Nature - autonomous learning

110 de-naturalisationdeal of funding is available for research into how to ameliorate theseproblems. Environmental economics has emerged as a distinct field sincethe late 1960s and aims to alter economic practices so as to reduce theirenvironmental impact (see, for example, Bateman and Turner 1994).Similarly, many researchers in the discipline of politics and governmenthave examined how and why political actors deal/fail to deal with environmentalproblems (e.g.Young 1994). It is more or less accepted that theseproblems are real and in need of a solution.The disciplines of anthropology,philosophy and sociology have been more ambivalent. On the one side,all three have traditionally focused on the human world, leaving the studyof nature (non-human and human) to the physical, materials and medicalsciences (though anthropology has a strong ‘human–environment relations’focus). Recently, though, all three disciplines have belatedly recognisedthat some societies appear to be having an unprecedented impact uponthe environment. Several anthropologists, philosophers and sociologistshave inquired into the beliefs, values and practices that cause environmentaldegradation, with philosophy containing the most outspoken ecocentriccritics (e.g. Light and Rolston 2003).Analogously, some have also inquiredinto why the boundaries of the human body are apparently being brokendown and have scrutinised the propriety of this boundary transgression.Again, philosophers have taken the lead in evaluating whether everythingfrom cloning humans to in-vitro fertilisation is morally acceptable (e.g.Burley and Harris 2002). On the other side, though, like the geographerswhose work is discussed in this chapter, several others in the three disciplinesargue that societies construct nature at the level of both representationand materiality. For instance, sociologists of the environment and the bodyhave shown how different societies produce different understandings ofand effects upon the natural world (e.g. Macnaughten and Urry 1998).Currently, then, the social sciences are divided in their approach tonature (between and within themselves): to use Soper’s (1995) terms oncemore,‘nature-endorsing’ positions are opposed by ‘nature-sceptical’ ones.Things are rather more clear-cut in humanities subjects like English andcultural studies.With the notable exception of environmental history, mostof these subjects – when they consider nature at all – tend to focus on socialrepresentations, discourses and images of it in different times and places.If we take geography as a whole it combines both of Soper’s positionsin one discipline.The nature-endorsing stance holds that (i) there is a realworld of natural phenomena, (ii) the properties of that world are knowable