Juxtaposing a cultural reading of landscape with institutional boundaries: the case of the Masebe Nature Reserve, South Africa

The article explores theoretically the juxtaposition of local stories about landscape with institutional arrangements and exclusionary practices around a conservation area in South Africa. The Masebe Nature Reserve is used as a case study. The article argues that the institutional arrangements in which the nature reserve is currently positioned are too static, and consequently exclusionary, in their demarcation of boundaries. This stifles local communities’ sense of belonging to these landscapes. Hence, they strongly resent and feel alienated by the nature reserve. Their opposition and alienation often manifests in poaching. The empirical material is based on how local people living adjacent to the Masebe Nature Reserve have historically named and interpreted the area’s impressive sandstone mountains, in the process creating a sense of belonging. Juxtaposing this mostly tranquil cultural reading of the landscape to the institutional practices of boundary demarcation gives the analysis an immediate critical edge regarding issues of social justic

Dynamics of integrating landscape values in landscape character assessment: the hidden dominance of the objective outsider

While there has been extensive research undertaken on the values which insiders attribute to landscape there is a lack of literature which looks at how planning professionals handle landscape values. In this article, I develop a framework for questioning how landscape values are taken up in landscape planning, with the aim of conceptualising what landscape values mean in practice. This is undertaken through addressing landscape assessment, more specifically analysing how landscape character assessment (LCA) represents a critical point in the framing of landscape values. Through a synthesis of research on landscape values I examine the underlying logic of the LCA documents. I conclude that the values communicated in these assessments tend to be those of ‘objective' outside experts, predominantly based on aesthetics and focusing on the physicality of landscape. This I argue leads to a questioning the legitimacy of the LCA approach