Nature - autonomous learning

prefacexxvTHE STRUCTUREFinally, a word on the book’s structure. In a short text like this I cannot becomprehensive or exhaustive. Nor do I want to dwell on geography’s pastat the expense of present-day thinking about nature. Nature’s five mainchapters (the sixth is a short conclusion) offer an overarching frameworkinto which a mass of material can be slotted – far more material thanI can consider in these pages.The material I do include is intended to givestudents a representative sense of how geographers have understood nature.After a scene-setting Chapter 1, Chapter 2 offers a potted history of howgeographers have studied nature and how, in turn, this has influencedthe nature of geography.The rest of the book then focuses on present-daygeographical thinking about nature. In Chapter 3 I look at work in humangeography where nature has been ‘brought back in’ to research and teachingover the past decade.This rediscovery of nature has, paradoxically, proceededby ‘de-naturalising’ our understanding of it and so in Chapter 3I explain the idea that nature is a social construction. In Chapter 4 I explorethe counterposition: the idea that what we call nature is real and can beknown in its own right. Most human geographers, I argue, currently havea very different understanding of nature to that of physical geographers andmany environmental geographers. Physical geographers, in particular, weartheir realist credentials on their sleeves and so in Chapter 4 I explore thegrounds for this realist credo in its epistemological and ontological aspects.This human–physical difference impinges on the question of whethergeography is a ‘divided discipline’ and I also explore that question in thischapter. In Chapter 5 I then look at exciting new ‘post-natural’ thinking(much of it by human geographers) which challenges the society–naturedualism that has long organised disciplinary understandings of nature. Inthe conclusion I summarise my overall argument and invite students toreflect critically on the politics of their education, whether it relates tonature or any other topic.Inevitably, a short book on such a large topic reflects my own intellectualpredilections. For instance, as a human geographer, my physical geographypeers will certainly find Chapter 4 wanting. I therefore apologise at theoutset for the biases of argument, simplifications and absences that follow.If I ever have the good fortune to write a second edition of Nature I can,perhaps, make amends.