Are There Counter-Landscapes? On Milk Trestles and Invisible Power Lines

Hannes Palang and Helen Sooväli-Sepping

Landscape Research, 2012, vol. 37, issue 4, 467-482

Abstract: The paper takes its starting point from the duality in the Estonian rural landscape shaped by social practices. On the one hand, the changes and management of landscapes follow a political decision. At the same time, the old patterns of semi-legal activity offer a resistant practice. The study is illustrated with the milk trestle, a now-disappeared symbol of recent history in the Soviet countryside. The milk trestles and their role in Estonian country life are studied from a threefold perspective—their functions, meanings and the values behind this symbol. The article is based on ethnographic field work carried out between the years of 2001 and 2002 and traces the phenomenon of how living landscape transforms into deserted landscape; in other words, how story becomes history. The paper shows how the milk trestle landscape functioned as a prolongation of the former landscape behind the ideological layers of the Soviet landscapes.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2011.604715

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