Conceptos para una sociología del paisaje

In traditional sociology, landscape has not been considerer as a product and agent of social production. Yet landscape is also society, and the ways by which we interact with landscape and even its very shape derive from social processes. This paper presents an overview of the research on landscape ranging from sociology to psychology, economy or human geography. Starting from the Latour’s proposal of hybrids (in part social, in part natural) and we present the concepts of natural place and natural icon. They are two ways to interpret landscape which sometimes are opposed one to each other. These two concepts hide two ways to understanding natural environment and how to interact with nature. Nowadays the image of a natural place is mainly found in rural areas whereas natural icon interpretations are prevalent in urban communities. Both interpretations of landscape and nature may clash at different scales.