WORLD VIEWS
AND CULTURAL
LANDSCAPE
Humanities

Presented to
Mehdi Ghafouri

By
Emi Rizvanolli

Vanier College
November 17th, 2013
Intro: Many people talk about culture as a reason of their authenticity. We often ask ourselves why we are who we are, what makes us what we are today, why we act like we act and so on. But have we ever considered that our surrounding, the places where we live, the people we are surrounded with makes us the person that we are today? We often say ‘’everyone is different and has its own personality’’, which is true, but what made us who we are is what we were surrounded with our whole life. The same concept goes to a population; they are who they are because of their history, their way of thinking and their surroundings. That is what we have learned in this class. The landscapes have their own meaning and their history makes them culturally important to us because a land is mean less if nothing important happen in it.
Development
First of all, before understanding the role of cultural landscapes, we need to understand some concept related to it and how they are linked one another.
What is culture? Culture is the characteristics of a group of people that are defined by their language, religion, cuisine, social habits, etc…
What is space? In a material point of view, space is defined as a physical reality, reinforcing relations of products. When we see space with the economic view, we see its functional unit which is determined by its economy. (1)
What is territory? In a material point of view, territory has substance and physical structures that are linked to cultural, historical, and political analysis that varies between the societies.(1)
Basically, when a specific culture and a territory are linked, we say that it is a cultural space. This brings us to define the term of Cultural landscape.
A cultural landscape has cultural and social values. There are two important types of values, tangible which is what is actually seen with the viewer’s eyes and there is intangible that is in fact a value, for example religion, because it is a sort of belief that is strongly present on a landscape. Cultural landscape is used to describe places where a distinct human relationship with the land has been created. A landscape is defined as a visible comprises features of an area of land where you can find human elements and landforms, such as villages, island and urban landscapes. A cultural landscape is also define in our course pack, by the author Andrew David Growsky, as an evolution of human society and settlement over time with the influence of the physical constraint and opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces coming from outside and inside. (3)
Who decides?
In order to define a landscape as a ‘’Cultural Landscape’’ many aspects are taken in consideration because not any land can be considered as cultural. That’s why the World Heritage Convention was created in 1972, to identify, to protect, to conserve, to present and to transmit the cultural landscapes. In 1992, it became the first international legal instrument to recognize and protect cultural landscapes. (3) They basically have to take many aspects in consideration related to the landscape in question to be able to classify the land as a cultural landscape.
In 1992, the Committee, represented by 21 countries and that receives help from UNESCO Secretariat, created three categories of World Heritage cultural landscapes. First, there are the landscapes designed and created intentionally by man. Second, there are the organically evolved landscapes (that had history on it) separated in two subcategories; the relict form, where the evolution of the landscape came to an end and the continuing form, where there is an active social role in the contemporary society. Last but not least, the associative (historical) cultural landscapes are the ones justify by value of powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations of natural elements such as the Old Montreal or the Rice Terraces of Philippines Cordilleras. (3)
Also, the landscapes are judged and selected under specific criteria’s made up by the Committee called ‘’The World Heritage criteria’’ based on values, outstanding things, natural beauty… whatever has a strong cultural value.
Worldviews;
Another topic talked in our course is worldviews, even though we didn’t elaborated much on this word, it is important to understand its meaning in our context. As we talked about cultural landscapes, trying to define them as clearly as possible we have to understand now what worldviews means. Regarding the free Dictionary by Farlex, two definitions are given. One being: ``The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.’’ And the other one being: ‘’A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.’’ Where both are good definition, since when we think about how these definitions of worldviews are linked to cultural landscape, we understand the reasons why we qualify them as cultural landscapes. Everyone has a different type of view of a landscape, even though it’s the same one for everyone, people will look at it with a different view since form them it might have another meaning. Everything depends on the way the person looks at it and what values they put into this cultural landscape.
Fieldtrips, (where a public square is defined by buildings (usually 4 sides) and public space is where everyone can go (side walk)).
This semester we did 4 fieldtrips around Montreal. The purpose of it was to make us understand the importance of our surrounding. But according to me, the first one that we did was representing best these criteria’s. One of the reasons is because this landscape is the base of Montreal history. Important things happened on that landscape over 300 years ago and it’s still an important cultural landscape nowadays. First of all, since the rapids Lachine where after that piece of the land, Champlain had to stop his travel at Pointe-à-Callière and at this specific place Montreal’s history started, they constructed the city there since it was near the water. As time passed, important events took place (such as the Chief meeting in 1701), where Place Royale is, it was an old customhouse; a market (the public space), there was also military activities such as punishment hanging but they destroyed it and created a ``Maison des Marins``. Nowadays, in that area you only find a simple unusable square, the museum Pointe-à-Callière and the old port. Basically through time, this square lost its initial use, but because of all the history behind it it makes it a perfect cultural landscape.
Another important landscape is the Vaudreuil’s mansion, which was a public market on place Jacques-Cartier, the heart of Montreal commercial. There you could also find the Colonel Nelson Statue representing the celebration of the victory of the English people, another big problem that took place at that time in Montreal. As we know, back then the religion was very important, and the Église Bonsecour existed where a statue with her open hand was welcoming and blessing the boats coming in.
Then we had the trip to Emilie-Gamelin square, which has an important historical value through time passes. She was handing out soup for poor people and orphans on a daily basis. But then the square was given to a city to be a park. Again in our days, once in a year at that place they’re making the soup tradition. Also at that place important events happen, such as the student red square movement and as a physical aspect we saw through years that they added a lot of buildings surrounding the cultural landscape.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, we can say that every single thing is linked to another. By defining each element we understand what makes it important to another thing. Culture is what defines an ethnic population, then a country, and obviously a person. Landscapes are what we live in and what we rub every day.

Bibliographie 1) Space and Territory ( powerpoint) 2) Gorski, Andrew David. ‘The Environmental Aesthetic Appreciation of Cultural Landscapes’. Master’s diss., University of Arizona, 2007, 12-31. (The World Heritage Convention)