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Beyond Dualism—The Social Construction of Nature and the Natural and Social Construction of Human Beings

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Abstract

The dualism between society and nature and the processes by which nature is being socially constructed has become an area of increasing concern and interest to geographers in recent years. In this article, the abstract and concrete inter-relationships between nature and society will be problematized, drawing on the work of LackoÄ, Wittgenstein, Harre´ , Bourdieu and Lefebvre, among others. A number of concepts that will enable us to work across the boundaries conceived to exist between the physical, the mental and the social and thus of great importance for the analysis of the social construction of nature will be proposed.

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... These objects of comprehension, whether they be objects in the environment, animals, or other humans, are passive recipients of the judgments of the subject. Foucault [2] suggests that domination need not even involve the conscious deployment of power upon the dominated but, instead, something internalized in discourse [3]. Nature, through discourse, is othered, objectified and alienated from society [2,3]. ...
... Foucault [2] suggests that domination need not even involve the conscious deployment of power upon the dominated but, instead, something internalized in discourse [3]. Nature, through discourse, is othered, objectified and alienated from society [2,3]. Alienation of subject from the other is a totalizing process [4,5]. ...
... Reed defines social learning as "a change in understanding that goes beyond the individual to become situated within wider social units or communities of practice through social interactions between actors within social networks [11] Lejano et.al [12] viewed social learning as a process of mutual development and sharing of knowledge through iterative reflections on observation and experience. With social learning, knowledge is acquired, produced and redirected towards human activity [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. It is an active and reflective process of learning with stakeholders, creating shared understanding of a situation from different perspectives (or ways of knowing) [16][17][18][19] As Berkes [20] noted it involves the observe-planning-action-outcome phases and reflection. ...
Article
Crises of the anthropocene begin with the radical alienation of subject from the other. Healing this separation requires a fundamental reconceptualization of the relationship. In this article, we juxtapose against the rational-modernist frame the concept of relationality, which conceives of the subject as constituted by its relationship with the other. This leads to new pedagogies that seek to undo rigid separation and underscore the agency of the hitherto subaltern. Given this, we describe a novel attempt to introduce a relational approach to learning about climate change related hazards, wherein elementary school students train to become expert risk communicators and to be agents of change in their community. The case study speaks on how to demonstrate this new approach and different strategies that are relevant in enhancing awareness, sustainability and resilience towards different crises. Comparisons of post- and pre-surveys from the workshop show promising results and the research concludes with further discussion and synthesis of relational approach into formal education on disasters.
... Vzroki za osebne odločitve posameznikov in parov pa imajo svoje korenine zopet v prostoru samem. Tudi rodnostno obnašanje moramo razumeti izrazito dialektično v smislu interaktivne povezanosti med posameznikom kot nosilcem in vršilcem svojega obnašanja in najširšim okoljem, ki ga obdaja in vpliva nanj na najrazličnejše načine ( Schellenberg, 1978: 93-4;Gerber, 1997;Graham, 2000). Tako denimo oddaljenost delovnih mest, nezmožnost pridobitve zaposlitve, nezadovoljstvo s pogoji bivanja, neugodne stanovanjske razmere in drugo lahko pripeljejo do frustracij, ki se kažejo bodisi z zmanjšano stopnjo reprodukcije bodisi z migracijami prebivalstva, predvsem njegovih najbolj vitalnih delov, in s tem do praznjenja celih naselij in pokrajin. ...
... Tudi danes ohranja geografsko proučevanje obnašanja posebno mesto v sistemu geografije (npr. Gerber, 1997). Tu velja omeniti zlasti področje migracij (npr. ...
... Skinner je glavno pozornost usmeril na operantsko obnašanje, le-to namreč primarno vključuje organizem kot celoto (prim. Gerber, 1997) v odnos s pripadajočim okoljem. ...
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UČINKI PRISELJEVANJA V SLOVENIJO PO DRUGI SVETOVNI VOJNI Raziskava obravnava demogeografske učinke imigracije v Sloveniji v obdobju po drugi svetovni vojni, zlasti z vidika dejavnikov migracij in sprememb v rodnostnem obnašanju. Namen raziskave je zapolniti vrzeli na področju poznavanja sprememb rodnostnega obnašanja prebivalstva Slovenije v odvisnosti od priseljevanja in vzrokov, ki so migracije v Slovenijo sprožili. S tem želimo prispevati k oblikovanju demografske in drugih politik ter nenazadnje k preseganju stereotipov in preprečevanju družbenih konfliktov. Osredotočili smo se na priselitve iz območja nekdanje SFRJ, ki so bile najštevilčnejše in še danes predstavljajo prevladujoči del priselitev v Slovenijo. Izpostavili smo geografske in tudi druge vidike migracij v Slovenijo, ki so pomembni za bolj celostno razumevanje migracij. Zanimali so nas dejavniki, ki so sprožili, spodbujali in oblikovali migracijske tokove. Na zastavljeno vprašanje smo skušali odgovoriti med drugim tudi z aplikacijo demogeografske analize in z izvedbo terenske ankete. Na ta način smo želeli spoznati več o prostorski organiziranosti različnih priseljenskih skupin in njihovem vplivu na preobrazbo pokrajine. Časovni okvir proučevanja predstavlja obdobje po drugi svetovni vojni. Teoretski okvir pa predstavlja obdobje konca demografskega prehoda in začetka druge demografske tranzicije v Sloveniji. Zato je analitski poudarek na novejšem razvoju rodnosti in migracij v Sloveniji. Delo je razdeljeno v osem vsebinskih sklopov. V teoretskem delu smo iz postavili temeljna teoretska izhodišča dela. Poudarek je bil na novejši teoriji s področja rodnosti in migracij. Izpostavljen je bil geografski vidik proučevanja dejavnikov rodnosti in migracij ter nekatere interdisciplinarne povezave pri proučevanju rodnostnega in migracijskega obnašanja. V metodološkem delu so predstavljene glavne metode dela in izbrani demografski kazalniki. Predstavljeni so tudi nekateri novi demografski kazalniki, ki smo jih izdelali zaradi omejitev pri pridobivanju podrobnejših statističnih podatkov. Izpostavljeno je tudi terensko delo, ki smo ga izvedli v obliki anketiranja. Ciljno populacijo so predstavljali v Slovenijo priseljeni prebivalci s krajem rojstva na območju nekdanje SFRJ. Analitsko-empirični del je sestavljen iz analize uradnih statističnih podat kov in analize anketnih podatkov. Anketiranje na terenu je bilo usmerjeno v pridobivanje dodatnih podatkov, ki jih uradna statistika ne beleži.
... Víctor Toledo (2001) propone abordar mediante el estudio de sus tres elementos: kosmos, corpus y praxis, la sinergia entre riqueza biológica y cultural, además la analiza como memoria y patrimonio biocultural (Toledo y), (Boege, 2008). Berkes y compañía reconocen la relación mutua entre el ambiente y la sociedad, de manera que no se impone uno sobre el otro, sino que ambos coevolucionan (2000), tomando en cuenta que las características de la sociedad y el ambiente que influye en tal relación ambiente-sociedad (Gerber 1997borador, sitúa en un orden relevante la importancia de la biodiversidad y la cultura en una comunidad rural mexiquense con perfil étnico en el capítulo: " Relaciones sociales y conservacióndeCastellanos, 2007;Sarmiento y Sesia, 2007), los cuales forman parte de la vida cotidiana familiar y comunitaria. ...
... Este tipo de estrategias implica la coordinación de relaciones de proximidad entre grupos de actores específicos mediante la acción colectiva y la calificación de una cadena de valor, frente a necesidades específicas (Torre, 2000). Se trata de procesos de patrimonialización (Boucher et al., 2006et al., 1997;Zimmer et al., 2006). Posteriormente, se generan procesos ...
... 13, Perú. Valdez Gutierrez, J. y J. Cesar García Rodríguez (2008), Informe final dePara acercarse a la compleja relación sociedad-ambiente se proponen conceptos como sistemas socioecológicos, sistemas acoplados humano-ambientales, entre otros; asimismo teóricas como la etnobiología, etnoecología (en si todas las etnociencias), sociología ambiental, antropología ecológica, entre otras (Folke et al., 2005;Gerber, 1997;Toledo;Ingold, 2000, 2010), es un país con gran diversidad biológica, de tal manera con estas características de riqueza y diversidad, enfrenta un gran reto u oportunidad para conservar su biodiversidad y sus culturas. Si bien se dice que la diversidad cultural y la biológica se sostienen una a otra, es relevante analizar el cómo, entonces, el presente estudio aborda parte de la cultura y diversidad biológicaToledo, 2000). ...
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El presente texto abre una discusión teórico metodológica sobre los procesos de investigación-acción en el medio rural que se estructura en tres partes, en la primera se describe el marco en el cual surge el turismo agroalimentario como resultado del estado crítico de los ámbitos rural y urbano. Resulta particularmente interesante la pérdida de la capacidad del campo para generar empleos, en conjunción con el debilitamiento ambiental y cultural de las sociedades urbanas. Ello incide en una ventaja comparativa del campo como escenario turístico, en conjunto con la apremiante necesidad de buscar alternativas para satisfacer sus necesidades económicas. La multifuncionalidad del territorio y la pluriactividad de los actores, son categorías indispensables para comprender los procesos de reestructuración productiva del medio rural, siendo el turismo una de las actividades más difundidas como estrategias de desarrollo en los últimos tiempos.
