Southwest Studies. Sense of Place and Connection to Identity Essay

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Introduction

Landscapes and different geographical places have a great impact on the cultural values and identity of populations. In their essays, D. W. Meinig, O. Chavez, Ch. Lummis, and S. Cormier portray the uniqueness of the Southern lands and how they shape the national identity of native populations. They admit that to understand the changing American landscape is to understand it aesthetically. Anesthetic interpretation of the landscape is not peripheral but central to understanding the physical transformation of post-industrial society. The failure to understand, acknowledge, and explain the fundamental significance of the rapid and dramatic change, in both private and public physical spaces, has been a failure to interpret such change aesthetically.

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Main body

In the essay The Southwest: A Definition Meinig depicts a unique identity of the region both geographically and culturally. Meinig explains the origin of the term southwest and its relations to other regions. Southwest is an “ethnocentric” term referring to the land inhabited by Hispano-Americans (3). Meinig underlines that without an aesthetic interpretation, history, demographics, sociology, and architecture offer merely discrete, patternless, and essentially incomplete and unsatisfying explanations of the transition from the farm, to the factory, to the shopping mall, and beyond. To grasp fully the dynamics of the changing Southwest landscape is to identify and ultimately understand an emerging twenty-first-century American aesthetic. While being neither as benign as the agrarian nor as de facto as the industrial, the New Southwest Landscape will be the first synthetic environment in history whose aesthetics will systematically anesthetize those who call it home. We cannot afford to misinterpret the portents of things to come.

In the essay, The Chicano Homeland O. Chavez portrays links between the unique place and identity of this ethnic group. Chavez analyses the importance of Anglo-Americans and their perception of the Southwest. The main difference was that Anglo-Americans viewed Southwest as a frontier while Chicanos perceived this place as a “lost homeland11… the conquered northern half of the Mexican nation” (11). Similar to other writers, Lummis calls this region “wonderland… with insight and understanding” (9). To understand how and why the American landscape is changing it is necessary to understand how and why the national groups have become a nation of a suburban mishmash. The suburbs encircle historic city centers. They sweep outward into what is left of the countryside. They are dominated by shopping malls-the contemporary commercial equivalent of the medieval castle–that impose an economic and cultural hegemony on the immediate neighborhood. In contrast to other writers, Lummis writes about the history of the region and its historical development. He describes the Fred Harvey Company and the importance of their lectures about the Pueblo Indians. Lummis writes: “the most vital sociologic and educational enterprise ever launched in this country” (8-9). Aesthetics are no longer meaningful as a disinterested sense of the beautiful independent of considerations of utility. A serious and significant change has redefined the character of American life with implications for all post-industrial consumer societies. However, we seem unaware of the meaning of what has transpired. There are moments in history that divide eras–moments that serve to direct our attention, to inform us of a fundamental shift in collective perception, in professed values. The emergence of the landscape is just such a moment, whose significance, for the most part, has escaped the attention of sociologists, historians, and architectural critics alike.

In contrast to other writers, Cormier underlines that at the beginning of the new millennium thousands of acres of countryside adjacent to existing cities were transformed into residential and commercial developments, the social, environmental, and aesthetic costs of which we have only begun to appreciate. The emergence of the new landscape has been one of the most far-reaching social transformations in history, carried out almost invisibly and without public understanding. The market has created the kind of housing, employment, and consumption choices acceptable to the majority of the public. However, as is usually the case, the public does not know the actual cost of the accompanying social, environmental, and aesthetic impacts. It is possible to say that so little of our historic landscape remains that it is difficult to appreciate our present aesthetic deprivation, having few opportunities for comparison. The emergence of the New American Landscape has been a lesson in the failure of our political system to identify and deal with significant social, cultural, and environmental problems.

D. W. Meinig, O. Chcvez and Ch. Lummis explains that nature and natural landscapes are infinitely varied. There are few natural landscapes that do not possess unique and inherent beauty. People should therefore not discount the aesthetic qualities of a natural landscape, such as a cornfield or swamp, because it does not meet some aesthetic test of spectacle and grandeur. Almost all natural landscapes possess aesthetic qualities sorely missing from the man-made environment, and they are by virtue of that reality alone worthy of our recognition. More difficult by far is discovering an American landscape that combines both the natural and the man-made in such a way as to create a totality that is aesthetically compelling. The resulting tableau is usually pleasing but often artificial, even contrived. It is as if such a felicitous combination of civilization and nature could only occur in the highly rarefied, if not stylized, confines of a stage-managed environment. Urbanization processes have changed traditional landscapes and identity. A modern man differs greatly from 19th century Chicano or Hispano-Americans. The suburbanization of America has not been solely a result of simple economic growth. Neither is it entirely a function of race and social factors. Rather, suburbanization encompasses an aesthetic appeal that emerged in the demise of the ideal of the city. America has become suburbanized because the idea and the ideal of the city failed, broke down, to be replaced by the idea and the ideal of the suburb. The contemporary and future American landscape can only be fully understood within the context of changing notions of individual and collective identity.

Conclusion

In sum, dealing in distinct pieces rather than wholes, they have become victims of their own overly focused, narrowly parochial perception. The aesthetic heritage of America is too important to be left in the hands of the usual architectural critics, urban planners, and environmental activists. Since ancient times, geographical places have reflected and shaped the national identity of the ethnic populations inhabited southwest. To travel across America, to live in much of the nation, is to experience a landscape that is truly indivisible. Whatever we choose to call it, its commonalities often surpass its differences. Both the city and its suburbs seem to exhibit a moral malaise. The metaphor of sickness and ill health is routinely employed to characterize the pathology by which urban and suburban America is debilitated.

Works Cited

  1. Chcvez, O. The Chicano Homeland. in Melendez, A. G., Young, J., Moore, P., Pynes, P. Multicultural Southwest- A Reader. University of Arizona Press, 2001.
  2. Cormier, S. “You Don’t Know Cows Like I Do”: Twentieth-Century New Mexico Ranch Culture. in Melendez, A. G., Young, J., Moore, P., Pynes, P. Multicultural Southwest- A Reader. University of Arizona Press, 2001.
  3. Lummis, Ch. The Golden Key to Wonderland. in Melendez, A. G., Young, J., Moore, P., Pynes, P. Multicultural Southwest- A Reader. University of Arizona Press, 2001.
  4. Meinig, D. W. The Southwest: A Definition. in Melendez, A. G., Young, J., Moore, P., Pynes, P. Multicultural Southwest- A Reader. University of Arizona Press, 2001.
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IvyPanda. (2021) 'Southwest Studies. Sense of Place and Connection to Identity'. 24 October.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Southwest Studies. Sense of Place and Connection to Identity." October 24, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/southwest-studies-sense-of-place-and-connection-to-identity/.

1. IvyPanda. "Southwest Studies. Sense of Place and Connection to Identity." October 24, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/southwest-studies-sense-of-place-and-connection-to-identity/.


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IvyPanda. "Southwest Studies. Sense of Place and Connection to Identity." October 24, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/southwest-studies-sense-of-place-and-connection-to-identity/.

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