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and reformation. Of interest were the means by which the people of this landscape made sense of what was happening. This chapter provides an explanation of our method for investigating the interpretive frameworks that the people of Milltown employed as a means of understanding their changing landscape.

Interpreting Landscape

It is useful to consider a number of related, but distinctly different, notions: landscape, place making, place, and emergent senses of place. Colloquial understanding of these terms is somewhat muddled, thus, we turn to a number of scholars for clarity.

We begin by defining a landscape as a particular “assemblage of material objects” (Duncan, 1994, p. 316), the elements of which render a coherent and sensible picture (Cosgrove & Daniels, 1988). We come to understand that certain sets of tangible elements are seashores, whereas other sets are shopping malls. It is through our interpretive, sense-making activities that we know the forest, the river basin, the mine site, and the mill town. Further, we can understand landscape abstractions, such as “productive” versus “amenity” landscapes. Recently, Trudeau (2006) explained that landscapes “stabilize the meaning of particular envelopes of space-time” (p. 437). His point alerts us to the transformative processes that shape the tangible landscape and to the momentary reality of the interpreted landscape.

David Meinig (1979) alerted us to another point when he argued that any number of perspectives are able to legitimately inform one's view of a landscape. These perspectives guide one's attentions when looking upon a particular scene. For instance, a developer might view a particular landscape as “wealth” and as an opportunity for personal gain, but an environmentalist might see that same landscape as an example of “nature” in need of protection. The meanings attached to particular assemblages are inherently subjective, rendered both from “life in society” (Cosgrove, 1978, p. 68) and from one's understandings of self in society (Agnew & Duncan 1989; Cresswell, 1996; Entrikin, 2001).