Rural Landscapes Society Environment History
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Stockholm University Press (SE) |
| ISSN | 2002-0104 |
| Scopus | 21100917133 |
| Wikidata | Q50815037 |
| OpenAlex | S4210230193 |
| MAG | 4210230193 |
| Website | http://www.rurallandscapesjournal.com/ |
| Total publications | 48 |
| Coverage period | 2014 - 2026 |
| Country | SE |
| Language | EN |
| Access | Open Access |
| Indexing | DOAJ indexed • Scopus indexed |
| Cited by | 87 |
| Impact factor | 0.541 |
| SJR | 0.185 (Q2) |
| SNIP | 0.436 |
| CiteScore | 1.4 |
| h-index | 4 |
| i10-index | 3 |
| Female authorship share | 55.6% |
This journal focuses on rural landscapes, society, environment, and history. Its scope aligns with social and cultural history and environmental studies, making it a cognate humanities/social science venue with regular anthropological intersection
History · Geography, Planning and Development · Nature and Landscape Conservation · Agricultural Economics and Policy · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
The Tale of Three Tanks
This paper traces contemporary grassroots efforts to rejuvenate eris, or irrigation tanks, in the Kaveri Delta in India, through a detailed case study of three interconnected tanks: Mudavan, Ayyampettai, and Shikkapattu. Drawing on mixed methods—including interviews, participant observation, Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, and auto-ethnographic reflection—we analyze this case of tank rejuvenation as a version of care. Guided by four…
Context Matters
This article analyses how technological, industrial, institutional, social, and spatial context influences the adoption of clean energy technologies using the Stockholm archipelago as its empirical setting. The paper examines the role of technology as an independent contextual element along with commonly used concepts within context analysis. Empirically, the paper provides new knowledge of what affects the adoption of clean energy technologies. …
Promoting Vitality and Sustainable Development on Åstol Island
This study explores the challenges and opportunities of promoting sustainable development on Åstol, a small island on Sweden’s west coast, through a participatory and place-based research approach. Åstol represents the complex dynamics of peripheral island settings, marked by spatial limitations, seasonal economies, demographic shifts, and strong civic traditions. The aim is to investigate how different groups, full-time residents, part-time inha…
Croatian Islands – Immigration Hub in a Country Dealing With a Demographic Crisis
Croatia is among the European countries struggling with serious demographic issues, having experienced a population decline of –9.64% between the last two censuses. For over a century, Croatian islands have been hotspots of emigration, with the demographic peak occurring in 1921. Despite negative natural change continuing to affect island demography, in the last decade, it seems that the migrational flow has turned in favor of these sensitive and…
Power and Sensemaking in Radical Policy Implementation
Forests are contested spaces where state agencies and local communities vie for authority. India’s Forest Rights Act (FRA) seeks to address these tensions by formally recognizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities and acknowledging historical injustices. Although this recognition is implemented through committees involving tribal welfare, forest, and revenue officials, forest departments continue to obstruct the process. How do they manage…
Fertilization Practices in Al-Andalus
This study explores agricultural fertilization practices in al-Andalus—the Medieval Islamic territory in Iberia—through textual sources and the archaeological record. Following research on the off-site record, it is suggested that the presence of Andalusi ceramic fragments in cultivated fields is not accidental but rather the result of intentional use due to their incorporation into fertilizer produced in domestic environments. Through the analys…
Instrumentalising Peripherality
A region’s peripheral status plays a key role in shaping its tourism development. At the end of the 19th century, the Bohemian Forest became a desirable nature-based tourism destination. This article explores how Czech tourism in the Bohemian Forest before World War I instrumentalised peripherality by actively engaging with and transforming the region’s peripheral status as part of the process of making it a desirable destination. Through an anal…
Social History of Outsider Migration and Politics of Essentialisms in Amrabad Tiger Reserve, Telangana, India
Chenchus, the native tribes (Adivasis/indigenous) of the Amrabad plateau in the Nallamala hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats in Telangana, India, are portrayed and academically studied as ‘primitive’ or ‘naïve foragers’. Their symbiotic association with forests, life in isolation in an economy based on subsistence, and their requirement for protection from outsiders and market mechanisms are central to how they are governed. Studies analysing multi…
A Roadmap for Swedish Island Research – Previous Knowledge, Current Debates, and Imminent Research Gaps
This study is the result of a participatory and collaborative project in which Swedish scholars and representatives of island organizations in Sweden set out to define what Swedish island research is and identify imminent research gaps. The article answers the following questions: 1) Which key research gaps can be identified in Swedish island research? 2) How can we relate Swedish island research to the international field of island research? The…
