Environment and Landscapes
If there is a geographical concept that ties together researchers from across the incredible breadth of our field (from examinations of the origins and transformation of landforms, to research on climate-society relations, to studies of the history, politics, and meaning of place), it might just be landscape – or if not that, then environment.
This research cluster brings together researchers interested in both, and often especially in their intersection. We seek to understand the historical developments, on-going transformations and meanings of landscapes here in Sweden and around the world. We are also especially focusing on their implications in light of ecological degradation and climate change, which unequally confront us now and will increasingly do so in the near future. Current research in this area includes (and continues to exceed), studies of:
- Shifting relations of property in transforming landscapes
- The historically shifting roles of land (property), labour, and capital in producing agribusiness – and other – landscapes
- Embodied knowledge in landscape studies
- Landscape and/as alienation
- Origins of pre-glacial, glacial, and periglacial landscapes (and what they teach us about coming environmental transformations)
- New climate regimes and their implications for Nordic and other landscapes
- Environmental and economic implications of intensified resource use and the construction of new markets for semi-renewable resources
- The historical development and ongoing redevelopment of industrial landscapes in Sweden (and beyond)
- New developments in environmental education
- Processes of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession
- Theories and practices of environmental justice
- The political economy of nature, including the construction of markets and climate change governance mechanisms
- The politics of park production, the emergence of the labour movement, and the wider politics of public space in late 19th and early 20th century Sweden
- Far-right climate politics and understandings of nature/political ecologies of the far right
- The memory landscapes of diaspora and migration, as conceptualized through contemporary art
- The politics of "Invasive alien species"
The work among members of the Environment and Landscapes group is as methodologically diverse as it is topically wide-ranging. What ties us together is a shared commitment to understanding the dynamics that construct, transform, and sometimes destroy landscapes and environments – rural, urban, and “natural,” and at all scales.