Environmental PhilosophiesAuthor(s): Hugh MasonSource: Area, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 254-256Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003675 .

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254 RGS-IBG Annual Conference

Anglia), took the audience away from Britain and out to the developing world where the nature of genetics and biodiversity is now so hotly contested. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and critical science studies. Whatmore described the powerful networks of interests and hybrid actors standing behind the construction of plant DNA, located predominantly in developing countries, as mobile genetic information that is rightly the common heritage of humanity and its transformation by multinational corporations into patented seed lines to be sold back to the developing countries from whence it originally came. Blaikie also confronted issues of knowledge and power as he tried to work through various postmodern critiques of development theories. Ultimately, he thought some kind of neo-populist development theory provided the best way to recognise the situatedness of knowledge without succumbing to paralysis in the face of violence and oppression that an older, more self-confident, neo-marxism had been so effective at exposing.

Papers in the second module turned their attention to the metaphors-and their implicit cultural policies-by which the nature of nature has been socially constructed and brought into material presence. David Matless (Nottingham) described the organicism of several reactionary English thinkers of the 1920's and 1930's. Their anti-modern vision of a healthy England focused on the culture of the land, and in particular upon reforming the practice of modern agriculture, as the fertile soil in which to grow healthy English bodies and a strong body politic. Such concerns with blood and soil, bodies and national identity linked these English thinkers to contemporary German fascism, itself also rooted in European romanticism, but as Matless noted in conclusion, these writings have been taken on more recently by self-styled radical critics who see in them a way of returning to a more holistic and ecologically sensitive organic agriculture. The relationship between organic metaphors and modern technology was also the subject of Simon Rycroft's (Sussex) discussion of post-war design. He described how both mainstream and counter-culture design courses mirrored an organic understanding of nature by celebrating the primitive, visceral, and transcendental. Demeritt (British Columbia) examined the science of forestry and its silvicultural model of the normal forest by which foresters represented and thereby discursively materialised what could count as natural processes such as growth. By pointing to the complex network of human and non-human actors incorporated by scientific representations of the normal forest, he challenged conventional understandings of social construction as being about exclusively human actors.

Sadly, poor weather and travel delays kept us from hearing Erik Swyngedouw's account of the political ecology of urban water in Ecuador. His interest in the material and metaphoric circulation of water would have provided an excellent opportunity to draw together the key concerns of the first module with those of the second. As it was, discussion was rather brief. A scheduling conflict with the History and Philosophy of Geography Study Group sessions on Environmental Philosophies meant that many people in the audience had not been present for all of the papers. While this affected the vitality of the discussion in the room, it does speak of the liveliness of these more general questions about nature and the environment within human geography.

David Demeritt University of British Columbia

Noel Castree University of Liverpool

Environmental Philosophies To suggest that it was a cold afternoon would be an understatement: only one of the speakers at this session on the first day became sufficiently warmed by his enthusiasm to take off his outer coat. No one however could put forward the excuse of an overheated room to explain dozing and indeed no one was seen by the chairman to be suffering from soporific inclinations. That so many people stayed throughout the two modules was a creditable reflection on the quality of the papers.

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RGS-IBG Annual Conference 255

Phil Sarre (OU) started the afternoon by looking at environmental ideologies and observed that the environmentalist movement was increasingly fragmented as had been demonstrated at

Rio. He viewed ideology as a means of making sense of society and of humanity's position in nature. Some current ideologies, such as that of sustainable development, he considered lacked a vision and could at best be thought of as medium term strategies. In looking at more profound ideologies he examined ' deep ecology ' and in particular discussed its intrinsic value theory. He concluded that humanity needed an holistic world view and that 'deep ecology' had ideological potential. Lyn Collins (Edinburgh) moved the group's thoughts from the abstract to the concrete. He argued that the widespread push towards recycling was based largely upon a philosophy of altruism but that schemes were encouraged for economic reasons.

However there was in a number of cases a disjunction between altruism and economic evidence. He concentrated upon waste paper recycling at a time when timber was being extensively replanted. Life Cycle Analysis, he argued, indicated that waste paper incineration for energy is the most beneficial option for the environment. The first module ended with a paper by Chris Wilbert (Anglia) in which he looked at ways of discussing and thus in a sense creating ' nature '. He contrasted the Green approach, which reified nature, with a post

modern approach which viewed nature as a cultural formation, and suggested the blanket term of ' nature ' was now redundant. He then sought to outline ways in which nature could be viewed as an active agent without slipping into deterministic thinking.

