Chapter 15 Where Settlements and the Landscape Merge: Towards an Integrated Approach to the Spatial Dimension of Social Relations

Chapter 15 Where Settlements and the Landscape Merge: Towards an Integrated Approach to the Spatial Dimension of Social Relations T HOMAS W IDLOK The separation between ‘settlement’ and ‘landscape’ is deeply entrenched in European thought and also in the worldview of many agrarian societies. In anthropology this is reflected in the distinct development of an anthropology of landscape on the one hand and an anthropology of built forms. The comparative use of permeability maps is introduced in this chapter as a promising route towards cross-fertilisation between these two hitherto separate bodies of theory and data. Permeability, the ways in which space allows or prevents humans from passing through places, is particularly relevant for our understanding of the fuzzy zone where settlements and the landscape merge. More generally, permeability maps help us to explore a more dynamic view of the relationship between spatial and social relations because they allow us to consider what one may call the ‘social agency of space’. The case material presented in this chapter was collected in the course of field research with ≠ Akhoe Hai//om ‘San’ or ‘Bushmen’ and their neighbours in northern Namibia but an explicit comparative perspective is taken that leads beyond this region. 407 M. Bollig, O. Bubenzer (eds.), African Landscapes, doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-78682-7_15, © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 408 Chapter 15 15.1. INTRODUCTION The anthropology of landscape and the anthropology of built forms have largely developed independently of each other. Today there are theoretical challenges and methodological possibilities to create links between these two fields. The aim of this chapter is to explore some of these links. In terms of theory the established divide between settlement patterns and landscape features has to be considered to be the product of a particular cultural tradition which does not necessarily provide the most adequate framework for comparative analysis. An integrated framework that would cover all relationships between people and their spatial environment, irrespective of the old divide, would be able to provide cross-fertilisation between two hitherto separate bodies of theory and data. It may also provide a better understanding of those phenomena that are located at the blurred zone where settlements and the landscape merge. In terms of methodology the use of permeability maps is suggested as one way of collecting and of systematising data in this integrated anthropology of space. An emphasis on the permeability of landscapes and settlements directs our attention away from isolated spatial features and towards the position of these features in the larger spatial structures that humans inhabit. In comparative research this allows us to detect patterns where there seems to be only a plethora of diverse spatial forms and it prevents us from assuming similarities arising from spatial forms which may only be of a superficial nature. Moreover, this methodology may lead us towards a more dynamic understanding of settlements and landscapes, not only as a static surface onto which humans direct their cultural imagination, but as an important part of the changing social world that is generated and altered in the process of human practice. Space, in a relational sense, is not only a passive vessel designed by human agents but it may be considered a social agent in itself inasmuch as the humans living within it are also ‘patients’ in relation to it (see Gell, 1998) . This is the case, I maintain, not only for settlements, constituting ‘man’s largest artefact’, but also for the landscape beyond the built environment. In this contribution I use the term ‘settlement’ to refer to the built environment, ‘landscape’ to refer to the larger space in which settlements are embedded, and ‘space’ more generally as covering both, settlements and landscapes. 15.2. RECONCILING THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SETTLEMENTS WITH THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE The anthropological record provides two main bodies of material relating to the position of humans in space, namely the anthropology of settlement patterns and the anthropology of landscape. Research into settlement patterns was particularly strong in the days of structural functionalism and continues to inform Towards an Integrated Approach to the Spatial Dimension 409 science-oriented branches of anthropological research, including archaeology (see, e.g., Kent, 1993) . Apart from more specialised research on spatial layouts, drawing ground plans of settlements has become a standard tool of ethnographic descriptions. The anthropology of landscape is a more recent development, at least under this label, and has particularly attracted humanistic and postmodern approaches following an upsurge of studies from history, especially art history (see, e.g., Hirsch & O’Hanlon, 1995) . Applied and ecological anthropology have also discovered the importance of landscape as a field of research (see Brody, 2001) . It is therefore fair to say that both