Sustaining Landscapes

Landscape, Governance, and Ecology in Chinese Visual Culture, 1000 1400 examines the ecological thinking embedded in the rise of Chinese landscape genre in relation to state finance, natural resource management, and geospatial knowledge. It traces the pre-industrial notion of sustainability in policy debates, legal regulations, and arts. Landscape imagery on paintings, maps, as well as mass-produced artifacts such as fans and ceramic pillows documented both appropriate and exploitative use of natural resources, and critiqued on social inequity and political turmoil. This book breaks new ground by bringing together research on visual and material culture with analysis of politics and ecology. Wang argues that the Chinese landscape genre embodied a holistic approach to negotiatingdebates on human-nature interdependence and people-state relationships. It joins the increasing literature on ecocriticism and offers alternative perspectives to address contemporary challenges, ranging fromenvironmental crisis to global governance.