Making sense of breaks in landscape change

CONTEXT: The paper studies the possibilities of how the cultural explosion theory and path dependence approach could be used for exploring landscape (change). The former is an approach (not theory) used in humanities and social sciences to study the processes that happen when culture changes rapidly—how new cultural processes are created and how the past ones are integrated or forgotten. The latter is an approach developed also in social sciences, mostly economy, to study how the current decisions are dependent on the past decisions. OBJECTIVES: To demonstrate the possibilities the two theoretical approaches might offer. METHODS: We discuss the ways landscape change could be analysed using, first, cultural explosion theory and, second path dependence approach, and demonstrate this on the example of the post-Soviet military areas. RESULTS: Both approaches are indeed useful in understanding landscape change. The demo case on military landscapes allows for distinguishing three different development paths for the future of the areas: set-aside, active use, and neglect. Similarly three different ways of relating with the past are found: ignorance and oblivion; acknowledging the past; and making use of the past. CONCLUSIONS: Landscapes have time boundaries and these two analytical tools in fact help us to navigate through these boundaries, understand better the trajectories of change and the importance (or the lack of it) of the past.