The landscape assay: exploring pluralism in environmental interpretation

Abstract The ‘Landscape Assay’ is a field study exercise which invites students to explore, understand and gain an appreciation of some of the variety of ways people interpret the world around them. It also aims to give students a deeper understanding of the causes of some environmental controversies. The term ‘assay’ has been chosen for this exercise because it links the exercise with concepts of assessment and judgement without connecting it too closely with established techniques of landscape evaluation. The exercise forms the final element in the module ‘Environmental Philosophy’, a third‐year synoptic course for undergraduate geographers. Different societies have developed an enormous variety of world‐views; the aim of this exercise is to allow students to explore sets of environmental values within the environs of Oxford. The exercise works with the pragmatic categorisation of world‐views or ‘world hypotheses’ developed by Stephen Pepper (1942). These are used throughout the course to provide a simp...

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