Influence of Landscape on Identity

In essence, the landscape is not just a physical backdrop, but an integral part of how people understand themselves and their place in the world. The lifelong influence of one's formative landscape is a key part of personal identity.

-"Perplexity"

Changing landscape identity—practice, plurality, and power

Landscape has always been in constant flux; yet, historically landscape change was local, gradual, and nested within existing landscape structures. By contrast, contemporary landscape changes are often seen as threatening, characterized as abrupt, unpredictable, and highly dynamic transformations with little relation to locality. Such transformations are driven by interrelated factors including globalization, urbanization, level of accessibility, calamitous events, economic factors, technological development, as well as changing cultural values.

Historically, the environment in which identities form was downplayed in academic studies. However, relationships and connections to others are always geographically located, as in ‘To be human is to have and know your place’. The relations we develop with our surroundings create and establish belonging, meaning, and security.

A significant step in the landscape identity concept is the unique psycho-sociological perception of a place as a spatial-cultural space as both a physical entity and a vessel for existential meaning. Alterations to the landscape affect how people see themselves. If changes are negative or non-democratic, they undermine the relationships individuals and communities have to their surroundings.

Changes to the landscape’s physicality may result in continued connection becoming untenable or only possible to maintain through increased effort, as the practice no longer fits the landscape and results in a ‘tipping point’ to landscape identity where through change new identity forms. Such change has the potential to create ‘landscape induced alienation’ or Solastalgia, homesickness without leaving home. Recognizing the psychological impact can help explain why landscape change arouses resistance. Identities become important when they are perceived to be under threat. As individuals, if we perceive a threat to the landscape, we find the need to defend it as an identifiable space; consequently, new relations to the landscape develop.

Such connections and understanding impact spatial behavior, the extent of which becomes clear when we are faced by people or practices that appear ‘out of place’, bringing into question who is recognized as a worthy or responsible community member. Yet, identity can also be constructed through change with such change having a positive effect if it provides increased self-esteem.

Contemporary landscape identities are situated in a world characterized by mobility where identities undergo a perpetual process of “rewriting”. Disembodied global processes are manifested in local landscapes restructuring localities from outside. The awareness of being part of global flows and systems undermines local place identity.

The uncertainty generated through global flows and resulting landscape change creates a search for identities of resistance, creating tension between globalization and the local. Landscape identity as a local construct is anchored in a specific place while global identities are abstract, generalized, subsuming the specific and the unique. In spite of and also as a response to global drivers, local identities and landscape distinctiveness become more significant as they provide a sense of security.

As such, location-based identities have to be seen as solid and fixed in order to provide anchors where collective practices, traditions, and shared material can form. The identity individuals draw on depends on the issue being addressed as individuals and groups draw on identity from various sources; place of residency, social standing, ethnicity, practices. Consequently, as individuals, we position ourselves on many axes at the same time depending on the issue at hand.

Multiple identities entail power structures, with different value holders vying for recognition, with global community values taking priority over local agendas and informing landscape identity. This raises a need to question the drivers in order to understand what instigates change in identity. Although landscape identity is generally perceived as having positive connotations, joining people together and developing shared values, it also constructs exclusion through the distinction of ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘the other’.

Identity, including landscape identity, becomes utilized as a means for classification, an objectifying scientific tool, masking the conflicts and ignoring the question of who belongs, who has a right to engage in landscape activities, legitimizing their identity in their surroundings. This discussion reframes landscape identity as a political entity, underwritten with power struggles, as all attempt to make their view and position significant. Landscape identity defines who can inhabit the place, who is included and who is excluded, and how people relate to each other.

Implicit Bias ~ Face to Face

I know when I first recognized my own implicit bias about gender. It was in the Fall of 2006 during a high school speech tournament in Helena Montana. I’d volunteered to judge the Lincoln Douglas debates and, along with a few other adults, was tired from a long day of civil argument as we sat to evaluate the final, prize-winning round.

The realities of gender inequality were not new to me. I was a fifty-two year old woman who had graduated from a women’s college at the peak of 1970’s Feminism. Over decades of work in film production, computer animation, and the Web, my primary colleagues were all men. Some of them, like my son’s father, were generous collaborators in favor of opportunity for all people. The majority, though, were male endowment heirs intent on seizing personal trophies. Harassment was surprising only when absent.

