This week we’ve immersed ourselves in the writings of Environmental Scholar and Sociologist Noel Castree. The week began with an introduction to Castree’s more systematic environmental theory. Our first reading broadly covered some of the fundamental aspects of Castree’s argument, and began to define some of the terms Castree uses in the remainder of the book. I was introduced to terms like ‘semiosphere,’ ‘semiotic democracy’ and more.
This week’s discussion around Castree reached it’s peak intensity on Thursday, when we ran around chapters one, two and three.
Our goal in class was to draw a concept map of sorts linking specific ideas from the reading represented as concise quotes taken from the chapters themselves. The exercise provided an appropriate jumping off point for further discussions surrounding Castree’s theory. We drew explicitly from the reading to inform our discussion, but also digressed into quasi-existential discourse at times when dissecting the severity of Castree’s argument about the construction of Nature.
Here’s a short understanding/summary formulated to the best of my present capability.
Castree claims that the Construction of Nature is built by communities of individuals referred to as ‘Epistemic Communities.’ These are groups of knowledge producing individuals such as professors, students, and others affiliated with Academia, as well as religious leaders and government authorities. These communities seek to maintain epistemic boundaries between themselves and other epistemic communities. The representations of nature these communities produce are proliferated and disseminated through action (professing, preaching, etc.) and politics (policy, etc.) leading Castree to call nature ‘politics by other means.’ The epistemic communities responsible for the construction of nature sit at the top of power-knowledge structures (Castree would be considered a structuralist) while at the bottom sit lay individuals.
Lay individuals consume the representations of nature (which is sometimes totalizing but also respectful of differences between knowledge realms, demarcated as concepts or often binary categories such as nature-culture) because they trust the authority of these epistemic communities. Castree calls for the democratization of nature knowledge production in the semiosphere in order to create a semiotic democracy.
This is important because how individuals interact (1) with the construction of nature is a particularly influential aspect of identity formation and the construction of self. (1)Castree’s metaphor for this interaction is markedly different that seeing or perceiving nature, but more like touching an encompassing nature with prosthetic limbs.
The reason my train of thought nearly lead me to existential crisis (albeit a minor one) is because Castree’s argument bears significant trouble for the individual concerned with self-regualted and otherwise autonomous construction of self. Now, I admit it’s (markedly) naïve to assume total autonomy in the formation/construction of self and identity, but Castree’s position adds considerable nuance to the structuralist perspective by complicating nature as yet another system of power. That is, while such things as governments, nations, culture groups and the like are relatively easy to (ontologically) pin down as social constructions; nature on the other hand seems ontologically given as non-social. Yet, I believe this is Castree’s fundamental claim, and a claim he himself questions for being passé. That is, don’t we know already that nature is mostly a social construction and therefore imbued with power-dynamics?
Catree says yes, but that thus far in the history of Environmental Studies such a dilemma has been met with notoriously normative claims made by intellectual Goliaths such as Bruno Latour who argue that we should, and more importantly that we can, change our binary construction of nature-culture, etc. Castree argues that the social construction of nature is not a problem, at least entirely. Castree further claims that the inertia possessed by the current system (nature-knowledge/power structures) ‘is far too great to dislodge our mindsets and habits of thought’ concerning nature. Instead of ‘mental revolution,’ Castree argues we ‘interrogate’ such structures and concepts intelligently. Castree concludes by apologetically (his language) defending his book by stating it’s still important to ‘denaturalize that which we routinely consider to be natural.’ Castree says he is not claiming nature merely exists in the human consciousness, for ‘we’re clearly made by the world as much as we make it;’ therefore, we do not create something out of nothing (meaning his argument does not advance a ‘muscular’ conception of ‘the social’). In short, Castree defends his work not by saying he brings novel ideas to the table around the discussion of the ‘social construction of nature’ but assembles these ideas in new and meaningful ways while including concepts of external and internal (human-nature) in the mix.
To conclude, I look forward to exploring Castree’s new assemblage of the arguments about the social construction of nature, and wading through the world of environmental theory to, hopefully, inform the way I exist in the world as an individual, and as a small part of larger social, and natural, structures. (All this assuming I trust Castree’s authority as part of an influential epistemic community!).