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«...moving the attention from products to the processes that identify places...»
 

Ah, how is everything terribly interweaved! So it seems obvious to me that the approach of human societies to landscape is a direct consequence of how the relationship between product and process is experienced. Product and process also mentioned in Chris Van Leeuwen's Theory of Relationships, but here we have to introduce a fundamental distinction: he meant pattern and process as the dual elements that generate a landscape from the point of view of biological ecosystems. That is: the pattern of a beach is generated by the process of the continuous shattering of the waves on the shoreline, capisc'? The process is a bit like the philosophical category of Becoming. The pattern (i.e. the variety of different landscapes/ecosystems) is the product of one or more processes, and often it is also part of the process itself, as a transitory product of perennial processes: we see a pond (the pattern) which is an intermediate product between the swamp from which it has progressively formed, and the scrub into which it will progressively transform when it becomes completely buried.

 

Now, from a strictly political and anthropological point of view, I can only agree with the sentence just quoted (whose author is Riccardo Ruggeri, whom I don't know). The problem is: that the first sentence, the initial one I quoted, comes from a conference on the landscape. I just showed you an evidence-based theory (more of an approach than a theory, in my opinion) that links natural products and processes. The further step to take is short: to ascertain the very evident link that exists between: natural processes and products, social processes and products, landscape processes and products. We could trace a triangle at whose vertices these phenomena reside, in relationships of reciprocal and more or less unbalanced interdependence.
And therefore the shift of attention from the product to the process is fine to tell, but let us remember that man does not live on products alone (semi-quote.) And therefore more awareness is needed regarding this type of "holistic" relationships.

 

The Landscape is both the synthesis and the exegesis of what happens —and it has happened in a long time— in incredibly different fields.
It is important to bear this in mind when we talk about these areas separately, as many ecologists seem to forget their embarrassing political ties to the economic system that devastates the very environment that they declare they want to protect...from their attics uptown!

 

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