Ben Highmore gives us a brief overview and analysis of the concept of "the everyday" - a term that simultaneously constitutes the banal/ordinary and the extraordinary/magical. He presents it as completely dependent on a separation of how one lives from how others live; the "everyday" of others is made exotic (in colonial discourse) or boring (in Marxist and feminist critiques of commodity culture). Pierce Lewis presents some semiotic tools for reading the landscape in which one of these "everyday" experiences take place (the generic "American cultural landscape"). Not unlike Highmore's example of Sherlock Holmes, who finds significance in the banal details of everyday life through rational investigation, Lewis proposes a rational method that might allow us to see "order in the landscape where we had only seen bedlam before." How do the ideas presented by the authors conform to or challenge your own experience/understanding of "everyday life"? What about how you understand the difference between "normalcy" in your own life versus the extraordinary context of travel and tourism?
In the article “Figuring the Everyday” Highmore sets out to describe the terrain of the everyday and horizon to locate this modern phenomena in a historical and social context. To do this the author discusses how the everyday is organized, thought about, valued, and experienced. The everyday is reconfigured by the author as a way of understanding a larger experience of modernity. Although the value-experience of modernity may have different valences these register in an ambivalent way. The constant reinvention of customary practices is part of a larger routine that incorporates the a-historical ideology of the modern project into and is actively normalized into daily life. This struggle happens dispassionately in the margins of consumption and production and defines modernist boredom. Sherlock Holmes is figured as a model subject of this modernity through his analysis that both decrypts, mystifies, and suffers the mundane. The character of Holmes represents the logical conclusions of Rationalism. His example is not only important to understand in terms of his analysis but also in his customary practice of getting bored. The paradox of Sherlock Holmes is that he delights in the reverse alchemy of transforming the mysterious into dull rationalization while performing this “magic” precisely because of his exceptional attention to mundane detail. The shamanistic ritual of the rational procedure works to cast compartmental a detail like an Orisha shells into legible patterns re-mythologizes the real. Highmore senses an opportunity to understand the condition of boredom productively through discriminating between types of boredom. These categories can be related to the practices and procedures of modernity that reproduces boredom. The examples the author points to are the mechanization of labor and the beurocracy that manages it. The techniques that organize people like the clock, communication, and travel affect the perception of everyday life. The repetition of these machines for keeping time or assembling parts found their counterparts in monotonous human physical choreography. Bigotry can assign boredom to denote social or cultural markers. This boredom describes social relationships between people. There are other boredoms that describe social and cultural inequalities that occupy the vein pursuits of the “other.” There contained within two opposing theoretical viewpoints on the everyday. These occupy, on the one hand the domestic, and on the other the public sphere. These two are gendered male and female and unsurprisingly, it is the public realm of the everyday that presides over the private in modernist ideology. Freud contributes to the theory of the everyday by relating the psychosis of his patients to the trivial hiccups of daily life. For Freud the commodity fetish brings the mystical rationalism of modernity into the living room. These commodities resound with an exotic antithesis to the droning on of the everyday. The desire to experience the everyday as strange resulted in looking to the “other” for inspiration. Cataloguing and displaying the lives of the exotic “other” through appropriating cultural objects and artifacts rationally achieve this objectification of the other. Colonialism through this process turns the everyday of the other into a commodity fetish.
In “Axioms of the Everyday” Lewis posits a list of cultural landscape truths that he holds to be self-evident. (I was not able to find much information about the author except that he taught at Penn State and wrote extensively about the subject of cultural geography) The author seems to be opening the field of geography in a cultural context. Strangely, he feels that there are few authorities on this topic although he does locate experts in unexpected places. The cultural landscape is defined as anything man-made. This expanded definition includes: the anti-aesthetic, commercial, functional, operational, un-picturesque landscape. Lewis describes the cultural landscape as: “nearly everything that we can see when we go outdoors. The premise of this Lewis’ thesis rests on the principle “that all human landscape has cultural meaning.” The author uses axioms as categories for understanding this way of thinking about the landscape. In logic an axiom refers to universal truths that are not demonstrated or proven. Using these basic truths the author makes an outline for the reader to be able to “read the landscape:”
Axiom of landscape as clue to culture- vernacular culture reflects national culture Corollary of cultural change- changes in landscape follow cultural change Regional Corollary- visual difference signals cultural difference Architectural aesthetics signal cultural difference Corollary of convergence- similarity of architecture signals cultural similarity Corollary of Diffusion-landscapes change to imitate trends elsewhere These changes are governed by predictable social diffusion Corollary of Taste- the forms that landscape take are predicated by cultural taste and not motivated by practicality Axiom of Cultural Unity and Landscape Equality- almost all objects in the landscape reflect culture Axioms of common things- common landscapes are hard to study in academia Corollary of Nonacademic literature-research into cultural landscape can come from “new journalists,” trade journals, advertisements, promotional travel guides Historic Axiom- historical context of landscape as it constitutes national identity Corollary of Historic Lumpiness- change happens in fits and starts Mechanical Corollary- technological and history of communications Geographic Axiom- literal topographical context implicit in cultural study Axiom of Environmental control- the reading of the landscape is colored by prior knowledge Axiom of Landscape obscurity- although the landscape conceals the questions of who, what, when, and why they were made.
