Responsible Geographies and
Geographies of Response
Educaing Geographers in an Era of the Anthropocene
Ph.D. Thesis
Thomas Skou Grindsted
Department of Environmental, Social and Spaial Change
Roskilde University, Denmark
Responsible Geographies and
Geographies of Response
Educating Geographers in an Era of the Anthropocene
Ph.D. hesis by:
homas Skou Grindsted
Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Changes,
Roskilde University, Denmark
March 2015
© 2015 homas Skou Grindsted
Layout: homas Skou Grindsted and Ritta Juel Bitsch
Front page: homas Skou Grindsted and Ritta Juel Bitsch
Print: Prinfo Paritas Digital Service
ISBN 978-87-7349-900-9
Contents
Foreword....................................................................................................5
Acknowledgement......................................................................................7
Abstract (Danish).......................................................................................9
Abstract (English) ....................................................................................11
Introduction ............................................................................................13
Chapter 1. When Climate Changes Science -Change(?) ..........................17
1.1 Responsible Geographies .................................................................. 24
1.2 Geographies of Response .................................................................. 28
Chapter 2. Critical Geography and the Neoliberal University .................35
2.1 Kant and the Dispute between Faculties as Academic Working ............
Climate(s) ........................................................................................ 36
2.2 he Dispute over Climate Change..................................................... 43
2.3 he Dispute over Academic Climate(s) – Regimes of Accountability and
the Disciplining of Academics at Work ............................................. 49
2.4 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 60
Chapter 3. Keywords, Buzzwords and the Power of Reference .................61
3.1 he Art of Making References - Distinguishing Keywords from ...........
Buzzwords ........................................................................................ 62
3.2 Practicing Discourses and Discourses of Practice .............................. 65
3.3 he Power of Reference ..................................................................... 66
3.4 he Dialectics of Sustainable Discourse ............................................. 71
3.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 74
Chapter 4. Space-Time Dialectics and Contradictions of Sustainability ..77
4.1 Space-Time Dialectics, Sustainability and the Human Environment
Interface .......................................................................................... 78
4.2. Geographical Imaginary: Scaling and Materializing the Power of
Reference ......................................................................................... 82
4.4 Conclusions .................................................................................... 103
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 5. Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves and Abstractions of
the Human Environment Interface ......................................105
5.1 Anthologies and Ontologies of Social Nature(s) ............................. 106
5.2 Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves – Co-Constructing Nature(s) ..... 109
5.3 Co-constructing Methods: ............................................................. 122
Chapter 6. Geographers at Work: Re-naturalizing
the Human-Environment heme..........................................131
6.1 Greening Educational Policy and Response(abilities) ...................... 132
6.2 Is the Human-Environment heme Being Reconigured
in Geography?................................................................................. 134
6.3 Curricula Constructs in an Era of the Anthropocene ....................... 140
6.4 How are Issues of Sustainability Addressed in Curricula? ................. 149
6.5 What Is the Inluence on Danish Universities of the Lucerne
Declaration, EU or National ESD Plans Concerning Geography? .. 153
6.6 Conclusion - Toward Analyzing Contradictions .............................. 155
Chapter 7. Educating Geographers in an Era of the Anthropocene: ......159
7.1 Paradoxical Cultures - Paradoxical Natures: .................................... 160
7.2 Frictions and Fractions: the Importance of Sustainability and
the Substitution of Concepts........................................................... 161
7.3 Frictions and Fractions: Integration of Sustainability as Implicit
Curricula – Learning Agendas of Socializing ‘Sustainable’ Nature(s) 167
7.4 Discussion: Dilemmas, Paradoxes and Contradictions .................... 171
7.5 Conclusions .................................................................................... 175
8. he Social Natures of Climate Change Modelling ..............................177
8.1 Human Environment Interfaces in an Era of the Anthropocene ..... 178
8.3 Spatio-Temporal Figurations and the Geopolitics Modeling ............ 181
8.4 Multiple Spatio-Temporalities – Multiple Rationalities.................... 182
8.5 Modeling Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves in an Era .................... 184
8.6 he Geopolitics Models (Continued) .............................................. 189
Final Discussion ....................................................................................193
References ..............................................................................................199
Glossary .................................................................................................211
Appendix ...............................................................................................225
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
I urge you to be skeptical towards all you are going to read. Empowered with positive skepticism, individually and collectively we enrich academic understanding,
responses and responsibilities to urgent issues in present time. hrough positive
skepticism, radical critique and engagement, academia produces new knowledge
and insights; insights that do not always serve the interest of those in authority. his
dissertation examine the role of academia in society, responses and responsibilities
when confronted with some of its own “most groundbreaking” [scientiic] discoveries of our time [that]…tell us that human beings have caused global warming
over the cause of their history” (Malm and Hornborg 2014, p. 66). Responsible
Geographies and Geographies of Response is more than a study of how academia
and geographers respond to issues of climate change and sustainability: It aims to
enrich a radical awareness and critical examination of some of the social dynamics that enclose academics at work by ways in which the scientiic climate and
responses to climate change are mutually conditioned. Once again I urge you to
hold a skeptical attitude toward what you are going to read. hrough mind we
change (what) matter(s).
FOREWORD
5
Acknowledgement
It is tempting but wrong to think that the writing of a thesis is one (wo)man’s
work. While many hours are spent in isolation it is at the same time a process of
connecting. Connections continue to have great emancipatory potentials when
meetings take place. With gratitude, hospitality and encouragement I have been
enriched by a number of people and their co-presence have heavily inluenced
my work.
I am foremost thankful to Henrik Toft Jensen, Associate Professor, Department
of Environmental Social and Spatial Change, (ENSPAC), Roskilde University,
Denmark. He has deeply inspired my way of thinking, and without him this work
(and I) would not have been the same.
Likewise, Bo Elling, Professor, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial
Change, (ENSPAC), Roskilde University, Denmark, has played a prominent
part. With criticism and inspiration he has gradually improved the intellectual
capacity of earlier drafts.
I also express my sincere thanks to Eric Clarke, Professor, Department of Human
Geography, Center of Excellence for the Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability, (LUCID), Lund University, Sweden and Juanita Sundberg,
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia,
(UBC), Canada. I am grateful for their hospitality and the enriching debates we
had, when I was in their hands during internship. heir critical engagement and
enthusiasm were illuminating.
he list of relations is ever expanding and many more have inspired, helped,
provoked and criticized. Finally I thank all interview participants (see appendix
5.1), they are the empirical basis, among others, upon which this work is based.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
7
Abstract (Danish)
Denne afhandling undersøger danske geografers artikulering af ansvar for og svar
på at repræsentere globale miljømæssige forandringer. Med udgangspunkt i tesen
om antropogene klimaforandringer belyses geografers kampe om at repræsentere
og udvikle menneske-natur traditionen. Hovedvægten ligger på den teoretiske
del, der gennem ’the social nature approach’ dels behandler denne teses ontologiske og epistemologiske konsekvenser i et faghistorisk perspektiv, dels undersøger
geografers svar og ansvar for co-produktive elementer, som denne tese indebærer.
