What do you think of how he organizes his book--- as "framed by two events, two places"? In the spirit of introducing ourselves to the field of ecocriticism, if we think of it as a way of looking at the world, what does Wilson's approach allow him to do?
What is similar and different between his arguments and Jennifer Price's? Like Price, Wilson outlines lots of paradoxes or ironies within environmental discourse. What are some of these?
If you were to examine a landscape or event in the way that Wilson does, to update his work and apply it to your own interests, what would you look at?
Will Geiger
ReplyDeleteEcocriticism
Sarah Jaquette Ray
September 10, 2012
Wilson, Culture of Nature Intro & Ch. 1
Wilson’s notion of landscaping is a means by which people create a culture of nature. There are three main foundations in this process of creation. First, one takes in the physical world perceptually. Second, they imagine the human connection to nature. Third, the perception-imagination synthesis is shared and translated over the social plane. If this is an accurate portrayal of how culture and nature affect one another, it opens up what I see as a rather frightening space of questioning.
The structure of the culture of nature is a dynamic, transient phenomenon – constantly on the move. There is no static trans-cultural-historical perception of nature, but rather economies of perceptions of nature that have been perpetually traded, mutated, synthesized and exploited. Perhaps somewhere beneath the depths of existence there does lurk a “nature,” which all culture is of. Wilson’s introduction made me rethink what I mean by nature by contrasting his description of how nature has fit into modernity with Foucault’s notion of the modern soul.
Just as Foucault argues in Discipline and Punish that there is a soul that inhabits the body, has material consequences and is more profound than the man (Foucault, 30), it may be the case that the culture of nature that we find ourselves in is in fact profound enough to have become a Form which undermines and predetermines our perceptions, interactions, and culture towards nature with a force greater than the individual or society could counteract. Foucault asserts that the “soul” can have a more profound material mastery of the body than the man. Wilson’s first chapter – on tourism – makes me consider the booming tour industry in a similar sense, as Nature’s deliberate domination over the human. Have humans ever really dominated nature? I see Nature as a slimy usher smirking as it leads tourists into their seats to watch the show, taking their cash and investing in tomorrow’s subjugations.
Sammy Becker
ReplyDeleteWilson’s approach allows him to look at the way in which we have constructed the meaning of nature through tools that we would not commonly think as related to nature in any way. In his first chapter he uses the personal vehicle as a means to understand how this object which has been created by humans affects the way in which we define natural spaces. Wilson’s approach is making the claim that science is not the only think in which humans use to define the natural world. He is making the argument that we use human engineered products such as vehicles, buildings, and road signs to develop the way in which we perceive and “use” nature.
One paradox that I think Wilson really tries to illuminate is the fact that as humans we realize that our cities and suburbs are encroaching on the natural world and so we put legislation through that then protects certain plots of the land that have been deemed “worth saving” and then we completely erase and former human history that doesn’t go along with our desired perception of this area, and then we take our modern tools to escape the modernity we have created. Such as the use of the car to travel through the National Parks in the U.S, it’s as though we are separating ourselves through the erasure of our own history, and then wanting to put ourselves back into these places as foreign visitors looking through a window while traveling in a vehicle that uses fossil fuels that were extracted from a different natural space that was not beautiful enough to be saved.
I would look at the different means by which tourists visit natural spaces in Alaska. The way in which land designation has come about alongside the fact that it exists burdened with the title of “The Last Frontier” makes it a huge destination for a wide variety tourists. I think it would be interesting to look at which designated wilderness areas in Alaska are visited the most and means by which they are visited. For example I would infer that most of Southeast is visited by cruise and the majority of the land that people come to look at is National Forest Land, however in Denali National Park the majority of people visit by bus, and these buses are regulated and driven by the National Park Service. And then there are places such as Lake Clark National Park where there is no means to visit this place unless it is by boat or plane. I think that the way in which people visit the protected lands in Alaska, and the effort they go through to pick the locations they travel to can offer a lot of information into how the accessibility and designation of the natural spaces have affected the way in which the larger population views them.
