Nature - autonomous learning

de-naturalisation 173marginalisation or oppression can use claims about the supposedintransigence of their bodies or minds to their advantage. Forinstance, suppose one argued that the sexual preferences of gayand lesbian individuals is genetically caused – something a personinherits at birth. This argument can be used to suggest to homophobicpeople that homosexuality is every bit as ‘normal’ a partof human biology as is heterosexuality. The third and final socialconstructionistshibboleth we can question relates to the practicalimplications of de-naturalising arguments. As the section ‘Why arguethat nature is a social construction?’ on pp. 166–71 explains, socialconstructionistgeographers emphasise the potential malleabilityof that which appears to be fixed and natural. However, it is unclearwhy showing something to be ‘social’ makes it any more amenableto change or improvement. After all, social power, social relationsand social attitudes are often as difficult to alter as human DNAor the orbit of the moon. For instance, if one follows Foucauldianreasoning, then dominant discourses are extremely hard to changebecause they are so deeply embedded in people’s thoughts andactions.Box 3.7 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, THE SOCIAL SCIENCESAND THE ‘NEW NATURALISM’Over the past ten years or so, nature has been brought ‘back in’to several social-science disciplines in a far more literal (i.e. nonsocialconstructionist) way than it has in human geography. Insociology and anthropology, for instance, there have been attemptsto marry natural-science insights about human physiology, humanpsychology and the non-human world with social-science insightsinto why people think and act in the ways they do. In its strongestform, this marriage seeks to explain social phenomena with directreference to natural phenomena. ‘Socio-biology’, for example, traceslinks between people’s genetic make-up and their characteristic