Robbins Chapter 8: Social Construction Of Nature

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Social Construction

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

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Wilderness

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

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Constructivist

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

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Nature

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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

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Social Context

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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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Three common usage of word nature

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1) the essential quality and character of something
2) the inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both
3) the material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings

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Race

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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

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environmental knowledge and environmental power

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environmental knowledge- claims and ideas about the state of the environment are known to be true

environmental power- what groups and interests control the environment and its resources

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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

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Narrative

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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

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Concept

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

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Ideologies

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

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Signifying Practices

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

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Power/Knowledge

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A theoretical formulation associated with the philosopher Michael Foucault, which holds that 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

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Case Study: Wild Horses

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- the presence of the "wild" horses, which are believed to be primarily descendants of Depression-era draft horses abandoned by poor farmers, predates the park, which was established in 1964
- federal legislation mandated that national parks manage designated "natural areas" primarily for ecological integrity over cultural or recreational considerations
-referred to the horses as "feral horses", alien denizens of an otherwise "natural" ecosystem

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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

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Nihilism

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the "view that nothing is knowable"

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Co-production

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

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Black people with salvaged good described as?

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Looters

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White people with salvaged goods described as?

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Finders