By: Jones

Jones — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:53:23 +0000

A very well-written and interesting book called ‘Political Ecology’ by Paul Robbins (2004) has an illuminating section on the construction and destruction of nature. What I find fascinating about this idea is very similar to what Merle and ellis pointed out: that concepts of nature are contingent upon the person or group of people conceiving. The message from this argument, to me, is that humans are integral pieces of nature, and not separate from the natural world. I am surprised that many still conceive of the human and the natural as two separate worlds, where one, the human, often interacts with and imposes its will on the other, nature. If evolution has taught us anything about a justifiable world-view, it has taught us that humans are part of the natural order, and everything that we do, and everything about us and the world around us, is natural.
In many protected areas throughout the world, indigenous people have been displaced to facilitate a ‘natural’ landscape. In doing so, the landscape is actually less natural than before. In many instances, one might as well uproot all the tress or dam all the rivers in a natural area if one agrees to the displacement of its human inhabitants.

By: ellis

ellis — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:46:30 +0000

This approach, and in particular the intertwining of nature and culture that it suggests, has, as you note, some profound implications. Discussions of environmental policy and ethics have tended to turn around this distinction. Approaches such as deep ecology have been critical of mainstream political and ethical approaches for seeing the world from an anthropomorphic standpoint and failing to take into account the needs and interests of ecosystems. Many deep ecologists and others argue that what is needed is a turn away from culture – or perhaps more accurately, an understanding of culture as embedded in nature – and a privileging of the ecological – the natural – point of view. What Vaccaro’s approach seems to indicate, however, is that we simply cannot choose between nature and culture and in particular we cannot choose nature over culture. We always see nature from the standpoint of culture, while we can no longer conceive of nature as standing outside of, in opposition to culture.

Comments on: Landscape analysis: a call for conciliating idealism and materialism

By: Jones

By: ellis