Nature - autonomous learning

168 de-naturalisationconstructionism from a social-science perspective see Gergen(2001) and Burr (1995). Within social science, three of the mainareas where the social construction of (human) nature has beenhotly debated are the areas of identity, the body and ‘race’. Thelast of these has been a highly contentious topic for the obviousreason that racial categorisations – which frequently rest on claimsthat people can be distinguished according to their mental andphysical characteristics – have long been used to discriminateagainst certain people. For more on the debate over ‘race’, natureand social constructionism within and beyond geography seeDuncan et al. (2004: ch. 16), Wade (2002), Miles (1989), Malik(1996) and Banton (1998).A useful way to answer the Activity question is to distinguish betweencognitive, moral and practical reasons.You will recall from Chapter 1 thatcognitive claims are descriptive and/or explanatory claims about realworldphenomena (or existing ideas about these phenomena). Moral (orethical) claims, meanwhile, are value-judgements about particular thingsor ideas and they can be normative, specifying how we should value thosethings or ideas. Depending on how we view (cognise) and value things,certain practical consequences follow. Using this three-part schema, we canunderstand the appeal of social-constructionists’ arguments for those whoadvocate them. Cognitively, the geographers whose work I’ve examinedin this chapter – despite their different theoretical and empirical emphases– have one key thing in common. Each of them insist that when we (asgeographers and ordinary people) talk about or attribute something to‘nature’ (in any of the three main senses of the term) we are often makinga category mistake. For them, we are confusing representations with the realitiesthey apparently reflect or else failing to see that those realities areno longer ‘natural’ (in the sense of untouched by society). Consequently,it is not just de-mythologising research (like Forsyth’s) or ideology-critiquearguments (like Harvey’s) that hold fast to the conviction that there is a‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to understand what nature is.All the geographicalresearch discussed in this chapter maintains, at some level, that it is simplyincorrect to suppose that nature is natural.