wouldalso be to reveal the subjective and emotional con-tent of the ostensibly “detached” sciences of en-gineering and economics, which usually providepolitical decision-makers with “objective” ration-ales for such large-scale landscape transforma-tions as that on which I have centred my discus-sion. One might here recall maverick economistMcCloskey (1990) who some time ago insistedthat economics was to a large extent a rhetoricalexercise, or story-telling.

On the subject of emotion, one well-worn andoften disparaged aesthetic concept is particularlyinteresting, evoking as it does complex emotionalresponses. This is the concept of the sublime,

which has a long pedigree in aesthetic discussion.Berleant has suggested that the sublime might af-ter all prove valuable for the aesthetics of engage-ment. As he puts it, its central idea is ‘the capacityof the natural world to act on so monumental ascale as to exceed our powers of framing and con-trol’ (Berleant 1992, p. 234), which may, if noth-ing else, provide a valuable counter-narrative totechnological hyperbole.

Cloke and Jones, taking due notice of the critiquesof Nature–culture dualism mentioned earlier in thepaper, have argued cogently for a renewed “ethicalmindfulness” that would be ‘both place-located andbound into wider relational matrices’ (Cloke andJones 2003, p. 212). They point to ‘the importance ofenchantment as a prompt to personal moral impuls-es’ (Cloke and Jones 2003, p. 211, emphasis added).Perhaps what is needed for a geography of landscapepolitics is not only an aesthetic of engagement but ofenchantment; an emotional state frequently and rath-er easily afforded by the sublime and grandiose, butalso by less spectacular landscapes, once one allowsoneself to dwell therein.

Bennett (2001, p. 5) explains that enchantmentinvolves:

the temporary suspension of chronologicaltime and bodily movement. To be enchant-ed… is to participate in a momentarily immo-bilizing encounter; it is to be transfixed, spell-bound. … Thoughts, but also limbs… arebrought to rest, even as the senses continue tooperate, indeed, in high gear. You notice newcolors, discern details previously ignored,hear extraordinary sounds, as familiar land-scapes of sense sharpen and intensify.

Sure, stories about enchanting landscapes are beingtold all the time. The trick is to foster a culture thatwill listen to and respect them. This may well proveto be a tall order, but I think geographers should tryto do their bit.

AcknowledgementsThe author gratefully acknowledges the contribu-tion of Edda Ruth Hlín Waage and °orvar√ur Ár-nason, who commented on this paper at variousstages. I have also benefited from conversationswith Gunhild Setten, Gunn•óra Ólafsdóttir andothers. Finally, two anonymous reviewers arethanked for their very valuable comments. All theusual caveats apply.



Karl BenediktssonDepartment of Geography and TourismUniversity of IcelandAskja, Sturlugata 7IS-101 Reykjavík, IcelandE-mail: [email protected]

Notes1. This statement was made by a rural inhabitant in east Ice-

land in June 2003 in an interview with Edda Ruth HlínWaage for a research project about the national parks andlocal community development (see Benediktsson and °or-var√ardóttir 2005; Benediktsson and Waage 2005).

2. In a recent book, Flyvbjerg et al. (2003) observe that infra-structural “megaprojects” seem to have their own peculiarlogic, which makes them irresistible to government. Al-though this is not the subject of this paper, the Kárahnjúkarproject obviously lends itself well to such analysis.

3. This is not to say that these landscapes have not been affect-ed by human actions. Most notably, centuries of grazinghave greatly changed the vegetation and contributed to se-vere soil erosion (cf. e.g. Arnalds 1987).

4. Cronon’s many and erudite writings in environmental histo-ry (e.g. Cronon 1983, 1991) are in fact clearly grounded inecological discourse. Interestingly, he has even beencharged with overlooking the metaphoric character of thatdiscourse: of conflating the concepts of ecology with Natureas such (Demeritt 1994).

5. I am using the term very literally here (‘the love of looking’)but not in its most common meaning, voyeurism, althoughsuch usage would, for example, chime well with Rose’s(1993) feminist critique of “the gaze” in geography.

6. The second phase of the master plan is in progress when thispaper is published. It will include a refinement and exten-sion of the work on landscape classification and evaluation.

7. Thoroddsen was a highly respected natural scientist and thefirst Icelander to study geography at university, in Copenha-gen in the 1870s. He was an inveterate traveller who surveyedand mapped much of Iceland’s interior for the first time.

8. Several others photographed the rock after this, but mostof them from the same angle, highlighting the same fea-tures.

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"Scenophobia", geography and the aesthetic politics of landscape

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