Nature - autonomous learning

strange natures 43of species, landforms and bodies. In keeping with the series of which thisbook is part, I treat nature as a ‘key concept’ in very literal and materialterms. As we’ll see in later chapters, other geographers see nature as anidea or ‘discourse’ too, but my tack is to take their claims about nature asthemselves ideas about nature.The knowledge that geographers produce aboutthose things we describe as natural is, I believe, both interesting andimportant. But student readers, in particular, must not treat this knowledgeas a ‘mirror’ held up the natural world. In the next chapter I want to offera brief historical survey of the changing ‘nature’ that geographers havestudied and how this has altered ‘the nature of geography’.Thereafter Iwant to explore in some detail the key – and often contradictory – understandingsof nature put forward by contemporary human, physical andenvironmental geographers.EXERCISES• Try to imagine not using the term ‘nature’ in your everyday conversationor in your degree studies. Do you think it would be possible to getby without the word or is it so ingrained in our language that it’sindispensable?• Take a few minutes to think about all the natural things that help tosustain your daily life. For instance, the next time you go shoppingconsider both the type and origin of all the natural things that, in eithertheir original or processed form, go into your food basket.• List ten things that you would describe as ‘natural’. How diverse orsimilar are these things? Is the thing that makes them ‘natural’ the samein each case?• Identify a film, an advertisement, a novel, a piece of art, a web site, aradio broadcast and a television programme where nature is a majortopic. How, exactly, is nature portrayed in each case? Why do you thinkit is portrayed in these ways?• Consider how describing something as ‘natural’ affects how you orothers behave towards it. For instance, if you describe obesity as a‘genetic disease’ then how would this influence your treatment ofobesity if you were a medical doctor?• Having read this chapter, go away and read Don Mitchell’s (1995)essay ‘There’s no such thing as culture’. Like ‘nature’, the word ‘culture’is complex. It has multiple meanings and myriad referents. Mitchell