Nature - autonomous learning

44 strange naturesargues that culture is not something real but, rather, an idea that has takenon a life of its own. See if you can apply Mitchell’s analysis to nature.Askyourself if nature is a similarly powerful idea – as I have argued in thischapter – or simply the real world of bodies, environments, species andthe like.FURTHER READINGThere are several books and essays on the concept of nature going backto the historian R.G. Collingwood (1945). Two of the best recent onesare John Habgood’s (2002) The Concept of Nature and Kate Soper’s (1995) Whatis Nature? Habgood’s book has a theological dimension but this does notdetract from his main argument. Soper’s book is denser than Habgood’s andrepays careful reading. Soper (1996) has written an essay summarising herbook’s thesis – this might be a good place to start for interested readers.Raymond Williams’ (1980) essay on ideas of nature remains essentialreading.The books by Glacken (1967) and Pepper (1984) are two of thefew written by geographers about ideas of nature – but they mostly focuson ideas about the non-human world (the first definition of nature) andsay less about the other meanings and referents of the term ‘nature’.For an insight into how ideas get invented by knowledge-producers andthen gain a certain acceptance and influence see John Takacs’s (1996)readable, fascinating book The Idea of Biodiversity. The first chapter of TimUnwin’s (1992) The Place of Geography argues that geography is a sociallyconstructed discipline that generates its own distinctive bundle of knowledgesabout the world. Finally, for those readers who are challenged bymy suggestions that ‘there is no such thing as nature!’, it’s instructive todraw an analogy with Don Mitchell’s approach to culture.‘Culture’, like‘nature’, is a complex word that describes a multitude of things. Mitchell(1995; 2000: ch. 3), subversively, argues that culture is not a real thing but,rather, a powerful idea that is strategically used by powerful groups insociety as if it named things that were self-evidently ‘cultural’ in character(see the final Exercise above).