Peasant Food Sovereignty in Guasca
This article examines how the expansion of plantations and rural gentrification in Guasca, Colombia, undermines peasant food sovereignty, with a focus on its disproportionate impacts on women and feminized bodies. Through ethnographic research, it reveals how these dynamics contribute to water insecurity and depeasantization. The ‘water factory’ narrative has fueled plantation growth, leading to water shortages, fractured social networks, and the…
Stockholm Archipelago on Instagram—Landscape Imaginaries of Two Hashtags
Stockholm archipelago’s exalted position in the national narrative of Sweden was invented during the second half of the 19th century when writers and artists started to depict the archipelago as an idyllic rural region. Previous studies have shown that the landscape imaginaries of Stockholm archipelago have successfully migrated over different media for more than a century. However, it has not been investigated whether social media has influenced…
Dynamics of Rural Settlement Patterns in the Yellow River Delta in Response to River Diversion and Avulsion Since 1855
Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History is a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to landscape research and interdisciplinary communication. Rural Landscapes aims to be a leading academic forum for the blending, contrasting and bridging of contemporary and historical landscape studies that engage with environmental and societal perspectives on rural landscapes in all parts of the world. The journal accepts contributions from a bro…
Understanding the Crucial Role of the Socio-Ecological Values of Olive Groves in Landscape Stewardship
Throughout history, the relationship between humans and olive groves has led to the development of diverse socio-ecological values and accumulation of relevant traditional knowledge in the Mediterranean region. However, empirical studies about such values of olive groves are missing in the literature. In light of this fact, this study aimed to explore the crucial role of the socio-ecological values of olive groves in landscape stewardship in the …
Forests and Energy in Ottoman Anatolia
Forests were the main sources of thermal energy for smelting in Ottoman Anatolia. Based primarily on Ottoman archival documents, this article examines the fuel supply from forests to the copper smelters in Ergani and Tokat from an environmental perspective. From the mid-18th century on, there was a division of labor between these two metallurgical centers. In Ergani, the initial smelting processes which used both firewood and charcoal transformed…
The 1703 Skrehall Landslide
This article is a case study of the Skrehall landslide, which occurred on 15 September 1703 at the border between the Swedish parishes of Fors and Rommele. It was a disaster with locally far-reaching consequences for the Westrogothian agrarian communities it impacted, damaging farmland and destroying a country road, which had to be relocated. Archaeological fieldwork was carried out at the site in May 2021, which led to the discovery of surviving…
New Human-landscape Relations in the Face of Global Environmental Crises
The current global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, waterway pollution, and land-system change need far-reaching collective action, with major implications for future human-landscape relations. However, whereas there has been a radical acceleration in green solutions brought forward within science and technology, less attention has been paid to their social integration and long-term sustainability. Based on experiences with a large-sc…
Mapping Lost Woodland. An Attempt to Use the Spatial Distribution of Woodland-Related Place Names as a Proxy for Localizing Woodland in the Middle Ages
After many centuries, much of Europe is now largely deforested. Today, plans for reforestation are ongoing. These plans have the potential to significantly impact the landscape. As a contribution to the current debate on large-scale reforestation in the Netherlands, we have tried to conduct a quick and overall scan to determine whether the spatial distribution of woodland-related place names can have an evidential value for locating surviving woo…
Green Hell
This paper revolves on the carceral practices of Morton Hall IRC (Immigration Removal Centre) and of the role of visual imagery in the campaigns against them. Morton Hall is located in Lincolnshire, a rural county in England with a long history of agricultural innovation. It observes and debates a sense of the dissonance between institution and location that Morton Hall shared with Manus Island in the Pacific, the site of another postcolonial pri…
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape
Farm restructuring is a continuous on-going process supported by national agricultural policy in Sweden; while striving for more efficient farms in terms of labor and yields, farms enlarge their holdings of arable land and animals. The environmental consequences of more intensive land uses have in turn stimulated environmental policies to deal with negative environmental consequences. In this paper we argue that an underlying problem with both of…
Recognising and Resisting Injustice
The future of inclusive forestry in Nepal depends on forestry professionals who can recognise patriarchal roots of gender injustice as they operate in the ideologies and apparatus of forest governance, and who can resist those injustices through their work. This paper uses the notion of knowledge practices to explore the recognition of injustice amongst Nepal’s community forestry professionals, and the relationship between recognition and resista…
