Kenneth Olwig

Last updated

Kenneth Robert Olwig (born 1946) is an American-born landscape geographer, specializing in the study of the Scandinavian landscape. He is best known for advocating a "substantive" understanding landscape, one that incorporates legal and other lived significances of landscape, rather than viewing it in a more purely aesthetic way. His writings include The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Nature and Justice (2019), Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic (2002) and Nature's Ideological Landscape (1984)

Contents

Olwig is a professor of landscape architecture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp, Sweden, where he joined the faculty in 2002. [1] He commutes to the university from Copenhagen, Denmark. [2] He is married to anthropologist Karen Fog Olwig. [3]

Early life and education

Though she died at the time of my birth, my grandmother's Swedish presence was still felt in the meatballs my mother made. However, when asked I preferred to say I was Danish, like my mother's father, to avoid problems with the Norwegians. It didn't hurt, of course, that the name Olwig is Norwegian in origin.
—Kenneth Olwig [4]

Olwig grew up in a Scandinavian neighborhood of Staten Island, New York. [2] [5] His father was sports editor for the Staten Island Advance . [6]

Olwig left high school early to attend Shimer College, which for more than 50 years has offered an early entrance program for talented high schoolers ready to enter college early. [7] He did a junior year abroad in Denmark, which he has credited with initiating him into "the core issues of Nordic identity", [8] and graduated in 1967. [1]

For graduate school, Olwig attended the University of Minnesota, where he completed a master's degree in Scandinavian language, literature, history and geography in 1971. Olwig has characterized the subject of his master's degree as "Scandinavian philology," [2] and philological inquiry has remained a staple of his writing.

For his doctorate, Olwig transferred to the geography department, where his advisor was Yi-Fu Tuan. [3] He completed his doctorate in 1977; [3] his dissertation was titled "The morphology of a symbolic landscape: a geosophical case study of the transformation of Denmark's Jutland heaths circa 1750-1950." [9]

Academic and research career

From 1979 to 1983, Olwig worked in the department of landscape at the Danish Pedagogical University (DPU), now part of Aarhus University. From 1986 on, he has been formally on the faculty of the DPU, with periodic lengthy leaves of absence. [1]

In 1984, Olwig published the influential Nature's Ideological Landscape, with an introduction by Yi-Fu Tuan. The book, an abridged version of Olwig's dissertation, [1] was likened by environmental historian Alix Cooper to earlier works in environmental history by William Cronon and Roderick Nash. [10]

From 1993 to 1996, Olwig worked at the Man and Nature Humanities Research Center at Odense University in Denmark, as a senior research fellow. [3] He later also taught at the University of Trondheim in Norway. [3]

In 1996, Olwig published an influential paper on "Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape", using his favored philological form of inquiry. [11] In it, Olwig used the roots of the Germanic cognates of "landscape" to push back against the more aesthetic understanding of the term that had come to dominate in the literature. [12] Observing that “a landskab was not just a region, it was a nexus of law and cultural identity”, [13] Olwig argued that for contemporary geographers it is similarly “not enough to study landscape as a scenic text.” [14] Drawing especially on the legal significance of landscape, Olwig pressed for a "substantive" approach to landscape, which he defined in this way:

By substantive, I mean "real rather than apparent" and "belonging to the substance of a thing," but also the legal sense of "creating and defining rights and duties" (Merriam-Webster 1961: substantive). In this context, I am also concerned with landscape as a "real" phenomenon in the sense that the "real" relates "to things in law," especially "fixed, permanent, or immovable things (lands tenements)" (Merriam-Webster 1961: real). [15]

The paper produced a lively debate between Olwig and backers of more aesthetic flavors of cultural geography, such as Denis Cosgrove. [16] Olwig's arguments have become a key part of the discourse on landscape within cultural geography, and are engaged with in many reviews of this field. [12] [17] [18]

Olwig's second book, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2002; like its predecessor, it bore an introduction by Olwig's mentor Yi-Fu Tuan. The book was reviewed in at least six different journals, covering fields from cultural geography to environmental history. [19] It was assessed by Denis Cosgrove as "by far the most sustained conceptual interrogation of landscape to appear in the past two decades." [20] Cosgrove also, however, challenged the excessively smooth intellectual transitions in the sweeping work, pointedly likening the book to "an English Georgian estate landscape: easy progression, gentle transitions, rounded hills and vales without sudden breaks or sharp disruptions." [21]

The cover design for Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, which adapts part of the original cover of Hobbes' Leviathan, drew particular attention for highlighting the little-noticed role of landscape in that historically famous image. [20]

In January 2002, Olwig joined the faculty of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, teaching landscape theory and history, and commuting to Sweden from his home in Copenhagen. [3] Olwig became a director of the Landscape Research Group in 2005. [2] Since 2006, he has served as editor of several edited volumes on landscape geography, including Justice, Power and the Political Landscape (2007).

Books

Works cited

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scandinavia</span> Subregion of Northern Europe

Scandinavia is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. Scandinavia most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer more narrowly to the Scandinavian Peninsula. In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and other similarities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scandinavian Peninsula</span> Land mass in Northern Europe

The Scandinavian Peninsula is a peninsula located in Northern Europe, which roughly comprises the mainlands of Sweden, Norway and the northwestern area of Finland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic Council</span> Body for cooperation of Nordic countries

The Nordic Council is the official body for formal inter-parliamentary Nordic cooperation among the Nordic countries. Formed in 1952, it has 87 representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden as well as from the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland. The representatives are members of parliament in their respective countries or areas and are elected by those parliaments. The Council holds ordinary sessions each year in October/November and usually one extra session per year with a specific theme. The council's official languages are Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, though it uses only the mutually intelligible Scandinavian languages—Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish—as its working languages. These three comprise the first language of around 80% of the region's population and are learned as a second or foreign language by the remaining 20%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Germanic languages</span> Languages of the Nordic countries