The Lincoln Douglas debate style takes its name from the original 1858 match between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas which focused primarily on slavery.  Now practiced mostly in high school speech tournaments, topics commonly center on moral questions argued between two people who are assigned either the affirmative or negative position.  The topic for the final round in Helena was: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.

The young contestants, a male and female, were both attractive, white, successful high school Seniors probably destined for law school.  Both were tall and well-groomed in conventional, tailored clothing. The young women had every sartorial detail crisp, tucked and aligned. In contrast, there was a noticeable rumple in the young man’s shirt. His tie, striped classic blue and red, was loosely knotted and slightly askew, suggesting an ivy league rebel.  

Throughout the debate, the young woman’s arguments were the most compelling and well-conceived, clearly affirming that civil disobedience is morally justified in a democracy. Her delivery was sincere and precise. I naturally agreed with her position.

Perhaps to mask his own distaste for having to support the negative view, the young man adopted a casually entertaining sarcasm that even highlighted the weakness in his argument, yet somehow also made it more appealing. Culture had granted him a wider range of persuasive tools than to his opponent.  On her, this approach would likely have seemed sloppy.  On him, though, it was charming and confident.  I found myself wanting to call him the winner.

Even the most intelligent and analytic of us will rely on cultural “rules of thumb” in everyday life. Acting without thinking because the situation appears to be “without question”. Face to face, these two young people seemed so evenly matched. Before laying down my final marks, I did shake off the enchantment of cultural mythology and gave the rightful win to the young woman.  But I had to consciously recognize and question my own conditioned bias in order to do it.

Making Pasta in Bologna

Fresh Laid Italian Eggs

In my mother’s Italian family, Fall was filled with food preparation for the Winter holidays.
Raviolis were the season's centerpiece. We made hundreds of them through October and most of November - all rolled and closed by hand on a massive kitchen table.

In 2013, I decided to deepen my ravioli experience during a trip through Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region and attended an official pasta making school in Bologna, a city of renowned Italian cuisine.

Cooking schools are an industry in Bologna and are plentiful since just offering lunch in a home kitchen could qualify. Visitors looking for particular experiences, especially with time and money constraints, should do as much research as their satisfaction level demands.

Francesca Prepares Dough

Being on a limited budget, value was a significant part of my decision mix. But I also wanted to "live" the culture of an Italian kitchen. So I chose the Vecchia Scuola Bolognese because of its affordable five day immersion course, allowing me to spend an entire workweek absorbing the sights, sounds, and sensations of an Italian production kitchen.

Ancient but Accurate Scale

I didn’t fully appreciate Vecchia Scuola Bolognese as a serious culinary training facility until I arrived.

They did offer a casual half day tourist course with lunch included, but their primary students were those beginning or extending professional careers in Italian pasta and pastry making.

The five day course I took was actually considered the first step toward earning a professional culinary certification. Vecchia Scuola is also an ongoing pasta production facility supplying food establishments throughout the region. Students are expected to practice their skills creating usable product. Nothing is wasted. What may not be “beautiful” enough for sale to an outside client will certainly be used in the school's student staffed Trattoria.

I paid for the class about six months before my trip and details such as available courses were made through email in both Italian and English. Payment was sent and confirmed by wire transfer.

My hotel in Bologna, Albergo Rossini, was a short portico covered walk from the Vecchia Scuola. Class started at 9 AM and lasted about four to five hours. The only new students on the day I started were myself and a twenty-four year old Israeli pastry chef who had just completed a four month certification in gelato making. He was planning to open his own cafe on a beach in Tel Aviv.

Alessandra Spisni is the founder of Vecchia Scuola. Though she was traveling outside of Bologna during the time I were there, signora Spisni was none the less a constant presence in the many attractive product displays throughout the school. The Spisni family thrives on an insatiable appetite for life.

The signora's brother, Alessandro, casually oversees the culinary school by correcting students with warnings lightly disguised as jokes. Much of his work day was spent enjoying food, family and friends. 

Our actual teacher was an impressive twenty-seven year old Sicilian woman named Carla.  She is the real head and heart of day to day pasta instruction and production at Vecchia Scuola. Alessandro even acknowledged this fact by joking about how often he loudly called her name. (CarrrrLLA!!)

