Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 23.1
Welcome to Stenshuvud! This information board provides a vivid example
of the spatiality of environmental discourse. With the help of texts and carefully
selected imagery (scenic paintings, fl ora and fauna, a green map, the national park
symbol), the authorities communicate a particular discourse about one of Sweden's
national parks. This discourse is situated within a local, national and international
context of environmental history readings and political discourse. Site-specifi c conser-
vation practices specify some of the ways in which the offi cial discourse is not only
about valuing or discarding earlier environmental practice (e.g., fruit growing, cop-
picing, fi shery), but also involves prioritizing certain future material relations and
processes in the fi eld (e.g., zoning, grazing, footpaths, conservation measures). In a
sense the information board and the nearby information centre, offers a discursive
spatial fi x of what remains a landscape of contested social meaning. (Source:
Author)
What I suggest is that the myriad things, processes, and relations we call environ-
ment, how they work, and how we should act towards them, are inherently discur-
sive problems. They refer to various ways in which the reality of the biogeophysical
world is at all times mediated before we speak or think about and act upon it. The
stones, trees, marches, mountains, sounds, currents and waves are media in
which cultural values and meaning are always already invested when encountered
by humans. The mounting supply of journals, books, and conferences devoted to
environmental discourses may be seen as a measure of the degree to which geo-
graphers as much as anthropologists, historians, philosophers, political scientists,
sociologists, and others recognise this theme. It also shows that the discomfort to
which I referred is not easily taken away, but rather something many academics
have embraced or learned to live with.
