GOVERNING SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO THE NATURAL - Making Sense of Nature - page 74

not) an 'external' environment comprising of multiple actors, institutions,
knowledges, discourses and so on. As a corollary, and thinking back to
Chapter 1 , the representations of nature abroad in our world may govern us
more widely and powerfully than at first meets the eye. They enter into the
relational constitution of people's self-understanding and habits of action
on a daily basis. In Jane Bennett and Williams Chaloupka's words, far from
being something to merely contemplate, discuss, utilise, manage or journey
into, “'nature” has long performed an identity function ' in Western society

(1993: ix, emphasis added). It's a reference point through which, and against
which, we come to define what sort of people (we think) we are. 5
Clearly, I'm suggesting that epistemic communities and their various rep-
resentations are part of a wider process of shaping our routines of thought,
feeling and action 'all the way down'. Their effects, given sufficient time, are
not superficial. At a minimum, they invite us to play temporary social roles.
For instance, when I read a front-page story in The Washington Post on the
latest scientific findings about marine species loss, I'm being interpellated
as a 'citizen' - either of the United States or of the wider world. I'm also
being addressed as an 'educated person', probably a university graduate and
'middle class' (in actuality or aspiration). I accede to these calls, consciously
or not. More than this, some critics would argue that everything from the
news media to artists to advertising professionals actively call us into various
subject-positions that, together, constitute our characters.
This concept of subject-positions, which has long been a staple of critical
social science, suggests that any person's “self ” is neither a pure product
of human biology nor necessarily coherent or indivisible . 6 As historian
and geographer David Livingstone put it, 'The “self ” has become increas-
ingly fractured

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nowadays all of us occupy an immense range of different
[subject-positions]. In these we act differently, adopt different personae, call
on different linguistic repertoires, [and] project different “selves” ' (Living-
stone, 2003: 183). What we call 'the self ' is thus fashioned out of multiple,
but not always commensurable discourses and prompts that invite us to
identify ourselves with or respond to them - and perhaps perform the prac-
tices they seek to engender. I say 'invite' because not all subject-positions
have significant meaning for us, and many do not generate commensurate
actions on our part. For instance, environmental social scientists are familiar
with the so-called 'values-action gap' found in most Western societies. This
describes a situation where people profess their 'environmental awareness
and concern' - often sincerely - and yet do little to follow-through on their
convictions in practice (e.g. by cycling to work as opposed to driving a 4 × 4

vehicle).
The complexity of the self, and the manifest differences between selves,
reflects the sheer variety of subject-positions that any given individual may
be invited to occupy. For instance, through a combination of structure
and chance, one might be interpellated as a parent, twin, lover, worker,
sister, hiker, lesbian, horticulturalist, migrant, consumer, environmentalist,