Being amenable to many interpretations, cultural landscapes, though, revolving around the nature-culture relationship. Jones (2003) traces back the first use of the term cultural landscapes to Friedrich Ratzel which was used in the 1890s, defining as “landscape modified by human activity” (p. 29). The term was then brought to light by Carl O. Sauer in 1925. Sauer explored cultural landscapes in the sense of the “combination of natural and man-made elements that comprises, at any given time, the essential character of a place” and “fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result.” The term did more than gaining momentum in academia, the World Heritage Committee adopted the concept of cultural landscapes and guidelines concerning cultural landscapes protection in 1992 stating that:

“[Cultural landscapes] are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal” (UNESCO & World Heritage Convention, 2021, p. 22).

The Guidelines put forth three main categories of cultural landscapes, including (1) landscape designed and created intentionally by man, (2) organically evolved landscape, and (3) associative cultural landscape (UNESCO & World Heritage Convention, 2021, p. 86). The definition of cultural landscapes provided by the international legal body would not render itself reductive even undermine its capacity of carrying various connotations, but allows researchers to better navigate throughout the research on cultural landscapes. Brown and Goetcheus (2023) explores school of thoughts, of which many of them conceptualize cultural landscapes as process instead static thing (pp. 17-31). Jones (2003) refers to the heated debate regarding fluid interpretations of the term cultural landscapes carry, among geographers (pp. 21-51). Though in scientific contexts one must seek precise and definitive terms, the merit of unambiguous term is that it sets scholars free from a fixated way of thinking. Carl Sauer was seen as a definitive figure in cultural geography field, however, his legacy in cultural landscapes have been undergone a wave of reevaluation by Peter Jackson, Don Mitchell and later emerging geographers. (Oakes & Price, 2008, p. 97). Given that Sauer emphasized on culture representation in the nature environment instead foregrounded the two-way dynamic process in nature-culture relationship. Which is to say, Sauer regarded “culture, rather than environment, was the dynamic, causal agent of change” (Oakes & Price, 2008, p. 97). Nonetheless, there were champions of Sauer’s ideology, Marie Price and Martin Lewis, who defended his legacy.

Nonetheless, the divergent interpretations dwell on the usage of the term is barely the only issue revolving around cultural landscapes, the binary tension pervasive in the components when it comes to cultural landscapes. The agents in this nature-culture symbiotic relationship, which mutually shape and shaped by each other can be considered moving along on the give and take spectrum. To grasp the slippery meaning of cultural landscapes, one must be able to examine the relationship as a whole instead treat the agents as silos no matter at a macro or granular level. Harboring the nature-culture dualism would prevent us from capturing the whole picture of the integrated thinking on cultural landscape. Byrne et al. (2013) suggest that “[t]here has been a growing consciousness of the extent to which culture-nature dualism is foundational to Western modernity and thus seminal to the West’s encounter with the non-Western world” (p. 1). Again, the way we think of nature and cultural heritage are separated is affected by the hegemony of Western values, World Heritage criteria. Besides, “[r]ecognition of a cultural place as a World Heritage site can intentionally or unintentionally marginalize certain groups” as in the sense of it legitimizes the ideological of the majority ethnic. In addition, debate about cultural values in Asia context revolves around simply listing main temple in World Heritage list instead taking the cultural connections between the temple and the surround countryside as they are also cultural significance. There are amounts of cultural landscapes that are not officially protected but by communities in the Asia-Pacific region though these community-based cultural landscapes have been seen as having inherently national and regional values rather than universal values (Taylor & Lennon, 2011, p. 550).

Circling back to Byrne et al., their point on separateness regarding nature-culture relationship, indicating that society (culture) dominated this hierarchical relationship. In addition, one of the shortcomings comes with the UNESCO’s adopted definitions of cultural landscapes is that the guidance on documenting cultural landscapes implicates the separation between cultural and natural heritage, which goes against with the worldviews in many non-Western societies (Brown, 2023, p. 72). Besides nature-culture dualism, Brown (2023) points out three dualisms including, intangible and tangible, non-human and human, and traditional knowledge and Western science regarding the identification and management of cultural landscapes. He indicates that holding these dualisms would cause cultural harm, take Indigenous people. At best, render ourselves insensitive to their culture; at worst, being racist and derogatory. As a side note, Brown also brings our attention to different dualisms proposed by other scholars including: past-present; continuity and discontinuity; rural and urban; secularism and spiritual; animate and inanimate; theory and practice; and science and the arts in this article.

With this in mind, understanding and recognizing the significance of the formation of cultural landscapes require rigorous mind, approaching them with least preconceived opinions, put it this way, naiveté would not be such distasteful in this sense. Bearing such least biased mind entering the field would avoid us to recount the local narratives from our inveterate cultural frames as an outsider, thus freeing from complicity in cultural hegemony.

With that being said, the examination of culture, coupled with analysis to the change in nature environment assist us in gaining a better understanding of the formation of cultural landscapes. Jiang (2003) analyzes the landscape change by comparing and analyzing three satellite images of Uxin Ju of Inner Mongolia, China to examine the change in the past three decades by using “mixed method” instead “multiple method.” The author points out that the observation of landscape change combined with ethnographic interview can reveal the untold stories about cultural landscapes which shaped by nature-human relationship. Consequently, it should be noted that the limited understanding of local knowledge will impede us from understanding the change in cultural landscape. These limited local knowledges are generated from two factors, including time scale and spatial scale. In this regard, time scale refers to the length of generation, longer generation accumulate more local knowledge compared to its counterpart. As for spatial scale, pastoralists work their own pastureland instead keeping an eye on larger spatial pattern. The author concludes that remote sensing techniques can enhance ethnographic research regarding studying cultural landscapes.

## Reference

Brown, S. (2023). From difficult dualisms to entangled complexity. Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice, 62-76.

Brown, S., & Goetcheus, C. (2023). From sites as materials to landscape as process. Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice, 17-31.

Byrne, D., Brockwell, C. S., & O'Connor, S. (2013). Introduction: Engaging culture and nature. In Transcending the Culture-Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage: Views from the Asia-Pacific Region. ANU ePress.

Jiang, H. (2003). Stories remote sensing images can tell: Integrating remote sensing analysis with ethnographic research in the study of cultural landscapes. Human Ecology, 31, 215-232.

Jones, M. (2003). The concept of cultural landscape: discourse and narratives. In Landscape interfaces: cultural heritage in changing landscapes (pp. 21-51). Springer.

Oakes, T., & Price, P. L. (2008). The cultural geography reader. Routledge.

Taylor, K., & Lennon, J. (2011). Cultural landscapes: a bridge between culture and nature? International journal of heritage studies, 17(6), 537-554.

UNESCO, & World Heritage Convention. (2021). Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. https://whc.unesco.org/document/190976