In the face of worldwide population growth, increasingly intensive agriculture, depopulation of marginal and less favoured areas, and growing rural-urban migration, two contrasting trends are ...becoming more pronounced: land abandonment on one hand and intensification of agricultural land on the other hand. Considering the complexity of mentioned issues, which result in landscape impoverishment, biodiversity loss, and a decline in crucial ecosystem services, it is essential to prioritise sustainable governance and management of landscapes and natural resources. Alternative approaches are needed to address these challenges. In this special issue, we focus on the potentials of commons and collective actions in sustaining landscape management and natural resource governance. The term "commons" refers to the way communities collectively manage local resources. Collective action refers to the coordinated efforts and cooperation of a community.
The article addresses the governance of water commons with an emphasis on drinking water. The study applied two conceptual frameworks: Ostrom's Design Principles and the Social-Ecological Systems ...framework. The empirical part refers to two water commons in Slovenia and is based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with locals and professionals. The article follows three objectives: 1) to identify the drivers and motivations for successful local water governance; 2) to assess the robustness of water commons in terms of current and future challenges; 3) to identify the benefits of water commons. The key elements for the functioning of the two local communities under examination are shared interests, as well as a strong commitment to effective management. In addition to the material benefits (i.e. drinking water supply), non-material ones are also important. Community building and identity are particularly noteworthy. The importance of small drinking water supply systems that are well organised and responsibly governed as commons is beneficial not only to a municipality but also to a country.
Interactions between nature and man – the underlying forces in landscape – have over time caused diversity. Usually, geographers and landscape ecologists deal with spatial diversity; in this paper, ...we would like to also consider temporal diversity. We argue that Central and Eastern European landscapes (using the examples of Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) are much more diverse in time (layers) than Western European ones. This difference requires the use of different indicators in order to measure and study landscapes and special problems, threats, and possibilities of management and future development – but most important is the consideration of different perceptions. We also show that this diversity reduces the readability of landscapes, creating miscommunication and a transformation of meanings. We further argue that the link between humans and landscape is lost in Central and Eastern European countries due to temporal diversity, and that this link will be created anew in a globalizing world. To overcome alienation, we need slightly different classifications/typologies for each country in this region, with the aim of a sound future management of cultural landscapes.
Traditional agricultural landscapes give a distinct character to the European Alps and are considered part of their heritage due to their distinctive natural and sociocultural features. At a workshop ...jointly organized by the Swiss Interacademic Commission for Alpine Studies (ICAS), the International Scientific Committee on Research in the Alps (ISCAR), and the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), Ljubljana, experts from different European countries discussed current trends in traditional Alpine agricultural landscapes in September 2017 in Tolmin, Slovenia. The objective of the workshop was to develop options for proposing these landscapes as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (www.fao.org/giahs/en).
The article focuses on the geographical imagination of landscapes, depicted in the photographs. The research stems from the assumption that photographs play an important role in shaping and ...preserving individual and collective imagination of a landscape and that geography as a science is closely connected to visual representations of the world. The empirical part of the research entails selecting and defining/coding the photographs from the book Slovenian Landscapes by Dušan Ogrin and their analysis through statistical methods. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate what kind of image of the landscape this book creates. The goal is to design/formulate a methodology for photograph interpretation, especially to select the indicators and their categories as well as the criteria for a quantitative photograph evaluation. Using these methods, the appearance of the landscapes is analysed according to the individual indicators, placing special emphasis on surface form as the most important landscape element.
This article aims to study and clearly define the terms public good, common-pool resources, and the commons. Using path dependency analysis, interviews, and workshops among the general public and ...experts, we highlight the perception of public goods and the commons in Slovenia as a transitional society. The analysis reveals that the general public’s understanding of these terms is still strongly influenced by communist socialist-era emphasis on social justice, equality, and access to goods for everyone, which can be at odds with the right to private property. Inadequate governance of goods that are considered public goods, but are in fact common-pool resources, can lead to conflicts and degradation of common-pool resources, which results in the loss of advantages providing wellbeing. Because people’s lives depend on subtractable natural resources, it is necessary to raise awareness about them among the general public and professional community, emphasize their vulnerability, and explain that they cannot be accessible to anyone in unlimited quantities. Furthermore, in an international context, using the Slovenian case, we seek to improve the understanding of human behaviour and expectations concerning public goods and common-pool resources in post-communist transitional societies.
