WDM Lecture: Landscape and the New Mobility Paradigm

02 March 17:30 – 18. 30 (CET) – Zoom
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Landscape and the New Mobility Paradigm
by Margherita Cisani (Università degli Studi di Padova)

Respondent: Theano S. Terkenli (University of the Aegean)

Over the last two decades, the social sciences have been characterized by a so called “Mobility Turn”, as many scholars dedicated their reflections on the multiple ways in which people, places, objects and ideas move (or are impeded from moving) in space and time. But how has this ‘New Mobility Paradigm’ (Sheller & Urry, 2006) affected landscape studies? And how can Landscape Studies contribute to the analysis of contemporary and historic mobilities? The proposed seminar aims to offer some answers to this issue, revolving around the different dimensions of the relationship between landscape and movement (Cisani, 2020).

On a theoretical level, mobilizing landscape means infusing fluidity and dynamism into a concept often considered static and motionless. Considering more than representational approaches (Ingold, 2002) as well as the political stances (Mitchell 2008; Cresswell, 2010), landscape become a powerful concept, vital and dynamic (Farinelli, 1991; Wylie, 2007), which bridges among various disciplines, enabling and enriching a complex understanding of many contemporary processes that relate to mobility, from commuting to tourism, from everyday mobility practices to long distance migration and dislocation processes related to economics, climate change, conflicts and humanitarian crisis.

On a more practical and project-oriented level, landscape and mobility are two strictly interrelated factors on which social well-being and environmental quality depend. Understanding their reciprocal interactions, such as in the ways in which people perceive landscapes through movement, is a key factor for just and responsible policies of landscape care, management and transformation.

This issues are at the core of the strong effort that the Department of Geographical, Historical Sciences and the Ancient World of the University of Padua is undergoing, in terms of didactics, research and public engagement, carried out in particular with the new Master Degree in Landscape Studies as well as with the Centre for Advanced Studies in Mobility and the Humanities.

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Bibliography

• Cisani, M., Paesaggi e mobilità. Strumenti per le geografie del quotidiano (FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2020)
• Cresswell, T., “Towards a politics of mobility”, Environment and planning D: society and space, 28(1), (2010), 17-31.
• Farinelli, F., “L’arguzia del paesaggio”, Casabella, 55 (1991), 575-576.
• Mitchell, D. (2008). “New axioms for reading the landscape: paying attention to political economy and social justice”, in J. Wescoat and D. Johnson (eds) Political economies of landscape change (Springer, Dordrecht, 2008), 29-15.
• Ingold, T., The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill (Routledge, London, 2002)
• Sheller, M. and Urry, J., “The New Mobilities Paradigm”, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 38(2), (2006), 207–226.
• Wylie, J. Landscape (Routledge, London, 2007)

Margherita Cisani is a post-doc geographer in the ‘Landscapes of Human Mobilities’ project at the MoHu Centre of the University of Padova and lecturer of Tourism Geography at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She obtained her PhD in Historical, Geographical, Anthropological Studies, with a thesis on the inter-relationships between everyday landscapes and collective practices of mobility, namely walking groups. Her research interests span across landscape and mobilities studies, with particular attention to their reciprocal influences, in everyday landscapes and non-motorized practices of mobility, in tourism landscapes as well as in education and public engagement.

Theano S. Terkenli | Professor and founding member of the first Department of Geography in Greece, University of the Aegean, since 1994. Faculty at the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Tourism Planning, Administration and Policy, (University of the Aegean), since 1999, and at the International Interdepartmental M.Sc. in Sustainable Tourism Development: Cultural Heritage, Environment, Society (Harokopeion University, University of the Aegean, and Université-Paris I- Panthéon Sorbonne), since 2018.
Ph.D. in Geography, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, USA (1986-1993); M.Sc. in Landscape Architecture, University of Wisconsin—Madison, USA (1983-1986). Research, publishing and teaching specialty and interests in Cultural Geography, Landscape Geography and Critical Perspectives to Tourism.