Keywords:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography.
;
Electronic books.
Description / Table of Contents:
We listen to a cacophony of voices instructing us how to think and feel about nature, including our own bodies. The news media, wildlife documentaries, science magazines, and environmental NGOs are among those clamouring for our attention. But are we empowered by all this knowledge or is our dependence on various communities allowing our thoughts, sentiments and activities to be unduly governed by others? Making Sense of Nature shows that what we call 'nature' is made sense of for us in ways that make it central to social order, social change and social dissent. By utilising insights and extended examples from anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, philosophy, politics, sociology, science studies, this interdisciplinary text asks whether we can better make sense of nature for ourselves, and thus participate more meaningfully in momentous decisions about the future of life - human and non-human - on the planet. This book shows how 'nature' can be made sense of without presuming its naturalness. The challenge is not so much to rid ourselves of the idea of nature and its 'collateral concepts' (such as genes) but instead, we need to be more alert to how, why and with what effects ideas about 'nature' get fashioned and deployed in specific situations. Among other things, the book deals with science and scientists, the mass media and journalists, ecotourism, literature and cinema, environmentalists, advertising and big business. This innovative text contains numerous case studies and examples from daily life to put theory and subject matter into context, as well as study tasks, a glossary and suggested further reading. The case studies cover a range of topics, range from forestry in Canada and Guinea, to bestiality in Washington State, to how human genetics is reported in Western newspapers, to participatory science experiments in the UK.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
Pages:
1 online resource (374 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
9781134613830
URL:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/geomar/detail.action?docID=1344580
DDC:
508
Language:
English
Note:
Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Acronyms -- Permissions -- Acknowledgments -- Preface: Nature is here, there and everywhere -- Part I: Making Sense of Sense Making -- 1. How we Make Sense of (What We Call) Nature -- Aims and Objectives -- What this book is not about -- What this book is about -- Denaturalising nature -- The Idea of Nature -- What is nature? -- Where is nature? -- When is nature? -- Nature's Collateral Concepts -- The Dualisms of Western Thought 1 -- Discourse and discourses -- Contemporary Western discourse and its antonyms -- The Dualisms of Western Thought 2 -- Metonymy: The 'Nature Effect' -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 2. Representing Nature -- Nature's Spokespersons: Epistemic Communities and Epistemic Dependence -- Re-Presenting 'Nature' -- Representation, reference and representatives -- Representations: constructed and political -- The Nature of 'Represention': Four Issues -- Representation = language? -- Representation = mimesis? -- A focus on representation occludes the non-representational? -- First-hand experience versus second-hand representation? -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 3. Governing Society with Reference to the Natural -- How Communication Works -- Genres of communication and modes of representation -- Subjects and self-hood -- Epistemic Communites from the Inside Out -- Circulating and Mutating Reference -- Shared meanings and semantic repertoires -- Translating between communicative genres and sub-genres -- Scepticism and the Governance of Nature's Representations -- Governing epistemic dependence -- Epistemic Dependence and Semiotic Democracy -- Substantive and formal democracy -- The value of epistemic diversity -- Summary -- Endnotes -- Part II: Representations and Their Effects -- 4. Unnatural Constructions -- What's a 'Forest'?.
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Beyond the cut -- On the wild side -- Buried epistemologies -- The Nature within: Rethinking Human Identity the Genetic Way -- The power of molecular biology -- Molecularising identity -- Mapping, quantifying and differentiating genes -- Down and Dirty: Getting in Touch with 'Real Nature'? -- The nature of Fraser Island -- Dingoes, danger and death -- In What Sense is 'Nature' a 'Construction'? -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 5. Enclosing Nature: Borders, Boundaries and Transgressions -- Borders and Boundaries -- From Nature to Artifice: Intellectual Property and Biological Invention -- Patents and biotechnological manufactures -- Conceptual quarantine: keeping nature out of invention -- Degrees of 'un/natural difference': purification is complicated and contentious -- Beastly Behaviour: Crossing the Human-Animals Divide -- The Enumclaw case: outlawing animal intercourse -- Respectable identities and proper behaviour: dividing sex in two -- Leaks and transgressions: Resisting the Compulsions of 'Either/Or' -- Beyond binaries in sex and gender: representing 'trans' identities and politics -- Genre blending and bending -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 6. The Uses of Nature: Social Power and Representation -- The Nature of Social Power -- Definitions -- Power shift: from 'hard' to 'soft'? -- Debates about social power -- How best to make sense of social power? -- Deforestation Discourse -- The crisis of tree loss in West Africa? -- The roots of epistemic inequity in upland Guinea -- The occlusion of forest history in Kissidougou -- The persistence of deforestation orthodoxy -- The power of discourse -- Summary -- Endnotes -- Part III: Key Epistemic Communities: The Making, Mobilisation and Regulation of Nature-Knowledge Today -- 7. Nature's Principal Public Representative: The Mass Media -- Living in a Mass Mediated World.
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The effects of the mass media - more on social power -- Conclusions? -- Mass Mediated Publics -- The public sphere, publics and publicity -- Mediated publicness: the mass media as public resource and public threat -- Global Climate Change as 'News' -- Newspapers, journalists and news as a communicative genre -- Reporting anthropogenic climate change and ventriloquising science -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 8. Expertise, the Democratisation of Knowledge and Participatory Decision-Making: Understanding the Nature of Science -- Climate Change Science Under Attack -- Two surprising 'scandals' -- Learning from the Controversy Over Climate Change science -- The governance of science -- Responding to science: avoiding the misuses of epistemic dependence -- No Room for Citizen Science? -- Flood management apprentices -- The power of lay epistemology -- How Best to Democratise Science? -- Summary -- Endnotes -- 9. Conclusion: Making Better Sense of Sense Making -- Endnotes -- Glossary -- Key sources and further reading -- How to use this book -- Endnotes: Why we (still) need to talk about nature -- References -- Index.
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