Cultural Landscapes
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King, Anthony D. "The
Politics of Vision," in Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, Understanding Ordinary
Landscapes, 1997, 134-144.
Anthony King asserts
that concepts of vision, culture, and landscape are interrelated and interactive.
Global studies that chart the processes of the world as a single place, showing
the global organization of economic and political power in a capitalist culture
that overrides national and ethnic identity, is posited as the means to chart
universality and difference, both historically and empirically. King addresses
the privileges that vision has received, and he acknowledges contemporary criticism
of its empiricist and positivistic nature in the field of anthropology.
One example of this 'vision' is the processes of Orientalism involved in construction
of visually "other" cultures through visual images. Culture is viewed
as the result of current political and economic conditions. In turn, these
conditions are affected by culture itself, resulting in an interactive relationship.
Here, King analyzes several current conditions in the capitalist world economy,
including the effects of rapid acceleration in international labor migration,
demographic displacement and cultural and ethnic identity, and the boundaries
of cultural production. Finally, landscape is acknowledged as a "unit
of analysis larger than, and beyond, the boundaries of the state," being the
crucial component, along with vision and culture (already acknowledged), in
a proper analysis of globalization -- the current reality of the world. [H.
Nasstrom Evans.]