Landscape science A Russian geographical (original) (raw)
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Landscape science: A Russian geographical tradition
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2007
The greatest and highest charm of natural history-the kernel of natural philosophy [consists in the] existence of an eternal genetic and ever orderly connection between the vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms on the one hand, and man, his life and even his spiritual world on the other.
Landscape And Ethnos Revisited
My 1987dissertation " On Landscape and Ethnos: An assessment of Lev N. Gumilev's theories " was marginal to mainstream 'Western Geography' and its academic discourse. Whereas, amidst an emerging Glasnost late Soviet discourse ushered in a re-emergence of several intellectual strains that encompassed aspects of Gumilev's work. Perhaps most contradictory was the Russian national ethnic identity—a proto Slavophil movement—also incorporating resurgent Orthodox religious thought and practice (about which more will be discussed later in this intervention) versus a revised Eurasianism that viewed Russia as a mix of European and Asian ethnicities. While current criticism of Gumilev incorporates a contradictions in his ethnic and geopolitical theories that synthesizes both Slavic Russian and Eurasian identities within biophysical & biosphere phenomena he labels as " passionarity ". In this intervention I will also address this issue and resolution of its seeming contradictions. Today, discussion, analysis and interpretations of Gumilev's wide ranging theories are legion, both within post-Soviet Russian and international discourses. What I adhere to is the Vernadsky based biosphere physical geography with acknowledgement of Anuchin's revised approach to a unified geography that merges evolutionary human agency into physical geography. Prior to my discovery and interest in Gumilev's theories, as a geographer, I was influenced by a sense of the factuality of humans as a species part of the planet's ecological evolution. But following an evolutionary trend in western (American) ecosystem and sociobiology, I began to see more of the broad diversified field of geography as unitarian rather than bifurcated into human and physical. American academic geography is rooted in 19 th century German theory and its universalization including its close philosophical and scientific connection with Russian academia. As a Berkeley student under the influence of Carl Sauer, I became familiar with the history and theory of geographical discourses, and a century of controversy over environmental determinism and its seemingly reasonable resolution in Possibilism. That approach does not rule out environmental influences on human agency or the reverse, but rather seeks to identify and understand mutual influences. Yet increasingly the two draw apart with the greater expansion of scientific research into convergent neurobiological processes and a unitary evolution of lifeforms within a biosphere that is more or less a product of cosmic and heliosphere influences on evolutionary earth processes. As the reader will discover, this preamble to a larger work points to the overwhelming and rationally incontrovertible evidence produced in scientific exploration and data analysis. 24 December 2017 PREFACE: So many reviews and critiques of L. N. Gumiev's theories and diverse works have originated from a social determinist perspective, both from Russian, English, and other language interventions, theses and publications. But that is the intellectual norm, especially from outside of a materialist ethos, be it dialectical materialist or generic scientific discourse. From having run across Gumilev's work on Eurasian historical geography and included a brief comment in my doctoral work, my mentor, P. L. Wagner suggested that I read deeper into Gumilev. Circulation of my initial work drew responses from senior academics urging me to shift from my theoretical and empirical work on the diffusion across Eurasia to focus on Gumilev who was known only to a small circle of scholars in areas of Soviet Geography and intellectual history. My earliest reading of Gumilev evolved with great assistance and encouragement from Wagner, Ted Shabad, and David Hooson into a successfully defended doctoral thesis, which was picked up by Soviet academicians with parts translated into Russian and published online from an Omsk
As part of a growing engagement with science studies, political ecologists have worked to theorize environmental science. They have situated science by juxtaposing it with other types of knowledge and have attended not only to science's application but also to its production and circulation. Despite these efforts, science is portrayed in most political ecology as brought to the field site already finished, rather than constructed there through embodied practices designed for use in live scientific debates. I argue that scientists doing science transform the sites in which they work, that political ecologists have not adequately theorized field-based examples of this process, and that help can be found in the geography of science. To this end, I present a historical geography of the Lysenkoist and field-based heredity science that informed a program of forest modification in Soviet Central Asia in the mid-twentieth century. This program, which used horticultural techniques to construct forest-orchards (lesosady) in the walnut–fruit forests of Soviet Kirgizia, entered the landscape into scientific controversies, with ramifications for human–forest interactions in Kyrgyzstan today. Field sciences, like Lysenkoist heredity, have geographies that immerse them in and transform the world. By telling them, political ecologists can better illuminate where and how the doing of science has shaped encounters between people and their environments. Como parte de su creciente compromiso con estudios de la ciencia, los ecólogos políticos se han empeñado en teorizar la ciencia ambiental. Ellos han posicionado la ciencia al lado de otros tipos de conocimiento y le han prestado atención no solo a sus aplicaciones sino también a su producción y circulación. Pese a estos esfuerzos, en la mayor parte de la ecología política la ciencia se visualiza como si se la trajera al sitio del campo ya terminado, más que construida allí por medio de prácticas incorporadas que han sido diseñadas para usarlas en debates científicos en vivo. Arguyo que los científicos que hacen ciencia transforman los sitios donde ellos laboran, que los ecólogos políticos no han teorizado adecuadamente ejemplos de campo de este proceso y que se puede encontrar ayuda en la geografía de la ciencia. Para este propósito, presento una geografía histórica de la ciencia de la herencia lysenkoista basada en campo, la cual sustentó un programa de modificación del bosque en el Asia Central soviética de mediados del siglo XX. Tal programa, que utilizó técnicas hortícolas para crear huertas forestales (lesosady) en los bosques de nueces de la Kirguizia soviética, incorporó el paisaje en las controversias científicas, con ramificaciones para interacciones hombre-bosque en el actual Kirguistán. Las ciencias del campo, como la de la herencia lysenkoista, tienen geografías que las sumergen en el mundo y lo transforman. Al revelar su naturaleza, los ecólogos políticos pueden iluminar mejor dónde y cómo el hacer ciencia ha dado forma a los encuentros entre la gente y sus entornos. Palabras clave: Asia Central, geografía de la ciencia, injertar, ecología política, estudios de la ciencia.
