REPRESENTING NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 66

several ideas that, together with others, form the scaffolding of this topic - coined the
term 'thought collectives' back in the 1930s. This sounds a little too Orwellian in the
present context for me to be comfortable using it. Perhaps closest to what I'm propos-
ing here is historical sociologist Robert Wuthnow's (1989) notion of 'communities
of discourse'. Wuthnow inquired into how specific discourses advanced by particular
groups of people are able to be both intelligible within their wider context yet also able
to transform that context by persuading enough other people to take the contents of
the discourses seriously. In this topic, I do not focus on 'transformative discourses'
solely but, rather, on the full range of discourses about 'nature' and its collateral terms
extant.
6 In saying this, I'm inspired by the seminal insight of SSK scholar David Bloor back
in the 1970s. Bloor's 'symmetry principle' stated that ostensibly 'true' not just 'false'
scientific findings invited a sociological explanation. In my treatment of epistemic
communities and their diverse representations, I do not, in this topic, make apriori
determinations about which of these communities and representations are to be
accorded special respect, influence or authority. Their varied role in shaping our lives
arises not so much from any 'intrinsic' differences between them, but from socially
created distinctions in the way knowledge is made, labelled, disseminated and used
in society. It's also the case that epistemic communities vie with one another, con-
sciously or otherwise, for social legitimacy . Legitimacy comprises the right to be taken
seriously, or to be noticed or paid attention to, in a society. It is often hard won and
takes time for epistemic communities to achieve.
7 Note that, while many epistemic communities utilise the insights of 'lay commu-
nities', in this topic I'm not including the latter in my expansive definition of the
former. The point about 'epistemic communities' is that, however loosely organised
or complexly organised they may be, becoming a recognised or authorised member
of one is rarely easy or quick.
8 For instance, Edwards recounts how long-run shipping data on weather conditions
was, in the 1930s, laboriously translated by hand on to thousands of machine-readable
punch cards.
9 Steven Pinch rightly describes the concept of community 'as one of the most widely
used [yet]

controversial notions in the social sciences' (Pinch, 2009). It's widely
used because it describes the enduring presence of various defined social groups in
the modern world. However, because the etymological root of the word 'commu-
nity' takes us back to pre-industrial, rural society (in which, according to sociologist
Ferdinand Tonnies, group cohesiveness was very high - 'gemeinshcaft'), it needs to be
adapted to a world in which groups come in many different shapes, sizes and forms.
It's also important to note that all communities are in some sense self-defined: unless
and until they come to describe themselves as such (using the term 'community' or a
similar word) they do not, in an important sense, exist.
10 An exceptionally good example of what I mean is provided by legal geographer David
Delaney (2003). In his brilliant monograph Law and nature he explores how legal
professionals (mostly in the United States) work with the conceptual dualisms listed
in Figure 1.5 and, in varied ways, make legal claims and decisions in relation to an
extraordinarily wide range of cases.
11 In both their own discourse and the minds of many citizens, scientists are typically
regarded as the producers of representations that are - contrary to artistic representa-
tions, say - deliberately 'free' of value judgements, bias, opinion or speculation. This
is precisely why the large environmental NGOs have increasingly sought to base their
'political representation' of the non-human world upon a supposedly 'non-political'
cognitive representation by employing accredited scientists since the mid-1980s.
12 In most cases, this second sense of 'representation' does not involve a resemblance
between the representative and that/those being represented. Because of this, repre-
sentation in the second sense necessarily involves relations between representer and
represented in which the former is, as it were, challenged to represent the latter in
a 'suitable' way, depending on the situation and the stakes. This is what political

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