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| THE CURRENT TRENDS OF STUDY ON CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN CHINA |
| JIANG Jin-bo1,2, SITU Shang-ji1 |
1. Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou 510275, China;
2. Geography Department, Jiaying Colloge, Meizhou, Guangdong 514015, China |
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Abstract In China, cultural geography can be divided into two stages which are named by classical study and modern study. Before 1980, cultural geography in China emphasizes on the relation between the environment and the culture of China and origin of Chinese culture. The modern study of cultural geography in China has come since the advent of policy of reform and opening and revival of human geography in China. The achievement of modern cultural geography in China is great in recent 20 years. Its construction of subject and level of research are raised to a new height. The theoretical study on cultural landscape rises. There is more profound understanding to cultural ecology, the know ledge of cultural diffusion and cultural integration is deepened and the methodology of cultural zone advances etc. While the structure and types of landscape and its history are paid attention to, the content and approach to landscape are regulated; sustainable development becomes a new field on the study of the relation between the environment and its culture; some new conceptions have developed, for example cultural beginning place, cultural end place, media of cultural diffusion; the influence of above factors is discussed; the same or similar degree of cultural development and a common cultural centre are applied to divide into cultural zones; the study on region culture and its use are being got wider and wider attention. Based on the above, the paper analyses a series of the problems in cultural geography in China, which includes natures of the subject, expansion on its study regions and the transform of its study methods. The author urges historical cultural geography is a branch of cultural geography, not completely the same subject. From the nature of geography, cultural actors in a region and the relation ship between them and their environment should be taken as the object of cultural geography study. It is important that cultural region and cultural diffusion in regions are regarded as main subject. The mechanism of cultural integration, dynamics of cultural diffusion, cultural ecology theory will be paid more attention. At the same time, cultural geography in China must put several new methods to use, such as subject and object method in cultural anthropology, experimentation method in sociology and GIS method. The study on oceanic cultural geography will soon be a new focus.
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Received: 12 June 2001
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2002, Vol. 17 