The authorship of an article like this poses some strange questions. Because I found it difficult to locate where the author was coming from through background research I found it difficult to suspend a certain amount of skepticism. This skepticism basically comes for me out of the structure of the article. The notion of approaching the social landscape as something to be classified and sub-classified seems violent. My assumptions are that the author is trying to open up the field of geography with the tools of the scientific method that is available to him. It is interesting that the author finds it difficult to locate knowledgeable persons in putting the landscape into a social context. I wonder where he was looking. Maybe an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge has become normalized for me looking at the article forty-odd years later. The logical mathematical reasoning coupled with the privileging of vision in producing knowledge seems like a limiting bias of the author.
“Figuring The Everyday” I enjoyed the connection the author, Highmore made with the everyday in modern western society being so influenced by clocks, and institutionalization. The Author connects western modernity to the workforce, specifically the invention of the assembly line: “In manufacture, the workers are the parts of a living mechanism.” Highmore goes on to say that Boredom can be linked to social critique. , “The Boredom of everyday life can be, and often has been an area of social and political struggles” I am not fully convinced of this, as the two examples given are both of similar content, that make links to upper class white women who were unhappy with the situation they were in as house wives, and were unable to see a way out, and thus turned to boredom. This exapmle seems to make sense to me but i would like to see more examples of this...it intrigues me! The Author also points to instances where academics have made everyday things strange, or a place of difference and critique that has been long overlooked. Although after time these things can also enter into the everyday. It seems that for the author has linked the everyday to capitalism and the effects this has on the opinions of people living outside of the modern westerners everyday life, as Highmore exposes the way the everyday looks at anything outside of it as exotic, or relegates as “other.”
“Axioms For Reading The Lanscape” In my opinion Lewis uses reading of landscape is a way of expressing the ways in which we are not critical of all of our surrounding at all times. This relates to the everyday in that people go about there lives living and seeing these landscapes and it becoming so regular that there is little room for questioning what is actually there. Lewis points to the links in culture and society that give us hints about changes in policies, government, opinions etc. For instance the change in a MacDonald’s building shows a change in who they are advertising for, how to catch peoples attention, what has become important to people, and this changes with location. I enjoyed Lewis’ comment that “we are a good deal more conservative then many of us would like to admit.” As he describes the HISTORIC AXIOM saying that in looking at landscape history matters. This implies that if “we” were more progressive and changes were made more quick it history may not be of as much importance in our landscape, at least not ancient history, as much as more recent history. In general the author was speaking of geographic patterns , and the study of geography in general, which made me think that there actually are people who teach critical thinking about landscape. Also it seems as though the author is speaking to a very specific group of people, as he claims many things as trueisms.
I thought both Highmore and Lewis readings were interestingly related talking about the ‘boredom’ of everyday life and ‘cultural landscapes’ that people take for granted. Both readings seems to relate to the idea of tourism in terms of how in many tourist places, the mundane everyday life becomes the tourist attraction. Although, the natives might take it for granted or doesn’t appreciate certain things that might appear in their everyday life, for the tourists, that aspect of its environment seems more intriguing, especially from my own experiences. Another thing I found interesting was according to Lewis, ordinary landscapes are not meant to be read as books, and that ‘most Americans are unaccustomed to reading landscape.’ However, I found it little ironic that also ‘nearly every square millimeter of the United States has been altered by humankind somehow, at some time.’ So we are ultimately learning to analyze how ‘natural landscapes’ can be read while under these conditions. When the natural landscapes are altered in such way, is there purpose to every detail and specific intention? For example, it reminded me of Stonehenge in Salisbury, because it’s such a famous landmark and still standing, do people consider Stonehenge as a natural landscape or otherwise?