... Conviene detenerse en estas ideas resaltadas pues, en primer término, el autor se refiere a «reglas de pensamiento y de acción» y es inevitable pensar en lo que hemos señalado como el «problema cultural» de la civilización actual. En segundo término, si, como parece, la Geografía se adhiere al ámbito de las ciencias sociales, y el medio geográfico, así como la propia naturaleza, se conciben ya como «construcciones sociales», tanto en una dimensión epistemológica, como ontológica (GERBER 1997;ORTEGA VALCÁRCEL, 2000;DEMERITT, 2002;CASTREE, 2005), éstas no son sino el reflejo de ideologías, tipos de conocimiento, aplicaciones tecnológicas y mitos que inciden en los modos en los que las distintas sociedades hacen uso y transforman la naturaleza. M. Santos afirmaba, en este sentido, que asistimos a un proceso de «racionalización del medio geográfico», entendiendo por éste -como lo hace M. Webber-al dominio efectuado por el modo de producción capitalista (SANTOS, 2000: 245) y que supone el tránsito de un «medio natural» a un «medio científico-técnico informacional» (SANTOS, 2000). ...
... La perspectiva geográfica resulta ser clave en este propósito. De hecho, estas escisiones se diluyen cuando se pasa del terreno de la abstracción al más concreto, como el que nos proporciona los diferentes tipos de experiencias geográficas (GERBER, 1997). Los entornos más inmediatos, los que forman parten de la experiencia cotidiana, los lugares que pueden tocarse y sentirse directamente, pueden servir como vehículos para unir los propósitos de cada individuo con el sentido auto-organizador del sistema biofísico planetario, como expone de modo alegórico Max-Neef: ...
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RESUMEN Tomando como referencia la obra de Edgar Morin, «Los siete saberes necesarios para la educación del futuro» (2001), se ofrecen una serie de reflexiones acerca de cómo la Geografía podría ser considerada un «saber necesario» que sea útil para la definición y consolidación del paradigma ecológico-ambiental. ABSTRACT Drawing on the Edgar Morin's book, «Seven complex lessons in education for the future» (2001), I offer some thoughts about how geography may be considered a «needed knowledge» that would be useful for defining and consolidation of the ecological-environmental paradigm. RESUMÉ S'appuyant sur le travail d'Edgar Morin, «Sept leçons complexes d'éducation pour l'avenir» (2001), je propose quelques réflexions sur la façon dont la géographie peut être considéré comme un «connaissance necesaire» ce qui pourraient être utile pour la definition et la consolidation du paradigme écologique-environnementale. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN La realidad del mundo actual, y su futuro en un largo tiempo, están condicionados ya (dada la irreversibilidad de muchos de los procesos) por el impacto que la sociedad industrial y globalizada viene efectuando sobre el Planeta Tierra, sobre sus equilibrios físico-ambientales, sobre el resto de formas vivientes y sobre los distintos pueblos y culturas. Un uso del Planeta guiado por lógicas y modelos que han resultado caducos y contraproducentes para el reto ecológico. La cosmovisión propia de la modernidad concibió lo humano y lo natural como dos mundos o reinos independientes uno del otro * Departamento de Análisis Geográfico Regional y Geografía Física. fjtoro@ugr.es
... Ta oblika dualizma še vedno dominira v splošnem, posledično pa tudi v migracijskem raziskovanju (prim. Gerber, 1997). ...
... Zavedajoč se zmotnosti tega dualizma (po Gerber, 1997), predlagamo predrugačen pogled na migracije, s pomočjo katerega bi celostno razumeli »obe vrsti migracij«, in sicer kot prepleteni in praktično nerazdružljivi. Pri tem gradimo na podatkih, zbranih z raziskavo o jugoslovanskih notranjih migracijah (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) in njihovih učinkih v Sloveniji. ...
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O teorijah migracij imamo na voljo zajetno literaturo, verjetno najobsežnejšo, če govorimo o teorijah, ki razlagajo temeljne demografske komponente, kot so nataliteta, mortaliteta in migracije. Čeprav je seznam teorij migracij nenavadno obsežen, ostajajo teorije nezmožne celostno razložiti tako kompleksen pojav, kot je človeška mobilnost (cf. Massey et al., 1993). Teoretski migracijski korpus je že dolgo razcepljen vzdolž kartezijanskega dualizma. Lep primer za to je denimo Greenwoodova študija iz leta 1985 o notranjih migracijah v ZDA. Greenwood omenja »fundamentalne spremembe«, ki so se zgodile v sedemdesetih in osemdesetih letih 20. stoletja in ki jih je pripisal novim metodološkim pristopom k analizi in modeliranju podatkov (Greenwood, 1985). Z današnje perspektive se zdijo taka razmišljanja tehnokratska, saj je, kot je opozoril že Harvey (2005, 12), svet zgrmel v globalno krizo še pred naftno krizo leta 1973, kar je povzročilo razmah neoliberalne razvojne paradigme. Prav ta je narekovala »revolucioniranje« ekonomskih postopkov. Med njimi je zlasti pomembna uvedba finančnih instrumentov, ki so uveljavljali nove in nove metodološke aplikacije na različnih področjih. Seveda je razmah te »nove ekonomije« povzročil spremembo v razmestitvi delovnih mest v ZDA, s tem pa posledično tudi nove migracijske vzorce. Ne glede na to Greenwoodovo pričakovano kratkovidnost pa je njegov članek uveljavil kartezijansko delitev na notranje in zunanje migracije. Ta oblika dualizma še vedno dominira v splošnem, posledično pa tudi v migracijskem raziskovanju (prim. Gerber, 1997). Zavedajoč se zmotnosti tega dualizma (po Gerber, 1997), predlagamo predrugačen pogled na migracije, s pomočjo katerega bi celostno razumeli »obe vrsti migracij«, in sicer kot prepleteni in praktično nerazdružljivi. Pri tem gradimo na podatkih, zbranih z raziskavo o jugoslovanskih notranjih migracijah (2002–2006) in njihovih učinkih v Sloveniji. Na osnovi analize uradnih jugoslovanskih (1948–1991) in slovenskih (po letu 1991) statističnih podatkov ter podatkov ankete, izvedene v obdobju 2001–2004, trdimo, da je delitev na notranje in zunanje migracije z vidika definiranja vzrokov in posledic migracij v Slovenijo irelevantna. Poleg tega zagovarjamo tezo, da je še ena od delitev migracij, in sicer na prostovoljne in prisilne, prav tako nezadostna. Zlasti v jugoslovanskem prostoru uveljavljeni raziskovalec migracij P. Klinar (1985) je denimo na primeru zdomcev oziroma začasnih delavcev v Zvezni republiki Nemčiji poleg delitve na zunanje in notranje migracije uveljavljal tudi delitev na prisilne in prostovoljne migracije. Prav njegov pomemben teoretski doprinos nam je pomenil izhodišče za idejo, da smo pričeli prevpraševati vidik prisilnosti migracij. Kot bomo pokazali v nadaljevanju, jugoslovanske migracije (1945–1991) obravnavamo v okviru potencialno prisilnih, polprisilnih ali »psevdoprostovoljnih migracij«. Na podlagi teoretskih in empiričnih ugotovitev smo proizvedli tudi posodobljen analitski okvir za individualno ali skupinsko analizo migracij.
... Un elemento de la vida comunitaria campesina es su conocimiento ambiental local, cuya relevancia para la conservación de Víctor Toledo (2001) propone abordar mediante el estudio de sus tres elementos: kosmos, corpus y praxis, la sinergia entre riqueza biológica y cultural, además la analiza como memoria y patrimonio biocultural (Toledo y , (Boege, 2008). Berkes y compañía reco- nocen la relación mutua entre el ambiente y la sociedad, de manera que no se impone uno sobre el otro, sino que ambos coevolucionan (2000), tomando en cuenta que las características de la sociedad y el ambiente que influye en tal relación ambiente-sociedad (Gerber 1997;Ingold 2001). De esta manera el capítulo titulado: "Conocimiento campesino para la conservación de maíces nativos en Ahuihuiyuco, Guerrero" contribución de Josefina Munguía Aldama y colaboradoras analizan la conservación in situ de maíz como un proceso coevolutivo; el trabajo se centra en el conocimiento y saber campesinos para documentar cómo agricultores y agricultoras de Ahuihuiyuco, Guerrero, conservan diversos tipos de maíz. ...
... Para acercarse a la compleja relación sociedad-ambiente se proponen conceptos como sistemas socioecológicos, sistemas acoplados huma- no-ambientales, entre otros; asimismo teóricas como la etnobiología, etnoecología (en si todas las etnociencias), sociología ambiental, antro- pología ecológica, entre otras (Folke et al., 2005;Gerber, 1997;Toledo;Ingold, 2000;Redclift y Woodgate, 2010), propuestas para superar estudios dualistas (naturaleza y cultura), para acercarnos a otras formas de entender y conocer a un organismo y su ambiente de manera integral (Descola y Pálsson, 1966;Ingold , 2013). ...
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El estudio actual de la ruralidad y sus procesos implica analizar las transformaciones rurales globales, así como las locales, revisar las experiencias de intervención institucional en el campo; discutir las nuevas dinámicas de población, y profundizar en las condiciones actuales de las tradiciones de los grupos sociales en relación con la biodiversidad de sus territorios. La comprensión de los cambios en el espacio rural es una condición necesaria para abordar fenómenos como cambio climático, biodiversidad, seguridad alimentaria, género, migraciones, entre otros.
... People categorise nature as a system of experience in which there is agreement on nature as separate and distinct from humans (Fortuna, Wróblewski, & Gorbaniuk, 2023). This separation is based on the principle of the dualism of nature and humans, the division between the abstract and the concrete, between theory and practice (Gerber, 1997). This view of the two entities is negated by the dualism and dichotomies that dominate, placing the earth as subordinate to human power. ...