Det konkluderes, at selvom geografer inder ’sustainability’ konceptet relevant
for faget, adresseres det implicit snarere end eksplicit. Dette medfører en række
modsætninger (og dilemmaer i forhold til at håndtere dem). Begrebet tilegnes
implicit, men generelt afvises det at adressere ’sustainability’ eksplicit blandt andet
pga. af den kritik og de politiske undertoner, der ofte medfølger. ’Geographies of
response and responsibility’ undersøger faglige kampe over at repræsentere globale
miljømæssige forandringer.
ABSTRACT (DANISH)
9
Abstract (English)
his dissertation engages with Danish University geographers at work and their
explication of the role of geography in shaping socio-environmental debates
in an era of the anthropocene. Situating sustainability concepts in a historygeographical context the dissertation examines responses and responsibilities
concerning academic ights over representing global environmental change. A
major part concerns the theoretical basis and draws inspiration from a series of
critical geographical work on the marketization of universities, and relates this
tincture to the wider education for sustainability in higher education literature.
he methodological framework is based on the social nature approach that tangles
these quite distinct epistemological communities by consulting the socio-natures
produced. It is concluded that though geographers ind sustainability themes important to geography, sustainability is more often implicit than it is explicit. his
produces a number of dilemmas and contradictions since geographers both seek
to distance themselves from produced politics while at the same time elucidating
them. Geographies of response and responsibilities address the battleground over
the reading and writing of global environmental change.
Keywords: Geography Education, Interdisciplinary academic spaces of work,
Academic responses to Climate Change, Sustainability, Anthropocene, Space-Time
Dialectics, Social Nature, Paradoxical Natures – Paradoxical Cultures
ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)
11
Introduction
Half a century ago few academics studied global environmental change. One
could be lucky to snif out one or two at a geographical department. If so, these
geographers, climatologists and meteorologists were largely considered to have lost
track with their discipline. Studying global environmental change was irrelevant,
a non-scientiic task and in the academic mainstream considered to be occupied
by academics freaking out. he epistemic borders of geography at the time had
a prominent status in studying human-environmental interactions. By contrast
geographers of today can hardly be said to be agenda setting in the study or in the
public (academic) debate and ight over representing socio-environmental change.
While nature-society interactions have long been part of geography’s raison d’étre,
identity and imaginations, geographers generally have lost track with or play a
marginal role in shaping contemporary environmental debates, Castree (2002)
complains: “Although I will suggest there are no easy answers to the question of how
geographers should involve themselves in the environmental debate, I will argue (possibly at my peril) that they are all too frequently conspicuous by their absence when
and where it really matters” (Castree 2002, p. 358).
It is one thing that studies in the human-environment tradition proceeded in ways
that largely ignored global environmental change half a century ago. It is quite
another thing and far more striking that pari passu with the anthropogenic climate
change thesis gains currency, geographers are conspicuous by their absence. Insofar
as this is the case, it is not only striking, it must also cause puzzle and concern.
Where on earth are they? Have they lost courage?
he aim of this study is twofold. First, I aim to provide an examination of geographers’ engagement in environmental debates or the lack of engagement. hus I
address university scholars’ articulation of responses and responsibilities, in representing the socio-environmental interface, how it is socially construed, made and
remade (Braun and Castree 1998) in curricula concerning global environmental
change. Exploring how socio-environmental curricula get produced is particularly
interesting in the subject of geography and yet, in line with Castree’s observation, I
suspect, it receives little priority in the education of geographers. “Although humanenvironment research is thriving in geography and receiving recognition outside the
INTRODUCTION
13
discipline, the curriculum—which we contend is the bedrock of future development
in the field—is wanting” (Yarnal and Nef 2004, p. 28).
Insofar as geographers ind themselves in “a disciplinary inferiority complex that stops
us producing ‘big environmental ideas” as Castree (2002, p. 362) speculates, I ind
it particularly relevant to take up utopian environmental ideas like sustainability
for inspection in order to examine how geographers shape environmental debates
in a period of time when the anthropogenic climate change thesis seems widely
manifested in academia (Chapter 1).
Second, inspired by the social nature approach (Castree 2001), I address geographers in their making of socio-natural representations, and their articulation of
dilemmas, controversies and contradictions concerning sustainability in curricula.
hus, it is part of the project to examine where geographical educations are heading
and which struggles and interests involved in representing global environmental
change. Addressing political ecologies through education of geographers and how
diferent kinds of social natures are being taught and embodied (e.g. manifested
through concepts like sustainability or the anthropocene), I address methodological, theoretical and political implications hereof. A substantial part of the dissertation therefore will deal with philosophy of science. As my research interest
lies in the interface between geographical imaginations and geographical identities
relating to cultural politics of representing socio-environmental change, I address
dilemmas concerning geographer’s articulation of responses and responsibilities,
and not least as participants themselves, in construing and approaching the socionatural interface (Demeritt 2009).
By pointing to the work of David Harvey and Noel Castree the study of sustainability challenges cannot be meaningfully undertaken without addressing power
relations within the wider context in which relationships between nature, society
and geographical education gets constituted. Exploring geographer’s articulation
of responses and responsibilities as a ight over assembling socio-environmental
curricula, it is not only a matter of examination. Insofar as geographers are reluctant to address global environmental change in these anthropogenic times, the
intention is also to challenge status quo. In consequence, this study is located in
three distinct and yet related bodies of literature.
14
INTRODUCTION
Relationships between geography, knowledge and responsibility are indeed a sensible issue, when approaching debates concerning anthropogenic climate change.
As Castree (2014, p. xvii) notes, scholars and their institutions have a particular
responsibility, as researchers publish countless papers that shape thinking, imaginations and future actions concerning global environmental change. Recently
a number of geographers (e.g. Massey 2004, McEvan and Goodman 2010) have
called for a more irm examination of responsible geographies. Highlighted as the
‘moral-turn’ (though frankly, it is nothing new) these authors call for interventions and practices that address connections between moral agency, knowledge
production, ethics and politics. he moral turn has covered a vast spectrum of
issues including environmental (injustice), the climate change thesis and so forth.
Although connections have been made and the ethics of sustainability are compatible
with the ethics of care” (Cheryl. 2010 et al., p. 106) the ‘moral turn’ has yet to be
linked with the sustainability in higher education literature. hough this study
is not directly anchored in the body of literature concerning ‘the moral turn in
geography’, I ind inspiration from the ‘relational understanding of responsibility’ (Massey 2004) and take it into a wider debate of geographical education in
examining geographers response when representing the socio-natural interface.
he body of literature addressing the sustainability in higher education debate (see
chapter 6 for a state of the art discussion) can both be embodied in geography
(e.g. Huckle 2002, Bednarz 2006, Sayer 2009 or Lui 2011) and approached in a
more interdisciplinary tone (Weisz and Clark 2011). In both cases sustainability
in higher education or sustainability science literature set a normative horizon
that orchestrates an ethical obligation to address sustainability across disciplines.
“I think that no matter what faculty students are doing their degree in, every student
should take a course on sustainability. Maybe one term in their irst year. herefore,
no matter if you are an economic student, a music student, an engineer, or whatever,
you take a course on sustainability. It is so central to how we deal with 21-century
problems that it should be a mandatory course for everybody” (Interview, Will Stefen).
