Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective : Essays on the Meanings of Some Places in the Past

Landscapes of material are also landscapes of meaning: praxis is itself symbolic, and all landscapes are symbolic in practice. Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective draws together fifteen historical geographers to examine landscapes as messages to be decoded, and as signs to be deciphered. The range of examples is wide in terms of period, from the medieval to the modern, and of place, embracing the United States, Canada, Palestine, Israel, South Africa, India, Singapore, France and Germany. Each essay addresses a specific problem, but collectively they are principally concerned with the ideologies of religion and of politics, of church and state, and their historical impress upon landscapes.