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This study aims to analyse the indigenous women's movement to protect nature using the perspective of religious ecofeminism. The Indigenous People Alliance of Indonesia (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara-AMAN) documented 13 cases of indigenous territory seizure, affecting 103,717 indigenous people and 251 hectares of indigenous territories. Consequently, the patterns of indigenous knowledge related to spirituality, as lived by indigenous women, prompt them to respond to the exploitation of nature. This research seeks to confirm the basic thesis of ecofeminism that links the domination of women and nature. The study employs qualitative methods, utilising text data from online media such as Twitter. The selection of data sources is based on the role of online media as a space for the representation of indigenous women and indigenous peoples. The main findings indicate that indigenous women have successfully positioned themselves at the forefront of nature protection through their movements. The indigenous women's movement to protect nature exemplifies a relationship based on indigenous understanding and knowledge, which is inseparable from the interpretation of nature itself. Equally important, the response of indigenous women reflects the interpretation of humans and nature as interdependent entities that provide sustenance, a concept known as religious ecofeminism. This concept embodies a cultural and religious understanding of the cosmology of life. The study contributes to raising awareness of the critical role of indigenous women in environmental conservation and demonstrates that their movements are grounded in religious ecofeminism values.
... Se si considera il fiume non solo come elemento naturale o setting delle azioni umane, ma anche come un vero e proprio costrutto sociale, uno stru-mento simbolico e relazionale (Nash 2005;Latour 1993;Demerit 1994;Gerber 1997), si possono mettere in luce rappresentazioni sociali del Pescara emergenti nella stampa locale e nazionale. La ricerca, attraverso tecniche di statistica testuale (Lucidi et al. 2008;Bolasco 1998) si struttura attraverso le seguenti fasi: 1) una selezione di notizie che contengono le parole chiave "fiume Pescara", mediante il motore di ricerca Google sezione "News", riferite agli anni 2017-2021; 2) il download di un numero complessivo di 232 articoli di stampa locale e nazionale (web scraping) grazie al software Octoparse; 3) l'analisi delle occorrenze delle parole negli articoli. ...
... The concept of language games developed by the second Wittgenstein provides a foundation to post-modern critics for structural isomorphism [5] (Lyotard, 1984;Gergen, 2000;Gerber, 1997). To clarify the concept of language games, Wittgenstein compares language to a chess game: (1) both are built by rules: "if there are no rules, there is no game" (Lyotard, 1984, p. 10); therefore, even an infinitesimal change in one rule means a modification of the entire game, (2) the rules are contractual, learned round after round by the players, (3) the performativity of the rules by the players is the source of game's legitimation, and it is a vector of the game change, framing the next moves available for each player and then (4) every utterance is similar to a move on a chessboard (Glock, 1996, p. 193;Lyotard, 1984, p. 10). ...
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Purpose This paper aims to argue that Economics is not a neutral science. Design/methodology/approach Post-structuralist perspective of Lyotard (1984), alongside the Pragmatics of Searle (1979) and Travis (1981) are useful for analyzing enunciations in mainstream Economics. Findings Economists use illocutionary acts expressed in formal language to achieve perlocutionary effects. Because of the importance attached to objectivity in mainstream Economics, the use of artificial languages is preferred to natural language. However, formal language is preferred regarding its perlocutionary effects on economists' community. Originality/value This paper puts together the Continental and the Analytical Philosophy and show, in an original manner, how their intersections and how they can be useful to better understand the epistemology of Economics.
... Similarly, resettlement is not understood as merely a technocratic process managed by humans, but is shaped according to past or expected future activities of nature. Building on the conceptualization of nature as actant (Latour, 2005), PE3 overcomes the dualism between nature and culture by understanding nature as an integral part of society (Gerber, 1997). ...
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In river deltas, human interference with regional and global socio-ecological systems has led to a plethora of gradual and more abrupt environmental changes that result in inundation, coastal and river bank erosion, land loss and, ultimately, displaced people. Often apolitically framed as protective, state-led transfer of people to new housing grounds, resettlement has become a common response to such displacements. In its process, existing arrangements of land tenure and occupancy and, at times more covertly, related arrangements of capital, labor and the social fabric become dislocated and reassembled. In line with emerging critical geographies of resettlement, this paper conceptualizes resettlement in river deltas against the background of environmental change as a highly political process with far-reaching environmental, economic, social and cultural implications. For this article is based on an in-depth review of both resettlement and political ecology literature, we first elucidate the concept of resettlement before providing a structured overview of categories and recent trends in resettlement literature. We then focus on river deltas that due to multi-scale environmental change are about to become hotspots of future resettlement. Building on identified gaps in resettlement literature, the article concludes with opening up three analytical strands of political ecology as entry points to resettlement studies, understood as critical geographic research into localized manifestations of environmental change in river deltas. Overall, our paper aims to initialize conceptual debate, grounded in a thorough review of recent case study literature on resettlement that is informed by political ecology. The review challenges positivist reductions of resettlement processes as technocratic-managerial tasks that so far have dominated scientific literature in this field and opens up new perspectives for critical research on resettlements in river deltas for human geographers.
... Potremo mettere in discussione gli assunti della città struttural-funzionalista (e soprattutto dei suoi esiti, si veda il contributo di Mazzette in questo stesso Volume) disponendoci verso una ridefinizione del concetto della human agency in favore di un agentività di tipo relazionale come, d'altronde, sta avvenendo nella storia dell'ambiente? Il dibattito disciplinare che si è sviluppato in seno alla storia dell'ambiente (si veda Demeritt, 1994;Mart, 1996;Gerber, 1997;Haila, 2000; ma anche Agnoletti, Neri Serneri, 2014) è attualmente il solo che riconosca all'ambiente naturale e costruito, alle sue risorse materiali e immateriali, il ruolo e potere di agency laddove, con questo concetto, non ci si riferisce solo all'intenzionalità umana quanto, piuttosto, agli aspetti contestuali, territoriali quindi, in cui individui e comunità si relazionano con l'ambiente circostante (Nash, 2005). ...
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La pandemia da Sars-Cov-2 ha messo in controluce i paradigmi che hanno informato finora gli apparati teorici e definitori del concetto di territorio; gli statuti disciplinari su cui essi poggiavano stanno quindi mostrando la loro inadeguatezza tanto da rendersi necessarie reinterpretazioni e ricodifiche. Al fine di fornire una definizione semanticamente più attinente a quanto si sta esperendo nell'habitare oggi, l'Articolo tenterà di circoscrivere questo concetto nella sua dimensione "identitaria", attraverso cui si stratificano, nel tempo, gli esiti dell'adattamento delle comunità in relazione all'ambiente biofisico e costruito in rapporto con le sfide locali e globali. Nella tradizione dei concept papers e degli hypothesis-building studies, questo contributo non pretende di fornire risposte ma si prefigge lo scopo di perimetrare un nuovo campo d'indagine per gli studi socioterritoriali, ovvero di circoscrivere un'agenda di ricerca, nonché il livello di astrazione al quale, si spera, una sociologia spazialista (Mela, 2006; Mela, 2020) possa conferire le sue risposte. In questa prospettiva, l'articolo rielaborerà il concetto di territorio come esperienza di processualità spaziotemporale, e introdurrà quello di metaterritorio, come spazio di relazioni collaborative.
... Indeed, a broad-based and increasingly cohesive literature traces how this problematic human/nature binary is one of, if not, the most essential dominant cultural premises enabling our epoch of extreme anthropogenic environmental destruction (Braun and Castree, 2005;Carbaugh, 1996;Castree and MacMillan, 2001;Coole and Frost, 2010;Milstein, 2016;Smith, 2008;Tsing, 2012). While diversity exists in Western/ized definitions of "nature" , the core dualistic tendency remains to define "nature" as expressly separate from, and lesser than, humans (Evernden, 1992;Haila, 2012;Plumwood, 1996), animated by Cartesian-informed perceptions of human exceptionalism in both rationality and sentience (Hall, 2011;Haraway, 2008;Merchant, 1990;Milstein, 2013) and an artificial spatial division between "nature" and "society" (Gerber, 1997;Huber, 2010;Lorimer, 2012). Indeed, the very pillars of modernity, including rationality, market exchange, technology, scientific knowledge, and personal identity are premised on articulating humans as distinct from and superior to all else on, in, and of Earth (Milstein and Castro-Sotomayor, 2020). ...
Article
The Florida Tampa Electric Company’s Manatee Viewing Center (MVC) and its fossil-fuelled Big Bend power plant are separated by a narrow ship channel that serves as state and federal sanctuary for threatened Florida Manatees. As humans have destroyed much of their warm spring habitat, many manatees are forced to rely on power plant hot water effluent to survive during cold winter months. Visitors’ reactions to the MVC are every bit as incongruous as a massive greenhouse gas pollutant source enabling a wildlife reserve. Notwithstanding its inescapable presence, visitor reviews of the MVC nearly uniformly ignore the immense power plant. We offer this study of online reviews of the MVC to examine how and why everyday people’s interactions are fundamental to making dominant practices of anthropogenic ecological destruction unremarkable and, therefore, unfixable. Specifically, we argue the collective blindness reflected in the findings of this study exemplifies a broader sociocultural tendency to articulate and reinforce spaces of ecological “invisibility.” In such spaces, our quotidian practices and discourses play a central role in enabling collective environmental inattention and environmental inaction, especially when we are confronted with places in which the constructed binary between human and “natural” realms spectacularly collapses.
... They deal considerably less with the political nature of scarcity. Political scarcity considers inter alia: (i) how water scarcity is shaped by social-ecological factors; (ii) how scarcity is socially constructed (Gerber, 1997;Kaika, 2003), perceived, and "manufactured" to match particular interests (Mehta, 2001); (iii) how narratives of scarcity are used in political discourses about competing water uses (Scoones, 2010); (iv) how historical inequalities as a result of exploitation and elite control have affected regulations about water access and control (Mehta, 2005); and (v) how such regulations consider different groups of people, creating winners and losers in times of water scarcity (Mehta, 2010a(Mehta, , 2010b. Demonstrating the political nature of scarcity does not imply that scarcities are not "real". ...