After well deserved cups of hot tea, the group reconvened to hear Geoff Wilson (King's College, London) present a paper written jointly with Ray Bryant (King's College, London) on environmental management. They argued that environmental management had in the past been largely equated with state policy and had concentrated upon the techniques rather than the concept and context of management. Indeed the concept of the manager had been interpreted in a way which excluded those without professional training. By so doing local priorities had been devalued and the environmental management of individuals such as hunter-gatherers and farmers had been ignored. They argued that the term needed to be re-conceptualised to encompass both the state based and the individual or non-formal elements in environmental management. Sarah Howard (Greenwich) in a paper on the

Mestizos and Mayanga of Nicaragua's Boswas Reserve fleshed out the distinction between the formal and informal management of the environment. She showed how different environ

mental philosophies played an important role in the conflicts between the indigenous communities and the Mestizo agriculturalists. The former recognised the need to conserve the forest but regarded it both as property and as a resource to be managed while the latter argued that they were the natural custodians of the reserve since they had always lived in harmony with the environment. Sarah Howard suggested that there was no simple polarization of views, and the approaches obscured a much more complex reality of both philosophy and practice.

The conflict in philosophy was further examined in a joint paper presented by Kevin Hannam and Pamela Shurmer-Smith (Portsmouth), who suggested that conservation, as with all solutions to environmental problems, is predicated on ideas which unless placed in context are confusing. In the case of India they argued that the forest bureaucracy produced conservation policies based upon the idea of the forest as a scarce resource which need protection from people. Other approaches were based upon ideas which verged on environ mental determinism. They proposed Gandhian philosophy as an antidote to these frameworks and in particular developed the idea of the continuous self as an antitode to market based values. In developing these ideas they drew parallels between Gandhian ideas and post structuralist notions of value. The final paper was given by Julia Meaton (Huddersfield) and

David Morrice (Staffordshire) who examined the ethics of private car use and made particular reference to John Stuart Mill's theory of freedom. They first examined car use within a Mill framework and argued that the use of the private car was largely an other-regarding harmful activity. Thus even on Mill's terms the car should be subject to extensive control. However they continued by subjecting the Mill approach to the criticism that there could not be a free choice since the use of the private car lacked justification. This derived from the facts that the choice was not a truly free choice and that any choice to use the private car, because it led to

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256 RGS-IBG Annual Conference

a decline in public transport, actually served to reduce choice. They concluded their paper by considering the policy implications of this view.

Although there were a number of questions in both modules, the majority of the discussion occurred outside the room where on their way to the hotels, and indeed later in the bar, people were overheard discussing some of the more contentious or uncommon points of the papers. This was certainly the main strength of the presentations for by airing some quite disparate ideas, no participant should have felt unchallenged or lacking in ideas for further consideration.

Hugh Mason University of Portsmouth

Convenor's Report on Submitted Papers in Human Geography The five submitted papers in Human Geography covered a variety of topics which ranged over time and space from issues in urban historical geography to themes relating to the structure of the contemporary global economy. The whole session offered an insight into the authors' current research and provided the basis for a stimulating discussion across several fields of human geography.

The first two papers focused on urban development in nineteenth century England. In the opening paper Mervyn Busteed (Manchester) employed a range of sources to examine the construction of identity among the Irish population of Manchester. This was followed by Emilio Biagini's (Cagliari) discussion of his work on constraints to urban growth in nineteenth century Nottingham. In the third paper John Mercer (Syracuse) presented evidence of the changing geography of immigration in North American cities, with increased cultural and racial diversity being a prominent feature of recent decades. Orna Blumen (Strates CNRS) then shifted the geographical focus to Tel Aviv and provided a detailed analysis of the creation and spatial distribution of occupational prestige in the city. Finally, David Keeling (Western

Kentucky) explored the sociospatial dynamics of economic globalisation in Argentina and examined the social costs of this process for the urban and rural areas of the country.

Overall, the range of issues addressed and quality of the papers presented provided a stimulating opening to the annual conference for those in attendance.

Michael Pacione University of Strathclyde

Reconsidering Quantitative Geography: social and cultural perspectives This session,1 organised jointly by the Quantitative Methods Study Group and the Social and Cultural Geography Study Group, reflected a growing sense of unease about the schism between those geographers who deploy quantitative techniques (regarding themselves as ' scientists ' operating within a loosely positivistic philosophy) and those who deploy quali tative techniques (challenging the authority of conventional ' science ' and being equivocal about the claims of regimented philosophies such as positivism). The lines separating geogra phers who count, calibrate, map and model the thing-world from those who converse, consort, engage and empathise with the people-world have been discussed since at least the early-1970s, but in recent years the stirrings of a literature dealing more systematically with qualitative methods in human geography has thrown the separation into sharper relief. Moreover, the evident connection for many researchers between the social-cultural theories that they consult and their everyday qualitative practice has created a more consolidated ' non-quantitative 'take on geography inquiry than that which existed in the 1970s-'80s, when the political-economic theories deployed by oppositional geographers were arguably still conformable with the use of quantitative measures and logical analytical procedures. The purpose of the session was hence

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