I think the most fascinating idea posed by either author is the idea of the "every day" being an mixture of the mundane and the magical, the known and the unknown, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, the "ordinary and the extraordinary". I too believe that there is magic and beauty in every corner of every room, street, and town. And I acknowledge that there is also this undeniable great fear of the ordinary or mundane. An uneventful evening is seen as bad. A drive through the corn fields of Illinois, a landscape we have all become very well acquainted with, is seen as boring, regular, and normal. The physical and "cultural" landscape, as seen by Highmore, is either ignored or taken for granted by the everyday American. We must learn to be a tourist, or traveler in our own towns, cities, lives. I also am fascinated by the idea of the exotic. What makes something exotic? When Highmore describes the "living exhibitions" showcasing the "every day" of African hut dwellers and natives of the Pacific, etc., I couldn't help but think of some glassed in cage somewhere in Africa, featuring a McDonald's employee flipping burgers. Would that be exotic to them? Would people pay money to see just how many burgers get flipped per day? Maybe there is something incredibly extraordinary about a chain like McDonalds, but we have been made so accustomed to it, that it has become mundane, and boring. But maybe if we only knew what to look for, we would see something else. This is what Lewis argues in his article, "Axioms for Reading the Landscape." We have forgotten, or never even learned, how to read our "cultural landscape." Lewis claims that, "our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form." I love that idea. There is so much history in the very dirt we walk on everyday. Our communities and cities can tell us so much about who we are as a people. But they have become so commonplace, that we don't even notice their significance. But as Lewis goes on to say, "Sometimes the commonest things are the hardest to study." My big question is, where do you begin? If the "cultural landscape" is this all encompassing thing, including everything we can see, how do you begin to dissect it? I guess the easy answer is to just do it. Begin to begin.
Highmore: When defining “the everyday,” one initially thinks of the monotony and boredom associated with habitually repeated actions. Any type of change immediately disrupts the notion of “the everyday” and one must then embrace this alteration into their routine. Eventually this change fades into the background. Anything exciting, magical, or interesting seems almost distant or unattainable yet one must remember that the concept of “the everyday” varies from person to person. What is a dull and boring existence to one may be fascinating to another; almost one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Lewis: The concept of the cultural landscape encompasses all that we see when we walk outdoors. Lewis states that “nearly every square millimeter of the United States has been altered by humankind somehow, at some time.” This information seems hard to digest as landscapes conjure up images of beautiful mountains, lush plains, and the shining seas. Approaching our “human landscape” as a sort of cultural record or commentary on American life seems peculiar yet Lewis provides us with the axioms or rules of how to read such a landscape. These rules seem to provide a discourse more than answers of why certain areas or regions across the country look as they do and what they reveal about their inhabitants. Because we are constantly progressing and evolving, how many of these axioms are truly applicable?
Highmore’s article called for our attention to everyday life and Lewis’ article introduce some semiotic tool for reading landscape. I just came up with some reflection. In the first article, every ordinary detail in everyday life could compose extraordinary events. The author used detective Sherlock Holmes’ investigation on ordinary objects as the explanation. However, not only Holmes, nowadays the police relay on the scientific investigation. To convict the suspect, some ordinary physical object or even imprint in the crime scene can be crucial evidence. "Collecting the clue in crime scene" has become the common sense for the public. Everyone can learn this scientific investigation from CSI or Discovery channel. Highmore indicated that Holmes regarded everyday as the mix of boredom, mystery and rationalism because of his genius. In contemporary life, we can grasp the idea by sitting in front of TV and watching CSI. In my opinions, technology plays an important role in changing our concepts of “everyday life”. TV and the internet provide knowledge or intellectual challenge which stimulates or satisfies our curiosity about “everyday life”. Now every ordinary person can obtain Holmes’ intelligence and sensitivity through the technology if he/she wants. In Lewis’ article, I think traveling can help people to rethink landscape. Although the landscape is ordinary and boring for local people, it is always new and exciting for tourists. Being in a new environment always makes human sensitive, curious, imaginative, and sentimental. For example, instead of New Yorkers, it is tourists who explore sightseeing spots and go through the whole Manhattan Island. Therefore, I believe that more tourists “read landscape” with more willing and humble attitude. However, considering tourists only stay in the spot for a short time. They might get some superficial stereotype or their own wishful thinking. Actually tourists might understand neither their neighborhood landscape nor the visiting spot. The best way to read landscape might be that we regard ourselves as tourists everyday – look into our environment every moment.