Pskov region studies journal, 2020
The paper describes the historical background and evolutionary trends of the concept of cultural landscape in the world cultural geography. The worldwide leading national scientific schools of the cultural landscape research are compared; the German, French and Anglo-Saxon (British and American) scientific geographical national traditions are chosen as examples for studies. The cultural turn in the world human geography and its consequences for rethinking cultural landscape phenomenon are elucidated; the interdisciplinary linkages between cultural geography, other geographical and social sciences as well as humanities are analyzed. The impact of the contemporary cultural turn in human geography upon the cultural-landscape studies in Russia is evaluated and discussed.
An outline of landscape science in Poland
The conception of landscape as a subject of study and a category useful in imparting geographic and regional knowledge appeared at the turn of the 19th century, in the works of several most distinguished geographers of the time (W. Pol, A. Rehman, E. Romer and S. Pawłowski among others), and took on a particularly interesting shape as «picturesque geography» postulated by W. Nałkowski. After years, the above conceptions, which formed a basis for regional research and syntheses, only survived in school geography, where landscape description was used to teach regional geography.
Ландшафт як геоекосистема [Landscape as geoecosystem]
Геоекосистема є геопросторовою екологічною моделлю ландшафту як реального тотального географічного комплексу, який охоплює всі природні та антропічні утворення поблизу земної поверхні. Залежно від обраного системоформувального компонента (абіотичного, біотичного чи соціоекономічного) можна виділити різні типи комплементарних геоекосистем, кожну з яких вивчає певна геоекологічна (ландшафтознавча) дисципліна. Концепція системного образу ландшафту у вигляді комплементарних геоекосистем покликана сприяти гармонізації підходів у ландшафтних дослідженнях.
Russian Cultural Landscape: Theoretical and Practical Implications of the Concept
Russian Peasant Studies, 2021
The author argues that the precise final definitions (recognized and universal) are often less important for scientists than the key features of the studied phenomena. Therefore, the author suggests to combine different concepts in order to get a working and temporary definition of the cultural landscape. The article presents this term as non-evaluative, mainly typological, non-taxonomic and 'real', which allows to consider its borders with the natural landscape as mobile, conventional and relative due to the fact that both landscapes are affected by human activities. The author describes factors and trends in the development of the cultural landscape, and regionalization as a tool to study and preserve it. The Russian cultural landscape is primarily determined by the interaction of the state with nature due to the obvious shortage of self-organized local communities. The author identifies endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external) factors in the (self)-development of the cultural landscape, which can be either stimulating or hindering. As the main features of the Russian cultural landscape the author considers its historically developed rhythm and ability to self-recover, which differ by country and region. Centuries of the military-colonial despotism and unprecedented centralization of the supreme power have turned the Russian space into a totalitarian landscape with the hypertrophied radial connections and the suppressed peripheral connections, which is embodied in the administrative-territorial division and determined the extraordinary social-economic, geographical, ecological and territorial polarization. The Russian landscape has a very specific feature-the so-called 'inner periphery', or hinterland (relative and ubiquitous): these are territories located closer to the country's cores than to its outskirts but with all negative features of the outskirts. This inner periphery plays an important role in the preservation and development of the natural landscape as a potential basis of the territorial ecological framework, but to ensure such a role we need a comprehensive cultural-historical regionalization.
A case for historical and landscape approaches to geography
FUTY Journal of the Environment, 2010
Historical and Landscape approaches to the study of geography are issues that have loomed large in methodological discussions in geography. This paper evaluates and discusses the arguments about historical and landscape geography. It examines the methodological problems in historical and landscape geography, and attempted to distinguish between historical and landscape geography on one hand and their relationship with the regional approach. The paper concludes by making a case for Historical and Landscape approaches to geographical synthesis, in order to place the geographical endeavour at the heart of environmental studies.