The habitus, the rule and the moral landscape

Human interaction with the environment, particularly when the latter is conceived as nature, is often measured against moral standards for ‘appropriate behaviour’. Different, and frequently conflicting, ways of being-in-the-world are the theme of moral geographies. This paper seeks to elucidate the relation between morality, landscape and environmental practice by focusing upon a particular Scandinavian case. The Jæren district on the south-western coast of Norway has become one of the most intensively farmed areas in the country, undergoing radical changes causing contemporary farmers to become subject to moral condemnation from a wide range of bodies and people. The paper argues that in order to understand how the culture-nature relationship reflects and produces moral judgements there is a need to investigate how the production and meaning of a lived landscape becomes a moral landscape. Two questions are addressed: What is the ‘nature’ of the moral geographies in the area? How do differing ‘moral geographies’ affect the land and its perception as landscape? Understanding the moral landscape of the Jæren district allows us to identify the dialectics and contradictions inherent in the production of the landscape, and the ways rules and regulations for appropriate behaviour are the result of these contradictions. By adopting Bourdieu‘s notion of habitus, we are able to capture how such rules work and how they shape the landscape.