Highmore's article in conjunction with our everyday touring journal account assignment caused me to look more closely at my everyday routine. I found the section discussing "Boredom: the emptying of time" to be particularly interesting and what I could relate most easily to. In one particular section he quoted another saying, " This daily moitoring and accounting was a routine that marked each and every day, but it also continually divided and catalogued the day into countable segments. Such practices emphasized the routinization and regimentation of everyday life." I find that every day I am plagued by the necessity to adhere to a strictly regimented schedule of events... wake up, shower, go to class, eat, go to class, eat, do homework, sleep, and repeat. Sometimes there just isn't time in the day to do all the things one would like to do or see things they would like to see. I constantly had running to do lists of errands I need to run or books I would like to read, but at the end of the day, there is only so much time to do so many things. If I attempt to visualize my day to day activities in my head, all I can manage to see is blocks of time that eat up the available space in my life. How are we to break free from the mundane routine of everyday? If we look at the opposite end of the spectrum, at one who lives life free of the mundane "everyday life", does that person not seem to be lost in chaos? With no routine to follow and no regular, boring, everyday things, when do the extraordinary events happen? It seems as human beings we crave a routine lifestyle in order to maintain sanity at least.
Following our conversation on "the everyday", I was talking about Lewis' 1979 classic text with a friend currently working on a PhD in Landscape Architecture, who pointed me to a recently published article by a geographer named Don Mitchell (who gave a great lecture on campus last semester). Mitchell's essay is titled "New Axioms for Reading the Landscape" and is both critical of, and inspired by, Lewis' original axioms. In setting up his new axioms, Mitchell qualifies:
Any new set of axioms for understanding – “reading” – the landscape will be anything but “self-evident.” This is because, in fact, the landscape itself is anything but self-evident. In the generation since Lewis published his axioms, the explosion of critical landscape research, for all its diversity, has shown not that landscape exists in obscurity, but rather that landscape obscures.
In other words, to even begin to look at the landscape requires theories that determine value and focus. His first axiom states that "the landscape is produced: it is actively made: it is a physical intervention into the world and thus not so much our 'unwitting autobiography' as an act of will." Of Mitchell's axioms, this one is especially relevant to our focus on tourism:
Axiom 3: No landscape is local. “Context matters,” Lewis argues, and he is absolutely right. But the argument that landscapes “make little cultural sense if they are studied outside their geographic (i.e., locational) context” (p. 24) is incomplete. For it is also true that landscapes make little sense, culturally or otherwise, if they are only studied in relation to their nearby surroundings. The fruit orchards of Brentwood, California in the 1930s, for example, were products of transient labor from China, Japan, the Northeast of the USA, the Philippines, and eventually Mexico. Much of the capital planted in the orchards was from Britain. The theories behind the development and management of labor camps came from Berkeley professors); the laws that governed laborers and camps were fought out in Sacramento and Washington. The suburban houses that are now replacing these orchards are likewise the products of transient labor (together with local construction workers), building materials from the world over, designs hashed out in contracting firms across the USA and diffused through trade journals, and capital that is global in scope (until the crises of the late 1990s, East Asian capital was quite evident). To understand any produced landscape thus requires tracing out these networks of capital, commodities, and labor, networks that have long extended across the globe.
Link to Mitchell's text via Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=pcdTlNtrkAoC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=%22new+axioms+for+reading+the+landscape%22&source=bl&ots=rUJAjMqR96&sig=5ZJJG00wtI1f3qIywbvk7kUY-4w&hl=en&ei=7weKSfGYOpKU-gasjPHhBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA29,M1
I found myself strongly relating to the themes presented in Highmore’s work, “Figuring the Everyday”. In a society that is increasingly mediated and monotonous, I found the references to Weber, Kafka, and Marx particularly relevant. Reflecting upon Weber’s theory of the “Iron Cage”, I sadly drew many parallels to our industrialized and capitalistic society. If I had to define what I felt was my iron cage, I would have to say it stems from an increased sense of isolation. As I look back on everyday life without cell phones, text messaging or the Internet, it seemed so much simpler and less evasive. I felt like I had more control of the outcomes of my social interactions, or my ideas, or my identity. On the whole, adding new technologies is just making the bars of our iron cages thicker, as we struggle to grasp the meaning or true sentiments of the everyday. Lewis’ article “Axioms of the Everyday” really helped me to re-conceptualize the definitions of landscapes. I suppose I used to slate landscapes under the category of the extraordinary, along with other travel destinations or tourists spots, but after familiarizing myself with the axioms my perspective became enhanced. I understood Lewis in a more casual context, not taking his axioms as unalterable absolutes, but guidelines through which I can re-evaluate my normalized notions. I began to consider more critically how the element of planning has affected our landscapes, considering the function or cultural context in which they were invented for. Which brings me back to the idea of my own everyday functioning in this mechanized modernity. I try to appreciate the peculiarities that radiate from our assembly line lifestyles, making much room for spontaneous enjoyment and indulging in the infrequent irregularities.