fields of research are now well established in anthropology. As in anthropological enquiry more generally, research into settlement patterns and landscape has broadened the known spectrum of how humans conceive and use space. The prime objective has been a better understanding of similarities and differences in settlement layouts and in the perception of the environment. An example for identifying patterns of similarity in diversity is Henrietta Moore’s study of Marakwet settlement layouts. She was able to show how the diversity of ground plans can be explained on the basis of the develop- mental cycle of Marakwet households, in particular on the grounds of changes in the lifecycle of Marakwet household heads (Moore, 1996) . An example to identify persisting difference in a shared process of land rights negotiations is given by Robert Layton’s analysis of Alawa landscape representations in northern Australia (Layton, 1997) . He argues that Alawa and Westerners may fruitfully discuss some aspects of the environment (e.g., the occurrence of wild game) but that sacred sites, as features in Alawa representations of their environment, cannot completely be translated into Western legal representations because of differences in the underlying causalities (Layton, 1997) . The premise that ancestral beings have created the land made Alawa representations of the landscape ‘sensitive to features to which Western representations are blind’ (Layton, 1997) . In other words, both the anthropology of settlement layouts and the anthropology of landscape seem to be well suited for the basic anthropological projects of raising awareness about difference and patterns of similarity. In fact, given the fruitfulness of analyses in these two subfields of anthropology it is somewhat surprising that the separation of the two fields continues to be taken for granted. In this chapter I argue that research has reached a point that allows us to pursue methods and theories that are no longer limited to either the analysis of settlements or that of the wider landscape. There are two main reasons for this endeavour. First, an analysis that can account for a wide range of phenomena is to be preferred against two separate theories that meet, as it were, at the doorstep to a homestead or a house but do not allow us to cross the threshold. Second, the separation into the ‘domestic’ space of settlement and the ‘greater’ space of landscape is not a universal one so that a separate analysis of the two spaces privileges one particular folk model that may not be adequate for comparative research. 410 Chapter 15 15.2.1. Hunter-Gatherers and Their Environment Hunter-gatherer studies have provided an arena for fundamental discussions about the relationship between humans and their environment. Two extreme positions are to be found: an adaptationist and a culturalist paradigm. Especially in the early literature the absence of elaborate settlements (in the archaeological record and in the ethnographic present) led to the image of hunter-gatherers as adapting to their environment but not as actively changing it . This gave rise to a view that considered foragers to be either completely encompassed by nature or as indeed being a rather insignificant part of it. Their flexible settlements and their movements in space seemed to be without any cultural logic and simply responses to environmental needs. Nevertheless, the ingeniousness and inventiveness of the diversity of forager adaptations has been emphasised and ever more complex simulations of these practices in models are being developed in this strand of research. At the other end of the spectrum a completely different approach has emerged based on the growing recognition that foragers, too, change the world they live in (e.g., through the use of fire) and that their movement in space follows social practices (e.g., conflict resolution) and cultural ideas (including religious ideas) and not only environmental pressures (see Figure 15.1). The fact that many foragers recognise personal agency not only in humans, but also in other living beings had for a long time been discussed under the label ‘animism’ but has more recently received new attention. In this strand of research the cultural meanings that are attached to features of the environment are being emphasised instead of its ‘physical’ properties (resource availability, climate, etc.). Most recently anthropologists with a background in phenomenology and ecological psychology have sought to once again include the physical characteristics, such Figure 15.1. ≠Akhoe Hai//om hunter-gatherers in northern Namibia moving camp (See also Color Plates) Towards an Integrated Approach to the Spatial Dimension 411 as the inclination of the land, but in very different terms than those discussed in the adaptationist paradigm. The separation into ‘settlement’ (read: civilisation) and ‘landscape’ (read: wilderness) is deeply entrenched in European thought but is also in the worldview of other agrarian societies. West African farmers, for instance, clearly cultivate this distinction and use it as an identity marker that distinguishes them from nomadic- pastoralist people in the area (see Dafinger, 2004) .

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