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Reservoirs are built worldwide for a higher water supply in dry periods by storing water temporarily in wet periods. Recent socio‐hydrology studies hypothesized, by creating “supply–demand cycles”, that reservoirs can lead indirectly to counterintuitive dynamics such as more water scarcity and a higher economic and social vulnerability. This opinion argues that reservoirs are part of co‐evolutionary processes with natural, social, and engineered elements and therefore, water scarcity need to be analyzed within socio‐political interactions. Aspects such as (a) institutions; (b) governance processes; (c) social–ecological factors; (d) narratives of water scarcity; and (e) powerful economic interests are essential to understand feedback mechanisms between reservoirs and water scarcity and to hypothesize long‐term phenomena such as water scarcity. Neglecting these interactions could lead to biased research agendas, misleading conclusions, and adverse effects on the transformation process toward sustainability. Given the complexity of social–ecological systems, the diversity and critical capacity of inter‐ and transdisciplinary work is crucial to further advance the study of unintended side effects of reservoirs or — more general — the study of socio‐hydrology. This article is categorized under: • Human Water Abstract Reservoirs are part of co‐evolutionary processes with natural, social, and engineered elements and therefore, water scarcity needs to be analyzed with inter‐ and transdisciplinary approaches. Neglecting socio‐political interactions could lead to biased research agendas, misleading conclusions, and detrimental effects on the transformation process toward sustainability.
... npr. Gerber (1997). ...
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... Along with this process there is embedded an element of power which is strongly linked to knowledge regimes. Interdisciplinary research on societynature relationship regarding land use has often proved to be challenging to overcome especially the dualistic thinking in the development of a common communicating platform between disciplines (Smith, 2006) and the tensions and conflicts stemming from this dualistic thinking have to a great extent lead to the subordination or exclusion of the social and relational dimension on behalf of the bio-physical environmental and economic dimension of a sustainable development (Gerber, 1997;Vallance et al., 2012). ...
Article
This article explores the potential of the SDG framework for interdisciplinary research. The aim is to illustrate the process of creating a shared platform of operation by the clarifying the positive and negative interactions between societal demands for land use on a national and local level. The research question is answered by making use of the systemic approach introduced by Niklas Luhmann including his arguments about autopoietic communication systems reproducing themselves. An interdisciplinary research group is firstly applying the SDG framework to the demands for sustainable land use by activating the land consolidation in Denmark. By doing so a ‘national framework’ anchored in the SDG framework is created. Secondly, the national framework is applied to a multifunctional land consolidation project in a Danish case area. The findings from the mapping of interactions between societal demands on a concrete case area revealed that some indicators and societal demands are more prone to conflicts than others but also on the local level there may be variations. Thus, a localised and contextualised SDG framework has shown useful insight for future projects on sustainable land use including land consolidation projects. The paper concludes that the SDG framework may be used for facilitating interdisciplinary research, however there is also a need for guidelines and examples on how to integrate the framework in academia. The paper offers a suggestion for integrating the Agenda2030 and the SDG framework in projects about sustainable land use.
... A partir de lo anterior, en este capítulo se nombra al conocimiento tradicional indígena, campesino y nativo como conocimiento tradicional, entendido como el resultado de una centenaria e incluso milenaria experiencia cambiante de relación humano-ambiente (incluyendo a los humanos como parte de éste) (Gerber, 1997;Descola, 1996;Ingold, 2000). Se tiene por objeto realizar un análisis conceptual y de contexto del conocimiento tradicional y los recursos bioculturales, lo cual permitirá distinguir los alcances e implicaciones teóricos al momento de analizar los procesos de conservación y pérdida de la riqueza cultural y biológica. ...
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Ante los problemas ambientales como deforestación, cambio climático, pérdida de la biodiversidad, crisis del agua y desertificación, se propone un manejo sustentable de los recursos naturales para disminuir la crisis ambiental. La biodiversidad es clave para los procesos ecológicos que brindan servicios ambientales, entre ellos la producción de oxígeno, ciclo de nutrientes, captura de carbono, formación del suelo, polinización, etc., procesos que están en peligro debido a la pérdida de la diversidad biológica. De acuerdo con la Lista Roja de la International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), en 2007 había 41 415 especies en algún tipo de riesgo, de ellas, 39% estaban en peligro de extinción (IUCN, 2010). Ante tal situación, se propone que las prácticas tradicionales para el uso y manejo del ambiente son una alternativa para lograr la conservación de la biodiversidad, alcanzar un manejo sustentable de los recursos naturales y, al mismo tiempo, proporcionar alimentos. Se estima que 40% (2.6 billones) de la población mundial son pequeños productores; a nivel global, aproximadamente 60% de la tierra arable es cultivada por pequeños productores, los mismos que contribuyen de manera importante en la producción de alimentos. En efecto, en África, 90% de la producción agrícola es de pequeños agricultores. Aunque éstos cuentan con poca extensión de tierra y las condiciones de producción son limitadas, su actividad resulta más productiva en términos de unidad de tierra y energía, por ello, seguirá prevaleciendo en los paisajes agrícolas de los países en desarrollo (Greenpeace, 2015).
... A partir de lo anterior, en este capítulo se nombra al conocimiento tradicional indígena, campesino y nativo como conocimiento tradicional, entendido como el resultado de una centenaria e incluso milenaria experiencia cambiante de relación humano-ambiente (incluyendo a los humanos como parte de éste) (Gerber, 1997;Descola, 1996;Ingold, 2000). Se tiene por objeto realizar un análisis conceptual y de contexto del conocimiento tradicional y los recursos bioculturales, lo cual permitirá distinguir los alcances e implicaciones teóricos al momento de analizar los procesos de conservación y pérdida de la riqueza cultural y biológica. ...
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Existen varios acercamientos e intereses relacionados con el estudio del conocimiento tradicional, también llamado conocimiento ecológico local, conocimiento ambiental tradicional o conocimiento popular. En los tiempos de la colonización de los pueblos por las naciones europeas, los conquistadores se centraron en la búsqueda de plantas condimenticias, encontraron una amplia diversidad de plantas medicinales, e incluso de animales, les asombró la belleza ornamental de éstas. Para su mejor comprensión, cambiaron los nombres locales de plantas y animales por un nombre científico, esto desvaloró el entendimiento y conocimiento local, privilegiando el conocimiento científico para el uso y abuso de los recursos naturales, los que se creían inagotables o que la aplicación de la ciencia y la tecnología podía resolver los problemas que causaba la explotación del ambiente. Sin embargo, los fenómenos: deforestación, cambio climático, desertificación, pérdida de la biodiversidad y pérdida de las culturas tradicionales del mundo, obligaron a hacer un alto en el camino hacia el desarrollo basado en el crecimiento económico y a proponer alternativas para no seguir deteriorando el ambiente. La propuesta del desarrollo sustentable no sólo integra el elemento económico, sino también el ambiental y social, convergiendo los tres para lograr el bienestar humano y el cuidado del ambiente.
... (1) One of the main topics in recent academic research in the geographies of disability is technology and its role in the formation of embedded experiences of disabled people (Chouinard et al., 2010;Davidson & Parr, 2010;Skelton & Valentine, 2010). 8 The following question could contribute to the discussion: if bodily experience is essential for spatial knowledge and spatial concepts (Gerber, 1997;Simonsen, 2005Simonsen, , 2007, how is technology, which changes bodily experience, included in the relations between the body, experience and one's conception of space? Based on the example of the white cane as one of the most basic mobility tools and one of the simplest forms of technology, we could ask: What kind of spatial image is produced during movement and enables the movement of concrete combinations of body and technology? ...
Article
Using the methodology of in-depth interviews, this article explores how blind and visually impaired white cane users conceptualize urban space. The study presented in the article showed that the city is conceived, even without visual mechanisms, through landmarks, paths, edges, nodes and districts, i.e. the types of elements in the city image defined by Kevin Lynch. However, spatial representations of blind people are produced on the basis of spatial experience that is proximal and not distal, as was the case with Lynch. The article discusses elements of the non-visual image of the city that are constructed through direct touch and white cane use. Drawing on Lefebvre’s stance on the interconnectedness of the body, practice and representational spaces, the author argues that the white cane is not just an aid that facilitates the mobility of blind people and helps to navigate in the urban space. As part of the ‘practico-sensory totality’ of the body, it also influences the ways in which the city is experienced and conceived.
... It means developing biosecurity approaches that take the "entangled interplay of environments, hosts, pathogens and humans" seriously (2013, p. 538). Examples of experiments with collective world-making as advocated by Latour, in which government representatives were involved, exist Waterton & Tsouvalis, 2015), and insights into how non-humans and material entities come to matter in human affairs, including politics, have been provided by geographers and STS scholars (Bennett, 2004;Braun, 2007;Castree & Braun, 2001;Cole & Frost, 2010;Gerber, 1997;Harman, 2009;Hinchliffe et al., 2017;Latour, 2004;Marres, 2012;Tsouvalis, 2000;Whatmore, 2002). They point the way to what is required to meet the challenges lying ahead. ...
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This paper analyses the post‐political nature of the discourse of plant biosecurity in the context of the response to ash dieback in Britain. Ash dieback or Chalara is a tree disease usually fatal to ash trees. It is caused by a fungal pathogen from Asia and was first discovered in Britain in 2012 at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, England, where it had arrived in a consignment of infected tree saplings imported from the Netherlands. Global trade and the rising number of epidemics affecting plants, animals and humans worldwide are connected. Global trade accelerates the pace of disease emergence and the spread of pathogens and pests. However, to date it has remained conspicuous by its absence from discussions of plant biosecurity. This paper investigates the reasons for this. It presents findings from an analysis of the European Union's (EU) plant health regime, in place to control the circulation and spread of plant pests and diseases in the EU, to demonstrate the key role played by plant biosecurity in neoliberalism. Additionally, results from a qualitative study of the British Government's Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Expert Taskforce convened in the wake of ash dieback are presented to illustrate how the risk‐based approach to biosecurity and expert‐led governance contribute to rendering the role of global trade in epidemics apolitical. The paper builds on and broadens critiques advanced by geographers and Science and Technology Studies scholars of biosecurity thinking and practice and brings them into correspondence with literatures on post‐politics. It concludes that there is not only a need for the development of new approaches to biosecurity, as suggested in the geographical literature, but also for the construction of a new politics of biosecurity.
