Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture

Patterned Ground unravels the entangled relationships between nature and culture. Around 100 entries by leading names in new geography and related disciplines focus on various ‘objects’ in the landscape – from beaches to battlefields, bees to horses, police stations to post-offices, trees to tractors. Each piece, written by an expert in the field, explores the way in which we understand that object and its relationship to the world around it. This book is neither encyclopedia nor dictionary, but a knowledgeable and impassioned engagement with the world. In this sense, it chimes with earlier experiments in understanding the earth and its landscapes, whether these endeavors have been conducted within the sciences, the social sciences or the arts.

Patterned Ground backtracks from familiar and obvious ways of seeing patterns in the world, and discovers it anew. In this way, it opens up new possibilities for thinking about the relationships between ourselves, objects and the ground on which we walk.

Stephan Harrison is Senior Research Associate at the School of Geography, Oxford University.

Steve Pile is Reader at The Open University, Milton Keynes.

Nigel Thrift is Head of the Life & Environmental Sciences Division, Oxford University.