1rst Brazil-Japan Seminar on Cultural Environments

July 8, 2015

Co-organization:
CIAS Collaboration Project ‘Area Environments and Global Sustainability Challenges’

Outline

Urban modernization maintains a central role in the rapid processes of transformation of the physical environment worldwide. In parallel to the continued transformation of physical environments, has also changed the perception of human-nature interactions. In light of this, for those interested in discussing how humans intervene over varied physical environments the terminology ‘landscape’ has become useful. According to Greider and Garkovich 1994,‘landscapes’ result from a human act of attributing meaning on nature and environment. From this viewpoint, humans intervene in the physical environment according to the social definitions of themselves and within the processes of change of their own social definitions. Consequently, the perception of natural entities, such as, a river, a rock, or a forest will change once interpreted by the view of a real estate developer, a farmer, or a hunter, for example. The several definitions of landscape will consequently result from the varying and often conflicting interests from those different actors. This seminar aims at the debate of the social, cultural and political processes underlying the transformation of the physical environment into landscapes. The main interest is to discuss the social construction of nature during the processes of intervention in the physical environment towards the creation of landscapes as varied as cityscapes, riverscapes, and forestscapes. The seminar will debate topics related to the nature-culture interactions in processes of landscape creation and transformation; the multiplicity of natures that exist in the processes of landscape making; and the contrasting definitions of landscapes, among other themes.

Presentations

Primitive Accumulation and the Production of Space in the Construction of Nature in Sao Paulo.
José Paulo GOUVÊA (Associação Escola da Cidade, Arquitetura e Urbanismo)

A Comparative Study of Metropolitan Water Supply and Drainage Systems in Developed and Developing Countries: The Cases of Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris and São Paulo
HAGIWARA Hachirō  (Shikoku University, Faculty on Management and Information  Science) 

Organizer

Andrea FLORES URUSHIMA, (Kyoto University, CIAS)

Discussants

Wil DE JONG (Kyoto University, CIAS)
YANAGISAWA Masayuki  (Kyoto University, CIAS)
Rohan D’SOUZA, (Kyoto University, ASAFAS)

Program