Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Replacing nature in environmental studies and sciences

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Cite this article

Abstract

The concept and practice of place is an important answer to two questions posed at the outset: what is the environment of environmental studies and sciences (ESS), and what sort of ecoliteracy do we need today? Yet place is more than it has often been understood in ESS, where notions of the local and the natural have loomed large. Scholarship from the field of geography can help ESS reframe environment and ecoliteracy in a manner amenable to the contemporary world. Place has been a century-long conversation in English-language geography, building on traditional regional approaches and running to recent work, paralleling contemporary notions of geographical imaginations, in which places are now understood as diverse nodes in larger hybrid nature-culture networks, and senses of place are now understood as “glocal” identities. Contemporary geographical approaches to place challenge common associations with nature and the local; and ESS may feel a bit like “everything studies and sciences” as a result. But ecoliteracy could become a new knowledge and practice of the larger connections that define place, and this deeper sense of place could suggest to our students a deeper way of dwelling on Earth.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. There have been attempts to forge a more cosmopolitan notion of bioregion (Thomashow 1998), but the local and natural still arguably prevail even in these efforts—no matter how much early praise they received from geographers (e.g., Parsons 1985).

  2. The concept of place in geography continues to evolve; see Progress in Human Geography (e.g., Jonas, 2012, 2013; Tomaney 2014) for regular review articles covering English-language literature.

References

  • Abram D (1997) The spell of the sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Abram D (2011) Becoming animal: an earthly cosmology. Vintage Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes TJ (2004) Placing ideas: genius loci, heterotopia and geography’s quantitative revolution. Prog Hum Geogr 28:565–595. doi:10.1191/0309132504ph506oa

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker M (2014) Warming temperatures threaten fragile balance in Canadian Arctic. N. Y. Times. www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/warming-temperatures-threaten-fragile-balance-in-canadian-arctic.html Accessed 29 Sept 2014

  • Berg P (1978) Reinhabiting a separate country: a bioregional anthology of northern California. Planet Drum Foundation, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford N (2008) Place: Connections and boundaries in an interdependent world. In: Clifford N, Holloway S, Rice SP, Valentine G (eds) Key concepts in geography. SAGE Publications Ltd, London, pp 153–172

  • Cochrane JH (2011) Understanding policy in the great recession: some unpleasant fiscal arithmetic. Eur Econ Rev 55:2–30. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2010.11.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell T (2004) Place: a short introduction. Blackwell, Malden

    Google Scholar 

  • Entrikin JN (1991) The betweenness of place: towards a geography of modernity. Macmillan, Basingstoke

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gillis J (2014) Global rise reported in 2013 greenhouse gas emissions. N. Y. Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/science/earth/scientists-report-global-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html Accessed 29 Sept 2014

  • Gorman J (2014) For polar bears, a climate change twist. N. Y. Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/for-polar-bears-a-climate-change-twist.html Accessed 29 Sept 2014

  • Gregory D (1996) Geographical imaginations. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartshorne R (1939) The nature of geography. Association of American Geographers, Lancaster

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey D (1973) Social justice and the city. Edward Arnold, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey D (1990) Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 80:418–434

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heise UK (2008) Sense of place and sense of planet: the environmental imagination of the global. Oxford University Press, New York

  • Holliday R (2006) Epigenetics: a historical overview. Epigenetics 1:76–80. doi:10.4161/epi.1.2.2762

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jonas AEG (2012) Region and place: regionalism in question. Prog Hum Geogr 36:263–272. doi:10.1177/0309132510394118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jonas AEG (2013) Place and region III: alternative regionalisms. Prog Hum Geogr 37:822–828. doi:10.1177/0309132513479088

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Latour B (2004) Politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey D (1991) A global sense of place. Marx Today 35:24–29

    Google Scholar 

  • McGinnis MV (1998) Bioregionalism. Routledge, New York

  • Mills CW (1959) The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Orr DW (1992) Ecological literacy: education and the transition to a postmodern world. SUNY Press, Albany, NY

  • Parsons JJ (1985) On “bioregionalism” and “watershed consciousness”*. Prof Geogr 37:1–6. doi:10.1111/j.0033-0124.1985.00001.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Proctor JD (1998) The social construction of nature: relativist accusations, pragmatist and critical realist responses. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 88:352–376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Proctor JD (2009a) Environment after nature: time for a new vision. In: Proctor JD (ed) Envisioning nature, science, and religion. Templeton Press, West Conshohocken, pp 293–311

  • Proctor JD (2009b) Old growth and a new nature: the ambivalence of science and religion. In: Spies TA, Duncan SL (eds) Old growth in a new world: A Pacific Northwest icon reexamined. Island Press, Washington, pp 104–115

  • Proctor JD (2013) Saving nature in the anthropocene. J Environ Stud Sci 3:83–92. doi:10.1007/s13412-013-0108-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Proctor JD, Clark SG, Smith KK, Wallace RL (2013) A manifesto for theory in environmental studies and sciences. J Environ Stud Sci 3:331–337. doi:10.1007/s13412-013-0122-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sack RD (1992) Place, modernity, and the consumer’s world: a relational framework for geographical analysis. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  • Sale K (1985) Dwellers in the land: the bioregional vision. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer P (1972) Famine, affluence, and morality. Philos Public Aff 1:229–243

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor JB (2011) Macroeconomic lessons from the Great Deviation. In: Acemoglu D, Woodford M (eds) NBER macroeconomics annual 2010, vol 25. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 387–395

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomashow M (1998) Toward a cosmopolitan bioregionalism. In: McGinnis MV (ed) Bioregionalism. Routledge, New York, pp 121–132

  • Tomaney J (2014) Region and place I: institutions. Prog Hum Geogr 38:131–140. doi:10.1177/0309132513493385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tuan Y (1974) Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuan Y (1977) Space and place: the perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Unger N (2014) To save the planet, don’t plant trees. N. Y. Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/opinion/to-save-the-planet-dont-plant-trees.html. Accessed 29 Sept 2014

Download references

Acknowledgments

The Andrew Mellon Foundation has provided significant support to help us develop and integrate a geographically informed approach to place in the Environmental Studies Program curriculum at Lewis & Clark. I acknowledge useful input on an earlier version from two anonymous reviewers and the guest editor, Brandn Green. Several other essays in this mini-symposium adopt broadly similar arguments regarding place, and further develop critiques of nature and the local; readers may turn to these essays for additional clarification. Finally, the many conversations I have had with geographers, starting with my Berkeley graduate school cohort and reaching to the present day, continue to be a source of intellectual inspiration as we collectively ponder nature/culture and the global/local.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies Program, Lewis & Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, 97219, USA

    James D. Proctor

Authors
  1. James D. Proctor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James D. Proctor.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Proctor, J.D. Replacing nature in environmental studies and sciences. J Environ Stud Sci 6, 748–752 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0259-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0259-3

Keywords

search

Navigation