The Production of Nature

[Tess Bath]

Hey all,

Not sure if we're reposting, but just in case we are here's my resurrected commentary (I tried to breath a little bit of new life into it!):

This week’s texts address the differing social constructions of nature in an attempt to expose what we often assume to be an inherent understanding of what is ‘natural.’  I resonated with much of Cindi Katz’s analysis of the environmental movement and the new ways nature is being constructed to perpetuate uninterrupted profit.  Asking “WHOSE?” and “FOR WHOM?”  is forever an important question and ties into all of the issues we’ve discussed so far, whether it be whose public space, whose transportation, or whose plan.  As important as it is to consider our localities, in the context of deep and extensive global relations it is equally important to understand the ways in which we are shaping spaces all over the world.

Environmentalism co-opted by capitalism?  Gross.  Politics as consumption?  Nope.  

Katz lays out the ways in which capitalists were able to absorb the critique in order to maintain exploitative power dynamics.  As opposed to structural change, there was an image change, and the marketing strategies were designed to target those aiming to ethicize their consumerism.  I think this idea ties into what’s been going on at Occupy Wall Street, and what the hopes are for the future of the movement.  As we are now at the one month anniversary (now over two months!) of the occupation I find it significant and refreshing that there are no explicit demands being made.  It has attracted a diverse group of people and while I think some are hoping for “reform” a good deal are hoping for “revolution.”  Whether or not the latter is possible, especially with the unfortunate fact that many who are most affected by the structural inequities are less able to participate, remains to be seen.  What I think is striking is that continuing to occupy without a specific platform recognizes that the problem is systemic, and there is no quick fix.  It also provides protection against the appropriation of the message to appease those who are perhaps more concerned with “reform.”  By not saying one thing they are implicating everything, which is something that cannot be distorted into a marketing strategy.  

Alexander Wilson explores the different ways nature has been scripted through landscaping, tracing its social, cultural, and often gendered implications.  I thought his commentary on the tendency to equate nature with green (and thus a lack of green is not nature) was spot on, and immediately thought of golf courses in the desert, and the colossal infrastructural/irrigation project that was initially necessary to fuel the development and population boom in the southwestern United States.  In discussing the phenomenon of 'the lawn' Wilson addresses how the evolution of 'turf management' necessitated these massive technological infrastructures in the suburbs.  

One of the many golf courses constructed in the arid desert - I feel as though this image almost literally expresses white-washing (or in this case green-washing), with swaths of monoculture oozing over a contrastingly biodiverse and complex landscape.  And the thing is, golf courses are incredibly complex, it's just that all of the networks that maintain them are totally obscured! 

[Einat Manoff]

Oh my. I apologize for not sending out a proper prompt this morning, but please follow Tess (thank you Tess! ) and resurrect (edit and think through) your old commentary’s on the production of nature  readings:

Wilson, A. 1992. The Culture of Nature, Chapter 3 ‘Nature at Home: A Social Ecology of Postwar Landscape Design.’ Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 88-115.

 

Katz, Cindi. 1998. Whose Nature, Whose Culture? Private Productions of Space and the Preservation of Nature, in B. Braun and N. Castree (eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the End of the Millenium. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 46-63

 

Looking forward to our discussion tomorrow,

Einat

[Samuël Poisson]

What do we call nature? Whose nature? as expressed by Katz seems to be the most relevant question, since it considers straightaway nature as a category that need to be constructed among other categories. “Nature” is then one of the tools which enable to read the world, and to interact with it, under various modalities.

Wilson starts with the most obvious instances of landscaped “nature”, showing how human habits are shaping it. Each tree, square foot of grass seen in an urban area is planed to be there, acknowledged as part of the designed environment, or considered as weed.  (remember the new urbanism code, sorting trees not by species or climate, but shape…) Between lawn and weed passes the limit of the wild. Looking at the urban evolutions linked to the car makes clear the weight of those habits: nature is designed to look like nature, to be an ornament, from a certain perspective. And the car is one of the major perspectives.

