Valuing the 'More-Than-Visual' in Highland Scotland
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University of Dundee DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The roles of cultural values in landscape management valuing the 'more-than-visual' in Highland Scotland Holden, Amy Elizabeth Award date: 2016 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. 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Oct. 2021 0 The roles of cultural values in landscape management: valuing the ‘more-than-visual’ in Highland Scotland Amy Elizabeth Holden PhD Thesis University of Dundee February 2016 1 [Page intentionally left blank] 1 Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................. 5 List of boxes and tables ................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 8 Declaration ..................................................................................................................... 10 Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 11 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 12 1.1 Positioning the research conceptually: ‘landscape’, ‘culture’ and ‘hybridity’ . 13 1.2 Positioning the research in landscape policy: culture, values and participation ...........................................................................................................................15 1.2.1 Why Scotland? Landscape, land and policy in Scotland .......................... 17 1.3 Introducing the case study areas: Applecross peninsula and Assynt ............... 20 1.3.1 Applecross/A’ Chomraich ......................................................................... 24 1.3.2 Assynt/Assainte ......................................................................................... 27 1.4 Positioning the research methodologically ....................................................... 31 1.5 Research aims and objectives ........................................................................... 32 1.6 Thesis structure ................................................................................................. 33 2 Literature Review.................................................................................................. 36 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 36 2.2 The picturesque and the landscape gaze ........................................................... 37 2.2.1 The picturesque: landscape as a way of seeing ......................................... 38 2.2.2 The Scottish landscape gaze: romance and nostalgia ............................... 41 2.2.3 Critiquing the Picturesque: identity, exclusion and boundaries ................ 45 2.3 Embodied and experiential encounters with landscape .................................... 47 2.3.1 Being ‘more-than-visual’: an embodied approach to landscape ............... 48 2.3.2 Emotional landscapes: memories, feelings and attachments .................... 49 2.4 Nature/Culture: From separation to hybridity .................................................. 51 2.4.1 Nature/culture: an ontological dichotomy or hybrid concepts? ................ 51 2.4.2 Spatialization of nature ............................................................................. 55 2.5 Summary and key themes ................................................................................. 57 3 Landscape and culture in Scotland: a policy perspective ................................. 59 3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 59 3.2 The policy perspective: the European Landscape Convention and the Scottish Land Use Strategy ....................................................................................................... 59 3.2.1 The European Landscape Convention: a focus on landscapes .................. 60 3.2.2 The Land Use Strategy: a focus on the land as resource........................... 62 3.3 Policy into practice: Landscape Character Assessment and landscape designation .................................................................................................................. 66 3.3.1 Characterising the landscape ..................................................................... 67 2 3.3.2 Landscape designation and the protected areas approach ......................... 69 3.4 Whose landscape? Stakeholders, values and participation .............................. 75 3.4.1 Who are the stakeholders and what are their ‘values’? ............................. 75 3.4.2 Governance, participation and community engagement ........................... 80 3.4.3 Land ownership in Scotland ...................................................................... 83 3.5 Summary, key challenges and moving towards a research methodology ........ 85 4 Research design and methods .............................................................................. 87 4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 87 4.2 Developing a research design using ‘more-than-visual’ methods .................... 88 4.2.1 Walking interviews ................................................................................... 91 4.2.2 Arts-based methods ................................................................................... 92 4.2.3 Key informant interviews .......................................................................... 93 4.2.4 Feedback events ........................................................................................ 94 4.3 Selecting a case study approach and the case study areas ................................ 95 4.4 Participant recruitment ..................................................................................... 99 4.5 Walking interviews: performing and narrating the landscape ........................ 101 4.5.1 ‘Doing’ the walking method ................................................................... 102 4.5.2 The sociability of walking ....................................................................... 105 4.5.3 Walking as an embodied performance .................................................... 108 4.6 Arts-based methods: the process and being ‘more-than-visual’ .................... 111 4.6.1 ‘Doing’ the arts-based methods .............................................................. 111 4.6.2 Art as product or process......................................................................... 113 4.6.3 Moving beyond representation ................................................................ 114 4.7 Analysis Framework ....................................................................................... 116 4.7.1 How the analysis was undertaken ........................................................... 118 4.7.2 Writing strategy ....................................................................................... 119 4.8 A participatory ethics: challenges and potential ............................................. 121 4.8.1 An independent researcher? .................................................................... 121 4.8.2 Confidentiality in small communities ..................................................... 124 4.9 Thinking reflexively about the research process ............................................ 126 4.9.1 Positionality ............................................................................................ 127 4.9.2 Reflecting emotionally on the research process ...................................... 129 4.9.3 What does this discussion contribute? .................................................... 133 4.10 Conclusions .................................................................................................... 134 5 Seeing and narrating landscapes: towards a more-than-visual concept ........ 137 5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 137 5.2 ‘Is this landscape?’ ......................................................................................... 138 5.3 ‘I spend a lot of my time just looking’: visualising the material landscape ... 142 5.3.1 ‘I just think you’ve got everything here’: landscapes of variety ............. 143 5.3.2 Describing appearances: light, colours and layers .................................. 148 5.3.3 Landscape, seascape or coastalscape: what is the ‘landscape’? ............. 151 3 5.3.4 Openness, freedom and space: more-than-visual and emotional narratives of the material landscape