Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Buenaventura Delgado Bujalance
Author-Name: Juan Francisco Ojeda Rivera
Author-Name: Juan Infante Amate
Author-Name: Carmen Andreu
Title: Los olivares andaluces y sus paisajes distintivos del mundo mediterráneo
Abstract: RESUMEN:
El olivar constituye uno de los paisajes más genuinos del mundo mediterráneo. Su proceso
de domesticación ha permitido ir transformando el potencial acebuche en olivar campesino, que va
derivando desde la extensividad multifuncional a los paisajes del monocultivo y que, en las últimas
décadas, genera unos olivares intensivos, sin vecería y sin sus ricos y variopintos sotobosques en
aras de unas productividades y unos benefi cios de los que comienzan a plantearse dudas para el
futuro. A partir de un primer acercamiento objetivo a los procesos milenarios que han permitido esta
diversifi cación varietal y agrocultural, se realiza en este texto una lectura hermenéutica de estos
paisajes con el fi n de mostrar claves comprensivas de sus complejas transformaciones, a través
de los valores perceptivos y connotativos que los convierten en realidades trayectivas o mediales,
como paisajes identitarios de la mediterraneidad.
ABSTRACT:
Framed through an original and oriental approach to landscape as a complex and medial
reality, in which the physiognomy of the world is manifested through a pathway which is divided
into different stages, this text is grounded in the hypothesis that the olive tree - a genuinely Mediterranean tree that has been wisely domesticated by this culture - is constituted as an identitarian constant of its varied and harmonious landscapes, so that olive tree and the Mediterranean world are written as a parallel account.
The initial chapters of this account tell that the fi rst cultivated olive tree - around 5,500 years
ago -originated in the Orient and subsequent chapters talk of its expansion from there to other
Mediterranean ecogeographical regions of the New World, South Africa and Australia. The most recent references allude to the origin of the monoculture olive landscape - which now dominates the
countryside and foothills of the south and part of the Levante region of Spain - as not being rooted
in antiquity but rather in the period after the ecclesiastical confi scations of the late 19th Century,
situating the expansion of its intensive monoculture cultivation in recent decades.
That long and fruitful coexistence brought about natural/cultural olive-growing landscapes,
and their continuing endurance tells of shrewd adaptations to limiting physical circumstances,
technical and agronomical transformations, trading circumstances and successive sociocultural
representations.
The aim of this article - written by two geographers, one historian and a painter - is to establish
a dialogue with current landscapes which bear witness to different moments in the process of
domestication, to converge in a geographical-historical-creative interpretation of them, which might
offer transdisciplinary keys to understanding the diverse and varied presences of olive trees in the
countryside of Andalucía.
From a methodological perspective, the aim has been to move on from multidisciplinary
readings prior to interdisciplinary convergence, in order to construct a transdisciplinary and shared
account:
There was also a shared multidisciplinary heritage of basic references, providing a point of
departure to foster an exchange of hypotheses with a view to focusing all expert gazes on certain
specifi c and signifi cant phenomena which testify to the different moments in the secular process
of olive domestication.
A guide - with itineraries and stop-offs by those testimonial landscapes of Andalucía and
an invitation to their common reading - was the next step in the method followed, which aimed to
turn basic multi-disciplinarity into convergent inter-disciplinarity: We were all looking at the same
landscapes which had been considered signifi cant and trying to establish certain spatial, territorial
and perceptive keys, through recognition of their limits, their main objective components and their
singular attributes, to agree on their core meaning or comprehensive signifi cance which - normally
- would have been drawn from internal or external literary or pictorial metaphors.
The method closes with a shared and transdisciplinary approach to writing this paper itself,
refl ected in the fourth section of the article, examining - based on a hermeneutical reading, which
aims to mediate between complex realities and a common understandable language - the traces
left in modern-day olive-growing landscapes in Andalucía by that millennial process of Mediterranean domestication.
Geographers, historian and painter are striving to see what emerges from a serene and unprejudiced
dialogue, seeing that a shared perspective gives rise to understanding that goes beyond
the summarising of analyses from each of our disciplines which, in turn, are necessary starting points in a process that surpasses and enriches them.
Classification-JEL: R1
Keywords: Paisaje, Olivar, Historia, Hermenéutica, Mediterráneo, Andalucía, Landscape, Olive grove, History, Hermeneutics, Mediterranean
Pages: 267-291
Volume: 01
Year: 2013
File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf1211.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:01:y:2013:p:267-291