As the idea of the knowledge society is institutionalized insisting on multidisciplinary and user driven innovation to approach societal challenges like sustainability
and climate change I also draw inspiration from a series of critical analyses on the
marketization of universities (e.g. Castree and Sparke 2000, Dowling 2008, Berg
2012). Relating this tincture of geographical work to the body of the sustainability
in higher education literature (Higgit 2006, Maxey 2009). I seek to anchor this
examination in a much more critical fashion than much work on sustainability
in academia, that have often gloomed by the absence of analysing power relations
INTRODUCTION
15
(Mansield 2009). Both David Harvey and Noel Castree use the term sustainability
in various and highly fascinating ways1 and ind critical ways of embracing its fallacies. Inspired by the space-time dialectics of David Harvey and Noel Castree and
their treatment of concepts like sustainability, I indend a similar critical curve in
examining the multiple ways in which sustainability inds its way into academia.
In scrutinizing the ways in which socio-environmental problems is framed by the
Danish geographical community I will render a critical study of geographers in
action when representing the socio-environmental interface through sustainability
concepts. What is the role of sustainability in geography in shaping responses to
environmental change in the Anthropocene?
1 “Environmental policy is frequently a means whereby those in positions of power further their
own interests, it is also an essential instrument for achieving a more just and sustainable future”
(Castree 2002, p. 360). “It is hard to oppose all of this speciicity and particularity without appeal
to universal principles. Dispossession entails the loss of rights. Hence the turn to a universalistic
rhetoric of human rights, dignity, sustainable ecological practices, environmental rights, and
the like, as the basis for uniied oppositional politics” (Harvey 2005, p. 178). “he sprawling
urbanization process was dynamic, but both environmentally unsustainable and geographically
uneven” (Harvey, 2012, p. 50). “It [Capitalism red.] is inherently growth-oriented: proit rather
than, say, social equity or environmental sustainability, is the primary goal” (Castree 2001, p.
193).
16
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
When Climate Changes Science
-Change(?)
“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted
counts”
William Bruce Cameron
In 2004 Naomi Oreskes wrote a short paper. A short paper, now heavily quoted,
in which she claims that scientiic consensus on climate change exists to the extent that 97 % of research articles in high-impact factor journals like Science and
Nature, conirm the thesis that climate change is fundamentally anthropogenic.
Having examined 928 abstracts of peer reviewed articles in journals specialized
in climate change she concludes that no article in her (construed) data set refutes
the thesis on human induced climate change: “virtually all professional climate
scientists…agree on the reality of human-induced climate change, debate continues
on tempo and mode” (Oreskes 2004, p. 1686).
he planetary crisis, on which scientists seem to form a common consensus platform does not imply a new era of ‘consensus science’. Rather it imposes challenges
to ‘classical’ socio-natural epistemologies, academic responses and responsibilities.
First scientiic work, processes of understanding, and truth seeking is not a
matter of voting. hough 97 percent of an epistemic research community ind
evidence of climate change to be anthropogenic, the three percent can be right.
he validity of scientiic indings is not judged on the basis of voting, ratiied
in the court or through political processes by the government (in that sense
fundamentally undemocratic). Scientiic indings achieve its validity, reliability
and truthfulness due to scientiic methods, standards, systematic scrutinizaCHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
17
tion, ongoing veriication, etc. Nevertheless scientiic standards, methods, and
processes of veriication are dynamic and change over time as new ‘common
knowledge’ gets established.
Second, responses and responsibilities to climate change are generated in a wide
spectrum of possible outcomes, among individuals, diferent social groups, institutions, organizations, and governments (Chakrabarty 2009). Although consensus
seems established and situates anthropogenic climate change as a ‘scientiic fact’, a
multitude of (possible) responses within and beyond ‘the ivory tower’ are produced.
hese ‘scientiic facts’ have the conjoint capacity to assemble scientists and nonhuman nature in ways that afect one another. he consensus thesis, however, does
not imply a new era of ‘consensus science’ on the matter of climate(s). Rather the
apparently new paradigm of ‘scientiic consensus’ is far from establishing a new
consensus as to scientiic response(abilities), methods, standards and approaches
in conceptualizing the human-environment nexus. It produces interdisciplinary,
integrative, and epistemological challenges.
hird, the consensus thesis on anthropogenic climate change is a process of
socializing nature (Castree 2001). As Malm and Hornborg (2014, p. 66) argue
anthropogenic climate change involves a more serious examination of “humanity”
as a driving force, not the natural. Hereby they point to the social practices, power
and biases that incur both in the natural and social sciences. To claim that global
warming is real and is caused by humans is to claim that nature is also social
(Braun and Castree 1998) and yet basic natural laws are unafected. he process
of socializing nature produces a number of scientiic tensions and interests, internally within the scientiic process of conducting knowledge and externally as to
societal responses to that knowledge. he recognition that global environmental
change somehow is socially produced is precisely the core of the consensus thesis, while the idea of an external and objective nature is uphold by the natural
sciences (Demeritt 2002), e.g. in the modelling culture on climate changes (see
chapter 8). his produces challenges within both the social and natural sciences
in assembling the natural and social.
18
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
Certainly there exists some kind of scientiic consensus on anthropogenic climate change, and Oreskes’ (2004) thesis can be conirmed in a number of ways1.
Quasi-scientiic bodies like IPCC (2007), UNEP, and the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) are not alone in this stance (Table 1.1).
Bodies like the American Geophysical Union (AGU 2013), American Physical Society (APS 2007), UK Royal Society (RS and NAS 2014), US National Academy of
Sciences (RS and NAS 2014), he American Meteorological Society (AMS 2014),
the Geological Society of America (GSA 2010), the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS 2009), American Chemical Society (ACS 2013),
and many more, have all featured reports, resolutions or consensus statements in
which they ind the evidence on anthropogenic climate change overwhelming to
the extent that they urge societal responses to it (Appendix 1.1).
In line with the above mentioned science institutions and academies (Table 1.1
and Appendix 1.1) the American Physical Society is pretty straight forward in
envisioning particular socio-ecological futures: “If no mitigating actions are taken,
signiicant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems,
security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse
gases beginning now” (APS 2007, p. 1). hus, the Science Academies (Table 1.2 and
Appendix 1.1) collectively urge for global responses to the current knowledge on
climate change. As such APS envisions long term sustainable post carbon societies
and Earth-System management stabilized within planetary capacities, boundaries,
limits, and dynamics.
One could now expect geographical societies have responded in similar ways
– envisioning similar utopian post-carbon and sustainable futures. In contrast,
1 Cook et al. (2013) ind 97.1 % of more than 4000 peer reviewed articles from the past 20 years
support the thesis that global warming is mainly or entirely human induced. NASA (2014) also
conirms the inding on 97 %, that ‘climate scientists’ ind global warming is real and triggered
by humans. Doran and Zimmerman (2009) suggest that 93% of actively publishing climate
scientists ind that humans have contributed to global warming. Also Anderegg et al. (2010)
and Stenhouse et al., (2014) conirm these studies, though the latter report that 75% of AMS
members actively publishing on climate change, “view human activity as the primary cause of
recent climate change” (Stenhouse et al., 2014, p. 1035).
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
19
Table1.1: Science Academies and Response (abilities) to Climate Change
American Geophysical Union
(AGU 2013)
American Physical
Society
(APS 2007)
UK Royal Society (RS) and US
National Academy
of Sciences
(RS and NAS
2014)
he American
Meteorological
Society
(AMS 2014)
he Geological
Society of America
(GSA 2010)
20
“Humanity is the major inluence on the global climate change observed
over the past 50 years. Rapid societal responses can signiicantly lessen
negative outcomes. Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At
the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other
heat‐trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial
Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase. Human‐caused
increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed
global average surface warming of roughly 0.8°C (1.5°F) over the past
140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these
gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present,
and future emissions will inluence the climate system for millennia”
(AGU 2013, p. 1). Reairmed 2003, 2007, 2012, and 2013.