 

But mobility is not the only modality of those interactions. Katz emphasizes the role of capitalism in the understanding of nature. Seen as an endless resource until the 70’s, the nature is still a resource, yet limited. And this grounds protection policies. Because what is being destructed has a value, it is worth preserving it. Once again, the ability (and necessity) of capitalism to revolutionize itself is made clear. What appears as an obstacle (environmental issues) becomes a new mean of power. Nature can mean protected enclaves if it is economically justified. Or mean homogenization of the suburbs because for a nationwide retailer, it is easier (more interesting from an economic perspective) to sell everywhere the same product (a tree that will decorate in a similar manner very similar houses).

(concerning nature as a resource, see the examples of the Svalbard global seed vault - http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/lmd/campain/svalbard-global-seed-vault.html?id=462220 )

and, in a much more critical way, the art project “la banque du miel” – Honey Bank, proclaiming “time is honey” and proposing bee savings account. http://www.banquedumiel.org/home.html )

 

History and popular imagery play an important role, as seen in the example of lawns. There is a rational origin to their existence. They were the result of the presence of sheep in a meadow. But the image stays whereas the use is forgotten. And in order to imitate sheep, thousands of people will climb on mowers and burn some gallons of gas, having the feeling to do something useful, part of an identity affirmation. This picture is so deeply rooted that the definition of the beautiful garden is not questioned. The lawn can even be the last appearance of civilization that can be kept. In Detroit, residents of empty streets cut lawns around abandoned houses.

 

It seems that the only nature that can be tolerated is one of which we can precisely control both the definition and the shape. The good nature is domesticated.

Humans spontaneously consider themselves as out of the nature, as part of a separate category called culture. But nature, as defined by humans, is a part of a cultural world order. Moreover, all the terrestrial space is covered by human -thus cultural- artifacts. Would  nature be only an entity of the past, surviving through romantic conceptions and preserved islands?

One element is still operating to distinguish between nature and culture: the law. Under culture we will find human laws, created and discussed by human, whereas nature has its own laws, not negotiable. We can understand the apparent fear of nature, fear of the wild: symbolically, it sends back to the limits of human power.

This is while working on that limit that a political shift is possible. Because we consider nature as having other and autonomous rules, it appears as an object to which we don’t belong. But we constantly act following laws of nature to transform it, so that objects are hybrids of nature and culture (B. Latour). To consider those hybrids as such would mean accompany them in the sphere of culture, imagining that people can interact with them in that sphere, following human laws (“Parliament of Things”). The issue of considering nature as a resource could be transformed through that shift, enabling a more symmetrical encounter between human and non-human. (Arne Naess formulate it as universal Self-realization. “According to Næss, every being, whether human, animal or vegetable has an equal right to live and to blossom”).

Practically, this can mean experimenting other relationships to nature. Restoration of nature can be one of those experiments if we imagine people getting involved in such movements. The process of restoration is more important than its result, from a political point of view. Wilson underlines the value of the intervention, of the possibility to be active. Restoration can only be one aspect among others, but does that invalidate it as Katz seems to argue?

 

Le 05/12/11 15:01, Einat Manoff a écrit :

[Juan Carlos Quiridumbay]

“The Culture of Nature,” Alexander Wilson mentions that the postwar 

suburb influenced modern landscaping, in a way providing a better 

physical environment for citizens in a community. Wilson gives the car 

as a example to the transformation of landscaping design development. 

He explains that the car was a big influence and part of many  such as 

giant boulevards and expressways. However, I think that this 

developments have not only created damage to nature but also had 

diminish the sense of what nature is. 

        Furthermore, the development of this “large-scale development” and 

landscape design created lawn-care business, which profited from this 

new develops and its need to take care the new landscaping design. 

From what I see, nature provided us a land to work and live on and 

gave us the opportunity to cultivated to make it better, but have we 

respect our nature? Cidi Katz tells that this new developments created 

a lot of damage to our ecosystem. For example, the usage of chemicals 

to well preserve this landscaping was a major concern to communities 

towards environmental problems. 

