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Citation: Harrington, Barbara (2016) Walking, landscape and visual culture: how walkers engage with and conceive of the landscapes in which they walk. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University. This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/29627/ Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html Walking, landscape and visual culture: how walkers engage with and conceive of the landscapes in which they walk. Barbara Elaine Harrington PhD June 2016 1 ABSTRACT Walking, landscape and visual culture: how walkers engage with and conceive of the landscapes in which they walk. Walking in the countryside is an increasingly popular pursuit in Britain. Much previous research within the social sciences has tended to concentrate on the physiological benefits, barriers or facilitators to walking. This thesis explores particular walkers’ complex motivations for and modes of walking, their individual engagements with certain types of (northern) landscapes and the significance of specific kinds of visual images, traditions and wider practices of looking. Constructions and discourses of landscape are considered in relation to the persistence of certain ideas and aesthetic traditions as well as and in relation to current concerns about individual health and social well-being. The research is multi-disciplinary and engages with studies of art history and visual culture, cultural geography, anthropology and sociology. Visual studies research methods are used to explore individual interpretations and experiences of landscapes, and how the circulation and consumption of particular kinds of images might inform attitudes to walks and walking. Walkers’ views and attitudes have been investigated using an ethnographic approach. In-depth qualitative interviews (including photo elicitation) have been undertaken with walkers who regularly walked five or more miles in the countryside either in organised groups, on their own or with friends and family, in order to capture how walking is perceived, felt, and made sense of. A grounded theory approach has been used for the interviews, building on theories that emerged from systematic comparative analysis, and were grounded in the fieldwork. Overall the thesis observes a marked persistence of and some striking similarities between particular ideas, cultural traditions and interpretations of walking in and ways of looking at types of countryside from the Romantic period to the present day. 2 Acknowledgements Firstly, I thank all my supervisors. A big thank you to Professor Roy Boyne of Durham University who first had faith in the research as an interesting idea and encouraged me to go with it. Thanks to Professor Ian Greener, second supervisor at Durham University, whose sole but useful contribution was to bark Hammersley at me one day in the corridor. Thanks to Professor Ysanne Holt and Mark Cieslik of Northumbria University for taking me on and seeing the research through to the end. Their comments and suggestions have been very useful. Many thanks to Professor Al Roulstone of Leeds University (who was at Northumbria for a time) who helped enormously with the shaping of the social science part of the research, provided many useful insights and gave me lots of encouragement. Thanks are also due to Dr John Warren who first asked me what I wanted to do a PhD on and when I said walking and visual culture, suggested not only would this be possible but that Roy Boyne would be a good person to talk to. Many thanks to friends especially Paul Braidford, Caron Walker, Elsie Allnut, Katherine Scott, Robbie Barker, Arthur Harris, Helen Wilding, Beatrice Turner and Nick Chapman, Peter and Angela Kellet who have stuck with me through thick and thin, at times when I wondered whether I would have any friends left by the end of this, distracting me with fun things to do and good company, and giving me lots of advice and support. Thanks are also due to good colleagues and friends at work, particularly in this last year. Thank you for keeping me grounded, and being there to talk through all the difficulties. So thanks to Se Kwang Kwang, Ethna Parker, Lesley Geddes, Natalie Forster, Alison McInnes, Jane Wilkinson, Monique L’Hussier, Therese Lewis, Ann Day, Mick Hill, Glenda Cook, Sue Regan, Julia Charlton, Jill Lea and Lara Pizycki who were there in the bad times offering comfort, advice, chocolate and tea. Many thanks to all the interviewees who gave so generously of their time. The time they gave and their many expressions of interest on how I was doing on the “course” not only provided data but also a much needed incentive to complete the PhD. The second time I very nearly walked away from the PhD, the only thing that made me stick 3 with it was the realisation that you had given your time and effort and that you were owed something for this. Thank you to the Ramblers for allowing me to contact members and supporting the research. Thanks to all the family who encouraged me even when at times it must have seemed like complete madness to attempt to continue. So many thanks to Lesley, Roger, Kate, Jo and Robin Clark, and Steve, Trish, Emily and Sam Harrington. Thank you for being patient, being there to talk things through, providing shelter and comfort when I first started out on this, providing me with emotional and practical help when I needed it, and sharing looking after Dad. Without all that, I wouldn’t have been able to get this far. Last but certainly not least I want to thank Sam, the cat, for the part he has played in this. There was the ever present need to put food in our bellies and have a roof over our head that meant I kept applying for jobs and getting employment throughout this long process, and continued with the PhD in the hope it might lead to a better job. He also played a big part in deciding to continue at a very difficult time. My brother was facing major heart surgery in a week’s time (thanks for staying alive, Steve!), I had just had a very bad supervision where all I had been working on for the previous 2 months was rubbish – and Sam had gone missing. Sam had just recovered from being knocked down by a car and breaking his pelvis needing 8 weeks nursing back to health. Fearing the worst, life seemed very grim. Spending any more time on the PhD especially seemed utterly pointless. Fortunately, Sam at that point decided to walk back in and I thought I might as well try to carry on. 4 5 Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 - Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 12 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 12 2.2 Visualising the landscape ................................................................................................. 13 2.3 Practices of dwelling in the landscape ............................................................................. 19 2.4 Non-representational literature on landscape theory ..................................................... 25 2.5 Recent academic treatments of walking .......................................................................... 29 2.6 New writing on walking .................................................................................................... 34 2.7 Therapeutic Landscapes .................................................................................................. 36 2.8 Northern Landscapes ....................................................................................................... 40 2.9 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 42 Chapter 3 – Methods .................................................................................................................. 45 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 45 3.2 Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 47 3.2.1 Exploring the Visual Context ..................................................................................... 47 3.2.2 Interviewing walkers ................................................................................................. 48 3.3 Methods ........................................................................................................................... 50 3.3.1 Analysis of contextual visual culture ........................................................................

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