Youth Inclusion in Forest Policy Dialogue
Awareness of human–forest relationships offers a basis for meaningful forest policy participation. However, weakening connections to forests, particularly among young people, hamper youth inclusion in policy arenas. We consider the use of arts-based methods as knowledge practices that nurture human–forest relationships and may promote inclusive policies. Arts-based methods, such as photography, music, or drama, offer insights and elicit opinions.…
Farm Knowledge Co-Production at an Old Amazonian Frontier
This paper addresses how co-producing knowledge can assist local farmers in reshaping their territories into sustainable farming systems. We describe the emergence and consolidation of an agroforestry system in an Eastern Amazon forest frontier, unpacking the co-production of a new farming system over recent decades. Instead of assuming pre-defined categories (e.g., traditional/technical, local/external), the analysis focuses on interactions amon…
From Haymaking to Wood Production
Mires form a large part of the boreal Swedish landscape and are important for biodiversity and natural ecosystem processes. Historically, mires also played a key role for the expansion of agricultural practices, and later to create new forest land, but knowledge is limited on how the land use has affected the current ecosystem services and functions of mires. In this case study from northern Sweden, we have combined historical maps with remote-se…
Where Have the Native Grasses Gone
Much of the foothill and valley areas of coastal southern California are covered by stands of non-native grasses with occasional scattered patches of native bunch grasses. For decades, the dominant view held that these native bunchgrasses, particularly Stipa pulchra, once covered these lands and that grazing practices were a key cause of their decline. The so-called bunchgrass dominant paradigm (BDP) put forth by Clements influenced thinking on g…
Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden
This review concerns when and why infield meadows developed, i.e. enclosed land, constructed and managed for production of livestock fodder. Meadows have been associated with ‘stalling’ of livestock, in turn associated with, for example, protection from adverse weather conditions, increasing efficiency of milk and manure production, or changing human-animal relationships. The suggested timing for origin of meadows ranges from the Neolithic to the…
Historic Landscapes Without History? A Reconsideration of the Concept of Traditional Landscapes
In the recent extensive literature on European cultural landscapes, much attention is given to regional variation. Less interest seems to be given to history. Ecologists in particular often use the ‘traditional landscapes’ model, which suggests a slow and gradual development of the man-made landscape, leading to a ‘climax’ during the 19th century. In that vision, landscape change sped up around 1900, after which time most landscapes underwent a p…
Rural-Urban Blurring and the Subjectivity Within
Realizing that a changing society is in constant need of redefinition, the rural-urban distinction is especially important to look systematically into. One reason is that although the outdatedness of the rural-urban dichotomy is widely acknowledged, it is still largely sustained, not least in ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ development endeavors, which are often conducted separately. Such practice may seem questionable in the face of the progressive blurring…
Economic Specialisation, Resource Variability, and the Origins of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa
In Eastern Africa contrasting ecological zones within relatively short distances encourage economic specialisations which are reliant upon one another. Connections between different economic groups are facilitated by a variety of institutionalised networks that encourage the movement of both goods and people across boundaries. The role of livestock as essential capital ensures a strong impetus to increase agricultural production for exchange whil…
Finding Vanished Routes
Route networks are influenced by cultural and environmental dynamics. Consequently, route networks themselves often are dynamic as well. This is especially true in lowland areas, such as the Netherlands, where environmental processes (e.g. geomorphological changes, floods) probably reshaped these networks numerous times. Many of the existing route networks in the Netherlands were established relatively recently, and little is known of their histo…
Woodland Dynamics as a Result of Settlement Relocation on Pleistocene Sandy Soils in the Netherlands (200 BC–AD 1400)
In this paper we investigate the potential of charcoal kilns as indicators (proxy data) of the interaction between settlement dynamics and the history of woodland presence, composition and structure. The results demonstrate that in our research area (Pleistocene sandy soils of the Netherlands) woodland regeneration and deforestation can be traced by a careful examination of the archaeological remains from charcoal production, provided such remain…
Cross-cutting Ties and Coexistence
This paper explores the value of cross-cutting ties and conflicting loyalties for the peaceful management of conflicts and the emergence of collective action across previously violently contested community boundaries in two communities in the Lake Naivasha Basin, Kenya. In the researched communities cross-cutting ties result from intermarriages, land rentals and friendship. Fieldwork was conducted in six neighbouring villages on the border betwee…
