Geoscience Reference
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Third, this shallow or deep 'space' of discourse within the research process also
refl ects ecopolitical differences, including where the political is located in research
and beyond, and how political struggles over the environment are or ought to be
structured and contested. The way discourses are located within power systems,
ranging from universally sprawled to specifi cally centred bends analysis in different
directions, e.g., deconstructing colonial environmental discourses by way of dis-
course; or denaturalizing them with a multimethod realist strategy; falsifying the
scientifi c base of policymaking by way of science; and bringing out the contradic-
tions of discourse as corporate ideology. Different approaches nevertheless raise
some shared concerns: which ensembles of ideas are regarded as legitimate?; whose
knowledge becomes widely accepted?; which discourses serve to sustain particular
power systems?; and how are these knowledges reproduced and transformed into
sets of practices? Questions such as these belong to the current standard arsenal,
which many human geographers haul to the forefront of environmental discourse
analysis.
Most generally, the examples illuminate the complex formation of environmental
discourse as a geography of physicality, meaning and power, with imbrications in
colonialism, capitalism and various social struggles. To grasp the real power of 'the'
environment we cannot ignore the ways in which competing environmental dis-
courses are constituted and reproduced within a set of material relationships, activi-
ties and socio-spatial power systems. In other words, the value of discourse analysis
is seriously limited if it does not provide ways of explaining the physical and social
power relations that determine the privileged or subordinated position of particular
discourses.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for several rounds of discourse at Joensuu University, Finland, in
particular with Bruce Braun and Ari Lehtinen. Many thanks to Noel Castree and
David Demeritt for edifying comments. The usual caveats apply.
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Nature.
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