        However, the environmental issues of the 1970s have made the world 

aware that we need better methods of building and protecting our 

environment. Also, Katz states that preservation is a way  for people 

to have ownership of nature. However, I disagree with this because, if 

people care for nature, they should protect it and not create more 

environmental problems. I also think that since the 1970s agriculture 

and landscaping design has made a huge impact to the world, because we 

are using nature to the fullest in order to create spaces for people 

to live in, but we all should be aware not to damage our nature that 

has provided us with a land to live in.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 3:03 PM, Samuël Poisson wrote:

What do we call nature? Whose nature? as expressed by Katz seems to be the most relevant question, since it considers straightaway nature as a category that need to be constructed among other categories. “Nature” is then one of the tools which enable to read the world, and to interact with it, under various modalities.

Wilson starts with the most obvious instances of landscaped “nature”, showing how human habits are shaping it. Each tree, square foot of grass seen in an urban area is planed to be there, acknowledged as part of the designed environment, or considered as weed.  (remember the new urbanism code, sorting trees not by species or climate, but shape…) Between lawn and weed passes the limit of the wild. Looking at the urban evolutions linked to the car makes clear the weight of those habits: nature is designed to look like nature, to be an ornament, from a certain perspective. And the car is one of the major perspectives.

 

<0clip_image002.png>But mobility is not the only modality of those interactions. Katz emphasizes the role of capitalism in the understanding of nature. Seen as an endless resource until the 70’s, the nature is still a resource, yet limited. And this grounds protection policies. Because what is being destructed has a value, it is worth preserving it. Once again, the ability (and necessity) of capitalism to revolutionize itself is made clear. What appears as an obstacle (environmental issues) becomes a new mean of power. Nature can mean protected enclaves if it is economically justified. Or mean homogenization of the suburbs because for a nationwide retailer, it is easier (more interesting from an economic perspective) to sell everywhere the same product (a tree that will decorate in a similar manner very similar houses).

<samuel_poisson.vcf>

[William Cawthern]

Cindi Katz’s “Whose Nature, Whose Culture” draws attention to the motivations behind “environmentalism.”  She argues that there are ulterior motives behind certain expressions of concern for environmental health and sustainability.  After the age of exploitation followed a series of natural resource crises, particularly with oil in the 1970s.  These crises alerted people to the apparent need to preserve or restore natural environments or else our Western systems of economics will not be supported.  Katz sees preservation movements as symbolic of the ownership that people claim to have overnature; in a word, she is suspicious of what motivates people (and corporations under the same banner) to advocate that natural areas be preserved.  According to Katz, this is the privatization of the environment, and is no good for either society or the environment.

I find Katz’s analysis to be a little too eager to find dishonesty in Western society’s concern for the environment. While it is certainly true that to buy up land in poor, far-away countries for the purpose of “conservation” is just another form of colonization, and that corporate interest in environmental health is preening for good public relations, I am not so quick to judge every act to sustain or improve the environment as disingenuous.  The wars over preservation and restoration are indeed highly politicized, but it is hard for me to imagine a world where such movements did not exist. These movements are necessary (no matter how helpful they are) because ours is an age where we cannot revert to pre-colonial times.  I think Katz is disgusted with the fact that colonization and industrialization led us to where we are today, and she blames environmental preservation as just another mission of those eras, when in fact it is more like a reaction to them. 

Wilson, in “The Culture of Nature,” has feelings similar to Katz about humans’ want to transform their landscapes.  Wilson’s critique of environmental management is different from Katz’s in that it is more specific about what about landscaping is wrong: that people transplant foreign elements into an environment.  Wilson here makes an important point that the simultaneous rises of suburbia and commercialism led to solidified norms that dictated how “nature” should look.  For example, the desire for a green lawn has led people living in arid regions to paint their dry, dusty lawns green.  It is these sorts of things – the acts of people to live up to expectations about nature – that reflect cultural understandings of the environment.       

[bradley brashears]

Okay, I did some minor edits and tried to liven it up a little. Here you are...

