Nature - autonomous learning

10 strange naturesgeography saw it as a uniquely integrative (or ‘composite’) discipline thatwould synthesise the Balkanised knowledges produced by more analyticalsubjects.The ‘geographical experiment’ consisted in trying to bring societyand nature ‘under the one conceptual umbrella’ (Livingstone 1992: 177).In its foundations, then, geography was defined not as the study of natureper se but, rather, as the study of society–nature relationships. It wasintended to be the ‘bridging’ subject that spanned the gaps created byacademic specialisation.Well over a century later, geography is an established university (andschool) subject worldwide.Though its reputation varies from country tocountry, it’s widely recognised that geographers study human impacts uponnature (and vice versa).What has changed since the discipline’s foundationas an integrative subject, is that (ironically) there has been specialisationwithin geography itself.This is certainly true of Western geography.Apart from the ‘divide’ between human and physical geography, both‘sides’ of the discipline are split into subfields like economic geography andgeomorphology.Those working in the disciplinary ‘middle ground’ are nowrelatively few in number and focus, among other things, on natural hazardsand natural-resource management (see Figure 1.1).These ‘environmentalgeographers’ (as they’re sometimes called) also now have to share thestudy of society–nature relationships with environmental science, earthscience and environmental management – three increasingly popularinterdisciplinary fields that bridge physical-science perspectives on theenvironment in the first and second cases, and physical and social-scienceperspectives in the third case.I’ll say more about which specific aspects of nature geographers studyin the next section. For now I simply want to note that geography is justone of several disciplines producing knowledge about nature – it’s but asingle player in a crowded field. Ask yourselves what the other disciplinesFigure 1.1 Geography’s main branches. The nearer the middle, the less ‘pure’ thehuman and physical geography become