”he evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no
mitigating actions are taken, signiicant disruptions in the Earth’s physical
and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are
likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning
now” (APS, 2007).
“Climate change is one of the deining issues of our time. It is now
more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans
are changing Earth’s climate. he atmosphere and oceans have warmed,
accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other
climate-related changes” (RS and NAS 2014, Foreword).
‘‘here is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the
Earth’s surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in
the past 200 years. here is also clear evidence that the abundance of
greenhouse gases has increased over the same period (…). Because human activities are contributing to climate change, we have a collective
responsibility to develop and undertake carefully considered response
actions’’ (AMS 2014, p. 1). reairmed from 2003
”he Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments
by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research
Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities
(mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since
the middle 1900s.” (GSA 2010). he text is from 2006 revised 2010.
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
American Association for the
Advancement of
Science
(AAAS 2009)
American Chemical Society
(ACS 2013)
“he American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
has reairmed the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of
18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of
scientiic evidence that global climate change caused by human activities
is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society. he vast preponderance of evidence, based on years of research conducted by a wide array of
diferent investigators at many institutions, clearly indicates that global
climate change is real, it is caused largely by human activities, and the
need to take action is urgent” (AAAS 2009, p. 1). In 2006, the AAAS
board made a similar statement.
”Comprehensive scientiic assessments of our current and potential future
climates clearly indicate that climate change is real, largely attributable to
emissions from human activities, and potentially a very serious problem”
(2013). Note the text is originally from 2004, reairmed 2013.
however, the UK Royal Geographical Society (RGS)2, Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG), Geographical Society of China (GSC),
American Geographical Society (AGS), German Geographical Society (DGfG),
Danish Royal Geographical Society (DGS), Russian Geographical Society (RGS
Russia), Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), Norwegian Geographical
Society (NGS), French Geographical Society (FGS), Indian Geographical Society (ISG) have not prepared such policy statements, resolutions or declarations3
. As far as I know, only the Association of American Geographers (AAG 2006)
and the International Geographical Union (IGU 2007) have made an English
written, publically available resolution, declaration or policy statement on climate
change (Box 1.2). Whereas the AAG made a resolution on climate change in 2006,
the RGS has not done so nor participated in any joint declaration. hus, AAG
2 hough no policy statements, recommendations, resolutions or declarations, the RGS strategy
states; “In the coming years we shall witness ever more rapid changes in technology, a more
globalized economy, changes in our climate, pressure on mineral and water resources as never
before and, almost certainly, changes in where and how we live. As the human population soars
towards the 8 billion mark, the pressures on the planet and its inite resources will increase and
with it will come ever greater need for people to understand how we are changing our planet
and how we can better manage it” (RGS 2012, p. 2). his may apply for the other Geographical
Societies as well.
3 he research was undertaken during the fall of 2014, consulting each society’s homepage. It
must be noted that the search was only done in English (apart from the Nordic geographical
societies) and thus, resolutions, statements or declarations may have been prepared in the
societies respective languages.
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
21
Box 1.2: AAG Resolution Requesting Action
on Climate Change
(passed March 11, 2006)
“WHEREAS,
Climate change is a process that constitutes a major threat to Earth’s environment and
to the well-being of people in all nations;
WHEREAS,
Geography is an integrative science that synthesizes and analyzes data regarding humanenvironmental relationships, thereby increasing understanding about global climate
change and contributing to more informed policy decisions;
WHEREAS,
Members of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) petitioned the AAG
Council to consider this issue;
WHEREAS,
Global scientiic eforts established a substantial body of evidence and reached a
scientiic consensus on global climate change, including reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
(ACIA), among others;
WHEREAS,
he International Polar Year for science and research takes place from March 1, 2007
to March 1, 2009, focusing on the Polar Regions, which are afected by climate change
at a greater rate than middle and lower latitudes; and
WHEREAS,
Eleven national science academies, including the US National Academy of Sciences,
issued a joint statement on June 7, 2005, that calls on world leaders to take prompt
action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts, and include the
issue in all relevant national and international strategies.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that,
he Association of American Geographers (AAG) airms the international scientiic
consensus on climate change, including endorsement of the June 7, 2005, joint statement of the national academies entitled “Global Response to Climate Change”;
continues next page
22
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that,
he AAG urges the US Government to take a leadership role in addressing climate
change, support open scientiic debate about the issue, and fully cooperate with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment (ACIA) of the Arctic Council, the national science academies, and other
governmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as with the international
community of countries, to better scientiically understand climate change and to
develop sound policies to attenuate greenhouse gas emissions;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that,
he AAG enjoins the US Government to act upon commitments made by the US
in the UNFCCC, May 9, 1992, and ratify the Kyoto Protocol and Rulebook that is
presently international law;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that,
he AAG encourages geographers to continue to engage in climate change research,
education [emphasis added], scientiic assessments, policy discussions, and political
action, as they deem appropriate; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that,
he AAG, as an important representative organization of geographic science, direct its
Council and President to establish a committee to draft a formal position paper as a
reference document on global climate change” (AAG Resolution on Climate Change
2006, p. 1-2).
and RGS respond in diferent ways. Nevertheless the scientiic consensus thesis on
climate change seems also strongly manifested within the discipline of geography.
Responses to the scientiic consensus on climate change are organized geographically
by ways in which they also surpass disciplinary borders e.g. of geography. Insofar as
institutional and disciplinary responses to climate change vary, it can be noted that
academic Societies from Arts and Humanities have not so far responded to climate
change with similar position statements, resolutions or declarations. According to
Malm and Hornborg (2014) climate change discourses are largely dominated by
science, not by social scientists, and the growing recognition that humanity is transforming the geo-biosphere is mainly orchestrated from science. his is paradoxical
since the natural science claim humans are the dominant force in transforming the
climate (Barnosky et al., 2014) and yet the dominant scientiic view has clung to the
idea that nature is external. he academic work has been organized into disciplinary
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
23
constructs, so that the natural sciences dealt with nature, and if nature was ever dealt
with within the Humanities and Arts, it was as cultural assemblages (Harvey 1996).
hus it can be observed that responses to the ‘scientiic consensus on anthropogenic
climate change’ are dissipated and organized vertically between disciplines and
horizontally within particular disciplines, traditions and epistemic communities.
It should be noted that the level of ‘convince’ is both disciplinary organized into
diferent epistemic communities, and methodological sensible e.g. with respect of
the use of terminology. Hereby it relects the traditional one dimensional division of
academic labor between the natural and social sciences, whereby response(abilities)
to climate change form academic geographies (of socio-natural engagement), e.g.
through institutional writings of such responses (universities, science bodies and
academies), epistemic boundaries, (inter)disciplinary responses as well as in terms
of relevance, urgency and positionality.
Whereas responsibility refers to a concern for and/or taking care/action of the socionatural assemblage in long term post-fossil and sustainable ways (e.g. as represented
by the Science Academies above), responses refer to all sorts of social outcomes (e.g.
climate gradualism, climate catastrophism or climate skepticism), and the social practices of valuation, evaluation, judging and representing the socio-environmental nexus.