The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish scholars and people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Landscape</span> Visible features of a land area

A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal. A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings, and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scanian dialect</span> Dialect of southern Swedish

Scanian is a dialect of Swedish spoken in the province of Scania in southern Sweden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic Bronze Age</span> Archaeological period in Northern Europe

The Nordic Bronze Age is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fennoscandia</span> Geographical peninsula in Europe

Fennoscandia, or the Fennoscandian Peninsula, is the geographical peninsula in Europe which includes the Scandinavian and Kola peninsulas, mainland Finland, and Karelia. Administratively, this roughly encompasses the mainlands of Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as Murmansk Oblast, much of the Republic of Karelia, and parts of northern Leningrad Oblast in Russia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scandinavism</span> Ideology that supports cooperation between the Scandinavian countries and people

Scandinavism, also called Scandinavianism or pan-Scandinavianism, is an ideology that supports various degrees of cooperation among the Scandinavian countries. Scandinavism comprises the literary, linguistic and cultural movement that focuses on promoting a shared Scandinavian past, a shared cultural heritage, a common Scandinavian mythology and a common language or dialect continuum, and which led to the formation of joint periodicals and societies in support of Scandinavian literature and languages. Nordism expands the scope to include Iceland and Finland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural geography</span> Subfield within human geography

Cultural geography is a subfield within human geography. Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo, cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early 20th century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop. Rather than studying pre-determined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes. This was led by the "father of cultural geography" Carl O. Sauer of the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers.

Nordic and Scandinavian Americans are Americans of Scandinavian and/or Nordic ancestry, including Danish Americans, Faroese Americans, Finnish Americans, Greenlandic Americans, Icelandic Americans, Norwegian Americans, and Swedish Americans. Also included are persons who reported 'Scandinavian' ancestry on their census. According to 2021 census estimates, there are approximately 9,365,489 people of Scandinavian ancestry in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denis Cosgrove</span> British cultural geographer and professor

Denis Edmund Cosgrove was a British cultural geographer. He taught at Oxford Polytechnic, Loughborough University, Royal Holloway, University of London, where he rose to become dean of the graduate school, and finally at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1998, he received the prestigious Back Award from the Royal Geographical Society.

Don Mitchell is Professor of Cultural Geography at Uppsala University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography in the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. From an academic household in California, he is a graduate of San Diego State University (1987), Pennsylvania State University (1989) and received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1992, working with Neil Smith. He taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder before joining Syracuse in the late 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scania</span> Province in Sweden

Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne, is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skåne County, created in 1997. Like the other former provinces of Sweden, Scania still features in colloquial speech and in cultural references, and can therefore not be regarded as an archaic concept. Within Scania there are 33 municipalities that are autonomous within the Skåne Regional Council. Scania's largest city, Malmö, is the third-largest city in Sweden, as well as the fifth-largest in Scandinavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic countries</span> Geographical and cultural region

The Nordic countries are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland; and the autonomous region of Åland.

Nordic art is the art made in the Nordic countries: Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and associated territories. Scandinavian art refers to a subset of Nordic art and is art specific for the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Germanic peoples</span> Linguistic group

North Germanic peoples, commonly called Scandinavians, Nordic peoples and in a medieval context Norsemen, were a Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North Germanic languages of today.

Michelle Facos is an American writer and art historian.

Veronica della Dora is an Italian cultural geographer. She is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she is Director of the Social, Cultural & Historical Geography Group and Co-Director of the Centre for GeoHumanities.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Kenneth Olwig. "Kenneth R. Olwig: Calendar 2012, Research Projects, CV, Publications" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Kenneth Olwig. "Kenneth Olwig". Landscape Research Group. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Kenneth Olwig". Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Archived from the original on 2013-06-15. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  4. ↑ Olwig 2003, pp. 211–212.
  5. ↑ Olwig 2003, p. 211.
  6. ↑ "Rod Such". Shimer College. Archived from the original on 2008-06-12. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  7. ↑ "Early Entrant Program". Shimer College. Archived from the original on 2013-06-02. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  8. ↑ Olwig 2003, p. 212.
  9. ↑ The morphology of a symbolic landscape: a geosophical case study of the transformation of Denmark's Jutland heaths circa 1750-1950. OCLC   4079419 – via Worldcat.
  10. ↑ Alix Cooper (2003). "Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain's Renaissance to America's New World. By Kenneth Olwig". Environmental History: 691–692. doi:10.2307/3985903. JSTOR   3985903.
  11. ↑ Olwig 1996.
  12. 1 2 David Matless (2003). "Landscape: Introduction". In Kay Anderson; et al. (eds.). Handbook of Cultural Geography. SAGE Publishing. p. 230. ISBN   076196925X.
  13. ↑ Olwig 1996, p. 633.
  14. ↑ Olwig 1996, p. 645.
  15. ↑ Olwig 1996, p. 646n1.
  16. ↑ Denis Cosgrove (1998). Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 27. ISBN   0299155145.
  17. ↑ Sarah Whatmore; Steve Hinchliffe (2010). "Ecological Landscapes". In Dan Hicks; Mary C. Beaudry (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. OUP Oxford. p. 441. ISBN   978-0199218714.
  18. ↑ John Wylie (2011). "Landscape". In John A. Agnew & David N. Livingstone (ed.). The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge. pp. 309–310. ISBN   978-1446209547.
  19. ↑ Elliott, John (September 2003). "Landscape Nature and the Body Politic: From Britain's Renaissance to America's New World (Book)". Southeastern Naturalist. 2 (3): 474.
  20. 1 2 Cosgrove 2003, p. 136.
  21. ↑ Cosgrove 2003, p. 137.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.