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- Convenors:
-
Emma Cook
(Hokkaido University)
Andrea De Antoni (Kyoto University)
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- Stream:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Piso 1, Sala 1.10
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
Preserving open or natural space such as wildlife habitats and spaces where children can play is a very important issue nowadays in urban areas. Thus, we have been designing landscape even in urban areas, based on vernacular design. We would like to discuss urban nature, design and participation.
Paper long abstract:
Preserving open or natural space such as wildlife habitats and spaces where children can play is a very important issue nowadays in urban areas. Additionally, "Children's Play" is an important experience in learning about the structure of nature whilst "Environmental Education" has been afforded much greater importance in primary and secondary school education. Forman (1995) discussed 'habitat fragmentation' and how it occurs naturally as well as being a result of human activity.
A lack of outdoor space to play in, fear of violence in public spaces, the longer working hours of parents and the artificial nature of most playgrounds, have helped create the present-day situation in which young children have gradually lost contact with nature. For these reasons, we have been designing landscape even in urban areas, based on vernacular design (ecology, regional culture and so on) for the past decade. Also the aim of these projects is to create an area for preserving biodiversity, children's play and ecological education that can simultaneously form part of an ecological network in an urban area. Additionally, we would like to discuss how to plan and manage the existing open spaces from a landscape planner's point of view, focusing on the methods used to plan it; the planning process as a whole; and how the children and local residents participated in this process.
It is thus vital that present‐day planners and landscape designers consider "landscape" as an "Omniscape" (Numata 1996; Arakawa, 1999; Ito et al. 2016) in which it is much more important to think of landscape planning as a "learnscape", embracing not only the joy of seeing, but stimulating a more holistic way of using body and senses for learning. Thus it is very important to monitor how children and teachers are using urban greenery, then landscape designers/ planners can flexibly adopt the plan for the place according to their needs. Consequently, we would like to continue these projects as long as possible and raise children with the experience of nature in their childhood, which will create more diverse cultures and biodiversity even in urban areas.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I show that by avoiding the objectifying approach to the Japanese furusato, based on the invention of traditions, inspiring moral values can be found in the way people actually live their sentient lives in their rural communities - for them, their furusato is not an 'invention'.
Paper long abstract:
The landscape and the places we inhabit play an important role in human consciousness and relations, being more than a simple physical substrate where Humans apply their reason. Japanese society presents us with a rich landscape culture where we can look for new ways to think about the relation between humans and their landscapes. Concepts like furusato, genfūkei, or satoyama, with their strong nostalgic and/or symbolic content, show us, heuristically, the importance of rural landscape in Japan. In the past, these concepts were explored by several authors in the social sciences through the lens of the 'invention of traditions', by stressing the use, by the government, of those concepts to inspire nationalistic and nostalgic feelings in the people (Robertson 1988; Ben-Ari 1992). Without denying this approach, but avoiding it, this paper will take the sole existence of these notions as a trigger for an honest intercultural dialogue with a Japanese rural community, on the themes of landscape, the human being as a landscape inhabitant and their continuous and mutual relationship.
To support both my ethical and ethnographic position in this matter, I will draw inspiration both from Nigel Thrift's 'non-representational theory' (1996; 2008) and Tim Ingold's 'education by attention' (2002; 2014) and (i) avoid a dualistic and representative approach that treats landscape as an independent object of analysis; (ii) engage in a moral understanding of the lives of those who inhabit the mentioned community and the ways the landscape manifests itself in their daily life, avoiding purely symbolic, historic or religious considerations.
This approach allowed me to show that by avoiding historical and causal explanations for the strong affection that Japanese people feel for the furusato - while going to the field open to an 'education by attention' - inspiring values, both on human-landscape relations and work ethics, can be found. The truth is that: to think about landscape, we must first turn to human beings and their tasks.