... culturally backward fed into the identity of being 'traditional'. To be clear, the term 'traditional' is not used here in its popular connotation of primitive, isolated, ritualistic cultures, but is understood to be socially constructed to serve a purpose (for more on social construction, see Demeritt 2002;Gerber 1997). Despite debate surrounding its usage, the term 'traditional' is retained in this chapter due to its use by fishers to selfidentify. ...
... The inclusion of people's opinions about the technical aspects of forest resources and their management has sparked scientific debate [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. In a modern sense, public participation in the devising of forest plans is, preferably, voluntary [12,13]. ...
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Society's participation in decisions regarding land planning and management is essential for reaching viable and long-lasting solutions. The success of forest plans depends on the involvement of different stakeholders. In turn, stakeholder involvement depends on the representativity achieved in public participation in the development of the plan. The first stage, diffusion, is the key element in the process. This paper describes a methodology for the diffusion stage that obtains six times more participants than a similar process. Its aim is to achieve stakeholder representativity in the forestry sector in forest planning at a subregional level. The methodology is validated and applied in a municipality of Galicia, northwest Spain. It is evaluated in terms of efficiency considering the effort in each stage and the results achieved.
... Proximal rather than distal interactions can lead to more positive interspecies engagements and the emergence of new interaction spaces such as the 'zoöpolis' , and the 'living city' (see for example, Hinchliffe & Whatmore, 2006;Wolch, 1998). Some scholars (see for example, Acampora, 2004;Gerber, 1997;Whatmore, 1999) describe animals as agents in networks of relationship that comprise their becoming, their transition from 'wild animal' to hybrid entangled actors alongside humans in the process (and result) known as natureculture. Haraway (2008, p. 15) understands humans and animals as entangled co-constructors of shared spaces in which 'companion species, and significant others to one another shape natureculture' . ...
Article
Scholarship recognizes the co-construction of space by humans and non-human animals (hence, animals), but the complex geographies of some animals whose lives depend upon human care remain under-studied. This article explores human–dolphin relations within the context of Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT), a practice in which most dolphins are in human care. We trace a genealogy of dolphin–human relations in built environments, and draw on a DAT case study in Curacao, to understand how the entangled agencies of humans, dolphins and other actants have co-constructed spaces of mutual therapy and care. Our research highlights the circumstances of ‘legacy dolphins’ in DAT, dolphins whose lives depend on human care. We suggest that, while the services of dolphins are recommodified through DAT, the legacy dolphin is de-commodified through ‘relations of obligation’ built on mutual ‘caring for’ as both companion species and work colleague.
... S druge strane, procena grada je više racionalno zasnovana, po osnovu mogućnosti ostvarivanja nečijih potreba i ciljeva, odnosno dobrog funkcionisanja u skladu sa potrebama/ciljevima (Jaššo, Finka, 2010). Urbani sociolozi razmišljaju o vezanosti za grad kao faktoru migracija u ključu Burdijeovog koncepta habitus (Savage et al., 2005;Benson, Jackson, 2012;Benson, 2014;Gerber, 1997). U takvom, burdijeovski inspirisanom pristupu emotivna i funkcionalna dimenzija vezanosti za mesto se analitički ne razdvajaju, jer habitus grada kao karakterstičan model ponašanja i vrednovanja objedinjuje racionalne i emotivno-afektivne elemente ljudskog delanja. ...
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Following the need to combine macro structural and micro actors’ perspective, this paper conceptually starts from endogenous city development paradigm within which place attachment and intentions to migrate are given specific importance since human resources are perceived of pivotal significance. Such paradigm is related to diversified factors that makes city more or less attractive for local population, thus enhancing their place attachment and involvement or migrational intentions. Focused connection between the place attachment and migration intentions are discussed as neglected in studies of migration, and conceptually supported by the notion of territorial identity and specific reinterpretation of Bourdieu’s ideas of sense of comfort in place, and by employing his concept of habitus to the city. Empirically, the connection of people’s place attachment and intentions to migrate is analyzed for eight cities in Serbia. The selected cities: Kragujevac, Sabac, Užice, Novi Pazar, Sombor, Zrenjanin, Leskovac, and Zaječar are chosen as middle sized cities for which the issues to develop attractiveness and attach their population becomes particularly complex in times of (post-socialist) transformation and economic crisis. Empirical analysis is aimed to illustrate the researched cities potential to keep their population by investigating their place attachment (emotional and functional) and the way they perceive their city, in relation to their intention to migrate. Data are collected through questionnaire survey, in the 2013-2015 period. Such an explorative aim intended to demonstrate the importance to research local population perspective in order to understand the cities as lived spaces and their acting potential, as such important information are left out of scope by regular statistics. Research findings confirm the basic assumption that cities with higher migration inclinations are also the cities with lower place attachment. That supports the employed perspective which reveals that place attachment and provincial habitus’ characteristics emerge irrespective to their development category. Thus, Zrenjanin and Zajecar appeared with weaker while Novi Pazar with stronger capacities than expected. Besides that, the correlation between migration inclinations and place attachment is more consistent and stronger than between migration inclinations and any other socio-demographic characteristic of respondents, in all cities. Such finding confirms the need that place attachment should be given more attention in researching city development potentials, for which migrations are sifnificant indication. More work should be dedicated to further conceptualization of connection between place attachment and migrational intentions both from demographic and sociological perspective. Also, the fact that respondents’ education correlates more to place attachment than to migrational intentions, while correlations among the last two variables are more consistent, indicates to possible complex interferences and need to further explore the observed connections.
... The naturalization of the 186 JOE 6,3 materialization of professional hierarchies, roles and traditions in practice thus draws heavily on taken-for-granted assumptions about the importance assigned to professions and kinds of work that concern who can do what, where and when (Halford and Leonard, 2003). Space is then nothing but a neutral backdrop for organizational life for the members of the department whose "immersedness" (Gerber, 1997) hinders them from recognizing its importance in their attempts at breaking with tradition. The reality of practice is urgent and thereby different from that of policymakers, managersand the researcher. ...
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of organizational space in attempts at practice redesign and innovation that involve a break with the traditional professional boundaries in a recently established Danish hospital department. Design/methodology/approach Organizational ethnography combined with Bourdieusian theorization. The data used for this paper are derived from 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork. The author performed participant and meeting observations combined with interviews and the reading of internal and external documents. Findings Despite the department’s attempts at pursuing practice redesign and innovation by breaking with the institutionalized professional boundaries as well as role hierarchies, and emphasizing collaboration between nurses and doctors, the paper demonstrates how the attempts at change meet invisible impediments in practice and how organizational space plays an important yet, overlooked part in reproducing field tradition. Originality/value By virtue of Bourdieusian theorization in combination with organizational ethnography, the paper contributes with unique insights into a seldom studied part of hospital organization, which is how organizational space, rather than being a backdrop for organizational life, is constructed and used by professionals whose habitus renders this space an active component in delimiting professional work as well as the scope of change.
... En España (2008), en cambio, las creencias son afirmaciones que se dan por ciertas sin ningún tipo de duda; esto es, que son compartidas y no hay necesidad de cuestionarlas y ni de expresarlas claramente. Sin embargo, si se considera que hay cambios en la sociedad, como globalización y cambios en el ambiente, y se toma en cuenta que tanto los seres humanos y su medio ambiente se influyen mutuamente (Gerber, 1997), hay espacio para la duda y el creer en algo diferente a lo ya establecido; debido a ello, por ejemplo, en el mundo hay diferentes religiones y manera de practicarlas, y diversas formas de entender y actuar en el mundo. ...
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The analysis of environmental and modernity crisis has resulted in the proposal of conserving worldwide cultural diversity by valuing it as cultural heritage. Thus, the close relationship between culture and biodiversity is seen as a living heritage, which is reflected on landscapes and territories of traditional peoples. This article focuses on the xita fiesta as the milpa biocultural heritage. It was an ethnographic study carried out in San Pedro el Alto, Mexico. The xita fiesta is part of the mazahua biocultural heritage, in which agrobiodiversity and culture are interwoven. The xita fiesta is a space for social and cultural reproduction of mazahuas.
... z.B. Luig & Schultz 2002;Hard 2001;Flitner 1998;Gerber 1997 Backhaus et al. 2008Backhaus et al. , 2007aBackhaus et al. , 2007bDinnebier 2004;Höfer 2004;Prominski 2004aProminski , 2004bBurckhardt 2000;Hard 1991). ...
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... Land planning is a complex issue (Díaz-Balteiro & Romero 2008, Ziberman et al. 20 2010). The inclusion of people's opinion about the technical aspects of forest resources and their 21 management has sparked scientific debate ( Gerber 1997, Pelkonen et al. 1999, Leskinen 2004 22 Grundmann 2008, Bruña-García & Marey-Pérez, 2014). In a modern sense, public participation (Hellström 2001, Kangas & Store 2003, Santos et al. 2006, Janse & Konijnendijk 2007 29 Hiltunen et al. 2009). ...