I tried to read a cultural phenomenon as a literary text and this is the short piece that I came up with:
ReplyDeleteThe phenomenon of the air freshener is a curious one. Febreze, one of the leading manufacturers of air fresheners and so-called odor eliminators, claims to scrub the air clean of anything they term “odors” (dirt, sweat, rot, and mildew) and replace it with a cleaner scent, typically a chemical concoction that vaguely resembles the scent of a flower or fruit. These products reveal a strange paradox in the American psyche: the need to bring nature into the home while simultaneously eliminating some of the most natural smells that occur in the manufactured environment of the house. While revulsion towards smells of dirt and decay is a helpful evolutionary trait, our preference for chemical scents reveals a sensory disconnect in what we think of as natural.
Air freshener companies work hard to maintain the natural illusion. Febreze’s website touts a collage of fragrances supposedly inspired by nature, ranging from Midnight Storm to Thai Dragon Fruit. Glade named itself after a clearing in a forest. Then, of course, there’s the ubiquitous pine tree-shaped car air freshener that smells like pretty much anything but pine. Alongside the creative naming and the relentless marketing campaign stands the fact that many air fresheners contain carcinogens, neurotoxins and respiratory toxins (1). University of Bristol’s ALSPAC study found that frequent use of air fresheners and other aerosols correlated with increased incidences of diarrhea and earaches in infants, as well as headaches and depression in mothers (2).
The sense of smell is a powerful thing. Perhaps by choosing healthier cleaning and odor eliminating products we can foster a healthier way of thinking about nature. I am not, however, saying we should all learn to love the smell of mildew in the morning. I’m saying that, instead of covering it up with chemicals, we should open a window.
1. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/health/scented-products-hazardous-chemicals//
2. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/participants/findings/
Wilson's main idea in this book is that the way people see nature depends on how they see or value the nature, and it has changed through histories of North America. In addition, cultures and products such as movie help us find how we or people in the past see or value nature. Once people's way of seeing nature changes, things that relates to nature changes such as tourism, recreation, and education.
ReplyDeleteFor example, before 19 centries, people had plenty of animals and wilderness, and they valued as tamed area and they had no interest going there. However, through urban cities get polluted, hunters keep hunting and killing a lot of animals, destrying natural world, people started realize that natural world and wilderness is neccesary for humans for many reasons, and now we respect nature and willing to preserve and protect them.
I like his way of writing because he shows many examples and histories of North America with articles and old pictures which shows how they see nature at that time of era. He talks a lot about Disney world and movie as example. He says the ways Disney make characters (anthropomorphism) makes people think animals are social being and nature are social realm. Our cultures today shows how society sees and value nature. How about other countries outside North America? How they value nature as? and do their movies, books, and the way of tourism show about it?
In The Culture of Nature, Alexander Wilson draws a history of the perceptions of nature in the dominant western culture of the United States and Canada. As a critical author Wilson is quick to note that any essence of nature could not arise prior to its actual existence. From this we realize that essence is constructed. Thus Wilson finds it necessary to describe a history of the cultural construction of the perception of nature. Wilson is also quick to note that the cultural construction of nature actually represents a discourse between the creation of culture in and through nature as well as the creation of the ideal of nature culturally. Jennifer Price recognized this indelible connection between nature and culture and was thus able to focus her work Flight Maps on areas of our daily life or mainstream culture that would not seem intrinsically linked to the natural world. Wilson continues this sort of inquisition, alongside more conventional environmental traditions, but in a decidedly more methodical manner.