Nature changed in the 1970s. However we ‘value’ nature, our conventions and practical engagements with the external world – ‘the environment’ or ‘nature’ – under capitalism have operated as if nature were given, a free good or source of wealth, an unlimited bounty awaiting only the ‘hand of man’ to turn it into a bundle of resources. – Cindi Katz p.46

 

The urban landscape of North America has been at the mercy of profit-mongers and exploitation which has led to numerous environmental concerns. The very nature of capitalism is a destructive machine that exploits the environment all in the name of profit and “human advancement”.

During the last century, many Americans left the farms of the countryside and headed toward cities and suburbs as the economy gradually shifted from agriculture, industrial and manufacturing to service and support sectors. According to Alexander Wilson: “By 1970 almost 40 percent of U.S. citizens lived in the suburbs, which became, ideologically at least, the dominant land form on the continent.” From this point on, the American suburb had spread like wildfire, consuming land and transforming the natural environment into a man-made “natural” environment. Standardized landscape design became increasingly profitable and it was everywhere: front and back yards, shopping centers, highways and freeways, suburban office complexes, schools and governmental offices. Lawn equipment and supplies like lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, pesticides and fertilizers became big business as America moved to the suburbs and wanted a piece of “nature” for themselves.

Modernism focused on the standardization of landscape design that could be replicated from one suburban community to the next. If properly maintained, lawns, whether they be private or public, became indistinguishable from each other. Lawns were perfectly cut, bordered with trimmed shrubs and trees, exotic flowers, and lawn furniture – all of which turned a good profit but resulted in a homogenous suburban landscape that could be seen from backyards to community shopping centers. These perfectly maintained and uniformed landscaped lawns required large amounts of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and water, which led to an increased concern for the environment. “The ‘byproducts’ of the regime are now familiar: given the intensive inputs of water and fossil fuels, there’s a related output of toxins that leach into the water table” (Wilson, p.93). Also, many different foreign species of plants, grasses and flowers were introduced, threatening the natural plant species and giving no individuality to cities and regions. Little thought was given to the environmental impact of introducing non-native species to arid or semi-arid environments, and the amount of water required to keep these new suburbs green instead of brown.

As environmental concerns increased in the 1980s, capitalism embarked on a new approach, which Katz terms “Corporate Environmentalism”. Corporations, recognizing the public outcry over frequent oil spills and the thinning of the ozone layer, devised a scheme wherein they would subvert their harmful activities in one realm by marketing themselves as champions of the environment in some other aspect. “The environmental language of nature as an ‘investment’ in the future took on an explicitly capitalist meaning with increasing privatization, whether in the form of ‘preserves’ or as a component of intellectual property rights, and as a result, nature was scrutinized and ‘mapped’ in wholly new ways” (Katz, p.47). In order for capitalism to turn a profit the environment would be exploited in new and different ways, all in the name of preservation and restoration. “…clean capitalism is better than dirty to be sure…” (Katz, p.52). Under this new capitalistic approach exploitation of the environment involved two conflicting sides. “Corporations curry favor with the public by funding various environmental projects from biodiversity protection efforts through watershed preservation to wildlife conservation. These companies may be among the world’s biggest polluters or habitat destroyers, but their environmentalism buys a protective if not mystifying shield for their actions” (Katz, p.52). Many companies will trade “pollution credits” in order to keep their exploitative activities while masquerading as supporters of the environment. This scheme ensures that large corporations might look good on paper from an environmental standpoint, but in reality their chief activities do more harm to the environment than good.

Meanwhile, many cities and regions — especially in the western U.S. — have set policies and regulations on water usage and have reintroduced native plant species to areas to protect the environment and provide individuality to these regions. After years of standardized landscape design (causing great environmental stress) that physically defined the suburban American landscape, a return to what is “natural” is gaining traction in many regions throughout the country. Hopefully this trend will continue to expand throughout the country even if corporate environmentalists continue to disguise themselves as proponents for the environment. Now, corporations must think about not how to exploit the environment but harness the environment in order to create a symbiotic relationship between humans and the land upon which we live. If green is the new gold in corporate America, companies need to invest in the land in order to reap a profit, or they will soon find that there is little left to exploit.

