Re)thinking Nature_WCP_august_2024_Rome

Journal of Ecocriticism, 2015

The Struggle for nature charts the scientific traps and the social pifalls of current environmental philosophies, such as deep ecology, social and political ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism and argues for a 'post-naturalistic' turn in environmental philosophy. Jozef Keulartz presents a critique of environmental philosophy from two complementary angles. First, he examens the theory of power outlined in the work of Foucault and Donzelot and demonstrates how environmental philosophy can contribute to a strengthening of bio-power. Second, the author explores the philosophy of language developed in the writings of Habermas and Lyotard and shows how current environmental philosophy can form a threat to communicative power.

This graduate seminar will offer an overview of the broad field of ecocritcism and its interaction with literature. Since its emergence ecocriticism has been growing as a field interacting across disciplines and exploring questions of a wide temporal and spatial axis. In this course we will discuss the key terms and themes that prevail ecocriticism today and its relevance for literature. We will address and problematize the political, philosophical, anthropological, ethical and aesthetic expressions of these themes. In addition to the study of the impact that the environment has on our interactions with landscape, animals and other forms of life, we will also discuss the implication of the environment in constructing identities and sovereign powers. In addition to our readings and discussion, we will also visit the MacLeish Field Station. Some guiding questions for this course are: How do we define environment? In what ways do we interact with it? How does the environment figure in literature? What are implications of the environment on our language, actions and policies? What potential does ecology hold for our future? In what ways ecology and art change and challenge processes of creation and representation?

Journal of Political Ecology, 2013

Environmental Aesthetics and Citizenship, Nordicum-Mediterraneum, special issue 15(3)/2020 , 2020

https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/annoucement/november-2020-issue-153/ This special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum contains select papers from the research seminar Environmental Aesthetics and Citizenship (https://estenci.wordpress.com/), coordinated by Neli Dobreva, Oleg Bresky, Mogens Chrom Jacobsen and Oliver Kauffmann at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, in partnership with the research circles Patterns of Dysfunction in Contemporary Democracies. Impact on Human Rights and Governance, coordinated by Mogens Chrom Jacobsen, and Appearances of the Political, coordinated by Carsten Friberg–all of them within the Nordic Summer University (NSU). This project was supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers of the Nordic Countries in cooperation with Foreningerne Nordens Forbund (FNF), the University of Aarhus (Department for Philosophy of Education and General Education) and the European Humanities University / The J. Althusius Institute. The Seminar Environmental Aesthetics and Citizenship took place in Paris, France, at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, during two semesters of the academic year 2018-2019. The guest editor Neli Dobreva would like to express her gratitude to the Dean of the École des Arts de la Sorbonne, Marie-Noëlle Semet-Haviaras, for her support and willingness, which allowed the Project to succeed. The debate started at the NSU Summer Session in 2018 at Faro Island in Sweden, when all the NSU circles first got in contact with each other and began working together. One of the first considerations was how to collaborate between circles, exploring the ways in which human-rights militancy and, more generally, the protection of human rights are affected by the international human rights system and the way this regime enters State relations and, on the other side, the ways in which we could connect the sensory or sensitive (le sensible) experience, such as the aesthetic one, through the ongoing global debates about: the environment, ecology, humanity and non-humanity, post-humanity and trans-humanity, citizenship and environmental migration through the lens of representations, Anthropocene-centered discourses on degrowth, the ethics of de-extinction, the education on citizenship and urban participative democracy, the politics of care and common good, etc. Of course, all these questions were so inspiring and the debates so rich, that we opted for an interdisciplinary experimental seminar: Environmental Aesthetics and Citizenship.

Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2013

Environmental …, 2001

Visions of nature are the subject of much philosophical and policy debate. The present paper focuses, however, on the visions of nature held by people not professionally involved in the issue, namely those of the general public. These visions constitute the democratic basis of environmental conservation and the frame for effective two-way communication between professionals and communities on nature protection and management. It appears that the general public in Europe and the USA has developed a strong general 'biophilia' (nature-friendliness). One indicator of this is that in quantitative research, 70-90% of the population recognize the right of nature to exist even if not useful to humans in any way. In qualitative research settings, lay people reveal a remarkable richness and depth of views and experiences of nature. A quantitative survey on images and values of nature, and a qualitative study consisting of in-depth interviews on the relationship between childhood experiences in nature and adult visions of nature were conducted in the Netherlands. A factor analysis revealed a classification of types of nature, which included 'wild nature', 'arcadian nature', 'penetrative nature' and other such images that, with wild nature in the lead, were ascribed a smoothly decreasing degree of naturalness. Asked to rank the values and functions of nature, the top three were formed by the value for human health, the intrinsic value and the value for future generations. In the qualitative interviews, indications were found that more intense childhood experiences with nature could be associated with later ascription of a high degree of naturalness to wild nature, and less intense experiences with later ascription of a high degree of naturalness to arcadian nature. Many significant experiences took place beyond the reach of parental supervision. Findings such as these are of obvious relevance for environmental education and the design of 'experiential nature' in and around protected areas. Social science research concerning nature protection is often triggered by frictions between local people and protected area authorities.

"Contemporary visions of nature have been deeply affected by the ongoing interaction and interpenetration of science, nature, and society. These new visions appear to be more complex than older visions of nature and at the same time they seem to challenge our notions of authenticity. “New Visions of Nature” focuses on the emergence of these new visions of complex nature in three domains. The first selection of essays reflects public visions of nature, that is, nature as it is experienced, encountered, and instrumentalized by diverse publics. The second selection zooms in on micro nature and explores the world of contemporary genomics. The final section returns to the macro word and discusses the ethics of place in present-day landscape philosophy and environmental ethics. The contributions to this volume explore perceptual and conceptual boundaries between the human and the natural, or between an ‘out there’ and ‘in here.’ They attempt to specify how nature has been publicly and genomically constructed, known and described through metaphors and re-envisioned in terms of landscape and place. By parsing out and rendering explicit these divergent views, the volume asks for a re-thinking of our relationship with nature.