1.1 Responsible Geographies
Whatever response(ability) academics, institutions or societies take with regard
to the scientiic consensus on anthropogenic climate change, the consensus is
precisely that humans including scientists write particular socio-natural and geographical futures with diferent socio-ecological and meteorological outcomes. It
follows that science impacts at a planetary level are not politically neutral, have
never been, and cannot be for reasons that will be discussed in greater detail in
chapter 4. he inculcation of the ideology of science thesis, however, is anything
but new (e.g. Harvey 1974b, p. 256). Whereas the natural science model assumes scientiic knowledge is value-free and universally true for all people, places,
and times (rinsed or corrected for the researcher’s positionality), the ideology of
science thesis inds it is impossible to separate scientiic conduct, methods, and
purpose from the context in which that knowledge is produced (Haraway 1988).
All researchers agree that bias is unacceptable and uphold a clear distinction bet24
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
ween science and ideology. But from the ideology of science perspective: “Bias
comes not from having ethical and political positions – this is inevitable – but from
not acknowledging them. Not only does such acknowledgment help to unmask any bias
that is implicit in those views, but it helps to provide a way of responding critically
and sensitively to the research” (Griith 1998, p. 133).
Such assumptions have a long and widespread history corralled into a vast body
of traditions, covering various forms of Science and Technology Studies, Critical
Pragmatism, neo-Marxism, post-Colonialism, Feminism, Structuralism or neoModernism. What is new is the recognition that scientiic work impacts at a planetary scale. hus the scientiic consensus on climate change encounters socio-natural
processes that implies an ethic of responsibility4 (within and across disciplines of
examining, exploring, judging and evaluating the human environment nexus)
rather than solely and ethic of conviction (Castree, Demeritt and Liveman 2009,
p. 10), precisely because it produces an impact on socio-environmental futures.
Insofar as epistemic communities recognize their reading and writing produce an
impact regardless of positionality, responses to the anthropogenic climate change
commands and ‘experimental ethos’ (Lorimer 2012) imposing ‘grant’ ethics and
responsibilities across scale, imaginary and disciplinary borders as to our role in
determining and co-producing global environmental change. “Taking responsibility
for how our engagement and intervention in nature proceeds, and the consequences
to diferent social groups, what is it to act responsibly, to act with awareness that we
will surely be answerable for our actions? How should we relate the unfolding of this
moment of responsibility, so that we can perceive what is being demanded of us at this
time?” (Szerszynski 2010, p. 10).
4 Originally Max Weber suggested two political educational purposes: ethic of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) and ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik).
Ethic of responsibility refers to the belief that an action only has meaning if it produces (known,
assumed or believed) empirical efects, hence desired outcomes. Desired outcomes are aligned
to cause and efect and why actors individually or collectively correct procedures (technical
instrumentality) for fulilling aims that are oriented toward desired actions and consequence.
Ethic of conviction refers to the free and autonomous choice of value and meaning, and is
sometimes seen as opposite to ethics of responsibility. For Weber however, ethic of conviction
is a boundary concept, where individuals have to create purpose, meaning and positionality,
through a series of individual and collective decisions. In other words one can only take responsibility if it is individually desired, with individual or collective aims. Only then, the two
forms of ethics become commensurable (Sung Ho, 2012).
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
25
As the above examination of Science Academies (Table 1.1) illustrates, these
scientiic institutions produce rhetorical ‘political ecological’ commitments to act
in responsible ways. Whatever concept (form of appearance) through which the
problematic is addressed; sustainability, the anthropocence5, geo-engineering6,
resilience or climate adaption/mitigation, they all (though in quit diferent ways)
seek to address the socio-natural dynamics that lie behind (form of realization).
Looking at how universities are responding to climate change, the notion of
sustainability remains dominant to academic institutions, climate policies, and
strategies, though epistemic responses(abilities) are highly contested (see Box 1.11.2). By way of illustration the so-called top 25 ranked universities in the world
(Times Higher Education) and their institutional response (abilities) toward addressing climate change is most frequently featured around the notion of sustainability (Appendix 1.2). It is symptomatic to note how accepted these quantitative
matrixes have been for measuring qualitative change, and how at the same time
ranking systems that measure greening of university campi are disregarded (e.g.
Green League in the UK). It is far easier to measure and to quantify quantitative
features like, co2 emission, waste, water or energy consumption from a particular
campus than to transform qualitative features like ‘quality and excellence’ into
quantitative. If ranking systems is an account of anything relevant for scientists
at work (gain insights, discover, understand, perceive, know, explain and comprehend), it counts, accounts, internalizes and produces power (see chapter 2).
hus, universities and academic institutions internalize power and demonstrate
how crucial these processes are as to the cultural politics of representing the socionatural interface e.g. through sustainability (Harvey 1996, p. 68).
Despite endless criticism for more than four decades sustainability seems featured as one of the most dominant rhetorical responses in university and science
institutions’ policies and strategies (Box 1.1-1.2 and Appendix 1.2). hus the
most ‘mainstream’ response(abilities) from science institutions to the recognition
5 he Anthropocene narrative holds the perspective that James Watt’s invention of the steam
engine is the fundamental dynamic behind global environmental change (see Glossary). I reject
that, through the example of Jevons theorem.
6 Geo-engineering is like postponing the problem into the future (like ‘to pie in the trousers’),
and similarly to carbon management responses that fail to integrate the multiple and social
dynamics that take part in shaping our future climate, I will examine how geographers respond
through sustainability.
26
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
of global environmental interdependence, anthropogenic climate change, the
anthropocene or planetary boundaries have been to produce policy statements,
institutional commitments, discourses and agendas for sustainability in all sort of
ways. Whereas a number of new terms like geo-engineering, planetary ecosystem
governance or the anthropocene have bargained terrain in academic discourses,
sustainability has been preached for 40 years or so (Carson 1962, Meadows et al.,
1972, Brundtland 1987).
In the same period of time, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere grew from
337 PPM (approx. growth rate were 0.85 per cent per year in the 1960 to 2.0 per
cent per year in the 2010) to 398 PPM as of 2014 (US NOAA 2014). During that
period, nearly three-quarters of the anthropogenic driven rise in CO2 concentration
took place. Accompanied by a 15 fold increase in the global economy (Stefen,
Crutzen and McNeill 2007, p. 618), a tripling in the petroleum consumption, and
a global energy supply that increased from 6107 Mtoe in 1971 to 12.717 Mtoe
in 2012 (IEA 2012), it seems polemic to talk about sustainability (Appendix 1.3).
Rather William Stanley Jevons’ (1835-1882) theorem applies. In he Coal Question
(1866) Jevons remarks that greater eiciency in the use of fossil fuels leads to an
overall increased demand. “Now the same principles apply, with even greater force
and distinctness, to the use of such a general agent as coal. It is the very economy of
its use which leads to its extensive consumption. It has been so in the past, and it will
be so in the future. Nor is it diicult to see how this paradox arises” (Jevons 1866,
chapter VII, p. 6)7.
7 Note that Jevons refers to coal as an agent (a geological agent), relevant to discussion in Chapter 8, on the use and practice of modelling. Given that coal is a inite resource, Jevons raised
the question of ‘sustainability’ as part of what is nowadays referred the peak oil hypothesis,
including subjects like limits to growth, over population and the ‘resilience’ of single resource
dependency.