Carla Instructs a Student from Texas

Fluent in four languages with a graduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, Carla led an ever changing group of students through various levels of instruction while managing overall production (rolling sheets of perfect pasta herself), quality control, and distribution for Vecchia Scuola.

During a break, I asked Carla how she chose pasta making rather than pursuing a career in her degree. She told me that she came to Vecchia Scuola to do a cultural research project then discovered she both enjoyed the physical exercise of the work and had a natural talent for it. Signora Spisni offered her a job. Carla took it, still loves it, and sees no reason that will change.

Filei Calabresi ~ Our First Pasta

Culinary Cathedral

The Israeli pastry chef and I were given official aprons, assigned lockers, oriented to the work space, and began making pasta alongside more advanced students.

We started with a batch of Filei Calabresi, a simple pasta made with just water and flour rolled by hand into a hollow tube that embraces any sauce. Using a classic industrial scale, we weighed rather than measured all ingredients. Weight, even for liquids, makes it easy to accurately increase or decrease the size of a recipe. We got a feel for how to properly knead dough and assess its readiness for rolling.

Tortelloni in Process

The most exciting part of the process was using long wooden rolling pins or poles, called matterellos, to flatten the dough. In the video at the end of this post, Carla uses a matterello to roll a double volume of dough into a translucent gossamer sheet, closely resembling fine cloth, in less than five minutes.

Both the matterello and table must be made of wood. Marble and stainless steel are too cold for pasta making. In contrast, wood warms the dough as it is worked and the grain imparts a surface texture that better holds sauces and condiments to the pasta.

Dried Spinach Tortelloni

At the start of this post I mentioned that making ravioli was my reason for taking the class. And we did make one batch of ravioli at Vecchia Scuola. But what we produced every day in quantity was tortelloni, the much larger version of tortellini.

Bologna is known for its tortelloni, pasta with a big stuffed "belly" that brings to mind the city's Medieval nickname, "La Grassa" (The Fat).  Of course tortelloni is much more popular than ravioli in Bologna!

One fundamental variation between types of stuffed pasta is the thickness of the dough. Tortelloni requires pasta that is as thin as possible because of its many layered folds.  On the other hand, ravioli doesn't have any folds and needs to be slightly thicker to hold stuffing in place with just crimping around the edges. I may not have made many ravioli at Vecchia Scuola, but I did gain a deep reverence for the skill and talent of handcrafting this seemingly simple food.

For those wanting to experiment for themselves, we used the basic recipe below for all variations of stuffed and flat pasta. A large wooden rolling pin can sufficiently flatten the dough but it's actually the length of the mattarello that makes it fun (and an art) to use.

There are no handles on a mattarello.  It moves with pressure applied from the palm of your hands, pushing and pulling like a massage as they move back and forth across the entire length of the pin. Yes. It is sensual. Lacking a real mattarello, a two inch diameter dowel, thirty-six inches long, sanded and bleached, will work.

Have fun making pasta! Even the mistakes are edible.

Basic Filled Pasta Recipe for +/- 100 Tortelloni Ingredients are measured by weight so the recipe can easily be scaled for quantity.
Pasta	Filling
Ingredient Ratio: 100 grams of "00" Flour per 50 grams of liquid. Liquid can be water, egg, broth, or a cooked vegetable such as spinach or mushroom. One shelled egg = 50 grams (Should be weighed if very large or small) 50 grams of cooked spinach = one egg.  The following mixtures allow for additional 50 grams of flour during kneading. Plain Pasta 6 eggs and 550 g flour Spinach Pasta 6 eggs, 50 g cooked spinach, 650 g flour  To Mix Form the flour into a bowl shape on the table.   Place liquids in the center of the flour. Gently blend flour into liquid. Knead until dough forms and stickiness is gone. Add flour as necessary.  Wrap kneaded dough in plastic. Let dough rest at least one hour before rolling.	Quantity Ratio:  Filling Weight = Dough Weight 1.5 kilos Ricotta (cow) 200 grams grated Parmesan cheese 20 grams salt (to taste)  1 Egg Nutmeg to taste
Roll dough into a sheet carefully but quickly to avoid drying. Cut rolled sheet into one inch squares. Place a dollop of filling into the center of each square. Fold dough corner to corner into a triangle over the filling. Squeeze the bottom tips of the triangle together to form a tortelloni shape. Practice often and eat your work!