Nature - autonomous learning

166 de-naturalisationproduction-of-nature perspective it is part of an internal dialectic: onecontained within the capitalist system rather than between it and an unproducednature.WHY ARGUE THAT NATURE IS A SOCIALCONSTRUCTION?In this chapter I have explored the two main strands of constructionistargumentation in contemporary human and environmental geographyvis-à-vis nature. I have dwelt on the representational strand at greater lengththan the material strand because it has been so dominant in human andenvironmental geographers’ analyses of nature this past decade or so.Together, these strands have emphatically de-naturalised our understandingof what nature is, how it works, how we should evaluate it, and howwe should use it. As I will explain in some detail in Chapter 4, the denaturalisingapproach contrasts strongly with how physical geographersunderstand nature. Outside geography specifically, and academia moregenerally, many people find the suggestion that nature is not natural absurdor scandalous – like the environmentalists who objected so stronglyto William Cronon’s argument that wilderness is an idea not a reality. Inthis penultimate section of the chapter, I discuss what motivates somany contemporary geographers to argue that what we call nature is asocial construction. In keeping with my overall approach to nature in thisbook, I explore what is to be gained (and lost) when students, academicsand groups outside the university are persuaded that nature is not what itseems to be (i.e.‘natural’). Note that I deliberately do not discuss whethersocial-constructionist authors are right or wrong in the claims they make.Others have debated this issue vigorously and I leave it to readers to makeup their own minds (see Box 3.5).ACTIVITY 3.6In your view, what motivates geographers whose research shows thatnature is a social construction? A different way of phrasing this questionis to ask: what problems do these geographers see attaching to the ideathat nature is natural?