Abstract
This chapter begins with a look at some of the most prevalent ideas about how and where humans fit in the grand scheme of things. Likening theories to maps, it explores the ways that mental models shape worldviews. Through a look at key scholarly attempts to position humans in their environmental contexts, we see how, despite best efforts, the resulting models in some ways reinforce the sense of humans as separate from nature and therefore perpetuate certain difficulties in socio-environmental studies. Viewing socio-environmental processes from a greater distance—a higher level of synthesis—resolves these problems and produces a new map which functions as an integrative framework for socio-environmental studies. The framework’s main components, addressed in the following five chapters, are introduced.
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Kasper, D. (2021). Mapping the Territory. In: Beyond the Knowledge Crisis. Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48370-8_4
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