Namen prispevka je proučiti in jasno opredeliti pojme javno dobro, skupni viri in skupno. V članku smo na podlagi prostorsko-časovne analize, intervjujev in delavnic med splošno in strokovno ...javnostjo osvetlili dojemanje javnega dobra in skupnega v Sloveniji kot tranzicijski družbi. Analiza je pokazala, da na razumevanje teh pojmov med splošno javnostjo še vedno močno vpliva poudarjanje socialne pravičnosti, enakosti in dostopnosti dobrin za vse iz obdobja socializma, kar je lahko v nasprotju s pravico do zasebne lastnine. Neustrezno upravljanje dobrin, ki so dojete kot javno dobro, v resnici pa so skupni viri, lahko vodi v konflikte in razvrednotenje skupnih virov, s čimer bomo izgubili prednosti, ki nam omogočajo kakovostnejše življenje. Ker smo od omejenih naravnih virov življenjsko odvisni, je treba o njih nujno ozavestiti splošno in strokovno javnost, izpostaviti ranljivost teh virov in pojasniti, dane morejo biti dostopni vsem v neomejenih količinah. V mednarodnem okolju želimo s predstavljenim slovenskim primerom prispevati k boljšemu razumevanju človeškega vedenja in pričakovanj do javnega dobra in skupnih virov v postsocialističnih tranzicijskih družbah.
Za sodobno humanistiko je znacilno, da poudarja vlogo jezika kot sistema znakov, ki omogoca ne le komuniciranje, razpravljanje, izrazanje mnenj, temvec prek rab, aktualizacij tega sistema vzpostavlja ...druzbene vezi, pripadnosti, identitete, oblikuje modele za pojmovanje sveta, prostora. Postrukturalisticni4 »jezikovni obrat«, ki je v humanistiki izpostavil ontolosko prvenstvo teksta in diskurza ter ju povezal z razmerji moci in strukturami vednosti, se v geografiji najjasneje kaze v metafori pokrajina je besedilo (Hoelscher 2009b). Razumevanje pokrajine kot besedila sicer samo na sebi ni iznajdba postmoderne geografije, saj je zaznamovalo ze nemsko Landschaftsgeographie in njeno hermenevticno razbiranje antropogenih sledi in objektivizacij druzbenosti v fizicnosti pokrajine, koreninilo pa je se v starejsem izrocilu krscansko-humanisticnega tolmacenja prostora v stari geografiji 19. stoletja (Hard 2008: 271-272, 279-284). Toda prvotno zgolj metaforicna analogija med tekstom in prostorom se je zdaj tako rekoc leksikalizirala in terminologizirala, s tem da je bila vpeljana v okviru razclenjenega lingvo-semioticnega pojmovnega instrumentarija, ki je preplavil postmoderno humanistiko. Na splosno lahko besedilo opredelimo kot komunikacijski pojav, ki nastane z uporabo jezikovnih znakov za predstavitev (reprezentacijo) neke vednosti, stalisca in/ali uresnicevanje nekega namena, cilja (Marko Juvan 2006: 120). Besedilo sestavljajo povedi in druge jezikovne prvine, ki so oblikovno in vsebinsko povezane ter soodvisne, tako da je besedilo zaokrozena celota. Ta celota predstavlja posebno raven pomena, to je smisel, ki ima med drugim posebno komunikacijsko vlogo. Tako besedilni smisel kakor omenjena vloga sta odvisna tudi od situacije oz. konteksta, v katerem besedilo nastane, polozaja, v katerem ga naslovnik sprejema, in intenc akterjev, ki elemente materialnega sveta - z njihovim razmejevanjem od okolja in vzpostavljanjem pomenotvornih razmerij med njimi - kot besedilo vzpostavijo ali dojamejo (Juvan 2006: 120-121). Besedilo je »pojav, ki je vseskozi vpet v proces pisanja, razumevanja, interpretiranja in reinterpretiranja konvencionalnih znakov« (Juvan 2006: 133), zato ni le kulturni izdelek, ampak tudi simbolni prostor, kjer socasno potekata dva procesa: predstavljanje sveta in druzbena interakcija. Besedilo je ne samo temeljna enota literature, ampak je, kot je opozoril Bahtin, »temeljna danost ... vsega humanisticno-filoloskega misljenja« (Bahtin 1999: 285), kar pomeni, da je humanisticnim znanstvenikom sodobna in pretekla kultura s svojimi praksami vred dostopna in pomenljiva samo prek tekstov (izjav), materializiranih v najrazlicnejsih oblikah; teksti kot izhodisce in glavni predmet humanistike pa so ne