Imagining rural landscapes: Making sense of a contemporary landscape identity complex in the Netherlands

Periods of accelerated societal change in European history have disrupted gradual alteration in the landscape, creating breaks with the past. This has led to, what we refer to as, the contemporary landscape identity complex in the Netherlands. Composed of dissonant narratives surrounding the landscape that play out on the societal level, the contemporary landscape identity complex may create tensions that can obstruct conservation efforts. In this article, we map out this complex. Three narrative clusters, distilled from literature and supplemented by interviews, aid in understanding the tension regarding the future of the Dutch contemporary rural landscape, namely: ‘the utilitarian narrative’, ‘the romantic narrative’, and ‘the eco-scientific narrative’. The contemporary landscape identity complex is fed by these narratives, specifically through how rural landscapes are imagined and discussed, as opposed to how they are lived and acted upon. The way such narratives play out in practice is further investigated through a case study on the ‘Bommelerwaard’, an area in the south-central of the Netherlands. From our results, we propose a pathway to reconcile the contemporary landscape identity complex towards a landscape conservation ethic that allows for a co-existence of a diversity of images and ideas about (semi-) natural landscapes.