Nature - autonomous learning

3DE-NATURALISATIONBringing nature ‘back in’‘The one thing that is not “natural” is nature’.(Soper 1995: 7)INTRODUCTIONIn this and the following two chapters I want to explore the natureknowledgesproduced by contemporary geographers in some detail. Mytack is to remain agnostic about the truthfulness or validity of theseknowledges. 1 Instead of taking sides, I stand back and ask how and whydifferent geographers depict ‘nature’ in the ways they do, with what effectsand to what ends. I leave it to readers to judge the relative (de-)merits ofthe nature-knowledges these geographers are currently producing. SinceI lack the space for a comprehensive discussion, I’ve chosen to focus onthe principal ways that nature has been studied in geography over thepast decade or so. This parsimonious approach involves identifying keythemes rather than surveying the literature in detail. In this chapter I explorewhat I argued in the previous one is a dominant theme in both humangeographers’ and many environmental geographers’ recent research intonature: namely, its ‘de-naturalising’ thrust. In Chapter 4, by contrast, Iexamine the argument of (mostly) physical geographers that nature is a