Landscape, space, and time: navigating the cultural landscape through socio-spatial and socio-temporal organization in rural Pakistan

This paper deals with landscape to examine the ways people associate meanings to their environment through the cultural perceptions of space and time. It aims to explain the transformation from natural to cultural landscape in the cultural context of socio-spatial and socio-temporal organization in rural Pakistan. It is argued here that spatial and temporal references are pivotal in constructing, perceiving, and memorizing cultural landscape. The paper is based on ethnography of a Pakistani village, using participant observation in addition to interviews from thirty-two participants. These interviews included narratives, photo-elicitation, and memory imagework to analyze the spatial and temporal aspects of landscape from socio-cultural perspectives in rural Pakistan. The study shows that the interrelationship of space and time in rural social organization is evident in the social construction of landscape.