ReplyDeleteWe can appreciate that Wilson is writing about the dominant cultural perspectives toward nature, that is the white, male, generally middle-class perspective. This allows Wilson to note and contrast ideals that have arisen within the dominant culture that conflict with the mainstream ideals of said culture. The problems that have arisen in this capitalist culture of domination and exploitation require this sort of critical attention but isolating this culture and its attitude produces all new problems that require critical attention. Wilson does touch on other cultural perspectives of nature and of work such as gender roles in garden and lawn care, the influence of Japanese gardeners in California horticultural style and cosmopolitan architectural influence but fails to touch on these subjects in the same methodical manner that he applies to the dominant culture. While the United States has been called the “melting pot” and our mainstream ideology promotes globalization, this type of critical analysis requires a discourse that acknowledges ideals formed in hybrid cultural situations. That is to say that the dominant cultural perception of nature has and will continue to shift as we encounter other regional and cultural perceptions and this should be given as careful consideration as any ecocritic would when approaching the reflection-reflecting synthesis of humans and the natural world.
In chapter 4: Looking at the Non-Human of Alexander Wilson's Culture of Nature, Wilson analyzes dominant cultural perceptions of nature through the lens of the nature movies produced in different eras. Wilson describes how a nature film may reveal conservational beliefs, ideal human-environment interaction (or lack of), relationships between organisms, relationships between animal and human characteristics through the use of anthropomorphism, science and industrialization. Nature films may also conceal the economy behind the camera in the buying and selling of manufactured nature footage, trained animals and constructed filming environments.
ReplyDeleteWilson goes back as far as the Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show to reveal the philosophy behind the traveling western circus: “White agrarian civilization was thought to be a more efficient use of the land than the “wasteful” nomadic traditions of the various aboriginal civilizations of the plains”. The show was a celebration of the triumph of farmer over Indian.
In a similar fashion, Wilson exposes early Disney nature films as an attempt to reconnect the post-WWII era audience with the wonders of nature to which it had been recently alienated from. Animals stood in for morals and ethics (like hard work and economic development) society wanted to impart upon the populace. The author goes on to explain the failures to accurately portray nature in nearly all environmental films.
It is obvious to the modern viewer that behavior of captive animals won’t tell us about how they act in the wild; that organisms or ecosystems can be entirely self-reliant and impervious to outside influence; that mankind will dominate or save the environment with industrialization; or that there is a truly “wild” place devoid of human influence. These nature films are plainly faulty lenses of previous environmental views, but how can we be certain that our modern viewpoint is correct? Can nature films really translate our true experience of nature into a form digestible to the camera? I doubt we can successfully remove our own bias, values and influences from this media. As an audience, Wilson urges us to be aware of the politics, economics and value system behind nature media.
Late post trying desperately to catch up! First off I don’t entirely like the book that we have been looking at this week. ‘Culture of Nature’ seems to be a little too obvious in it’s exploitations of culture and nature, in that when I read through the book I didn’t really find anything new, which I wasn’t aware of prior to looking at it. It seems to be that of a re-cap of what is already known of the issues of culture and nature, city and nature, tourism, industrialism, etc. I suppose it proves some solid points but, I feel like it has all been said before. I specifically looked at the chapters Technological Utopia (5) and City and Country (6). I was drawn to these chapters because I enjoy the contrast between industrialism and what would be considered the ‘wild’ and not-yet-discovered. My overall thought would be, how can we bring the craving of the American Dream/Utopian Design, into a conjoint functionality with nature, without having to replicate everything by hand? Should we go to the Country and create our Utopias in Nature, and allow Nature to be the core, or should be bring Nature to our Cities and re-create what we hope would evidently, being to multiply itself such as nature does? Also, how is it that farming and farmland of the country be considered as more natural or more naturalistic than the city? The processes are just as damaging, and the chemicals are just as potent. I’m assuming it has to do with what people can see on the surface. In the country we can see the land still, even though it is barren and ploughed, or planted in man-made rows, whereas in the city, we can’t see the land as it was, and we definitely don’t see the nurseries or recycling companies, etc. all we see is the pollution…..in the country the pollution is hidden. What seems more ideal to you…..a hidden pollution or something obvious?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtkI0xomwd8&feature=player_detailpage
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCfiv1xtoU
ReplyDeleteI really like what Zizek has to say here about artifice/nature and his take on true ecology.