England's 'Lake District' and the 'North Atlantic Archipelago': A body of managed land contra a body politic

• Main Author: Kenneth R. Olwig
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01426397.2018.1503240

According to the European Landscape Convention landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors. The meaning of landscape depends on how people perceive and, in turn, interpret a landscape, which, in a circular way, effects again how people perceive the landscape. Perception thereby involves both the sensing of landscape and the constituting of the landscape that one senses. This article counterpoises the perception of landscape as a body of land generated by the enclosure of common land and the perception generated through the use of unenclosed common land by a body of people, and the concomitantly differing perceptions of the nature of the relation between the natural and the human. It will make the distinction drawing upon the case of England’s ‘Lake District’ as perceived in the context of a suggested North Atlantic archipelago.