Rethinking stewardship: landscape architecture, commons enclosure and more-than-human relations

Abstract

In landscape architecture, stewardship has become synonymous with a positive approach to managing and designing environments, which lacks historical and geographical context. While the practice has the possibility to increase human involvement in habitats and cultivate ecological relations, historically it suffers the socio-ecological separation of the human (subject) and non-human (object). Additionally, the majority of practice sits comfortably within private development, and reproduces inequalities rather than challenging them. This article traces an institutionalised European-centred notion of stewardship by focussing on three episodes from British woodlands: 8th century pre-enclosure woodlands and the original steward of pigs, 16th century park and forest enclosures and the steward of deer and 17th century national estates and the steward of oaks. In light of these findings, landscape architecture’s uncritical reliance on stewardship as an ethical stance, needs to be revised to better account for environmental and social justice within more-than-human relations.