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
27
his is another way of saying that since the industrial revolution or so energy freed
when scientists and entrepreneurs invent a new method, practice or technology,
has been used elsewhere so the net-demand has increased8.
As sustainability challenges have been outspoken for more than four decades now,
and the collective path have been fundamentally unsustainable, it is ever more
relevant to ind “critical ways to think about how diferences in ecological, economic,
cultural, political and social conditions get produced” (Harvey 1996, p. 5) in examining how concepts like sustainability inds its way into academia.
Contradictions of sustainability however, are not so interesting in itself (see chapter 4). Geographers have a long history of, (as a number of related disciplines)
pointing towards them (Castree 2001, Huckle 2002, Mansield 2009, Chatterton
and Masey 2009, Morgan 2011). What is far more interesting is how academics
respond to them. As geography professors are all aware of contradictions of sustainability I shall particularly address contested ideas of sustainability and how
geographers in their teaching practices respond to and “encourages geographers to
continue to engage in climate change research, education, scientiic assessments, policy
discussions, and political action” (AAG 2006, p. 2).
1.2 Geographies of Response
Disciplines do not represent themselves, disciplines are represented. Insofar as
academia is organized into divisions of disciplinary work, geography is one organized between the natural and social sciences. Within the academic division
of labor, the birth of modern geography in the UK for instance (established as a
8 Similarly Max Weber (1864-1920), emphasized the rationality of fossil fuel consumption in relation to his well-known iron cage (instrumental rationality): “he tremendous cosmos of modern
economic order…is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism,
not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it
will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal [fuel] is burnt” (Weber 1930, p. 181,
here quoted from Szerszynski, 2005, p. 24). Despite his early ‘prediction’ of the fossil fuel nexus
to the rise of modernity and the spirit of capitalism, he has only recently been reexamined in
socio-ecological debates. Weber, however, analyses processes of rationalization developed on the
basis of religious world views, and he fails to understand the multiple dynamics of modernity
related to scientiic progress.
28
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
university discipline), became a gathering point in which Mackinder argued, that
geography should “bridge one of the greatest of all gaps” (Mackinder 1887, p. 145)
referring to the disciplinary division between the natural sciences and humanities.
“Although space and region have since joined human-environment relations as central organizing concepts for the discipline [geography red.], many still see geography
as the ‘original integrated environmental science” (Castree et al., 2009, p. 1).
his stance has been made throughout the history of the discipline and Turner
(2002), Yarnal and Nef (2004), and Zimmerer (2007) have recently argued that
human–environment relations are a unifying subject that holds the discipline
(physical and human geographers) together. hus, the teaching of geography has
both in the past and in the present sought academic identity through ‘the geographical experiment’; that is, ‘an experiment in keeping nature and culture under
the one umbrella’ (Livingstone 1992, p. 190).
Whereas the argument at Mackinder’s time, to ill the gap of academic work
divisions by establishing a new discipline today’s work divisions are quite diferent. Since the 1960s the integrative approach has melted into a broad spectrum
of related nature-society disciplines (e.g. ecological economics, environmental
sociology, environmental management, industrial ecology, sustainability science,
earth system science and climate science to mention a few). hese newer disciplines re-shape disciplinary boarders and change the ‘socio-natural divisions of
work’ in ways that are both an opportunity and a challenge to geography. While
modern geography has addressed the human-environmental nexus for more than
two centuries, there are simply too many epistemic communities interested in the
subject to be let alone to geographers (hrift 2002). Rather, and due to increasing
competition, the newer disciplines have come to occupy much of that (academic)
space so that “especially in North America, Environmental Studies have replaced
Geography at many universities” (Rasmussen and Arler 2010, p. 40).
Processes reshaping the socio-natural interface organized according to (inter)disciplines also relate to changes in funding structures. As universities are undergoing
profound changes in governance structures these years, division of academics at
work cannot be written without including these wider processes of marketization
and disciplinary market segmentation (see Chapter 2). While an increasing body
of science funding agencies (e.g. US NRC 2010) allocates money for ‘integrative
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
29
environmental science’ (as responses to climate change and sustainability challenges
among others) it is both an opportunity and a challenge to geography. An opportunity in that it remains one of the ‘core’ areas kept under the (disciplinary) umbrella
of (environmental) geography (Turner 2002, Castree et al., 2009). A challenge in
that it reconigures disciplinary borders that are not supportive in bringing physical
and human geographers together. As hrift puts it (2002, p. 292) ‘times are with
geography’, yet challenging to the discipline. hough neoliberal trends in university governance concurrently support interdisciplinary and collaborative projects
through (inter) disciplinary alliance imposed by co-research funding schemes, it
does not necessarily make space for sustainability in academia (Maxey 2009).
As Castree, Demeritt and Liverman, (2009, p. 14) argue: “here is no ‘context-free’
knowledge and the precise role that environmental geographers play in wider epistemic
debates on human–environment relations in academia and society will depend almost
entirely upon how the university (re)deines itself as an institution”.
hese wider trends of neoliberalizing universities do not only reconigure what it
means to be an academic and a geographer, but reshape disciplinary boundaries,
responses and responsibilities to climate change (Dowling 2010). In chapter 2, I
examine in greater detail how these neoliberal processes of governing higher education also co-produce academic spaces of (un)sustainability that are particularly
subject to external pressures, students’ ‘career’ choices and interests that ‘act’ in
‘competition’ (Castree 2011).
In an interview with Nigel hrift with regard to academic responsibilities on
climate change, these multifaceted dilemmas are beautifully conveyed: “Well irst
I am not sure if they [universities red.] have any more responsibility than many other
institutions. Neither I am sure if geographers have any more responsibility than other
disciplines. But, if you wanted to argue that case, I think that it will be on the basis
that they [universities red.] educate large numbers for the future planet. For me that is
probably the most important responsibility they have and that education should include
some issues around sustainability. his can be addressed in many diferent ways, in
curricula, in the environment itself, and actually funny enough, having in all processes
at the university, some reference to measurement of sustainability (…). he only issue
I face is you need some way of judging that in comparison to other topics that should
be part of curriculum as well. And I think sustainability is an important value, but
it is not the only one” (Interview, Nigel hrift).
30
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
Like many other disciplines geography ights for its place, territory, borders and
disciplinary right under increasing marketization of academia. Fights that produce
spaces of (un)sustainability while ighting for the subject in academia and geography.
It is now more than forty years ago Peter Gould famously called on geographers to
relect on and review their curricula (Gould 1973), since they take part in shaping
and governing our thoughts, imaginations, aspirations, emotions and actions. As
Geography education is not only exploring and teaching what the human-environmental interface is about, but also how it is made sensible and co-produced for,
with and/or by the students it covers a vast spectrum of responsibilities in capturing
and dealing with it (Castree 2014). Governing higher education with reference to
socio-natures therefore is much more than explaining the state of climate change
in the 21st century, but a process of reading, writing and re-making it (Braun and
Castree 1998, Szerszynski 2010). To examine how geographers (at Danish Universities) respond and produce responsibilities to global environmental challenges
through ights over assembling curricula when exposed to sustainability (1.1- 1.3)
the following research questions are addressed: What are the role(s) of sustainability
in geography in shaping socio-environmental debates in the Anthropocene?
