Case studies: Learning by doing

Case study is a research method that involves an investigation of a subject area and its related contextual position. Case studies concerning cultural landscapes are vital to learning since they enable the sharing of knowledge and experience with regard to understanding, caring for, and safeguarding heritage landscapes. There are a huge number of published case studies on cultural landscapes. Scale is a key issue illustrated in the case studies. All case studies illustrate the complex intra-actions between cultural-natural systems. In all case studies, the communities associated with each cultural landscape are not typically geographically contained but extend across extensive settings and networks: for example, tourists visiting West Lake, dispersed Maori peoples with ancestral connections to Ihumaatao, Micronesians with widely distributed connections to Yap, the many Taiwanese with gastronomic linkages to the longan orchards of Taiwan, the viticulture systems of the Azores, and Chinese Taoists for whom the Wudang Mountains are spiritually significant.