Nature + CulturePub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.3167/NC.2020.160104
Franziska von Verschuer
{"title":"Making Post/Anthropocentric Futures in Agrobiodiversity Conservation","authors":"Franziska von Verschuer","doi":"10.3167/NC.2020.160104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/NC.2020.160104","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since the mid-twentieth century global modernization of agriculture, seed banking has become a core technoscientific strategy to counteract agrobiodiversity loss and ensure future food security. This article develops a post-anthropocentric reading of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as a nodal point of global ex situ conservation efforts. Based on qualitative expert interviews, I explore the rationality of crisis and salvation that underlies these efforts and discuss its roots in an anthropocentric relation to nature as a resource. By arguing that the latter produces the crises that conservation measures intend to counteract, I show how the Seed Vault conserves this resource-orientation. I then illustrate a concurrent unruliness of more-than-human worldly becoming the embracing of which, I argue, is a way for conservationism to cultivate different, non-crisic futures.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48832202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150305
Jan-Martijn Meij
{"title":"Artificial Intelligence","authors":"Jan-Martijn Meij","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150305","url":null,"abstract":"Lovelock, James. 2019. Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.McKibben, Bill. 2019. Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? New York: Holt.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3167/nc.2020.150305","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48449592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150302
Alison E. Adams, Thomas E. Shriver, Landen Longest
{"title":"Symbolizing Destruction","authors":"Alison E. Adams, Thomas E. Shriver, Landen Longest","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150302","url":null,"abstract":"Emotions can play an important role in the perception of grievances, yet we know little about how environmentalists strategically utilize emotions to bolster activism and garner support. Drawing on social movement and environmental sociological research, we analyze how moral shocks can be used to mobilize activists against environmentally destructive activities. We study the case of Libkovice, Czech Republic, where environmentalists battled against the coal industry to save a city from being razed to access coal reserves. The data come from in-depth interviews, organizational and documentary video, and archival documents. Findings indicate that environmentalists drew upon symbols of destruction, such as threats to the local church, to fuel anger and mobilize the campaign. Results show how symbolic environmental campaigns can serve as beacons for future protest.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"249-271"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45252339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150301
D. James
{"title":"The Alchemy of a Corpus of Underwater Images","authors":"D. James","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150301","url":null,"abstract":"Through an ecocinema lens, an unconventional corpus of photographs of Carysfort Reef, one of seven iconic coral reefs along the Florida Reef Tract, represents something of an extreme time-lapse series. In the absence of a cohesive underwater documentary record at the time when the Florida Reef Tract is undergoing the most extensive reef restoration in the world, speculation allows us to search for patterns in damaged places with incomplete information and practice a form of multispecies storytelling of our encounters. Taken in 1966, 2003, 2014, and 2019, these images are evidence of cultural moments in our changing relationship with this reef in the context of anthropocentrism, the emergence of an alternative environment spectatorship of awareness, and a baseline for localized social change.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"225-248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42424534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150304
Y. Lam
{"title":"More than Darkness Preservation","authors":"Y. Lam","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150304","url":null,"abstract":"Enveloped in artificial light, many urban dwellers have never experienced real darkness. Seeing this as a loss, scholars and organizations have initiated discussions on light and darkness and advocated the preservation of the dark skies. This article aims to further this study by emphasizing the importance of the stars. Instead of studying lights, stars, and darkness ethnographically, the article examines the ideas of stars and darkness in Thierry Cohen’s photographs and two of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. This article will suggest that the dark, star-filled skies represented in van Gogh’s paintings provide a visual blueprint of what the article calls the “star-lit cities,” which goes beyond a simple preservation of darkness, and may be significant in driving vital changes in combating the current environmental crises.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"296-317"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43307640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150303
Ulrika Olausson
{"title":"Making Sense of the Human-Nature Relationship","authors":"Ulrika Olausson","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150303","url":null,"abstract":"Gaining knowledge about laypeople’s representations of nature is crucial to meeting the sustainability challenges ahead. However, the ways laypeople discursively construct nature in digital settings have received scant attention. Guided by Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding/decoding and multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study aims to contribute knowledge about the ways laypeople construct the human-nature relationship on social media. This is accomplished through a reception study of YouTube users’ discussions about two of the films in the campaign “Nature Is Speaking.” The results show that the human-nature dichotomy largely prevails notwithstanding the pluralist nature of YouTube users’ interpretations, but also indicate the (embryonic) potential of social media to open up for a politics revolving around new visions of the socio-environmental future.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"272-295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46375375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150201