1.3 Research Questions:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What spaces of work do the introduction of the market in academia, leave
for sustainability analysis in geography? (Chapter 2)
Why is the power of reference crucial for how academics and geographers
(academia) incorporate/make use of sustainability in academia? (Chapter 3)
How is the dialectical approach developed to examine how geographers
respond to the paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas of sustainability?
(Chapter 4)
What does the ‘geographical experiment’ look like when confronted with
climate change and sustainability? (Chapter 5)
How do geographers conceptualize response(abilities) to issues of sustainability and climate change in education programs? (Chapter 6)
How do geographers respond to the paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas of sustainability? (Chapter 7)
What can critical human geography ofer climate change modelling?
(Chapter 8)
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
31
1.4 Structure of the Dissertation
he research is not only designed as an exploration of how geographers respond
to dilemmas of sustainability, but also what they say about political-economic
organization and how geographers respond to it. Hereby research questions dialectically comprehend a horizontal and institutional analysis of university responses
to climate change and a vertical analysis, in examining the discipline of geography.
he study takes a second nature approach in examining the politics of representing
nature and particularly addresses ight over representing socio-ecological changes
through sustainability concepts in curricula. hus the study does not concern
didactics and how students learn (un)sustain(abilities), but solely addresses the
ights over representing nature through sustainability in curricula.
he dissertation is divided into three Parts. Part 1 ‘Sustainability as a Double Edged
Sword’ (including this chapter) addresses the problems from a wider institutional context and relates it to the discipline. Chapter 2 “Critical Geography and
the Neoliberal University” examines how marketization of universities change
conditions for academics at work with impact in shaping spaces of sustainability,
responses and responsibilities, internally and externally. Hereby it illustrates the
multifaceted character of academia’s responses to (un)sustainability and addresses
the changing climate for academics at work and climate change entangled between
internal and external activism.
Part 2 ‘Anthologies and Ontologies on Social Nature(s)’ takes a second nature approach
in building a comprehensive methodological framework to address contradictions
of sustainability in geography and academia. Chapter 3 considers the power of
reference and examines sustainability concepts in between keywords and buzzword.
Whereas Chapter 4 “Space-Time Dialectics and Contradictions of Sustainability”
provides a methodological foundation from which contradictions of representing
socio-natural changes through sustainability concepts are addressed, Chapter 5
“A heory of Spatio Temporal Tides and Waves” takes a history-geographical approach in representing socio-natural changes.
Part 3 ‘Geographers at Work: Reclaiming the high Grounds and Sustainability Contradictions’ is divided into three chapters that present an empirical analysis of how
geographers make use of sustainability in Danish University Geography Programs.
Chapter 6 “Geographers at Work: Re-Naturalizing the Human-Environment
32
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
heme” examines how geographers ind sustainability theses relevant to their discipline but reluctant to explicate it in the classroom. Chapter 7 critically addresses
how sustainability produces signiicant dilemmas that tend to frame education as a
change agent that socializes students to accept certain kinds of explanations, values
and pre-analytic assumptions. hen internal and external contradictory elements
are examined, both within and across diferent sustainability approaches, and it is
questioned what we want with the concept in geography. he inal chapter discusses
the role of geography in shaping environmental debates in an era of the Anthropocene. In turning to the “he Social Nature(s) of Climate Change Modelling” it
critically addresses modelling culture when confronted with multilateral ontologies.
CHAPTER 1. WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES SCIENCE -CHANGE(?)
33
Chapter 2
Critical Geography and the
Neoliberal University
“he school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to
economize.”
(Franklin D. Roosevelt)
In 1798 Immanuel Kant wrote ‘Der Streit der Facultäten’. A short text, nowadays
barely quoted, in which he celebrates the scientiic ight between faculties and
disciplines1. ‘he Dispute between Faculties’ is the last work published by Kant
himself, and often considered a key text for the rise of the modern university.
In the text he outlays the autonomy of universities internally as a ight between
faculties, disciplines and individuals and externally as a ight over independence
from the state and the church while at the same time serving them.
Before we turn to changes in the academic working climate and how spaces
of sustainability mean very diferent things to the management of universities
and critical geographers (academics) at work, we will irst examine Kant’s account on the inner and outer organization of a university. Against this background of thought, the governance of academic knowledge is considered in a
Danish context. As universities are becoming more and more dominant in the
1 he text gives exemplary arguments for the freedom to conduct research which marks a break
with the church and the state. As the irst social scientist pointing toward the modern subject
he points his own philosophy to university governance emphasizing the research process also
as an internal ight between faculties. Later, merging research and education his ideas became
foundational for the rise of the modern Humboldt University. At this point I hope you ponder
what Immanuel Kant has to do with the changing climate and climate change at universities
– if you see no connection at this stage I hope you do so by the end of the chapter.
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
35
knowledge economy, university governance changes in ways that also reconigure circumstances under which sustainability is orchestrated in academia2
. he second part discusses sustainability as a double level of controversy. In addressing the dual character of sustainability it is examined how the concept both
serves as a strategic tool for the management of universities and as a concept for
critical, alternative and emancipatory potentials much related to ideas of academic
freedom. he inal part turns to the convergent and divergent relationships between
sustainability and the liberalizations of universities to examine ways in which
structural changes make space for sustainability in geography.
Questions for the chapter:
•
•
What spaces of work do the introduction of the market in academia, leave
for sustainability analysis in geography?
How does the knowledge economy afect climate(s) under which academics
work, and how do (critical) geographers respond to it?
2.1 Kant and the Dispute between Faculties as Academic Working
Climate(s)
he internal and external dynamics of knowledge production and its organization
is subject to ongoing debate. What is interesting about Der Streit der Facultäten
is not only what it has to say about the organization and relevance of power
relations and (a)symmetries to the conduct of research, but also how this is
spatially nested. As to the internal dispute, Kant found a certain and ‘powerful’
spatial organization of the campus ordered hierarchically between higher and
lower faculties. he higher faculties comprised disciplinary heology, Law and
Medicine. he lower faculties were gathered around disciplines like philosophy,
2 It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to address how market like universities in diferent
spaces and stages (and diferent ways) afect the organization and output of academia. Likewise
it is beyond the scope to address the thesis of declining quality as the critics of this development
often turn to. Embedding the study in a Danish context is both an empirical and practical
necessity
36
CHAPTER 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
history, geography, social studies and natural science (Gerhardt and Meyer 2005)3
. hese distinctions and their disciplinary reputation, power and prestige still
exist, though changed completely as well as they are embodied in hierarchies,
identities and cultures of reputational capital, e.g. through the art of reference
making (Chapter 3). he higher faculties and disciplines difer from lower faculties because they have an immediate purpose or service to provide the state. Kant
calls the students of these disciplines Geschäftsleute, in that they are educated to
serve the interests of the state, not their own personal and free realization (Kant
[1798] 1979)4. Geschäftsleute of today are sometimes measured in monetary terms
as a source of identifying their relative economic contribution to the national
economy: heology, Law and Medicine (servants of the church, servants of the
administration upholding the states dominance and control, and servants securing
its workers’ health). Since Kant the church has been replaced by the market and
Geschäftsleute occupying higher faculties are generally technicians and businessmen conceived higher on the socio-economic ladder than say a geographer. Yet
it is worth mentioning that both lower and higher faculties are regulated by the
state (accreditation), and higher faculties of today (technicians and businessmen)
are less regulated than lower faculties – the less contributing faculties to society in
monetary terms are disciplined in order to sustain economic growth.
he lower faculties in contrast have no responsibilities in the sense that these
disciplines have no purpose or immediate function to serve the government, the
church or the market (those in authority). Lower faculties have nothing to ofer at
irst stance: “It is less essential to the operation of the State” as Evans (2008, p. 486)
phrases it. To Kant of course studies at lower faculties are illuminating/enlighte3 Both lower and higher faculties are regulated by the state why both categories are both different from the Anglo-Saxon university tradition and problematic for universities of today.
