Our textbook is called Environment and Society almost as if the environment and society are different things to be studied. I’m not sure if the environment can be separated from this thing we call “society.” Society is our environment– we are surrounded and interconnected with society and in many ways, we as people, as individuals and groups, ARE society. Society is shaped by “the environment” as much as “the environment” is shaped by the societies that inhabit it. For instance, the Western culture, the society of Western Europe and the United States, is generally a very capitalistic, economically focused society, where economic structures dictate class lines and stratify interactions. This structure arose around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when colonization brought new environments into contact with this materialistic society, and while the endeavors of capitalism shaped environments situated all over the globe and these endeavors also transformed the landscapes where industry was taking place, new social structures emerged from this evolving environment/society relationship.
In my AP Environmental Science class, the textbook broke down almost everything into facts with a very minor focus on the controversies of environmentalism and environmental education. The cover of the textbook that we analyzed last week in class depicted a wild animal- a cat that was probably found in some far off place that students in environmental science classes in the USA probably had never encountered before. To me, it is odd that this one animal could represent “the environment.” If you chose this animal as your object for our situated research project, you would probably find a lot of information about endangered species and biodiversity, and some connections to tribal traditions or national parks or nature preserves. This would probably lead to something quite fascinated and surprising about the interactions between humans and human institutions and this rare creature. On the cover of our textbook, we see an arctic scene, where a group of humans dressed in red on a raft are gazing at group of penguins perched on an iceberg. What I like about this cover as it compares to the other cover image is that there is a depiction of humans. Environmental studies is created by humans- humans are the beings who are writing about it, thinking about it, grappling with it, learning about it, sitting in our classroom discussing and pondering this discipline. Of course it is viewed through a human lens, and I’m glad that our textbook incorporates a human aspect into the very cover image.