Abstract

It is paradoxical that, while there is a generally increasing recognition of the scienti c and cultural importance of conserving ‘semi-natural’ pastoral environments, and the negative e ects of their widespread abandonment and overgrowth, British ‘rewilding’ activists and environmental managers are e ectively advocating policies that will have a similar negative e ect on the character of the semi-natural pastoral commons of places like England’s iconic Lake District. This situation, it will be argued, owes to the mindset of ‘virtual enclosure’ whereby the character of landscape is pre-de ned by an assumed, behind-the-scenes, Euclidean/Ptolemaic spatial logic that leads to the comprehension of nature as a bounded scenic property; an (e)state of nature with its own economic system and services. This mindset is antithetical to both the practice of pastoral commoning and much contemporary natural science and conservation policy. It ts well, however, with older teleological ideas of nature, as well as modern ideas of privatisation, private property and management control.

Published in

Landscape Research
2016, Volume: 41, number: 2, pages: 253-264

SLU Authors

• Olwig, Kenneth

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Human Geography
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Environmental Sciences


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2015.1135320

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/77688