Lara Koegst Knihy

Exploring the intersection of aesthetics and the petrochemical industry, this book delves into how oilscapes are perceived and constructed socially. It examines individual interpretations of landscapes shaped by petroleum extraction and its impacts, emphasizing the limits and possibilities of aesthetic experiences. Drawing from neopragmatic landscape research and Richard Rorty's ideas, it critiques expert knowledge and innovative representation methods, focusing on Louisiana's diverse landscapes affected by over a century of petrochemical activities and their ecological consequences.

This book provides a broad view on multisensory landscapes from multiple perspectives. It includes theoretical perspectives as well as case studies. Different theoretical perspectives on landscape emerging from research in the last decades also require a differentiated approach to landscape phenomena, going beyond the visual. For example, a social constructivist approach to the social world foregrounds the processes of negotiating social ‚realities‘. This is not limited to visual aspects, and is not based on a clear physical measurability with an accompanying (purely quantitative) recording. A phenomenological approach, for example, places the synesthetic experience of landscape at the core of interest. This approach to the topic of multisensory via ‚landscape‘ is obvious for several reasons. Firstly, landscape is created (from a constructivist perspective) through the synthesis of sensory impressions on the basis of social patterns of interpretation and evaluation. Secondly, communication about ‚landscape‘ is also accessible to people who do not have any ‚expertlike special knowledge‘ in this regard. Thirdly, landscape as a changing concept is not only a concept of landscape but also of landscape itself. Fourthly, landscape as a changeable concept is particularly suitable for conceptually framing the highly fleeting non-visual stimuli.

This book is oriented on testing and developing the neopragmatic approach of horizontal geographies, in which we follow approaches of natural sciences, social sciences, and cultural studies. Regional focus is thereby put on a rapidly changing elemental space and its social representations, characterized by unstable and not well-defined hybridities: coastal Louisiana. This region is highly dynamic: the Mississippi River in particular, with its extensive sediments, has shifted the coastal fringe of present-day Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico. This land gain is contrasted by natural processes, but also by processes resultant of human intervention which cause marine encroachment. A complex interplay of different aspects is directly and indirectly leading to coastal land loss which makes the question of how to describe emerging hybrid spaces virulent and highlights the limits of a positivist understanding of boundaries that is also physically geographical. In the neopragmatic tradition, positivist research findings will be framed in social constructivist terms and supplemented by phenomenological approaches to Louisiana's coastal space, thus suggesting the need for and potentials of horizontal geographic integration of different theoretical and methodological approaches as well as researcher perspectives and data bases.

Die Gewinnung mineralischer Rohstoffe steht häufig im Spannungsfeld zwischen notwendiger Ressourcenbereitstellung und gesellschaftlicher Akzeptanz. Während die Bedeutung von Materialien wie Kies und Sand für die menschliche Existenz unbestritten ist, wird der planerische Umgang mit deren Sicherung und Abbau oft von ökologischen und fachplanerischen Fragestellungen dominiert. Dieses Buch beleuchtet die soziopolitischen Aspekte dieser Thematik, insbesondere in Hinblick auf Bürgerproteste und die wachsenden Bestrebungen nach mehr Partizipation und Demokratisierung in der Rohstoffpolitik.