samo pisni ali ustni, temvec tudi nebesedni, denimo vedenje neke skupine v ritualih ali simbolna govorica arhitekture in urbanizma (prim. Juvan 2000: 7-14). Pojem tekst, razumljen v sirsem semioticnem pomenu, je mogoce prenesti na zivljenjski prostor in pokrajino, kolikor v njuni fizicnosti opazovalec prepozna znakovnost (znake, indekse, sledi, simptome itn.), prek katere lahko prostoru prisodi neki pomen, sporocilnost. Geografija je pri preucevanju prostora segla se po dveh literarnoteoretskih koncepcijah, povezanih s pojmom tekst. Konstitutivna lastnost tekstov je medbesedilnost, saj vsako besedilo vsebuje sledi drugih besedil in znakovnih sistemov kulture oz. se nanje nanasa, sklicuje, te predloge pa spet predpostavljajo, evocirajo in predelujejo nove in nove tekstualne plasti sodobnega in preteklega kulturnega prostora (prim. Juvan 2008). V luci pojma medbesedilnost lahko preucujemo slojevitost pejsaza ali mestnega tkiva, ki v sleherni sedanjosti nosi v sebi sporocila ostalin iz minulih dob naravne in kulturne zgodovine, pa tudi clovekovo orientacijo v prostoru ter njegovo kognitivno urejanje, clenjenje in opomenjanje neposrednega zivljenjskega okolja prek mentalnih podob in shem, spominsko akumuliranih z recepcijo mnogovrstnih, zlasti zanrsko ponovljivih besedilnih imaginacij prostora (Juvan 2006: 255-258). Drugi izraz, ki je pritegnil geografe, je diskurz, tj. raba jezika v konkretnih situacijah, v katere izjavljanje umesca svoje subjekte in vzpostavlja vezi z aktanti, ki so naslovniki izjave ali pa so z njo predstavljeni, predpostavljeni, zlasti kot nosilci predhodnih, naknadnih ali moznih izjav (prim. Juvan 2006: 47-51; Koron 2004/2005). V geografiji je diskurz razumljen kot niz reprezentacij, praks in predstav, ki oblikujejo pomene, jih povezujejo v omrezja in jih osmisljajo.
Slovenia boasts a great diversity of all natural factors. As a result, many different types of cultural landscape have developed in Slovenia's very small area. The aims of this book are to obtain a ...comprehensive picture of Slovenia's cultural landscapes~to define and assess their elements, relationships, and the correlations between them~to make an historical survey of landscape shaping~and to delineate and analyze current processes and trends that are changing the rural landscapes faster than ever before. An important part of the book is to classify landscapes at the national level. The classification model is based on a hierarchical concept with eight levels of division. More than 300 variations were defined at the lowest level, and by using a synthesis approach, twenty typological groups were created. Later, nine case studies were analyzed to determine which elements, physical and human, were of vital importance for the examined landscape types. The results show the importance of natural elements, particularly in less favourable areas. Natural elements have direct and indirect impacts on the human elements, but the importance of political and administrative decisions are also significant.
This paper presents the cultural landscape as an abstract concept and the result of a complex relationship between the natural environment and human society, and at the same time as a result of ...comprehension and personal views. A landscape is a story about the people that created it. The theoretical part establishes parallels between a landscape and the stories that this landscape has generated as well as their connection with geographical knowledge. This is followed by stories about real and imagined landscapes from Slovenian Istria, as ascertained through an analysis of extensive material using the ATLAS.ti software and taking into account the principles of grounded theory. This approaches a holistic view of the landscape, or understanding the landscape as a system of material and non-material elements and processes that direct them.
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