Reinventing Nature?

A Note from the Editors

Preface

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: Nature Under Fire

Gary Lease

The boundary between the world and human beings is under fire. On the one hand nature is personified; on the other hand the idea that nature needs protection from humankind's onslaught begs the definition of the boundary and turns our attention to contesting constructions of nature and to competition among human groups for access to resources and power. Whose story (narrative, paradigm, construction) will prevail? Deconstruction insists that we must not ignore these cultural questions, even in the formerly exclusive provinces of science and conservation. Reverberations of past issues are sensed in debates over what is "out there," what is nature, and the locus of the human species vis-à-vis the divine. The Western tradition has not found the answers. Postmodern answers, to date, have ignored certain actors and obscured certain questions--for example, the issue of conceptual constructions of nature versus the role of human beings in the physical construction of ecosystems. The answers will affect the lives of many.

CHAPTER TWO

Virtually Hunting Reality in the Forests of Simulacra

Paul Shepard

The postmodern constructionist view is that all texts, reports, narratives are but descriptions--focused chatter about an unknowable external world, psychobabble, webs of words that serve as ammunition in struggles over who dominates whom. But Derrida, Lyotard, and other deconstructionists have about them the smell of the coffeehouse, a world of ironic, patronizing remoteness in which the search for generality and truth would be an embarrassment. Moreover, somehow justified by the deconstruction of nature are the theme parks, malls, and other virtual simulations of originals that create a world easier to control, a world where imagination is the only real landscape and where denial replaces even disengagement and relativism. The loss of contact with nature, a biophilic deprivation, must lead to pathology. But other animal species, because they have no words to confuse themselves, are not so deluded.

CHAPTER THREE

The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature

Albert Borgmann

For most of human time, reality/nature were divine and one thing. The Greek thinker Thales stands for the rupture of this spiritual plenum. By the sixteenth century, nature was seen as the recalcitrant power against which people had to struggle, then vanquish--leading, in the late twentieth century, to the end of nature. Now the fragmented, anthropogenic wilderness cannot be left unattended lest it deteriorate even faster. Modernity paints this dismal scenario, a melancholy acquiescence to decline; but this view rests on a false dichotomy: natural vs. artificial, independent vs. managed. An alternative to ubiquitous artificiality is the admission of degrees of “reality.” The criteria are genuineness, seriousness, and commanding presence. Thus the substitute for the dualism of natural and artificial is a new continuum: reality-hyperreality. And even if nature (reality) is to some extent a human invention, it still can be eloquent and inspiring and still can invigorate the notion of excellence. A general guideline: to save or restore a wild area’s commanding presence and to guard its coherence with its environment and tradition.

CHAPTER FOUR

Searching for Common Ground

N. Katherine Hayles

The deconstructionist paradigm, if accepted broadly, would not only threaten the privileged role of science as a source of truth about reality. It would also destroy environmentalism, since the environment is just a “social construction.” Short of dismissing the institution of science, not to mention all of “reality,” we might adopt a constrained program of deconstruction using the concepts of interactivity and positionality. This program may create a common ground between adherents of the strong program of deconstruction, on the one hand, and traditional objectivists (for example, Western scientists) on the other. For example, human beings develop their models of reality with their sensory/cognitive apparatus, “the cusp,” each person being uniquely embodied and positioned. But not all representations of reality are equally acceptable because certain constraints, such as consistency across cultures, can falsify representations. (Thus this “constrained constructivism” does not mean that all realities are equally valid, as does the strong program.) The notions of interactivity and positionality enliven the stakes in contesting for the integrity of the environment. Those in power, therefore, should consider marginal points of view, including those of other species.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nature and the Disorder of History

Donald Worster

Attitudes about nature and the environment change. But contrary to the belief of many contemporary postmodern historians, whose excessive relativism may distort reality, change may not be the most important metaphysical principle. Still, disorderly change is the fashion of the day. Just as in ecology, where the Victorian paradigm of stability, equilibrium, and order has been superseded by a paradigm of disturbance and disorder, the contemporary historian’s view of human society rejects the notions of normality, equilibrium, progress, and all value judgments; it is fixated on disorder. As Marx said: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” Because modern historicism leads either to cynicism or to banality, it could be described as a degenerate worldview. A less extreme interpretation of contemporary history and ecology might stress two principles: one is social and biological interdependence; the other is successful adaptation to situation and place by human groups and species. Change is not a good in itself. But preserving a diversity of change, not freezing nature, ought to stand high in our system of values.

