Nature - autonomous learning

130 de-naturalisationpolicy would do better to help farmers maintain soil fertility rather thanfocus on erosion-control measures. Overall, his research showed that it waswrong to see upland farmers as careless land-users.Though this may be truein some instances, the kind of careful case-study research in which Forsythengaged is designed to question blanket statements about environmentaldegradation in the Himalayas.In many ways, the kind of ‘de-mythologising’ approach to naturefavoured by Forsyth takes us back to one of the original meanings of theword ‘science’.When that word first came into currency – in seventeenthcenturyEurope – it had a very positive and progressive ring to it. It meantany kind of knowledge that was free from bias or prejudice and it wascounterposed to the kind of religious, traditional and monarchical beliefsthat permeated European society on the eve of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’period (see Box 2.2 again).Today, of course, the word ‘science’ has negativeas much as positive connotations – as I noted in Chapter 1 in my briefdiscussion of BSE.This is, no doubt, one reason why Forsyth prefers notto characterise his research as ‘scientific’. Nonetheless, his insistence thatevidence can adjudicate between myth and reality, fiction and fact, opinionand actuality places him in a lineage that, in geography, goes back toHarvey’s critique of ideological representations of nature (see also Sullivan2000). 3Hegemony and ideas of natureIf geographers like Forsyth seek to reveal the realities about nature concealedby false representations, others in the discipline are more concernedwith how ideas of nature further the interests of ruling elites in varioussocieties regardless of their factual in/accuracy.The focus here is less on the‘truths’ hidden by these ideas and more on how the general acceptanceof these ideas by those who, ironically, have something to lose by theiracceptance is achieved. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called thisprocess of acceptance ‘hegemony’ (see Box 1.4 again).As the British culturalgeographer Peter Jackson (1989: 53) put it:hegemony refers to the power of persuasion as opposed to thepower of coercion . . . [F]rom the point of view of a ruling class, . . .[this] is a much more efficient strategy than coercive control,involving the use of fewer resources and reducing the potential for