Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
start
...
Rather than an intrusion that upsets nature's timeless balance
...
disturbance is a necessity for much of the life on this planet.
(Budiansky, 1996; 69-70)
Here again we see metonymy at work, with reference to a specific
biophysical entity (a single tree species) being made to speak to much
grander themes concerning nature as a whole: its natural lack of sta-
bility and regularity in certain situations. The most obvious - least
subtle - metonyms take the form of symbols and icons whose role
is, quite deliberately, to evoke a larger or grander meaning on the basis
of a single word, phrase or image. See
Box 2.3
for more on icons.
Of course, many would argue that this example and that in
Box 1.2
,
relating to bees and trees, respectively, are metonymic in an
ontological
rather than simply epistemological sense. In other words, they might say
that British bees can be made to stand for environmental degradation and
Chilean beeches for nature's intrinsic disorderliness because they really,
actually
do
stand for these things. I do not want to deny these claims, but
neither do I want to affirm them uncritically. My specific (and more lim-
ited) aim is to show that the 'nature effect' attends many (perhaps most)
specific references to parts or aspects of the biophysical world. This is obvi-
ous when general categories, like 'old growth forest' or 'oil reserves', are
used to refer to specific cases thereof. But think too of Dolly the sheep, the
recently deceased Lonesome George, the already mentioned Amazon Basin,
blood-stained ice and baby fur seal carcasses, the famous images of a human
foetus floating in amniotic fluid, or the shrinking perimeter of the Antarctic
ice sheet. In each case, particulars are evocative vehicles for denoting wider
'realities'. Similarly, the famous environmentalist injunction to 'act locally,
think globally' resonates with many of us because it appears to be based on
the common-sense idea that small parts together make a larger integrated
whole. What these examples suggest is that even when the idea of 'universal
nature' is not being communicated explicitly, it is often being communi-
cated implicitly by reference to specific and visible 'natural' phenomena. As
historical geographer Kenneth Olwig puts it, 'Despite the fact that nature is
one of the most abstract
...
concepts we have, [it]
...
nevertheless signifies
...
all that is concrete
' (Olwig, 1996b: 380).
SUMMARY
It should by now be abundantly clear that I intend to take a thoroughly
'non-natural' approach to those things that we consider to be natural, in
kind or degree. This is hardly original on my part, even if readers new to
the ideas presented so far may find them thought-provoking (as I hope they
