A social constructivist approach has been applied in our case study analysis in order
to explore the sense of place and the perception of landscape of local inhabitants.
Fieldwork was carried out in three rural Hungarian microregions selected on the basis
of a typology developed through statistical analysis. The central question of the
study assumes that the way people name the place where they live is an expression
of their sense of place and that it is related to their perceptions about narrower
locality and also the general attitudes they have towards the rural or urban landscape.
To prove this hypothesis, we examined, in three microregions, how people name their
own living area, how they relate to the countryside and rural way of life, and how
they describe their own locality in their own words (positive and negative aspects).
Based on analyses, three different landscape perception types were outlined and were
seen to be interconnected with three ways of place naming: (i) a “close-to-nature”
perception in relation to geographical place names; (ii) a “cultural-historical” identification
in connection with cultural names and (iii) “lifestyle-service” focused landscape
perception linked to administrative place naming.
