Repertory grid technique was used to test the claim that sense of
landscape naturalness is socially constructed and culturally relative, and the reverse claim that sense of landscape naturalness is
underlain by universals of human thought. Participants made
judgments of sameness and difference concerning elements in a
standard landscape of nine elements. Sample groups represented
three cultures at extremes along a continuum of ideology concerning
human relations with nature: Euro-Canadian at one end, Vuntut
Gwich'in and north Baffin Inuit at the other. Results were consistent
with the universalist but not the relativist hypothesis. Although
principal factors for the three culture samples differ slightly, a
common factor is nested within the variation, and it corresponds to the
Euro-Canadian construct (natural x man-made). The study has
implications for environmental education and environmental planning.
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