Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
climbing Mount Everest (he was the youngest person ever to do so, in 1997)
but quite another to join an expedition and do so oneself. However, are
'first-hand experiences' like the latter entirely
un
mediated?
Study Task:
Think of one memorable 'outdoor experience' you may have
had during your life. In my case, 'ghyll scrambling' in the English Lake
District comes readily to mind. Kitted out in a helmet and full-body fleece,
my son and I spent an hour and a half jumping, ducking and diving our
way down a stretch of intensely cold upland stream. It was exhilarating.
We scrambled with a guide and, in my case, with a long history of visits
to the area to hike and camp. Whatever your memorable experience was,
ask yourself this: to what extent was it a result of the things you did in
that place, at that time? Did other things condition your experience and
subsequent memory? If so, what were they?
The notion of (mass) mediated interaction, long discussed in the field of
media and communication studies, tends implicitly to support the idea that
unmediated interaction is qualitatively
distinct
from it. But the two are not as
separate as they may appear. The study task is designed to get you consider-
ing this possibility. First, in general terms, it's implausible to believe that in
our daily lives we maintain a Maginot Line between the two forms of inter-
action. Surely, the information, knowledge and experiences we accumulate
in both domains leach into one another in our heads and hearts. Second,
and to be more specific, many of our chosen activities can, upon a moment's
reflection, be seen as an obvious blend of 'mediated' and 'unmediated' inter-
action. For instance, a visit to the zoo or a safari park is not mediated in the
sense that watching a wildlife documentary is: we encounter animals in the
flesh not through a television screen. However, echoing Tim Mitchell's anal-
ysis of the old Cairo exhibition (see
Chapter 1)
, the 'first-hand' experience
one has is still mediated to the extent that zoos and safari parks are 'con-
structions', in both a material and semiotic sense. They invite visitors to see,
smell, hear and understand in particular ways. These direct sensations can,
in turn, unthinkingly provide insights into the 'reality' of animal lives - if
only by foregrounding the 'unreality' of enclosing some animals while their
wild and 'happier' cousins roam free (see
Plate 2.3
).
They illustrate why the feminist critic Joan Scott (1991), in a brilliant
essay, was right to insist that personal 'experience' should never be assumed
to be the basis for 'authentic' understanding, insight or belief. If, as is con-
ventional, such experience 'is taken to be an unquestioned given, this
...
asks neither whether or not there may be another origin underlying the
“original” experience, nor whether or not these underlying conditions may,
in fact, be the cause of a particular experience' (Stoller, 2009: 708). Hence,
Braun insists that 'Even when our relation to nature seems most immediate,