Thesis
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A participación da sociedade nas decisións relativas á planificación e ordenación do territorio é fundamental para acadar solucións viables e duradeiras. A actuación conxunta de todos os sectores involucrados na planificación forestal, tanto de carácter táctico como estratéxico, permite elaborar solucións á xestión futura dos recursos do monte, seleccionando e aplicando aquela ou aquelas de consenso. A procura de acordos entre os grupos de interese é o factor máis importante na planificación de áreas rurais, onde o territorio é o sustento de todas as actividades. A clave do éxito está na representatividade ou presenza equilibrada de todos os axentes en aras de obter un obxectivo común, que transcenda ós obxectivos individuais. Esta tese afonda no traballo científico feito ata o de agora con respecto á participación pública na planificación forestal. Propón e valida unha nova metodoloxía que serva para integrar a grupos sociais con escasa experiencia en procesos participativos para a planificación de recursos naturais en rexións demograficamente en recesión. Deste xeito combínase a enxeñería de planificación, clásica do século XX, coa participación social, necesaria no século XXI, para acadar a sostenibilidade e a gobernanza efectiva The participation of society in decisions regarding land planning and management is essential to achieve long-lasting and viable solutions. The joint action of all the sectors involved in tactic and strategic forest planning gives the opportunity to develop solutions for the forest's future management, selecting and applying consensual ones. The search for agreements among stakeholders is the most important factor in rural areas, where land is the basis of all activities. The key to success lies in the representativity or balanced presence of all the agents to achieve a common objective. This thesis examines the scientific work carried out so far about public participation in forest planning. It proposes and validates a new methodology to integrate social groups with little experience in participative processes for natural resource planning in areas with demographic collapse. It combines planning engineering, typical of the 20th century, with social participation, necessary for sustainable and effective governance in the 21st.
... Vgl. Oesterdiekhoff 2012, Rushton 2000 An dieser Stelle sei auf Gerbers Aufsatz "Beyond dualism -the social construction of nature and the natural and social construction of human beings"(Gerber 1997) verwiesen. ...
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Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel war ursprünglich ein Diskussionsbeitrag auf der ÖGS-Tagung in Inns-bruck. Er befasst sich kritisch mit der Debatte über die Bedeutung der Evolutionstheorie in der Soziologie. Die folgende Annäherung bewegt sich innerhalb des Spannungsverhältnisses zwischen einer soziologisch-kritischen Analyse 1 von Herrschaftsverhältnissen qua Evolution, und möglichen (gesellschaftlichen) Kon-sequenzen einer Weiterführung der Evolutionstheorie in der Soziologie. Nachdem zu Beginn verschiedene Problematiken im Umgang mit der Evolutionstheorie fokussiert werden und daraufhin der Begriff geschärft wird werden anschließend der Umgang mit der Evolutionsthe-orie, und ihre Integration in verschiedene Bereiche kritisch untersucht. Dabei wird die virale Ausbreitung vermeintlich darwinistischer Ideen als Metapher einer entzündlichen Krankheit, " Evolutionitis " , historisch nachvollzogen. Darüber hinaus wird eine grundsätzliche epistemologische Grenze als implizite Folge der Evolutionstheorie aufgezeigt. Abschließend erfolgt ein Vorschlag, um auftauchenden Problemen in Zu-kunft besser zu begegnen. Abstract: This article was originally a contribution to a discussion at the ÖGS-conference in Innsbruck, and critically studies the debate on the meaning of the theory of evolution in sociology. The following approach shifts within the tension between a sociological-critical analysis of ruling order qua evolution, and possible social consequences of a continuation of the theory of evolution in sociology. After focussing on different problems concerning the treatment of the evolutionary theory, and having specified the concept, the way the evolutionary theory is handled, and its integration into different areas will be investigated subsequently. Thereby the viral propagation of supposed Darwinistic ideas is followed 1 Vgl.: Fischer-Lescano 2013. 376 L. Klotz historically in the form of a metaphor of an inflammatory disease: " Evolutionitis ". Apart from that it is shown that there exists a general epistemological limitation as implicit consequence of the theory of evolution. Finally a suggestion is made how to better face emerging problems in future.
... Another pervasive dualism of Western thought is the nature/culture split [34]. This dualism is reflected in specific views about bodies, for example, essentialized understandings of biologically determined roles and behavior (for example, in the ongoing sex vs gender debate or the quest for the gay gene). ...
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Virtual and augmented reality technologies have been heralded as bringing an end to education in its traditional, institutional forms. This paper explores this claim by deploying two areas of educational theory: non-technicised pedagogical theory and sociological theories of embodiment. The paper traces each theoretical area, weaving a series of provocations, throughout which raise significant questions for the development and study of educational technology. This paper highlights a number of educational issues and tensions that need to be deeply considered and debated if virtual reality is to become the much heralded transformative technology for education and embodied learning.
Thesis
Significant features of the ancient Greek landscape were its open-air cult sites, one of which was theἄλσος, translated in modern English to 'sacred grove'. Sacred groves were areas of natural forest, or trees that were planted as spaces of worship. In these spaces, religion was interwoven with thelandscape; wherein human-nature interactions formed a foundation for cultural practice. Yet, despite the connection between landscape and religion in these spaces, research in the field of sacred groves has focused primarily upon their religious qualities: scholarship has rarely delved into sacred groves as natural ecosystems, and their roles as ecosystems in ancient Greek religion. This approach has overlooked the inherent entanglement between nature and culture in ancient Greece, as well as the agency of sacred groves as natural ecosystems in the ancient Greek world. Accordingly, this thesis asks: what is the nature of entanglement between humans and ancient Greece's sacred groves?
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This paper provides a critical reflection on the nature of ethnic enclaves and segregation by presenting an analytical frame that can be used to capture the contested nature of spatiality in these spaces. By underscoring the dynamics in which differences constitute distinct subject positions, this paper posits a relational orientation to studying spatiality that is based on complex relations among and between subjects and space. To date, few attempts have been made to present an analytical frame for the analysis of the spatiality of ethnic enclaves and segregation in which space becomes contested by different groups, occupants of space, and those external to space. This paper bridges this gap by synthesizing the relational approaches found in Bourdieusian field theory and Lefebvrian spatiality. This paper seeks to make three contributions. First, to provide an explicit theoretical anchor upon which relational and spatial theories converge since the underlying rationale for complementary is usually only implicitly evaluated. In detailing this convergence, the social constitution of reality and an emphasis on the duality between individuals and society as well as society and space are identified as a rationale for relational spatiality. Second, to demonstrate how a collective engagement with Bourdieu’s and Lefebvre’s approaches facilitates a recognition of spatiality as a polysemous social product and producer of social reality in addition to grounding this orientation as a critical dialectic engagement in which both the subjects and knowledge production cannot be neutral. Third, to present an analytical frame for the investigation of ethnic enclaves in and through which ethnic majorities, minorities, occupants of space, and those external to these enclaves constitute different views towards the same space.
Article
For several decades, national environmental framework laws have come into existence to define its citizens’ environmental rights and duties, as well as express how the government will manage and protect the environment. However, previous research has not considered how a nation’s highest form of law promising environmental protection and management conveys its role or supports relevant parties. To fill this gap, we do a narrative analysis to see what themes emerged in 44 national environmental framework laws across the world. The main themes are (1) Rights and responsibilities of citizens and corporations, (2) Rights of the natural environment, (3) Environmental knowledge, (4) Governing the natural environment, and (5) External influences. Overall, we argue that the narratives we observed in the national environmental framework laws helps shape and reify the existing human domination of the natural environment for our own benefit and survival under the guise of protection.
Article
Purpose This paper aims to present the basic assumptions for creation of social Fröhlich condensate and attract attention of other researchers (both from physics and socio-political science) to the problem of modeling of stability and order preservation in highly energetic society coupled with social energy bath of high temperature. Design/methodology/approach The model of social Fröhlich condensation and its analysis are based on the mathematical formalism of quantum thermodynamics and field theory (applied outside of physics). Findings The presented quantum-like model provides the consistent operational model of such complex socio-political phenomenon as Fröhlich condensation. Research limitations/implications The model of social Fröhlich condensation is heavily based on theory of open quantum systems. Its consistent elaboration needs additional efforts. Practical implications Evidence of such phenomenon as social Fröhlich condensation is demonstrated by stability of modern informationally open societies. Social implications Approaching the state of Fröhlich condensation is the powerful source of social stability. Understanding its informational structure and origin may help to stabilize the modern society. Originality/value Application of the quantum-like model of Fröhlich condensation in social and political sciences is really the novel and original approach to mathematical modeling of social stability in society exposed to powerful information radiation from mass-media and Internet-based sources.
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Der Begriff »Kulturwissenschaften« wird gegenwärtig in Kontexten genutzt, in denen gegen die fortschreitende Spezialisierung insbesondere in den Geisteswissenschaften und gegen die damit einhergehende Fragmentierung des Wissens plädiert wird. Neben einer Perspektivierung der einzelnen Disziplinen als Kulturwissenschaften im Plural wird aber auch eine Art Dachdisziplin »Kulturwissenschaft« als wesentlich für die Modernisierung der Geisteswissenschaften diskutiert. Aus disziplinärer Perspektive loten die Beiträge dieses Bandes Möglichkeiten und Grenzen kulturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitens aus. Sie finden zu einer interdisziplinären Verständigung aus einer dezidiert historischen Sicht, die scheinbar disparate Geisteswissenschaften integriert.
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This paper analyses Steven Vogel’s claim that his account of a post-natural environmental philosophy solves the dualism problem within the field. Through what I will call a novel critique of social constructionism, this paper examines whether Vogel’s attempt succeeds or whether it reinforces the problem he wants to solve. Could the ontological foundations of social constructivism themselves be in conflict with Vogel’s stated aim of overcoming the human/nature dualism? The last part of the paper focuses on the significance and role of a post-natural environmental philosophy for the field of environmental philosophy in general.
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Basic convictions, political regulations and cultural behaviour based on tradition and communication influence the management of the environment, and as such are an important corridor of power affecting natural habitats. This also depends on whether a disaster is seen as blow of fate, natural and irremediable, or as a problem caused by humans (Nature-Culture Dichotomy).
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This paper sets out to conduct an embodied and situated aural analysis of what silence in Northern Norway is about, with the aim of bringing forward the background noise. The paper brings together theories on construction of the rural, time-space relations, soundscape ecology, and on affect and power, and it merges academic traditions about how to communicate findings from non-visual biased studies. This interdisciplinary framework provides a novel structure for both analysing material and communicating findings from embodied studies of listening out. The study found that silence in Northern Norway is about not listening to the economy of scale, to the commodification of the natural conditions and the suppression of lifestyles and territory. The paper illustrates how power is an inherent part of listening and how listening is a practice that is enacted to create emotions that are associated with a specific time-space relation.
