Environment And Society - Chapter 8 Terms

Front 1

Social Construction

Back 1

Any category, condition, or thing that exists or is understood to have certain characteristics because people socially agree that it does

Front 2

Wilderness

Back 2

A parcel of land, more or less unaffected by human forces; increasingly, wilderness is viewed as a social construction

Front 3

Constructivist

Back 3

Emphasizing the significance of concepts, ideologies, and social practices to our understanding and making of (literally, constructing) the world

Front 4

Nature

Back 4

The natural world, everything that exists that is not a product of human activity; often put in quotes to designate that it is difficult if not impossible to divvy up the entire world into discrete natural and human components

Front 5

Social Context

Back 5

The ensemble of social relations in a particular place at a particular time; includes belief systems, economic relations of production, and institutions of governance

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Race

Back 6

A set of imaginary categories distinguishing types of people, typically based on skin color or body morphology, which varies significantly between cultures, locations, and periods of history

Front 7

Discourse

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At root, written and spoken communication; thicker deployments of the term acknowledge that statements and texts are not mere representations of a material world, but rather power-embedded constructions that (partially) make the world we live in

Front 8

Narrative

Back 8

A story with a beginning and end; environmental narratives such as “biological evolution” and “the tragedy of the commons” aid our comprehension and construction of the world

Front 9

Concept

Back 9

A single idea, usually captured in a word or a phrase

Front 10

Ideologies

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Normative, value-laden, world views that spell out how the world is and how it ought to be

Front 11

Signifying Practices

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Modes and methods of representation; the techniques used to tell stories, introduce and define concepts, and communicate ideologies

Front 12

Power/Knowledge

Back 12

A theoretical formulation associated with the philosopher Michel Foucault, which holds that what is known and held as true in a society is never separate from power, such that knowledge reinforces relationships of power but also that systems of power are associated with their own specific regimes of knowledge

Front 13

Relativism

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Questioning the veracity of universal truth statements, relativism holds that all beliefs, truths, and facts are at root products of the particular set of social relations from which they arise

Front 14

Co-production

Back 14

The inevitable and ongoing process whereby humans and non-humans produce and change one another through their interaction and interrelation