Global Challenges in the 21st Century Management of Cultural and Environmental Heritage Landscapes

Dear Colleagues,

Cultural and environmental heritage landscapes are tricky things. They are the spatial representations of every-day life, palimpsests of historical and cultural signs and legacies, embedded in contemporary occupied, living and working landscapes. They represent the intersection of the geosphere and the sociosphere.

Embedded in a global ethos, they still tend to reflect Western, colonial and modernist thinking. They represent conceptions of heritage and landscape from the North, imposed upon the South. They represent Western thinking about geoscience, social science and cultural studies, and thus are the articulation of Western establishment concepts and practices of time, place and space imposed upon Traditional and Indigenous societies.

As such, they present fascinating and tantalising challenges for landscape, natural resource and cultural heritage managers and planners.

This Special Issue calls for articles that explore the dilemmas inherent in the management of cultural and environmental heritage landscapes in the 21st century. The Special Issue calls for articles reflecting on the ways in which contemporary management – broadly defined – of cultural landscapes can simultaneously respect the cultural and environmental values implicit in the landscape and the people who live within that landscape, without reverting to 21st century colonialisation, displacement and continuing repression of the residents and custodians of these landscapes.

The Special Issue welcomes case studies, critical analyses and reflective essays that illustrate or explore these issues. Articles based in any of the disciplinary contexts – geoscience, social science and cultural studies – are welcomed. Articles that explore North-South tensions and Traditional or Indigenous perspectives on cultural and environmental heritage landscape management are especially welcomed.

Articles are invited from across the globe, in particular from majority world, the South, Traditional or Indigenous authors.

Prof. Dr. Bill Boyd
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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