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The theory of sociotopography has attempted to model the complex relationship between the topographic environment in which humans live, sociocultural factors, and language. This paper takes some first steps towards extending this to landscape and place. It argues that the human environment comprises terrain (raw landforms) and topography (terrain plus human modification), and that humans construct conceptual representations of this environment in the form of landscape (a mental representation of topography, its chunking into features, and the categorization of those features); place (regions or features of landscape assigned an individual identity); and geocentric relations (the representation of spatial relationships anchored in landscape). The paper presents five case studies exemplifying the role of sociocultural factors in mediating between topography and conceptualization: where affordances and characteristics of the topography motivate landscape categorization and notions of place; where social beliefs and practices are mapped on to motivating aspects of topography, underpinning categorization of landscape and place; where sociocultural structure is mapped onto topography without apparent motivation from within the topography; and where conceptual representations appear to respond to the environment directly via perception without sociocultural mediation. The paper presents a tentative expanded sociotopographic model including conceptual representations of landscape, place and geocentric relations, and a more fine-grained model of environment as terrain and topography.
sociocultural practices and structures, language, ethnophysiography, place, sociotopography, terrain, landscape
sociocultural practices and structures, language, ethnophysiography, place, sociotopography, terrain, landscape
citations This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 1 | |
popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
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