The concept of therapeutic landscape and its research progress in health geography

Abstract

Since the 1990s, a new branch discipline, health geography, has developed from Western medical geography. Under this new disciplinary framework, the focus of geographic research has gradually shifted from disease and medical services to health and well-being in a broad sense, and related studies have had a significant impact in the fields of geography and social sciences. These studies on healing share a common theoretical foundation—the concept of "therapeutic landscape" proposed by Gesler in 1992—and gradually developed a set of influential theories in the subsequent development, becoming a well-deserved important theoretical contribution to health geography. As a core theoretical framework of health geography, the study of therapeutic landscapes is rarely mentioned in geographic research in China. This article reviewed the theoretical development process and current research progress on the use of therapeutic landscapes since the 1990s. The therapeutic landscape concept draws on structuralist and humanistic theories of new cultural geography. Influenced by the relational turn of geography in the later period, it gradually developed into the most influential theoretical framework of health geography. Therapeutic landscape research from a relational perspective has been deeply influenced by theories such as non-representational theory, actor network theory, and the mobility turn, and has gradually developed branch theories such as therapeutic assemblage, enabling place, therapeutic mobility, and therapeutic "taskscapes". Finally, the article summarized some challenges in the current research on therapeutic landscapes, and put forward suggestions for the development of health geography under the framework of therapeutic landscapes in the future.