Eric A. Stone, Jennifer D. Roberts
{"title":"Park Spaces and the User Experience","authors":"Eric A. Stone, Jennifer D. Roberts","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150201","url":null,"abstract":"As a strategy for combating physical inactivity, obesity, and other health conditions, the apperception of greenspace and importance of human-nature relationships have increased in recent decades. With this raised awareness in greenspace, the development of park auditing tools has been positioned primarily in the material conditions (e.g., physical environmental conditions) of parks. An examination of existing park auditing tools has shown that by focusing on particular material conditions, built environment and active living scholars have set aside other characteristics, namely, those that consider the user (e.g., the active human), as a separate concern from the focus of these tools. We have sought to engage with these tools to examine how they can be more effective in analyzing both the physical and human elements of parks and other natural environments.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"123-133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3167/nc.2020.150201","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44909093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150203
Lukas Sattlegger, Immanuel Stiess, Luca Raschewski, Katharina Reindl
{"title":"Plastic Packaging, Food Supply, and Everyday Life","authors":"Lukas Sattlegger, Immanuel Stiess, Luca Raschewski, Katharina Reindl","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150203","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents practice-theoretical conceptions of societal relations to nature as a fruitful alternative to common system approaches in social-ecological research. Via the example of plastic food packaging, two different practice-theoretical approaches to food supply are discussed regarding their suitability for relating the material properties of packaging to their everyday use by producers, retailers, and consumers: (1) the network approach (portraying food supply as a network of practices; these practices include material elements that interrelate with other elements like competence or meaning) and (2) the nexus approach (investigating the interrelation between social practices and material arrangements in which they take place). Depending on the given research interest, both perspectives have their pros and cons: the network approach is stronger in understanding the everyday use of technologies, while the nexus approach encourages the integration of infrastructures and environmental contexts that are not directly observable within the practice. (Less)","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"146-172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3167/nc.2020.150203","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49305191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150204
B. Panikkar
{"title":"“Litigation Is Our Last Resort”","authors":"B. Panikkar","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150204","url":null,"abstract":"The permitting of large-scale industrial mines is often controversial and litigious. This article examines three legal battles over the exploratory permitting of the Pebble mine in southwestern Alaska to examine the logics and rationalities used to legitimize the permitting, the alternate epistemic arguments made by the resistance movements to redraw state-constructed boundaries, and differing definitions of land-based resources, pollution, and bias. It asks how conflicting knowledge claims and epistemic injustice are debated and settled in court. All three legal cases observed demonstrate conditions of scientific uncertainty, undone science, and bias, failing to hold space for diverse representations within legal claims. Citizen science is partially successful in addressing epistemic injustice, but to effectively mediate justice, law must distinctively question both knowledge construction and phronetic risks, including values, intent, bias, privilege, and agency, and take into consideration the ontological multiplicities and civic epistemologies of the parties within legal claims.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3167/nc.2020.150204","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41894559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature + CulturePub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.3167/nc.2020.150202
A. Horta
{"title":"Automobility and Oil Vulnerability","authors":"A. Horta","doi":"10.3167/nc.2020.150202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.150202","url":null,"abstract":"Climate policies in the European Union require a substantial reduction in carbon emissions from road transport. However, in the last decades the system of automobility has expanded considerably, establishing a process of path dependence that is very difficult to reverse. Changes in current patterns of automobility may increase oil vulnerability of citizens dependent on the use of the car, aggravating forms of social inequity. Based on an analysis of how television news framed a period of oil price rises in a country highly dependent on car use, the article shows that oil vulnerability may resonate with socially shared sociocultural meanings such as lack of trust in political leaders, which may aggravate the social perception of unfairness and compromise public support for energy transitions toward sustainability.","PeriodicalId":46069,"journal":{"name":"Nature + Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"134-145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3167/nc.2020.150202","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43372118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}