[Marc Pearce]

A Wilson tells us of the evolution of our relationship with nature.
From the beginning of the XXth century to today, Wilson reminds us
that nature is a cultural construct. Many representations of nature
have followed one another, from the romantic obsession for
breathtaking vistas to the Modernist’s functional use of nature and to
the integrated development of the restorationists.

Today, nature has returned as an agent of human activity. The
ecological imperative that we face has brought us to resist the
mechanical, Descartien definition of nature that sees it as merely a
resource to be consumed. We now realize that the standardization of
landscaping and of the horticultural industry has led to the
impoverishment of our ecosystems and to the fragility of our natural
resources.

Today, certain cultural trends such as the Hippy movement and maybe
today’s Bo-Bo (Bohemian Bourgeoisie) help sensitize our society to the
ecological emergency by introducing nature as a legitimate cultural
issue. These cultural trends introduce plants, medicines and foods
sourced in greater genetic diversity. These cultures as well as the
multitude of activist groups that have come about, emphasize greatly
on alternatives to the use of fertilizers, pesticides and other
practices damageable to local ecosystems. But, for Katz, the
realizations of the finite nature of the resources that lie in the
wildlife have led to the privatization of public environments.
Protecting the nature has become a strategy of accumulation;
biodiversity has become an investment. Nature is introduced in the
capitalist game and is being monopolized by greater capital at the
expense of local inhabitants and more generally what we could call the
99%. While Wilson does point out the cultural construction of nature,
he fails to mention its social and economic determination. Katz asks:
who decides what is to be preserved or nurtured? Who does it profit?

For Katz, the environmental culture Wilson was referring to has a
negative impact because it creates a moral shield around more
systematic ecological deteriorations. Recycling or buying “green”,
“eco-friendly” products alleviates our cares. The individualization of
ecological issues and their solutions strips us of our sense of
responsibility and allows the continual violence that is done to
nature and to men.

While I don’t completely agree with Katz’s criticism, it does address
a very critical point. The incorporation of ecological concerns in our
cultural representation seems to me to be of paramount importance. The
advent of environmental or ecological culture is a historically
important one, comparable to the culture our society has built around
other notions like human rights. Nevertheless, while it is important
for our society to fully integrate these issues, we are confronted
with their structural nature. Is recycling or donating to humanitarian
associations enough to solve the problems of society?

The Occupy Wall Street movement might be the beginning to an alternate
response. Born from the general indignation of some (99%), it is a
response to the inability of corporate governments - surpassed by the
capitalist system in which they are rooted - to answer in any
meaningful way to the structural ineptness of our society. Recognizing
the failures of our current social and economic model is crucial. The
libertarian myths and fantasies of our society isolate the individual
from the globalized context in which he lives today. The individual is
excused of any responsibility while being stripped of any solidarity
that could be expressed towards him. The danger of this situation is
that the ecological issues to which we are faced will not wait. If we
do not realize the structural relationship we entertain with these
issues, we will reach a point of no return, if it isn’t already too
late.

[Simon Mertner Vind]

“Changing environmental and cultural circumstances have brought changing aesthetics” Alexander Wilson wrote in his interesting and sometimes humorous essay “The Culture of Nature” (I especially found the description of the gender swap in suburban gardens curious and funny).

I would like to continue the analysis of nature in modern cities and how nature is a tool to produce a specific and “desirable” behavior. As I’m not from New York I’ll base my points mainly on Danish examples (though I’m pretty sure that the following tendencies are general in western developed countries).  The urban nature has gone through an evolutionary development dependent on what men of power wanted it to signal. We still have the ‘old English gardens’ which signals conservative and classic virtues such as absorption and decency:

(‘HC Ørstedsparken’ in Copenhagen landscaped in 1876-1879, a City Beautiful park in Denmark – now it’s a meeting place for homosexuals at night, but that’s a completely different story)

I will now jump 110 year forward - a little detour maybe, because the next thing I want to present is not directly a ‘nature design’:

In the 1990s the term ‘city life’ didn’t exist in Danish town planning. But then the (public) City Hall and the (private) restaurant business/sector allied in a plan that killed two birds with one stone: The City Hall allowed restaurants and café’s to service outdoor which was productive for both ‘city life’ and of course for business.  This development is a part of the economic strategy/discourse called experience economy (or leisure economy) that have become extremely popular in the administration of cities the last 20 years. We can thank the author Richard Florida for that.