Landscape Imaginaries and the Protection of Dynamic Nature at the Wadden Sea
Whereas the transgression of nature-culture dichotomies is commonplace in academic discourse, contemporary practices of nature conservation continue, in many cases, to be characterised by the active construction of fixed boundaries between spaces of nature and spaces of culture. In such contexts, nature constitutes a powerful discursive category, albeit one that is manifested differently across space and time. This paper advances a situated under…
Rebuilding the Landscape of the Rural Post Office
This paper uses Post Office (PO) petitions to uncover the complex spatial relationships that developed through the unique social space of the PO. These petitions were signed by the rural people of Middlesex County, Ontario, and submitted to the Postmaster General in order to request changes in the workings of their postal services. When used in a historical GIS they allow us to recreate and reconstitute postal communities in late-19th-century rur…
The Continuing Significance of Rural Landscapes in the Urban Century
I write these reflections from the British Institute of Eastern Africa (BIEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, after a symposium that examined the ways landscapes in the region are being reconfigured. My location seems relevant as the last time I was at a symposium at the BIEA was in 1998, working with colleagues investigating ‘islands of intensive agriculture’ in the Rift Valley. Presenting work from geographical, archaeological, historical and anthropologica…
Human Niche Construction and the Rural Environment
Ecology is usually defined as the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. On basic ecology courses, students learn that environmental factors may be composed of other living organisms, e.g. predators, or they may be abiotic, e.g. water. Resources constitute a special category of environmental factors as they are consumed by the organisms and thereby, at least temporarily, made unavailable to others. Resources are ultimatel…
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape
Farm restructuring is a continuous on-going process supported by national agricultural policy in Sweden; while striving for more efficient farms in terms of labor and yields, farms enlarge their holdings of arable land and animals. The environmental consequences of more intensive land uses have in turn stimulated environmental policies to deal with negative environmental consequences. In this paper we argue that an underlying problem with both of…
Analyzing Cultural Markers to Characterize Regional Identity for Rural Planning
Regional identity is the shared sense of regional ‘one-ness’, distinctiveness and difference. However, it is an undervalued factor to promote development in lagging rural areas and little is known about methods to reveal its content. This paper aims to develop and apply a method to explore regional identity in rural areas. We argue that the most important cultural markers – understood as rural landscapes and heritage features, perceived as region…
Amazonian Erasures
Radical land-use changes are under way in Bolivia's Beni Department. As a prelude to changes, tales of idle land and premodern peoples have emerged, resembling the Pristine Myth that accompanied the 'discovery' of the Americas. In this article, I revisit the history of this area to show that its landscape and people have been re-narrated over time in ways that resonate with political economic concerns. I describe three dominant historical landsca…
Preservation of Agricultural Land as an Issue of Societal Importance
Based on concerns about food security and food sovereignty, it is appropriate to scrutinise societal measures for protecting agricultural land from conversion to other uses. Changes from agricultural to urban land use are particularly problematic, as they are largely irreversible. By analysing relevant Swedish policy, the present study investigated how the protection of agricultural land is framed as an issue of societal importance. Protection of…
Agrobiodiversity, Rural Transformations and Household Experiences of Globalised Change
This paper examines reconfigurations of household economies and agrobiodiversity through the experiences and responses of rural households to local manifestations of globalisation and environmental change in the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia, from the 1950s to the present. Research participant narratives from seven study communities document a widely experienced regional shift from rain-fed agriculture and pastured livestock production for ho…
An Expression of Multiple Values
To aid political and institutional decision making in the sustainable use of natural resources the value of ecological, socio-cultural and economic assets has increasingly been communicated in terms of monetary units. Despite reliance upon natural resources, the impact of human activities has now reached a stage where cumulative losses are forcing society to re-appraise the evaluation process and how to better incorporate these values in to the d…
Stockholm Archipelago on Instagram—Landscape Imaginaries of Two Hashtags
Stockholm archipelago’s exalted position in the national narrative of Sweden was invented during the second half of the 19th century when writers and artists started to depict the archipelago as an idyllic rural region. Previous studies have shown that the landscape imaginaries of Stockholm archipelago have successfully migrated over different media for more than a century. However, it has not been investigated whether social media has influenced…
