Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Sandra Pannellwith the “traditional land-use pattern”, have been rejected by the Park authorities 67 (ICOMOS2004: 135). Certainly, heritage tourism in the region promotes the ‘caught in time’ qualitiesthe Park management plan strives to maintain. Tourism is focused upon Agriturismo, or‘farmstays’, the commercialisation and promotion of ‘traditional’ agricultural products andhandicrafts, and upon showcasing the tangible cultural heritage of the region. As KarenThompson observes, ‘heritage products’ based upon the idea of ‘tradition’ or the ‘relics offormer civilisations’ have “greater potential to generate revenue from international tourism”(2005: 100). In some instances, this particular emphasis upon the past may also be part of alocally driven, cultural renaissance.Management also emphasises that “Val d’Orcia Artistic, Natural and Cultural Park is run bypeople who live and work in the area or are part of local administration”(http://www.parcodellavaldorcia.com). For the people who live and work in Val d’Orcia, thepreserved ‘landscape patterns’ referred to in the World Heritage nomination and evaluationdocuments form the contours of their lived-in, day-to-day experience of this place as home(see Jackson 1995). While traditional artistic and contemporary tourism depictions suggest alandscape of confined cultural edifices surrounded by expanses of nature, it is the familiarand temporally enduring combination of these features as the source of “a comforting homelyfeel” (Ellen 1996: 11), which ultimately renders the entire countryside of Val d’Orcia as‘natural’. It is this sense of being at home in a taken-for-granted world that largely informsthe experience of naturalness and the local identification of this World Heritage ‘culturallandscape’ as ‘natural’.The ‘organic’ values a community places upon its environment are not readily andsometimes not easily recognised in conventional heritage conservation frameworks. AsSharon Sullivan points out, these organic features and feelings “are often an unconsciouspart of [a] society’s values until they are challenged” (2004: 50). Even when challenged, it isnot always the case that this intangible and often inarticulate sense of place is acknowledgedas having heritage significance. While in some World Heritage properties, governmentofficials and park administrators may place a “high value on ‘classical’ culture” and a “lowvalue” on local culture (Black and Wall 2001: 132), the values cherished by a local group orcommunity may not readily or wholly translate into those “elements assessed, analysed andcertified by experts as having a certain degree of significance” (Sullivan 2004: 51). In thecontext of World Heritage, this process of translation, and its spatial articulation, is spoken ofin terms of the “functionality and intelligibility” of a place or a landscape (UNESCO 2005: 84).It is a precondition for inclusion of a cultural landscape on the World Heritage List that thevalues of the nominated property can be delineated and made intelligible to others. AsLayton and Titchen comment, some cultural landscapes are neither “susceptible to divisioninto discrete areas”, nor are all of the values ascribed to them by the local communitynecessarily intelligible to outsiders (1995: 178).Val d’Orcia appears to be one of those instances where the translation process is bothincomplete and, to some extent, artificial. The inscription of the valley as a ‘culturallandscape’ over-rides the artistic traditions and contemporary expressions, which construeVal d’Orcia as both a natural and cultural space. The delineation of the entire region as acultural space ignores historical and modern landscape aesthetics, where the “forms ofman’s constructions and the spaces provided by geography seem to fit” (Hartt 1970: 11).Not as a homogenous cultural expanse, but one where hills are crowned with cities, villages,castles, churches and villas, surrounded by the Tuscan countryside. The countryside in thisexample is a ‘natural’ space ordered and made intelligible, however, in relation to the geopoliticallandscape of city-states, which emerged in the later part of Middle Ages (Hartt 1970:67 The Park of Val d’Orcia is managed by the five municipalities of Castiglione d’Orcia, Montalcino,Pienza, Radicofani and San Quirico d’Orcia, the Provincial Administration of Sienna, together withrepresentatives of the private sector” (ICOMOS 2004: 134; http://www.parcodellavaldorcia.com).68