Imagining Nature

by Roepstorff, Andreas; Bubandt, Nils; Kull, Kalevi

• ISBN13: 9788772889450
• ISBN10: 8772889454
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Summary

During the last decade, many social scientists have sought to show that nature is not an eternal constant but an intrinsically unstable concept - a historical, cultural and social construct with powerful emotional, moral and political connotations. Imagining Nature sets out to explore some of the implications of and lacunae in this recent push to "denaturalise nature". But rather than asking, What is nature? as many academic writers have been doing, the contributors here ask, How is nature established as an entity? Through what processes and practices does nature achieve reality? The first section of the book, "Cosmologies", focuses on ways the practices of nature are embedded in overarching conceptual worldviews. Chapters in the second section illustrate some of the means by which identity unfolds and becomes established in interacting with and imagining nature. The chapters examine nature and identity in the national mythologies of Scandinavia and Germany; two Fulani status groups in Burkina Faso; the confrontational Sami community of Manndalen, Norway; the spatial world of the Tsaatang nomads in Mongolia; and two neoclassic houses by Le Corbusier and Wright. While the individual contributions here will certainly interest specialists in the particular fields they represent, Imagining Nature is broadly interdisciplinary in appeal, and it is especially recommended to anyone intrigued by recent constructivist debate and the multiplying conceptions of nature in the social sciences.

Table of Contents

General introduction: The critique of culture and the plurality of nature	9	(24)
Andreas Roepstorff
Nils Bubandt
Section I: Cosmologies
Introduction	33	(7)
Three in one: How an ecological approach can obviate the distinctions between body, mind and culture	40	(16)
Tim Ingold
Conceptions of diversity in biology and anthropology: Problems of translation and conditions for dialogue	56	(20)
Randi Kaarhus
When culture supports biodiversity: The case of the wooded meadow	76	(21)
Kalevi Kull
Toomas Kukk
Aleksei Lotman
From animal masters to ecosystem services: Exchange, personhood and human ecology	97	(20)
Alf Hornborg
Clashing cosmologies: Contrasting knowledge in the Greenlandic fishery	117	(26)
Andreas Roepstorff
Semiosis: Significative dynamics between nature and culture	143	(18)
Anti Randviir
Anthropology and the concept `sustainability': Some reflections	161	(24)
Arne Kalland
Section II: Identities
Introduction	181	(4)
Nature and ideology: The case of Germany and Scandinavia	185	(19)
Nina Witoszek
The duality of indigenous environmental knowledge among the Fulani of Northern Burkina Faso	204	(13)
Bjarke Paarup-Laursen
Lars Krogh
People-nature relations: Local ethos and ethnic consciousness	217	(21)
Bjorn Bjerkli
Networking the nomadic landscape: Place, power and decision making in Northern Mongolia	238	(22)
Morten A. Pedersen
The horizontal architecture, or how we locate ourselves inside nature	260	(23)
Sabine Brauckmann
Contributors	283	(3)
Index	286