Forests and Energy in Ottoman Anatolia
Forests were the main sources of thermal energy for smelting in Ottoman Anatolia. Based primarily on Ottoman archival documents, this article examines the fuel supply from forests to the copper smelters in Ergani and Tokat from an environmental perspective. From the mid-18th century on, there was a division of labor between these two metallurgical centers. In Ergani, the initial smelting processes which used both firewood and charcoal transformed…
The 1703 Skrehall Landslide
This article is a case study of the Skrehall landslide, which occurred on 15 September 1703 at the border between the Swedish parishes of Fors and Rommele. It was a disaster with locally far-reaching consequences for the Westrogothian agrarian communities it impacted, damaging farmland and destroying a country road, which had to be relocated. Archaeological fieldwork was carried out at the site in May 2021, which led to the discovery of surviving…
Farm Knowledge Co-Production at an Old Amazonian Frontier
This paper addresses how co-producing knowledge can assist local farmers in reshaping their territories into sustainable farming systems. We describe the emergence and consolidation of an agroforestry system in an Eastern Amazon forest frontier, unpacking the co-production of a new farming system over recent decades. Instead of assuming pre-defined categories (e.g., traditional/technical, local/external), the analysis focuses on interactions amon…
From Haymaking to Wood Production
Mires form a large part of the boreal Swedish landscape and are important for biodiversity and natural ecosystem processes. Historically, mires also played a key role for the expansion of agricultural practices, and later to create new forest land, but knowledge is limited on how the land use has affected the current ecosystem services and functions of mires. In this case study from northern Sweden, we have combined historical maps with remote-se…
Recognising and Resisting Injustice
The future of inclusive forestry in Nepal depends on forestry professionals who can recognise patriarchal roots of gender injustice as they operate in the ideologies and apparatus of forest governance, and who can resist those injustices through their work. This paper uses the notion of knowledge practices to explore the recognition of injustice amongst Nepal’s community forestry professionals, and the relationship between recognition and resista…
Youth Inclusion in Forest Policy Dialogue
Awareness of human–forest relationships offers a basis for meaningful forest policy participation. However, weakening connections to forests, particularly among young people, hamper youth inclusion in policy arenas. We consider the use of arts-based methods as knowledge practices that nurture human–forest relationships and may promote inclusive policies. Arts-based methods, such as photography, music, or drama, offer insights and elicit opinions.…
Decision Making in Tree Selection – Contemplating Conflicting Goals via Marteloscope Exercises
The implementation of biodiversity conservation measures in forests managed for timber production usually implies trade-offs between ecological and economic objectives. In continuous cover forestry these trade-offs emerge at the scale of selecting individual trees for timber harvesting or habitat retention. Tree selection determines both the economic viability of timber management and the prevalence of tree-related microhabitats, considered a mul…
Rural Waterscape and Emotional Sectarianism in Accounts of Lough Derg, County Donegal
The story of Lough Derg in Ireland’s County Donegal is arranged around clusters of sectarian narratives in juxtaposition, synthesis and conflict. The Sanctuary of Saint Patrick sits on Station Island, a small rocky islet set within the waters of the lake. The site became well known in the early Middle Ages as the place of Saint Patrick’s delving of a cave that led to purgatory, allowing the sinner to experience a glimpse of the torments of hell w…
Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden
This review concerns when and why infield meadows developed, i.e. enclosed land, constructed and managed for production of livestock fodder. Meadows have been associated with ‘stalling’ of livestock, in turn associated with, for example, protection from adverse weather conditions, increasing efficiency of milk and manure production, or changing human-animal relationships. The suggested timing for origin of meadows ranges from the Neolithic to the…
Where Have the Native Grasses Gone
Much of the foothill and valley areas of coastal southern California are covered by stands of non-native grasses with occasional scattered patches of native bunch grasses. For decades, the dominant view held that these native bunchgrasses, particularly Stipa pulchra, once covered these lands and that grazing practices were a key cause of their decline. The so-called bunchgrass dominant paradigm (BDP) put forth by Clements influenced thinking on g…
From Haymaking to Wood Production
Mires form a large part of the boreal Swedish landscape and are important for biodiversity and natural ecosystem processes. Historically, mires also played a key role for the expansion of agricultural practices, and later to create new forest land, but knowledge is limited on how the land use has affected the current ecosystem services and functions of mires. In this case study from northern Sweden, we have combined historical maps with remote-se…
Farm Knowledge Co-Production at an Old Amazonian Frontier
