Shared Landscape Model Integrating the Management of Culture and Nature: Thesis and Exegesis

Abstract

PhD project (the Project) includes a Thesis and an associated Exegesis. The Project is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural investigation of shared management landscapes that considers the integration of cultural and natural heritage management. The aim of the research is to propose a management model to address failures in the sustainability and effectiveness of shared management partnerships, manifest in damage to both the heritage and historic fabric. The Case Studies are the Australian world heritage locations of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Purnululu National Park and Reserve, and the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. The research reveals that within Australia, the approach to managing the relationship of culture and nature within a landscape is dominated by the outmoded Western dualist model that manifests in the separation of the management of cultural and natural heritage, whilst simultaneously separating historic fabric and heritage management. This model is in stark contrast to the Australian traditional Aboriginal partners approach of managing landscapes as ‘Country’, which recognises the symbiosis and integration of culture and nature. The Thesis provides evidence for a new landscape management model integrating the management of Culture, Nature and Art (CNA) focused on the intangible of heritage as the primary driver of policy development and management delivery. In engaging with CNA simultaneously the Western dualist model is shifted closer to the holistic traditional Aboriginal perspective of ‘Country’ thus opening the potential for greater cross-cultural understanding and reciprocity. The Exegesis provides an exploration of the concept of negotiation as encountered through the experience of sense of place within the landscape to provide an intangible qualitative basis on which to informed landscape management priorities. The visual practice is pursued through the mediums of photography, drawing, painting, firedrawings, sculpture and installation that engage with a reciprocity between mediums and cyclic movement between field and studio. The continual shifting dialogue between mediums and locations produces an engagement with ‘the liminal’ relating to the decisions required to transverse cultural thresholds and become enveloped within the process of cross-cultural negotiations.