(Outdoor serving – good for city life, good for business)    

In the recent years the men of power in the City Hall is apparently no more just satisfied by us spending a lot of money on café latte and cupcakes. Now they want us to be healthy and sweat out the café latte milk. This discourse is evident in present urban design: The new park design is a design who invites to active behavior and bikeways are planned throughout New York.

Parkour in Carlsberg, Copenhagen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjmPNatbbo

Bikeway, New York:

Urban design tells a lot about the dominant discourses in modern society, both Cindi Katz and Alexander Wilson clarifies. Modern design is maybe not rational in a modernistic way, but it certainly is not random how the built environment takes form. Urban Design has another and more modern rationality but it is as purpose-oriented as before.

But what do planners, landscape architects and architects come up with after we are all healthy and skinny?

2011/12/5 Marc Pearce <pearc...@gmail.com>

[mqu...@hunter.cuny.edu]

Production of Nature

Nature has been conceptually manipulated by various actors and forces to
shape the way we look at our environment, (urban, rural and all areas in-
between) our history, and our modes of economic production. Wilson looks at
"working landscapes" as socially defined areas of settlement that mirrors our
aesthetics and perspective of nature. The post-war suburb was about the control
and manipulation of horticulture. Pastoralism saw nature as pristine, a nurturing
refuge from an urban existence, yet this ideal leads to the exploitation of nature
by human enterprise by presenting nature as passive to modern production.
Modernist design principles sought to relate human individuals with the
environment in an ecologically-based aesthetic. Wilson looks at how the
landscape industry adapted in the post-war economy which led to the
standardization of form and horticulture, simplifying the environment for easy
reproduction and sale. Wilson hopes for a ideology of nature that includes urban
habitats, that reflect the human history with the natural world.
Katz describes the conceptualization of nature as shifting from an unlimited
resource for capital gain to the refashioning of nature to fit accumulation
strategies of business interests. She points to the co-opting of the
environmental discourse by capital as being the start of the contemporary
ideology of environmentalism (closely tied with consumption patterns). The idea
of preservation goes along with the privatization of space and the separation of
potential sites of production from local use. This neo-colonial dynamic guised
as environmentalism points to the marriage of "preservation and plunder". How
do we separate our concept of nature from forces of privatization and
consumption? How will a holistic view of nature and our role in it affect the
individualization of environmental problems Katz mentions?

[A.Baruch Tauber]

Katz:

How do we create “a political ecology that is rooted in productions of nature that hold environmental concerns in tension with social, cultural, and political economic considerations”?(48) How to find “meaningful ways” (52) to deal with the paradox of subjective goals designing public space?

As Katz points out, (52) we love to recycle but it only makes us consume more, like an HOV lane intended to discourage excessive travel

If tomorrow we'd learn that there was no threat to the ozone layer, would environmentalism still be of value for intrinsic reasons? With diminishing numbers of environmental stewardship, i think this a key question

Katz quotes Wilson that we should work on making “intelligible connections with each other and our environments via active work in the landscape” (56) Sounds brilliantly poetic, but how? Community gardens? Love farms? I’m in...

Wilson:

(92) “Regional character... is now a matter of choice rather than necessity” unlike the good(?) old days when local materials used had “an organic relationship” to their (time) and place?

 Is this good or bad? Nostalgia or vital “ecology”? Does this debate reference back to our modernism discussions? How does one create a sense of identity and placement in a world where almost nothing is indigenous to one’s location? Through locovorism? community gardens? 

 

(96) Loved  the analogy of the “edges”. edges are vital signs of urban life; where private spaces (eg the stoop) can sometimes become public(like) rather than  the otehr way arouns

--
<Abraham Baruch Tauber>

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world" -Anne Frank