Response to "Investigating the Everyday": The everyday here is described to us as the day to day objects, landscapes and tasks. Does the everyday inherently carry the weight of oppressiveness or the weight of unobtrusiveness? Highmore explores these questions further. He brings in modernity, because it was something that brought mystery, which is what is understood as the opposite of everyday, into an everyday setting. But eventually the mystic of the modern infused into the everyday became the everyday. Everyday and boredom: I think the everyday holds boredom for those whose everyday it is. but when one person's everyday is seen through a foreign lens int becomes exoticized. I think this is a link to tourism. When I travel I often have this strange inner tension of enjoying being a tourist and relaxing with longing to be part of the everyday of the particular locale, longing for this everyday to be my everyday. Then many times I come to the realization that if this were my everyday, it would probably seem just as benign as my current everyday situation. I think the everyday can carry a sort of oppressiveness depending on your socio-economuc stature and depending on your spiritual outlook. The workers described by Marx and the oppressed Victorian housewife Madame Bovary share a meaningless monotony that becomes oppressive and boring. I share the view that without the everyday, we wouldn't have mystery and excitement. It's just like many things bad or boring: without them, there's no other side of relief. We cannot be constantly stimulated and excited. There has to be some neutral space in oorder for us to be able to become stimulated and excited.
Axioms for Reading the Landscape:
From the 1st sentence of this article the author did little to make me think this was going to be an eye-opening, and thoughtfully written document. "For most American, ordinary man-made landscape is something to be looked at but seldom thought about." First of all, he's making the presumption that unlike his thoughtful self, the rest of America has never analyzed their landscape. This is just not true. I'm curious as to when this article was written. I'm going to assume maybe in the 60's when modernism was still going strong. Lewis did hae some useful steps to use if someone felt the need to read their landscape, which as a visual worker, I do. Many of these sort of points are action I and I'm sure many other artists, architects, and other, not just Pierce Lewis, have considered. Some of the points seem blantantly obvious to anyone who has spent any time analyzing their surroundings. For instance, it seems to me obvious that landscape is a direct link to the culture of those who inhabit the given landscape. The references to a past, to the surounding environment, to neighboring landscapes, all seem quite obvious. But it's sort of a nicely formatted document to have in the pool of references for reading the landscape. Comprehensive.
Stemming off of our conversation about boredom last week, it is interesting to hear what people understand as boredom and how our culture has totally manipulated the concept of being busy. People spend lots of money to "get away" and go to a spot where they feel they can relax, regain control, and force themselves to be bored for a little bit, the american vacation. It truly is frightening that people cannon just sit these days. Something has to be getting done, and that is certainly a reflection on how our capitalist society has effected our everyday lives. As I am growing in age, and have seen more landscapes, I notice how different landscapes affect my "boredom" or my "busyness". Its that the amount of work I have to do changes that much, its the people around me and what they are doing that determines how "bored" I am or busy I am. In Italy, they are much slower in life, but its not like they don't have things to do, they still have jobs and school and work, but its the mindset of going about doing all of those things that really makes the difference. This is where I think Lewis' reading comes into play. He gives a lot of vague examples about recognizing landscape as not simply a mountain scape or picturesque scene, but the everyday. I think he is ultimately suggesting a change of mindset for the ordinary human being. A different mindset of recognizing our surroundings as something out of the ordinary not just the everyday. I am not sure where this will get us though. I am not sure if by reading my everyday surroundings as out of the ordinary will change my circumstances or not. Maybe this will be an experiment...
