Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
systems occurring constantly. There is concern for spatial and temporal dynamics
developed in detailed and situated studies of humans and non-humans in places,
using, in particular, historical analysis as a way of explaining environmental change
across time and space. Of particular interest are mechanisms though which the states
and 'directions' of systems might be transformed. Within this the challenge is 'to
regard human actors as always already
part of
complex and changeable biophysical
systems' (Castree, 2005, p. 235, original emphasis).
This recognition opens up new geographies for ecologies, habitats, and biodiver-
sity to be found (and created) in the world's proliferating urban spaces. With their
webs of non-human life, in mosaics of abandoned and planned spaces such as
gardens, parks, allotments, derelict land, transport network verges, car parks, roof
tops and underground systems, cities can offer much richer habitats than intensively
farmed, but apparently green, rural landscapes. Maxeiner and Miersch (2006) point
out that Berlin is in fact the biodiversity 'hotspot' of Germany, being home to 141
species of birds and more types of wild fl owers per square kilometre than just about
anywhere else in the country. This comparative abundance may in part be the result
of drastic declines in biodiversity outside cities, but it shows the extent to which
'nature' and 'society' are intimately tied together in ways that often escape our
notice. Norman (2006, p. 16) goes so far as to state that 'the city and not the
countryside is the true home of nature' and that 'the bigger the city, the more eco-
logical niches it offers to nature'.
Recognising that the quintessentially social spaces of the city are in fact ecologi-
cally rich, or potentially so, opens up a new kind cosmopolitics. No longer are we
concerned solely with multiculturalism but with a wider politics of conviviality
encompassing humans and non-humans alike. Insofar as the century is going to be
an urban one, in which the majority of the world's human population lives in cities,
the quality of such urban hybridity is a vital matter. Such entanglements, where
both humans and non-humans might collectively fl ourish, have often been neglected
in scientifi c and political agenda focused on either one or other side of the nature/
culture divide.
Social constructionism
The social constructionist approach mounts a concerted attack on the nature/culture
dualism and raises key questions about knowledges and practices of nature. It
sprang up as a response to realist approaches, which took at face value the vision
of 'external nature' as presented by the modern constitution.
Social construction calls into question the very existence of a stable, objective,
knowable realm of nature in the fi rst place - 'nature has come to be seen as never
simply, or not even, natural' (Castree, 2001, p. 16). This is not to deny the existence
of material reality, but rather that it is always known through socially contingent
and geographical variant languages and discourses which arise from and shape
specifi c cultures, societies, and economies. Even spaces of 'wilderness', where pure
nature (one might think) still abounds, are creations of powerful discourses of
Western modernity (Cronon, 1996).
The social construction of nature works both discursively and materially (Castree,
2001). Discourse is about a world beyond discourse which is shaped by and shaped
those discourses. 'Artefactual natures' are the myriad things that are 'purposefully
engineered' by socio-economic systems. What types of artefactual natures are being