This paper addresses how co-producing knowledge can assist local farmers in reshaping their territories into sustainable farming systems. We describe the emergence and consolidation of an agroforestry system in an Eastern Amazon forest frontier, unpacking the co-production of a new farming system over recent decades. Instead of assuming pre-defined categories (e.g., traditional/technical, local/external), the analysis focuses on interactions amon…
Youth Inclusion in Forest Policy Dialogue
Awareness of human–forest relationships offers a basis for meaningful forest policy participation. However, weakening connections to forests, particularly among young people, hamper youth inclusion in policy arenas. We consider the use of arts-based methods as knowledge practices that nurture human–forest relationships and may promote inclusive policies. Arts-based methods, such as photography, music, or drama, offer insights and elicit opinions.…
Recognising and Resisting Injustice
The future of inclusive forestry in Nepal depends on forestry professionals who can recognise patriarchal roots of gender injustice as they operate in the ideologies and apparatus of forest governance, and who can resist those injustices through their work. This paper uses the notion of knowledge practices to explore the recognition of injustice amongst Nepal’s community forestry professionals, and the relationship between recognition and resista…
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape
Farm restructuring is a continuous on-going process supported by national agricultural policy in Sweden; while striving for more efficient farms in terms of labor and yields, farms enlarge their holdings of arable land and animals. The environmental consequences of more intensive land uses have in turn stimulated environmental policies to deal with negative environmental consequences. In this paper we argue that an underlying problem with both of…
Green Hell
This paper revolves on the carceral practices of Morton Hall IRC (Immigration Removal Centre) and of the role of visual imagery in the campaigns against them. Morton Hall is located in Lincolnshire, a rural county in England with a long history of agricultural innovation. It observes and debates a sense of the dissonance between institution and location that Morton Hall shared with Manus Island in the Pacific, the site of another postcolonial pri…
Mapping Lost Woodland. An Attempt to Use the Spatial Distribution of Woodland-Related Place Names as a Proxy for Localizing Woodland in the Middle Ages
After many centuries, much of Europe is now largely deforested. Today, plans for reforestation are ongoing. These plans have the potential to significantly impact the landscape. As a contribution to the current debate on large-scale reforestation in the Netherlands, we have tried to conduct a quick and overall scan to determine whether the spatial distribution of woodland-related place names can have an evidential value for locating surviving woo…
New Human-landscape Relations in the Face of Global Environmental Crises
The current global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, waterway pollution, and land-system change need far-reaching collective action, with major implications for future human-landscape relations. However, whereas there has been a radical acceleration in green solutions brought forward within science and technology, less attention has been paid to their social integration and long-term sustainability. Based on experiences with a large-sc…
The 1703 Skrehall Landslide
This article is a case study of the Skrehall landslide, which occurred on 15 September 1703 at the border between the Swedish parishes of Fors and Rommele. It was a disaster with locally far-reaching consequences for the Westrogothian agrarian communities it impacted, damaging farmland and destroying a country road, which had to be relocated. Archaeological fieldwork was carried out at the site in May 2021, which led to the discovery of surviving…
Forests and Energy in Ottoman Anatolia
Forests were the main sources of thermal energy for smelting in Ottoman Anatolia. Based primarily on Ottoman archival documents, this article examines the fuel supply from forests to the copper smelters in Ergani and Tokat from an environmental perspective. From the mid-18th century on, there was a division of labor between these two metallurgical centers. In Ergani, the initial smelting processes which used both firewood and charcoal transformed…
Understanding the Crucial Role of the Socio-Ecological Values of Olive Groves in Landscape Stewardship
Throughout history, the relationship between humans and olive groves has led to the development of diverse socio-ecological values and accumulation of relevant traditional knowledge in the Mediterranean region. However, empirical studies about such values of olive groves are missing in the literature. In light of this fact, this study aimed to explore the crucial role of the socio-ecological values of olive groves in landscape stewardship in the …
Dynamics of Rural Settlement Patterns in the Yellow River Delta in Response to River Diversion and Avulsion Since 1855
Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History is a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to landscape research and interdisciplinary communication. Rural Landscapes aims to be a leading academic forum for the blending, contrasting and bridging of contemporary and historical landscape studies that engage with environmental and societal perspectives on rural landscapes in all parts of the world. The journal accepts contributions from a bro…