Book
Cambridge Core - Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Horticulture and forestry - Rewilding - edited by Nathalie Pettorelli
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Environmental problems are first and foremost problems of relationship, where faulty interactions between individual human and more-than-human beings scale up to create various large-scale environmental crises. The origins of these problematic interactions lie in modern assumptions about what is possible in these relationships—specifically about what capacities more-than-human beings have to enter into them. This is ontology, where differences in ontological concepts should not be attributed to differences in human beliefs alone, but instead to the accuracy of interpretation of human-nature relational experiences. Modern humanist assumptions operate to distort these interpretations so that they are seen as not containing reciprocity or closeness. Such assumptions are traced to ecofeminist “human/nature dualisms” where humans are pre-installed as superior to reduced/inferior more-than-human partners. The book focuses on closeness both for its ameliorative effect on human-nature relationships and to convey that closeness is inherent in these relationships, but has been post hoc eradicated by human/nature dualisms.
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This chapter presents a history and critique of mid-twentieth century general, and social systems theory. The history of systemic thought is familiar to most students of social science. What is less well integrated into current sociological theory and practice is the ‘second wave’ of systemic theory or ‘complexity theory’, which succeeded the general systems program. It beings with a critical re-evaluation of the legacies of ‘classical’ general systems theorists, and the early multidisciplinary promise of their work. Social systems theory emphasises the role of functional pre-requisites for social stability and reproduction, allied to a model of social structure often referred to as ‘structural functionalism’. The chapter concludes that the two tasks can productively be separated, and that there is nothing inherently conservative in specifying structural models as guiding ideal-types.
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Where does wearable technology exist? The question is more complex than it might first appear, when one considers the thin corpus of metaphors that are available to us to describe the Internet and technology. Do wearables exist somewhere between the physical and the virtual worlds? When you use them, are they like a pencil or are they like your body? In terms of regulation, are they like an iPhone, a house, or a limb? Can they be compared to prosthetics? What kind of conceptual domain are we working with? The metaphors we use matter because metaphors carry weight. “Metaphors are encumbered with assumptions,” says a recent Atlantic article, “and when people use metaphors, they embed those assumptions in the discussion. These assumptions are the residue of the physical analogues from which the metaphors draw.” One of the most widely accepted metaphors for describing the virtual reality of the online world is the concept of cyberspace, described in William Gibson's 1984 sci-fi novel Neuromancer this way: “Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” Cyberspace exists outside of the realm of the real, according to Gibson. It is a “nonspace” that simultaneously possesses spatial contours and yet doesn't.
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My selective review of metaphors in environmental history and cultural geography is intended to point the way towards some new metaphorical terrain, indicated by the work of B. Latour and D. Haraway. Approaching the world from this general direction, environmental historians and cultural geographers might make more sense to one another. In very different ways, Latour and Haraway each provide metaphoric tools that make it possible to imagine nature as both a real material actor and a socially constructed object without reducing it, ultimately, to a single pole of the nature/culture dualism. The work of Latour and Haraway is vitally important because it provides a new vocabulary for discussing nature as a monstrous hybrid, a lively, if socially constructed actor. The final part of the article will discuss the different ways their metaphors enframe nature and enable us to think about it simultaneously as an embodied material actor and as a socially constructed object. -from Author
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This book stems from a seminar at the University of California on the role of nature in contemporary American society. The volume argues that the environmental movement in North America has achieved political influence and power and a broad presence in the culture, yet faces challenges through losing sight of the core phenomenon of nature. The volume is a series of 17 essays by humanities scholars, anthropologists and sociologists on the symbolic and philosophical position of nature in American society. It deals with specific resources issues such as conflicts over forests and national parks, as well as examining the modern construction of nature in retailing and consumption. -N.Adger
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We have before us, here and now, a whole. It is both the condition for production and the product of action itself, the place for mankind and the object of its pleasure: the earth.1 ...a thing cannot be understood or even talked about independently of the relations it has with other things. For example, resources can be defined only in relationship to the mode of production which seeks to make use of them and which simultaneously "produces" them through both the physical and mental activity of the users. There is, therefore, no such thing as a resource in abstract or a resource which exist as a "thing in itself."2 A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.3 The two extremes, local and global, are much less interesting than the intermediary arrangements that we are calling networks....Is it our fault if the networks are simultaneously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse, and collective, like society?4.
Article
In 2020 amidst the COVID-19 crisis, and in the final year of Donald Trump’s tumultuous Presidency, a group of Australian applied linguists met weekly via Zoom to discuss Claire Kramsch’s latest book, Language as Symbolic Power. As linguistics and language educators, we were a close fit for the book’s intended audience. Our weekly interactions, our unresolved questions, our resistances were distilled in a weekly e-mail to the author, provoking generous and respectful responses. In the spirit of valuing reciprocity and diverse voices, what follows takes the form of an uptake of each chapter by a different member of the reading group. Kramsch’s opening move in the Introduction Language as a Loaded Weapon is to contrast Dwight Bolinger’s analysis of the manipulative uses/abuses of English in 1970s USA with an analysis of language use in today’s post-truth digital age. Her point is that the world that our language learners have to negotiate today is vastly different from that of the 1970s—impacted as it is by social media and its inherent paradoxes (e.g. increased connectivity as well as alienation; more platforms to speak from but pervasive surveillance). To understand how language, knowledge, and power work in today’s world, Kramsch argues, we need a theory of language as not simply an instrument to convey information but as discourse with symbolic effects, producing as well as reflecting very real power asymmetries. Kramsch then poses the question prompting her to write this book: why does a ‘code-centred, structuralist view’ of language still prevail in language education? Being listened to, respected, and valued, she adds, is different from simply being understood. Beyond articulating and contextualizing the book’s aims, and defining key terms, such as ‘symbolic power’ (the power to persuade people to accept a particular view of the world), the introduction offers a preview of what is to come in other ways. Kramsch’s organization of scholars (in some cases, quite contentiously) into the camps of modernist/structuralist and post-modernist/post-structuralist reflects the immense ground covered in the book, theoretically and conceptually.
Book
Book synopsis: The philosophy of mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This Companion is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in the philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's substantial Essay on the Philosophy of Mind which serves as an overview of the subject, and is closely referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several ""self-profiles"" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoints within the book's overall coverage.
Article
The problem of the relation between our bodies and our minds, and espe­ cially of the link between brain structures and processes on the one hand and mental dispositions and events on the other is an exceedingly difficult one. Without pretending to be able to foresee future developments, both authors of this book think it improbable that the problem will ever be solved, in the sense that we shall really understand this relation. We think that no more can be expected than to make a little progress here or there. We have written this book in the hope that we have been able to do so. We are conscious of the fact that what we have done is very conjectur­ al and very modest. We are aware of our fallibility; yet we believe in the intrinsic value of every human effort to deepen our understanding of our­ selves and of the world we live in. We believe in humanism: in human rationality, in human science, and in other human achievements, however fallible they are. We are unimpressed by the recurrent intellectual fashions that belittle science and the other great human achievements. An additional motive for writing this book is that we both feel that the debunking of man has gone far enough - even too far. It is said that we had to learn from Copernicus and Darwin that man's place in the universe is not so exalted or so exclusive as man once thought. That may well be.
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(1) IMAGES, DURATION, SPACE AND TIME
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This piece begins as an academic paper about what the social sciences are and it ends as a manifesto of what they ought to be. The message is thoroughly ideological, for ideology is defined as that ethical glue whereby is and ought are forged together into a coherent whole. In the first part, I shall provide a succinct but novel summary of a long and complicated argument recently developed elsewhere.1 In the second, I shall explore some implications of those thoughts. In neither case shall I draw anything but a rough caricature. But that may be just as well, for it is usually easier to see the prominent features in a caricature than in a fascimile reproduction.
Article
First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental Phénoménologie de la perception signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers.
Article
This paper explores the relationship between Geography, modernism and nature-mysticism in the early twentieth century through a detailed study of the writings of two geographers, Vaughan Cornish and Sir Francis Younghusband. It is argued that spiritual and mystical themes informed a significant part of modern Geography, yet that these have been largely ignored in geographical historiography. The themes of universalism, continuity and leadership in Cornish and Younghusband's attention to the mystical are examined, as are the 'risks' of such an attention for those concerned with the maintenance of order. Parallels are drawn between Cornish and Younghusband's modern spiritual Geography and contemporary 'Green' ideas, and the implications of this 'hidden' element of geographical modernism for the practice of a post-modern Geography are considered. It is argued that any such practice must attend to Geography's constitution as a very modern discipline of space and environment, and that any such attention should address the significant spiritual element in Geography's modernity.
Article
Born and raised in a remote mountain village of the Pyrénées in southwestern France, Pierre Bourdieu moved to Paris in the early 1950s to study at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure at a time when philosophy was the queen discipline and the obligatory vocation of any aspiring intellectual. There he quickly grew dissatisfied with the ‘philosophy of the subject’ exemplified by Sartrian existentialism — then the reigning doctrine — and gravitated toward the ‘philosophy of the concept’ associated with the works of epistemologists Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Jules Vuillemin, as well as to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Shortly after graduation, however, Bourdieu forsook a projected study of affective life mating philosophy, medicine, and biology and, as other illustrious normaliens such as Durkheim and Foucault had done before him, he converted to social science.
