by Dorceta E. Taylor

About Dorceta E. Taylor

Dorceta E. Taylor is James E. Crowfoot Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, where she is the Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Field of Studies. She also holds a joint appointment with the Program in the Environment. She is a past Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Environment and Technology Section. Taylor received doctorates in Sociology and Forestry & Environmental Studies from Yale University in 1991. She is the author of The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600s-1900s: Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change (2009) and Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (2014).

Landscape

book Keywords for Environmental Studies

In The Environment and the People in American Cities (2009), I argue that landscape is a socially constructed entity that is an important element of nation building. It is not simply an object to be viewed, depicted, cultivated, or manipulated, but as W. J. Thomas Mitchell (2002) contends, it is an instrument of cultural force central to the creation of national and social identities. The American Heritage Dictionary (2009) defines “landscape” as an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view. “Landscape” is also commonly defined as a depiction of scenery in a picture or painting, or as a branch of art. The term, first recorded in 1598, arose from the Dutch word “landschap,” meaning “region, tract of land.” It took on artistic overtones in English usage, where it came to mean “a picture depicting scenery on land.”