Nature - autonomous learning

prefacexixnot been done before. Geography, like most other university subjects today,is filled with specialists who often know very little about what those outsidetheir area of expertise actually think and do. However, because the conceptof nature knows no bounds (semantically speaking), one is forced in abook like this to discuss human geography, physical geography and the‘middle ground’ occupied by so-called ‘environmental geographers’.Afterall, geographers study everything from floods and plant communitiesto ideas about people that make reference to their supposed ‘natural’characteristics (as racist ideas often do). In short, one is compelled to considerthe whole of geography in a book like this one.What such a discussionreveals are the commonalities and fault-lines that give the discipline astructured coherence while, at the same time, threatening any integrity itmight claim to possess.That is why any analysis of how nature is understoodin geography is necessarily one about the nature of geography.Second, I have written Nature because I think it’s important to acknowledgethat geography has shaped understandings of one of the most importanttopics in our lives. Geographers often have an inferiority complex aboutthe wider influence of their thinking. I won’t rehearse the reasons forthis, simply to note that we risk here underplaying the impact of our teachingand research. Quite how important geography is (and has been) in shapingwider understandings of nature is an open question. But I feel surethat the discipline is not the bit-part player it’s sometimes seen to be. 1Generations of students have had their understandings of nature shapedby people like me: that is, supposed ‘authorities’ in their field.The particularways that nature has (and, as importantly, has not) been depicted inthe lecture theatre, the seminar room and in the readings assigned tostudents has surely had a major impact on how they then view it as citizens,consumers and workers later in their lives. Indeed, the belief that thisis the case is one of the motivations for writing this book. Equally, professionalgeographers have disseminated their research on nature to myriaduser-groups beyond university campuses and continue to do so. This isparticularly the case in those countries – like the UK – where geography isan established university subject.THE ARGUMENTWhat, then, is my argument in this book? Nature is a text whose title isdeceptive. It does not do two things that, at first glance, some readers might