61 LANDSCAPES OF MOTION AND EMOTIONS – Contributions by Katrín Anna Lund
61 LANDSCAPES OF MOTION AND EMOTIONS – Contributions by Katrín Anna Lund
From the beginning of my career my focus has been on landscape; the perception, the experience, the narrative and the making of landscapes. The concept of landscape is not the first thing that comes to people’s mind in relation to tourism studies but in my case, I brought this approach with me into the field through my training as an anthropologist as I will illustrate further below. Even though concept of landscape has not been prevalent for tourism scholars in analytical terms it is nevertheless all around. In fact, in studies about nature-based tourism, urban tourism, tourism planning and infrastructure, to mention some, landscape is most often at issue although the concept is not at forefront in the analysis but rather, it features as an innocent backdrop; a stage, something to be experienced or something to be arranged. In my view many of these studies would often engender more fruitful result if the concept of landscape would be brought to the front as it would generate deeper meaning that embraces the heterogenous and complex relationality that everyday life is composed from, and tourism is a part and parcel of. To illustrate my take on this I will start by discussing in brief my take on landscape as a vital agent, influenced by phenomenological approach before heading on to discussing how I came across the importance of examining landscape and its materialities whilst carrying out fieldwork for my Ph.D. project in Southern Spain and where it has brought me too.
Vital landscapes
Conventionally we tend to think about landscapes as a backdrop to human activities. We think about landscape as a scenery that surrounds people, combination of forms and colours in which people are located. My emphasis, on the other hand brings landscape to the front as a vital agent. Inspired by phenomenological approach, my work demonstrates how landscapes are everything else but backdrop and neither are they simply a stage upon which we act. Landscapes are motional and cease to be disciplined (Bender 2002, Massey 2006, Lund 2010), and as Bender has stated, they are never innocent, rather vibrant, hence vital. As such landscapes are more-than-human agents that we, as human beings, are entangled with in constant interaction. Landscapes affect us at the same time as we continuously affect them through our activities and performances, sometimes unconsciously as we move through them in our everyday lives but also when we attempt to control them, play with them (Sheller and Urry, 2004) and act upon them. This I why landscapes are important when it comes to tourism studies, yet the discipline’s researchers have mostly tended to ignore their vitality, emphasising how they are either designed or impacted upon, not acknowledging their agency.
It can be said the one of the key elements in tourism studies are destinations that are performed in various ways by multiplicity of actors, tourists, locals, s