HEIDEGGER, LATOUR AND THE REIFICATION OF THINGS : THE INVERSION AND SPATIAL ENCLOSURE OF THE SUBSTANTIVE LANDSCAPE OF THINGS – THE LAKE DISTRICT CASE

• “Thing” has undergone reification, and it has done so together with its linguistic “conjoined twin” – “landscape”. Whereasthingonce was the name for meetings where people assembled to treat commonthings that matter, things, in the modern sense, have become physical objects (things as matter). Likewise, landscape's meaning has been reified from being a polity constituted by commonthingmeetings treating substantivethings that matter, to becoming a spatial assemblage of physicalthings as matter. To fully grasp the contemporary meaning of both things and landscape it is necessary to understand the way in which those meanings are the intertwined outcome of a process of revolutionary inversion, or turning inside–out, by which the meaning of things has been spatialized, enclosed, individualized, privatized, scaled and reified as a constituent of the mental and social landscape of modernity. The potentiality of the concept of thing lies, it will be argued, in its continued containment of older, subaltern meanings that can work to empower an alternative “non-modern” understanding of things along the lines of, but distinct from, Bruno Latour's notion ofDingpolitik, which will be termed “thingpolitics” here. This argument is analysed in relation to Martin Heidegger's concept of the “thing”, and exemplified by the mandate of the European Landscape Convention, and the modern planning usage of Landscape Character Assessment and Ecosystem Services, as applied to England's Lake District.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Filosofi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Philosophy (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Idé- och lärdomshistoria (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- History of Ideas (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Övrig annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Other Humanities not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

LANTBRUKSVETENSKAPER  -- Annan lantbruksvetenskap -- Övrig annan lantbruksvetenskap (hsv//swe)

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES  -- Other Agricultural Sciences -- Other Agricultural Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

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