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The author explores the ways that human beings have turned to natural science, theology, and myth to form visions of the earth as a human habitat. She also reaches beyond the Western tradition to examine how other cultures have conceptualized the nature and meaning of their environments. She begins by placing her study in the context of Western intellectual and cultural history. Focusing on the "emancipatory cry' of humanism, she identifies and interprets cyclical patterns of Western thought using the three mythopoetical characters of Phoenix, Faust, and Narcissus. The author uses symbols to reflect on four ways in which the world has been perceived both in the Western cultural tradition and in other traditions throughout history: the world as a mosaic of forms, as a mechanical system, as an organic whole, and as an arena of spontaneous events. Although postmodern thinkers have seen the struggle between Faust the builder and Narcissus the evaluator as insoluble, she argues that the impulse of the Phoenix can bridge the gaps between disciplines, cultures, and world-views. -Publisher
Article
This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
Article
In this paper a conjuction of geography, environmental thought, and modernism in the early 20th century is discussed, around the metaphor of "a modern stream'. It is focused on the work of Geddes and Cornish. After an outline of Geddes's conceptions of human and environmental evolution and progress, the focus is on the writings of Geddes, Cornish, and Mumford on nature, technology, and electricity. Cornish's accounts of the Panama Canal, with their emphases on energy, science, hygiene, race, and beauty, are then considered in detail in order to bring together these wider arguments around a particular landscape. The paper ends with the suggestion that the "modern stream' metaphor contains within it many of the key themes of modern geography. -Author
Article
After it is outlined why this paper is not geared around the term 'postmodernism', approaches within Geography and without to the representation of landscape are considered, and a way of analysing representation from the writings of Michel Foucault is developed. Foucault's ideas on power, knowledge, discourse, truth, and genealogy are discussed, and the paper is concluded with an examination of how such ideas might be employed in relation to key themes of geographical enquiry such as nature and place identity, and to the discipline of geography itself.
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The work of Michel Foucault has recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny. This paper is an examination of his book, Discipline and Punish, which describes an historical transformation in the exercise of power. The themes (section 2) and the significance (section 3) of the book are discussed in terms of Foucault's conception of history and power. In the rest of the paper, its implications are examined more closely, through four categories: ‘institutions’, ‘the economy’, ‘law and the state’, and ‘struggle and strategy’. Under these headings are discussed the connections and contradictions between Foucault's analysis and more conventional Marxist or Weberian approaches. Although Foucault's perspectives cannot be ‘incorporated’ within such theories of power, they are far from being completely incompatible with them.
Article
This paper has three parts. The first examines the emergence of environmental history as a distinct subset of the history discipline. Its development is discussed, beginning with its roots in American conservation and intellectual history, its evolving ethical and radical emphasis, and ultimate its more internationalist and interdisciplinary views of humans in nature. The various models (mainly anthropological) and agendas for the study of environmental history are examined. The second part considers the contribution of primarily historical and cultural geographers to the larger human/nature debate raised by environmental history. Attention is focused on four areas of study (1) the transformation and modification of earth, (2) global expansion and the capitalist economy, (3) the place of humans in nature and, (4) the interrelationships between habitat, economy and society. The third part surveys some of the implications, commonalities and challenges of the discourse for both disciplines. It is concluded that both disciplines have much to contribute and learn from each other in "the telling of place stories".
Article
Inspired by the Green Movement and invoking many of the analytical concepts of ecological science, environmental historians have offered trenchant criticisms of modern society and its relations with nature. Recently however, their position has been eroded on several fronts. Revisionists in ecological science have repudiated the idea of stable, holistic ecosystems used by many environmental historians and other Green critics to measure and assail the environmental damage wrought by society. Various assaults on the authority of science and history to represent nature and the past have also undercut the exclusive claims to knowledge that environmental historians rely upon to legitimate their critique. I review these various challenges and the responses to them in turn. In the final part of the essay, I advance the position that environmental historians and other Green critics should end their search for foundational authority, be it in science or elsewhere, and appeal instead to diverse moral, political, and aesthetic criteria to arbitrate between particular representations of nature in particular situations. This situation does not rule out appropriations from ecological science or other fields of knowledge where they prove useful and convincing, because ultimately, environmental narratives are not legitimated in the lofty heights of foundational epistemology but in the more approachable and more contested realm of public discourse.
Article
How places are made is at the core of human geography. Overwhelmingly the discipline has emphasized the economic and material forces at work. Neglected is the explicit recognition of the crucial role of language, even though without speech humans cannot even begin to formulate ideas, discuss them, and translate them into action that culminates in a built place. Moreover, words alone, used in an appropriate situation, can have the power to render objects, formerly invisible because unattended, visible, and impart to them a certain character: thus a mere rise on a flat surface becomes something far more—a place that promises to open up to other places—when it is named “Mount Prospect.’The different ways by which language contributes toward the making of place may be shown by exploring a wide range of situations and cultural contexts. Included in this paper are the contexts of hunter-gatherers, explorers and pioneers, intimate friendship, literary London, Europe in relation to Asia, and Chinese gardening and landscape art. There is a moral dimension to speech as there is to physical action. Thus warm conversation between friends can make the place itself seem warm; by contrast, malicious speech has the power to destroy a place's reputation and thereby its visibility. In the narrative-descriptive approach, the question of how and why language is effective is implied or informally woven into the presentation, but not explicitly formulated or developed. Ways of making place in different situations—from the naming of objects by pioneers, to informal conversation in any home, to the impact of written texts—are highlighted and constitute the paper's principal purpose, rather than causal explanations, which must vary with each type of linguistic behavior and each situation.
Article
This paper analyses social constructions of nature in different discursive contexts and the ways in which particular representations of nature are used to legitimate specific institutional policies and practices. The proposal to create a commercial and entertainment development on the Rainham Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in east London provides the case study. Drawing on arguments from media sociology and the sociology of risk, the paper explores the identification of distinctive myths of nature associated with particular sociopolitical formations within the discourses of developers, conservationists, the media and the public. Detailed ethnographic research reveals how the developers and conservationists employed different constructions of nature to justify their respective positions and how different local audiences made sense of competing claims about the relative worth of the 'nature' on their doorsteps.
Article
It is my thesis that the discipline we now know as environmental history owes a great deal of its impetus to the emergence at the beginning of the 19th century of a socially engaged and environmentally committed interdisciplinary 'proto-discipline'. A material conception of nature was of key importance to this environmental history, and thereby to the historically conscious conservation movement which it set in motion. This concept of nature as thing could, however, be (mis)construed to represent a reification which separates humanity from nature. This reification, as will be seen, was problematic because it bore concealed within it older normative concepts of nature, which came to imply environmental determinism as a natural ideal and the alienation from nature of any form of humanity which violated this ideal. This meant that humanity tended to be counterpoised to nature. There is a consequent need today to 'deconstruct' this concept of nature in order to 're-invent', as it were, a conception of nature which maintains the conservation imperative, but which shifts its focus from things to the dynamics of a society-environment relation in which humanity can take a positive and active role. I exemplify my argument by drawing upon a classic case of the intertwining of environmental transformations and changing conceptions of nature: that of the 'landscaping' of the Jutland heath. Even though this analysis is not about Transylvania, a key factor in it proves to be an arcane bond between bats, vampires and the concept of landscape.
Article
Turner examines the role of metaphor in cognition and in the ways we understand causation, particularly the causation of mental events. Focusing on inference—on how we reason, using inship metaphors—Turner explains nothing less than why these metaphors mean what they mean. The immediate concerns of his work also serve a larger purpose: The development of a new mode of analysis, a modern rhetoric that makes use of the insights of contemporary cognitive science and linguistics as well as those of literary criticism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
The paper notes certain features of the post-modern debate within geography and in science generally: the crisis of foundationalism and the revision of geographical historiography. It draws parallels between these and aspects of natural philosophy at the opening of the 'modern' period in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. A progressive historiography of geographical science is challenged and the continued significance of analogical and metaphorical understanding, particularly in relation to visual images, is discussed. Specific attention is paid to the uses of mathematics and geometry treated metaphorically, and to the relations between poesis and techne as morally distinct but related modes of human interaction with the natural world. The revival in recent years of many features of late Renaissance scientific debates is examined through the work of some feminist and neo-romantic authors.
Article
This paper reflects upon the progress and prospects of the "production of nature' thesis within Marxist geography. Pivoting around a distinction made by George Canguihelm between "theories' and "concepts,' the argument is two-fold. First, it is suggested that Marxist geographical accounts of produced nature underplay the materiality of produced nature. A general theoretical account is then presented wherein historical materialist concepts can register the materiality of produced nature. Second, it is suggested that Marxist geographical accounts of produced nature insufficiently problematize the concept of nature deployed within their theoretical-explanatory frameworks. A discussion of "cultural studies of science' is then presented in order to problematize that conception. In the final part of the paper an attempt is made to reconcile the ontological realism of the first part and epistemological skepticism of the second by arguing that Marxist geographers must see produced nature as simultaneously a constellation of ontologically real and yet epistemologically-conceptually "fixed' entities. -from Author
Article
Abstract Although concepts of space and time are socially constructed, they operate with the full force of objective fact and play a key role in processes of social reproduction. Conceptions of space and time are inevitably, therefore, contested as part and parcel of processes of social change, no matter whether that change is superimposed from without (as in imperialist domination) or generated from within (as in the conflict between environmentalist and economic standards of decision making). A study of the historical geography of concepts of space and time suggests that the roots of the social construction of these concepts lie in the mode of production and its characteristic social relations. In particular, the revolutionary qualities of a capitalistic mode of production, marked by strong currents of technological change and rapid economic growth and development, have been associated with powerful revolutions in the social conceptions of space and time. The implications of these revolutions, implying as they do the “annihilation of space by time'’and the general speed-up and acceleration of turnover time of capital, are traced in the fields of culture and politics, aesthetic theory and, finally, brought home within the discipline of geography as both a problem and a stimulus for rethinking the role of the geographical imagination in contemporary social life.
Article
Traditionally, geography has paid relatively little attention to disabled or disadvantaged po[ulations. This paper outlines some general and some specific suggestions regarding the way geographers can invoke their skills and knowledge to deal with sets of problems faced by these special populations. The paper is designed to make suggestions both for instructional purposes and to identify specific future research challenges. The combined effect is to suggest that geographical study of the disabled could represent a new systematic area of geographic concentration that would combine micro and macro approaches, and facilitate the development of new geographic theory, methods, and applications. -from Author