Response to: Ben Highmore- “Figuring the Everyday”
Ben Highmore challenges how we understand the mundane landscape of the ‘everyday’ by revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Highmore explains, “(The everyday’s) special quality might be its lack of qualities”. Even though many people claim to see the beauty in everyday life; it requires a specific way of seeing, to truly uncover the mystery in the everyday (and it’s not always pretty). The American cultural landscape obscures our ability to see the everyday as anything but generic. Ever since the industrial revolution the mechanization of labor has decreased the skill and increased the repetition required to do work. Because certain jobs reward efficiency over skilled labor, time has extended into a monotonous drone that has saturated our everyday lives (if we are not sufficiently entertained). In order to see beyond our routines, and into the bizarre world of the inner workings of the everyday, we must think like an investigator. Highmore uses Sherlock Holmes’ scrupulous perspective on everyday scenes to show how the appearance of reality is deceptive. Everyday life is made up of a shifting series of illusions and it takes a keen curiosity to discover the mystery. But even Sherlock is not free from boredom. It was surprising to discover that Mr. Holmes needed some cocaine every once in a while… just to keep things lively. What is boring or exotic depends on what we’re accustomed to or not accustomed to. The difference between ordinary versus extraordinary is understood relative to culture. This is not to be confused with ‘cultural relativism’ as the philosophical concept, but as the practical difference between cultures. When we travel to a foreign land we are not only confronted with a change in geography, but also a shift in human interaction. What is exotic to us is tradition for others, and vice-versa… although some of these traditions (like the hula dancers at the Maui airport) are a façade used to tantalize tourist’s expectations of the ‘exotic’. A more racist example are the ‘human showcases’ and ‘living exhibitions’ that up rooted indigenous tribes to perform their daily lives in fairs across the globe. During the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 a tribe of pygmy people from central Africa were put on display so westerners could gawk at them like animals at a zoo. Again, I am embarrassed to be human.
Response to: Peirce Lewis- “Axioms for Reading the Landscape” Don Mitchell- “New Axioms for Reading the Landscape”
During our class discussion of Peirce Lewis’ “Axioms for Reading the Landscape” there was an over emphasis on the fact that these guides were written during the 1970’s. It’s true that the American cultural landscape has changed since the 70’s but that does not mean Lewis’ ideas are invalid. From my recent studies in Landscape Architecture I have some experience as to how reading the landscape is taught currently. In Lewis’ first paragraph he defines the verb “to landscape” as “to prettify”. To this day “landscape architecture” is associated with making landscapes pretty (at least in America). Just as Lewis describes his experience teaching in the 70’s, I too was puzzled and annoyed that the majority of my peers in landscape architecture seemed so obtuse to the everyday landscape and so keen on making things look pretty. But, like Lewis, I also realized that these students were merely reflecting the department’s emphasis on “aestheticization” instead of investigation. There were some creative and critical perspectives within the faculty, but their voices were far and few between. Ever since Lewis wrote his ‘Axioms’ there has been an influx of critical landscape theory, but practically speaking, Lewis’ axioms are as relevant today as they were in 1970’s. The majority of Americans, including myself, could use these guides to uncover the secrets imbedded within our everyday surroundings. I think Lewis is right in saying that this is something that most Americans have not done and should do. However, reading the landscape is not self evident, as Don Mitchell point’s out in his response to Lewis’ axioms titled: ‘New Axioms for Reading the Landscape.” Mitchell’s response isn’t as much a revision of Lewis’ ideas as it is an add-on. These new axioms stress the importance of the politics, the economy, and social justice when reading the landscape. The only substantial critique of the previous axioms is Lewis’ faith in visible evidence. Mitchell argues that our modern landscape is anything but self-evident because of the transparent and tangled network of capital, commodities, and labor that lace today’s vernacular landscape. Mitchell and Lewis agree that context matters, but Mitchell rightly points out that no landscape is local in today’s world. The global transformations between power, money, and oppression must be taken into consideration when trying to read the local landscape. Lewis argues that the mystery of our culture can be revealed to anyone who knows what to look for. But Lewis admits that reading the landscape is obscure and that physical evidence is ‘not the master key to an understanding of culture.” It is through a combination of looking, reading, thinking, and repeat, that someone can teach themselves how to ‘read’ their surroundings. And I believe anyone, with access to the right resources, can teach themselves how to read the landscape. Both Lewis and Mitchell’s axioms (although kind of a misnomer - as their axioms are not self evident) can be applied by anyone willing to see the world in a different light.