Stockholm Archipelago on Instagram—Landscape Imaginaries of Two Hashtags
Stockholm archipelago’s exalted position in the national narrative of Sweden was invented during the second half of the 19th century when writers and artists started to depict the archipelago as an idyllic rural region. Previous studies have shown that the landscape imaginaries of Stockholm archipelago have successfully migrated over different media for more than a century. However, it has not been investigated whether social media has influenced…
Peasant Food Sovereignty in Guasca
This article examines how the expansion of plantations and rural gentrification in Guasca, Colombia, undermines peasant food sovereignty, with a focus on its disproportionate impacts on women and feminized bodies. Through ethnographic research, it reveals how these dynamics contribute to water insecurity and depeasantization. The ‘water factory’ narrative has fueled plantation growth, leading to water shortages, fractured social networks, and the…
A Roadmap for Swedish Island Research – Previous Knowledge, Current Debates, and Imminent Research Gaps
This study is the result of a participatory and collaborative project in which Swedish scholars and representatives of island organizations in Sweden set out to define what Swedish island research is and identify imminent research gaps. The article answers the following questions: 1) Which key research gaps can be identified in Swedish island research? 2) How can we relate Swedish island research to the international field of island research? The…
Social History of Outsider Migration and Politics of Essentialisms in Amrabad Tiger Reserve, Telangana, India
Chenchus, the native tribes (Adivasis/indigenous) of the Amrabad plateau in the Nallamala hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats in Telangana, India, are portrayed and academically studied as ‘primitive’ or ‘naïve foragers’. Their symbiotic association with forests, life in isolation in an economy based on subsistence, and their requirement for protection from outsiders and market mechanisms are central to how they are governed. Studies analysing multi…
Instrumentalising Peripherality
A region’s peripheral status plays a key role in shaping its tourism development. At the end of the 19th century, the Bohemian Forest became a desirable nature-based tourism destination. This article explores how Czech tourism in the Bohemian Forest before World War I instrumentalised peripherality by actively engaging with and transforming the region’s peripheral status as part of the process of making it a desirable destination. Through an anal…
Fertilization Practices in Al-Andalus
This study explores agricultural fertilization practices in al-Andalus—the Medieval Islamic territory in Iberia—through textual sources and the archaeological record. Following research on the off-site record, it is suggested that the presence of Andalusi ceramic fragments in cultivated fields is not accidental but rather the result of intentional use due to their incorporation into fertilizer produced in domestic environments. Through the analys…
Power and Sensemaking in Radical Policy Implementation
Forests are contested spaces where state agencies and local communities vie for authority. India’s Forest Rights Act (FRA) seeks to address these tensions by formally recognizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities and acknowledging historical injustices. Although this recognition is implemented through committees involving tribal welfare, forest, and revenue officials, forest departments continue to obstruct the process. How do they manage…
Croatian Islands – Immigration Hub in a Country Dealing With a Demographic Crisis
Croatia is among the European countries struggling with serious demographic issues, having experienced a population decline of –9.64% between the last two censuses. For over a century, Croatian islands have been hotspots of emigration, with the demographic peak occurring in 1921. Despite negative natural change continuing to affect island demography, in the last decade, it seems that the migrational flow has turned in favor of these sensitive and…
Promoting Vitality and Sustainable Development on Åstol Island
This study explores the challenges and opportunities of promoting sustainable development on Åstol, a small island on Sweden’s west coast, through a participatory and place-based research approach. Åstol represents the complex dynamics of peripheral island settings, marked by spatial limitations, seasonal economies, demographic shifts, and strong civic traditions. The aim is to investigate how different groups, full-time residents, part-time inha…
Context Matters
This article analyses how technological, industrial, institutional, social, and spatial context influences the adoption of clean energy technologies using the Stockholm archipelago as its empirical setting. The paper examines the role of technology as an independent contextual element along with commonly used concepts within context analysis. Empirically, the paper provides new knowledge of what affects the adoption of clean energy technologies. …
The Tale of Three Tanks
This paper traces contemporary grassroots efforts to rejuvenate eris, or irrigation tanks, in the Kaveri Delta in India, through a detailed case study of three interconnected tanks: Mudavan, Ayyampettai, and Shikkapattu. Drawing on mixed methods—including interviews, participant observation, Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, and auto-ethnographic reflection—we analyze this case of tank rejuvenation as a version of care. Guided by four…