Ch 8: The Social Construction of Nature PDF

Ch 8: The Social Construction of Nature Source: Lane V. Erickson/Shutterstock The Social Construction of Nature • • • • Welcome to the Jungle! So You Say It’s “Natural”? Environmental Discourse The Limits of Constructivism: Science, Relativism, and the Very Material World Welcome to the Jungle...

Ch 8: The Social Construction of Nature Source: Lane V. Erickson/Shutterstock The Social Construction of Nature • • • • Welcome to the Jungle! So You Say It’s “Natural”? Environmental Discourse The Limits of Constructivism: Science, Relativism, and the Very Material World Welcome to the Jungle! • Remember first class? What is the most ‘remote’ place you have ever been and why do you think of it as remote? • Can you think of any place that is unaffected by human activities? What places are the ‘least’ affected? • What do you think of when you hear the word wilderness? What about jungle? Nature? What are the differences in these words (in a common understanding)? Social construction • Social construction: – the theory that any category, condition, or thing is understood to have certain characteristics because people agree that it does • Thomas Theorum: – Situations perceived as real are real in their consequences – It matters less what something IS compared to what we THINK it is/AGREE that it is – Ex: wilderness and nature are generally constructed as separate from society • A constructivist examines how concepts, beliefs, and the practices they create and put in place shape – how we understand the world – the world itself So You Say It’s “Natural”? • The word nature has several meanings: – Essential quality of something – Inherent force that directs humans and/or the world – The material world itself, which may or may not include humans • The way we’ve been exploring it in this class • Our common understanding of the word in this way is often separate from humans – We can be ‘close’ to nature or ‘further’ and sometimes ‘part of’ – Three are closely related and overlap – How do we ‘know’ the nature of something or what is ‘natural’? • Impossible to explore characteristics of ‘natural’ outside of where humans are • Even in science Social context • The way that we understand “natural” properties depends on the social context – Social context • set of social relations in a specific place at a specific time – Includes things like cultural/belief systems, economic relations of production, governance and law systems etc. – determines which concepts are conceived, which ones take hold, and which ones are dismissed – Social reality then, is both perception-based and negotiated by people in unequal/complex social systems • ‘nature’ and ‘natural properties’ are part of this social reality – Ex: The concept of race is socially constructed as natural • Can see many examples of it throughout human history – Race is very different in different times and places – In a more modern era, it was used as justification for dominating other people during the period of European expansion » From slavery to occupation and colonialism How do we know how something is socially constructed? • We can ask a series of questions to think about the origins of concepts: – Is the concept apparently natural, inevitable, timeless, or universal? • If not, under what conditions was it invented? – What are the social, political, and environmental effects of believing that this concept is true, natural, or inevitable? – Would we be better off doing away with the concept, or fundamentally rethinking it? The social construction of “New World” natures • Indigenous societies had dramatically altered landscapes by building cities, deforestation, farming, and irrigation • Europeans constructed the image of the New World as pristine and undeveloped, and used this concept to justify violently displacing its inhabitants Figure 8.1: “Old Growth” Pacific Northwest forest Source: © Ian Grant/Design Pics/Corbis What matters? • Does it matter that the Europeans were wrong about the pristine emptiness that they assumed existed in the New World? – Not really (if ‘wrong’ is even a word that works here). • It is more important to ask what happened because of those assumptions, and who benefitted – In the context of this class: • The knowledge that is accepted by those with power will be used to control environmental resources as benefits them Environmental Discourse • Discourse – spoken and written language that not only represents the world, but may materially change it through its representations • How we negotiate social reality – Consists of things like: • Narrative – A story we socially build with a beginning and an end – Not like a novel » A way of telling ourselves socially in a coherent manner, the ‘truth’ or ‘way’ of something • Concept – a single idea, though it may be complex » ‘nature’ is a concept • Ideology – belief about how the world is and how it ought to be • Signifying practices – modes and methods of representation • Discourse analysis – ‘read between the lines’ approach that takes the narratives of knowledge that we’ve built about concepts by looking at the underlying ideologies being expressed and what/whose interests are supported Environmental Discourse • The production of a discourse is supported by different types of institutions – More powerful institutions and people may create and sustain the discourses that benefit them • Eventually, the origins of the elements that make up a discourse are forgotten, and the discourse is taken as true without question • A social constructivist then, wants to destabilize the accepted discourses by discovering the origins of the elements, the relations of power in which they were created, and the institutions that benefit The discourse of North African desertification • Is the Sahara Desert expanding northward? – Documentation from the 18th century until 1997 says yes – Most well informed people who are not specifically experts believe this to be true – Environmental studies say no Figure 8.2: Pollen evidence from Morocco over 14,000 years Source: reproduced from Davis, D. K. (2007). Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa. Ohio University Press. The discourse of North African desertification • What is causing the discrepancy? – Lack of information? Maybe. – Does the discourse support some interests over others? Does it specifically benefit people who might have benefitted from understanding the world this way? • Early French colonial officers used the discourse to justify tighter land controls and the settlement of nomadic people Wilderness: a troublesome discourse • It is specific to Western European cultures – The concept shifts, but always disguises human values as natural conditions • Barren wasteland that should be dominated and civilized • Pure untouched landscape that should be preserved. – It has often been applied to places that are inhabited by people with displacement and violence – It places the focus on places assumed to be wilderness and takes the focus away from other valuable natural areas or conditions Figure 8.3: John Gast, American Progress, 1872 Source: Library of Congress, engraving after 1872 painting The Limits of Constructivism: What about science? • Science is often assumed to be an objective method for discovering the truth of nature – But social constructivists have shown that the practices and findings of science are socially constructed too – Even if the methods of science can objectively observe something • We decide what to observe and decide what our observations mean as humans in a social context • Science is also practiced within a formal establishment: – What counts as “good science”? Who decides? – What are the topics that interest the scientific community and the agencies that fund them? The Limits of Constructivism: The threat of relativism • Relativism: – the theory that all beliefs, truths, and facts are socially constructed in a particular social context • So what information can we believe, or act on? • Shades of relativism: – most relativists will admit that there are influences other than social context • Especially in a physical world • Constructivist Paradox: Relativism relies on objectivism to prove its point – We use science to test the underlying assumptions about ‘knowledge’, but don’t trust objectivism • Like using science to challenge ideas of desertification – Who benefits from this challenge and change in knowledge? The Limits of Construction: Constructivism in a material world • Since there are things and systems that operate outside of human behavior, no matter what knowledge we construct about them • An alternative concept: co-production – a theory that argues that humans and nonhumans produce and change one another through interactions