Intertwining with Nature - Taking a Walk around the Lake at Lunchtime—1 (original) (raw)
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The Changing Qualities of Nature Encounters - Taking a Walk Around the Lake at Lunchtime—2
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, 2023
In this essay, I continue my examination of plant and animal encounters in place. In a previous essay, I showed how my experiences of the lake at my workplace shifted from year to year (Wood 2022). I explained how, now alert to the natural rhythms of the place, I could perceive with greater depth and notice novel, surprising elements. Here, I explore the theme of noticing in more detail. Phenomenological geographer David Seamon identified noticing as one mode of place encounter. He located the modes of obliviousness, watching, noticing, and heightened contact on a spectrum running from greater separateness to greater oneness between human experiencers and their surroundings (Seamon 2015, Part 4, figure below). My focus is the shift from obliviousness to noticing and the oneness with nature marked by moments of heightened contact.
Reenchanting Urban Wildness: To Perceive, Think and Live With Nature in its Urban Environment
Transatlantica, 2018
This second edition of the International Conference on Ecopoetics organized by Benedicte Meillon, under the aegis of the research center CRESEM (Centre de Recherche sur les Societes et Environnements en Mediterranee) of the University of Perpignan Via Domitia, explored the literary and social manifestations of diverse interactions linking humans and non-humans in the midst of an expanding urbanization. The conference gathered a hundred scholars, novelists, poets, sociologists, ethnologists, t...
How ordinary wildlife makes local green places special
People travel all over the world to see charismatic and iconic wildlife in their natural habitat. But what about more ordinary wildlife near home? What do they mean to people? How do they strengthen the bond with our local environment? This paper explores how wildlife adds to a personal bond with favourite green places near home among people in a highly urbanised society, the Netherlands.
Nature as a constellation of activities: movement, rhythm and perception in an Italian national park
Social Anthropology, 2020
Drawing on the concept of taskscape, the paper explores activities of environmental interpretation in an Italian national park. Taskscape is the array of rhythmic movements, tasks and activities that humans and nonhumans perform in the process of dwelling. Accordingly, the paper presents environmental interpretation as particular mode of action and perception that shapes conservation areas as environments understood as realms of nature. By extending the concept of taskscape, and adopting a performative perspective, the paper also sheds light on ethical and cognitive considerations. Ethics emerges along with the activities interpreters carry out within the landscape; it is performed, hence it is constitutive of a taskscape of conservation as a process in which particular ways of moving, hence perceiving, generate particular ways of knowing, hence understanding, and vice versa. The conclusion suggests that nature in conservation areas emerges as a constellation of activities resulting from a particular way of dwelling and performing a certain environment according to a specific rhythm, and framed within a particular ethics.
Environmental Values, 2015
As our interactions with nature occur increasingly within urban landscapes, there is a need to consider how 'mundane nature' can be valued as a route for people to connect to nature. The content of a three good things in nature intervention, written by 65 participants each day for five days is analysed. Content analysis produced themes related to sensations, temporal change, active wildlife, beauty, weather, colour, good feelings and specific aspects of nature. The themes describe the everyday good things in nature, providing direction for those seeking to frame engaging conservation messages, plan urban spaces and connect people with nearby nature.
Wildlife: a hidden treasure of green places in urbanized societies?
2016
Wildlife: a hidden treasure of green places in urbanized societies In my thesis, I investigate how wildlife contributes to a bond with green places on different spatial scales among lay people in the Netherlands. The results show that wildlife matters in the bond with green places both near home, and further from home. Among nature lovers, wildlife experiences confirm, rather than create, their bond with protected areas visited during daytrips and holidays. Enjoying nature is part of a nature lover’s lifestyle and thus, he or she takes the effort to seek wildlife encounters in green places further from home. Near home, the presence of wildlife contributes to a higher valuation of, and a stronger affective bond with, green places among a more general public. Familiarity with everyday wildlife, and the embeddedness of wildlife experiences in an individual’s life course seem to be most important in shaping a bond with green places near home. Of all wildlife, birds seem to form a specia...
Wildlife Tourism: Reconnecting People with Nature
Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 2014
Wildlife tourism is an important platform to investigate the relationship between people and nature. Given that wildlife destinations are likely to receive higher tourism demand from new emerging economies, this article considers the wider emotional and psychological implications of wildlife watching. The growing significance of this tourist activity is a potential reawakening of a deeper ecological sub-consciousness brought about by a society which is disconnected from nature. Particular attention is given to the importance of experiencing nature first hand, the psychological benefits and the emotional responses that may engender a relationship of care. This is not only good for the human spirit but ultimately good for nature conservation as well
Place experience, gestalt, and the human–nature relationship
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2007
This paper explores some ways in which differing views about the human-nature relationship reflect and are reflected in people's experiences of the places and environments they encounter in their lives. I first describe how ideas of humans being ''part of'' versus ''apart from'' nature have appeared in discussions of environmental ethics and management, and suggest how these contrasting views might relate to people's actual experiences of the natural and human aspects of places. Using qualitative survey responses about outdoor places in the midwestern USA to illustrate ideas from phenomenological and gestalt psychology, I show how a sense of the human-nature relationship is conveyed in the gestalt qualities of places and how this may give rise to a feeling of moral responsibility toward nature. I conclude that the experience of human and natural aspects of real places points toward a dialectical view of the human-nature relationship, in which humans can be seen as simultaneously ''part of'' and ''apart from'' nature. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Experiencing Nature in Special Places: Surveys in the North-Central Region
Journal of Forestry -Washington-
The experiences people have in natural environments can be very important to them, even though these experiences are sometimes hard to categorize and measure. In a series of qualitative surveys, I asked people to describe special outdoor places and explain in their own words what these places meant to them. Their responses revealed many similarities in the highly valued experiences that occurred across diverse respondents and places. By treating special places with care, managers and planners can help ensure that opportunities for such experiences will continue to be available to people.