CHAPTER SIX

Cultural Parallax in Viewing North American Habitats

Gary Paul Nabhan

Does conservation of wilderness imply excluding residents who practice traditional forms of human subsistence? The debate over this issue is relevant to the question of the past human role in the “construction” of native ecological systems. What is original, untrammeled nature--primitive America? Is it pre-Columbian, implying that Native Americans walked softly and lived in harmony? Or did they and their ancestors deforest large areas, cause the mass extinction of mammals, and change the landscape everywhere by burning? It is clear now that Native Americans practiced extensive and intensive land management, though this evidence was often invisible to the European settlers who arrived after epidemics had erased it. In any case, the polarized debate about aboriginal impacts obscures the complexity and diversity of old cultures in North America and ignores cultural adaptation and change. Such local, cultural knowledge of nature in indigenous groups is rapidly being lost because the mass media expose Native American children to pan-Indian culture and a generic electronic nature.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Concepts of Nature East and West

Stephen R. Kellert

Even though nature evokes common emotional and intellectual structures in humans (evidence for a shared understanding), cultures are heterogeneous in how they value nature. The scholarly depiction of Western (Judeo-Christian) perspectives as oppressive and exploitive, and Eastern views as unitary, respectful, and harmonious, may not be relevant or even accurate. Survey results comparing Americans and Japanese indicate that Japanese are inclined to emphasize control over nature, to emphasize the presumed essence of natural phenomena, especially in contrived or symbolic representations, and to be less knowledgeable about natural history and ecology. Americans are far more likely to express concern about ethical treatment of animals and to support environmental protection. Attempts to attribute the aloofness of Japanese to Western intellectual colonization seem simplistic, for Eastern attitudes toward nature have always been idealized and passive. Though the seeds of a conservation ethic can be found in both cultural traditions, they are not the same seeds. The deconstructionist notion that all cultural perspectives of nature possess equal value is both biologically misguided and socially dangerous.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Resolute Biocentrism: The Dilemma of Wilderness in National Parks

David M. Graber

National parks (and wilderness in general) are by default the sites where the values of solitude, wildness, and otherness reside. Yet the baseline criteria for original, natural, or pristine states still elude managers. And public pressure for aesthetics and recreation militates against the achievement of biodiversity protection (saving all the parts)--including the control of exotic species and the restoration of native species and associations--and forces abandonment of the principle of “organic autonomy” and the vision of wildness. Management for biodiversity in national parks is incompatible with management for wildness because it requires heroic and intrusive interventions, depriving visitors of the subjective experience of wildness. If a third objective is added--reconstructing cultural landscapes, a current management fad--any sense of wildness recedes further yet. One can only hope that research provides a way out.

CHAPTER NINE

The Social Siege of Nature

Michael E. Soulé

Humanity entertains manifold representations of living nature--from quite pagan/spiritual views to the more utilitarian (Judeo-Christian) and scientific conceptions displayed on television documentaries. Myths about ecological equilibrium, homeostasis (including Gaia), nature’s pristine/profane dualism, and human population underlie some of these representations, as do the postmodern social myths of Western moral inferiority, historicism, and cultural relativity. The overt siege of nature, entraining a major extinction episode, is sometimes defended by various ideologies--the social siege and its postmodern premises. Yet there is evidence against the more rigid constructionist/historicist positions and it can be shown how postmodern views have been employed by the Wise Use movement, the Animal Rights movement, and the Social Ecology and Justice movement to justify further exploitation of wildlands. Some positive elements of the postmodern, humanist agenda--a focus on power inequities, bias, and the myths that maintain them--may help balance the harm to living nature by the politics of deconstruction.

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Index