Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics (original) (raw)

2003, Annals of the Association of American Geographers

For over a century, geographers have sought to describe and explain the society-nature interface. When, James Bryce (1886, p. 426) -one of geography's early advocates -characterized the discipline as "a meeting point between the sciences of Nature and the sciences of Man [sic]" he sought to create a distinctive place for it within the academic division of labor. As we enter the twenty-first century, geography remains one of the few subjects dedicated to exploring the relations between humanity and nature. To be sure, the geographical project extends beyond the study of these relations. But many geographers remain convinced that the society-nature nexus should be a central disciplinary preoccupation. It's easy to understand why. The world has changed enormously since Bryce penned his words in the genteel surroundings of Victorian Oxford, where he was a university professor. In the twenty-first century, society-nature relations seem to be marked by a new breadth, depth, and consequentiality. By breadth, I simply mean that few areas and aspects of nature today remain untouched by human hands; by depth, I mean that many society-nature relations extend 'all the way down,' even to the level of genetic modification; and by consequentiality, I mean that what happens to nature today may be of world-changing importance, both for ourselves and other species. In short, Bryce could scarcely have anticipated a future in which mass deforestation, global warming, the collapse of commercial fisheries, chronic species extinction, transgenic organisms, a growing ozone 'hole,' and desertification would be just a few of the problems arising from human transformations of nature. And he could hardly have imagined that such problems would spawn a global environmental movement, or that governments worldwide would put the question of nature near the top of their political agendas.