CourseCompendium

Scape metaphors

RELATED TERMS: Cultural geography, Human geography, Social geography

The suffix -scape has been added to a number of nouns apart from land. They include brandscape, servicescape, experiencescape, technoscape, ethnoscape, financescape, mediascape and ideoscape. Some of these terms may be of value when discussing narrative environments. Alternatively, you may wish to create your own kind of -scape, as a particular kind of narrative environment.

The following books discuss brandscape, servicescape and experiencescape:

Strasser, S., ed. (2003). Commodifying everything: relationships of the market. London: Routledge.

Knox, P. L. (2008). Metroburbia, USA. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Link to

Hanna, J. and Middleton, A. C. (2008). Ikonica: a field guide to Canada’s brandscape. Vancouver: Dougals and McIntyre.

O’Dell, T. and Billing, P. (2005). Experiencescapes: tourism, culture and economy. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.

Klingmann, A. (2007). Brandscapes: architecture in the experience economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007

The terms ethnoscape, mediascape, financescape, ideoscape and technoscape are the invention of Arjun Appadurai. The following books contain a discussion of those terms:

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Arjun Appadurai’s essay, “Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy”, in which these -scape concepts are raised, can be found here.