Problematic since all disciplines are regulated by the state, they can also be said to be regulated
for the state. In the case of geography (as a lower discipline) the Danish high school reforms
(e.g. the Gymnasiereform 2005) heavily regulates the curriculum, much in favor of physical
geography (another lower faculty discipline at the time - today a higher ordered faculty). hus,
higher and lower faculties can both be said to be hierarchical organized within disciplines and
regulated by the state in securing particular subjects, it be regarded higher or lower or certain
subdivision of the distinction.
4 It is worth noting that the dispute between higher and lower faculties later became foundational
for the distinction between polytechnic institutions and universities. Polytechnic institutions
difer from universities in that the problem based academic work takes part in the form of production. hus, problems are not necessarily derived from ‘truth seeking’ e.g. on climate change
or conditions of (for) sustainability, but on the form of production and their efectiveness.
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
37
ning (idiom to basic research) precisely because lower faculty sciences have no
immediate interests and purpose, apart from searching truthful knowledge, new
insights, and processes of realization: the pursuit of rational enquiry.
Higher and lower faculties also have common grounds: searching for evidence, valid
and true knowledge. Both lower and higher faculties share methods, procedures
and academic standards as the means for the conduct of research. Whereas lower
faculties have truth seeking as the only purpose, according to Kant, higher faculties, besides truth seeking, are also iniltrated by serving other interests (church,
government, agencies or market interests)5. his recognition makes Kant conclude
that: the dispute between faculties serves as a legitimate process of validation
precisely distinguishing scientiic knowledge from other forms of knowledge. In
that Kant distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate processes of validating
scientiic knowledge.
”Indeed, the pursuit of truth requires independence of mind and the possibility,
the right, and even the duty to criticize accepted notions which are adopted by a
given society”
(horens 1996, p. 268).
As power of reason (and abstraction) varies between epistemic communities, conlicts arise from the fact that they overlap and investigate a subject from diferent
disciplinary angels. hese ights are fully legitimate and to Kant disagreement,
rivalry and competition is a key for advancing the research processes. Also ight over
standards, methods and criteria e.g. between faculties, disciplines and individual
researchers are legitimate as long as it (solely) concerns the power of reasoning:
the search for truth (Evans 2008). Illegitimate ights by contrast occur when
epistemic communities exclude other epistemic communities from engaging in
the scientiic debate (individuals, disciplines or traditions as boundary making),
when the scientiic debate is blurred for non-scientiic external purposes, or when
iniltrated with other interests than the pursuit of reason and truth. Illegitimate
ights then turn into dogmatic justiication, evaluation and validation of such
knowledge (Kant [1798] 1979). It is worth mentioning that legitimate and illegitimate ights can both be internal within the dispute between faculties and/
5 It needs hardly to be mentioned that medicine also has truth seeking as the highest goal, not
necessarily being a problem that the research is funded by particular agencies, disseminated
and found useful in society. It is the purpose of scientiic indings. In this respect I distance
from the elitist project of Kant.
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CHAPTER 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
or external. Note how the legitimate and illegitimate ight is not far from what
Castree (2000) terms academic activism inside and outside the discipline. With
the illegitimate ight in mind, however, we irst turn to the external dispute.
As to the external dispute, Kant recognizes that universities are related to the state
as a dispute over control and organization of research and education. he state
is the ruler, the university is its servant: providing knowledge and Geschäftsleute
(Gerhardt and Meyer 2005, p. 41). For Kant the purpose in question is how universities can uphold the freedom to conduct research, ensuring truth seeking and
a legitimate scientiic ight, while being funded by, regulated by and serving the
state. While funding is a crucial subject for the relationship between the university
and the state, Kant stresses the governmental authority, domination and control
(of thought) is the critical factor rather than inancial allocations in themselves
(Evans 2008). Funding is only a means through which domination and ideological control can be manifested. It is worth noting that in systems where private
funding is more widespread these funding schemes are also governed by the state
e.g. through tax reduction (Harvey 2005).
Likewise a dispute in itself is non-scientiic – an intellectual dispute (and associated power relations) is a means through which results, methods, standards and
procedures are scrutinized but, the ight in itself is not ‘truth seeking’ (in that I
distance myself from Kant since I do not conceive intellectual ights necessarily
ensure ‘truth seeking’). he ight itself only (re)distributes power, control and
dominance over truth seeking processes. Hence, asymmetric power relations
(internally between researchers, disciplines or faculties, or externally between the
university and politico-economic interests) may favour particular social interests
rather than valid, accurate and true knowledge. Likewise I should perhaps stress
that in contrast to Kant, I conceive no singular and universal truth or any pregiven and absolute truths (see chapter 4).
While new innovations, inventions, insights and knowledge are not always in the
interest of those in authority6, Kant insists that truth and accurate knowledge is
in the interest of society as a whole (the commons). Kant draws the conclusion
that the external disputes serve another purpose (political ight over resources),
hence illegitimate as to the conduction of independent and true knowledge. Yet
6 Private commons as knowledge control can only be validated by those invited by the principal.
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
39
there are many other interests in play that blur the distinction between internal
and external ights. A case in mind is Bourdieu’s symbolic power in academia
(homo academicus). It is not solely a question whether the ights are internal and
external, but as much a question of who in academia gain the power to deine what
is to be considered legitimate knowledge (Bourdieu 2004). Bourdieu’s symbolic
capital is an element of the external and internal ights knitting them together
and yet characteristics may be distinct in one or both spheres or within epistemic
communities. In chapter 3 I point to the power of making references as a form
of symbolic capital in academia and relate it to Foucault’s “truth regimes”. By
doing so, the ight between truth regimes cannot be upheld in the dualistic construct between internal and external ights, but is complimentary to one another.
Consequently, it is hard to uphold the ‘internal purity’ as fully separated from
the external (and dirty) reality in practice. he internal ights can be just as dirty,
as scientists (internal) studies the (external) world. he truth produced internally
in the university system then, becomes externalized (and internalized) when used
in practice, whether in the ‘politics of earth system governance’ or technological
innovations, it produces an impact. Academic knowledge is external activism and
holds another element blurring the internal and the external, again distinguished
from solely being a matter of symbolic capital.
Kant’s argument appears as if only external ights hold political elements while the
internal and intellectual ight can be freed from such constraints when managed
as ‘the individual freedom to conduct research’. In chapter 4 limitations of such a
stance will be examined in greater detail. While it is hard to uphold Kant’s elitist
and idealistic project it was exactly to distinguish between the internal and external
academic activism (Castree 2000), to ensure the latter. University governance therefore, should be organized in ways that liberate academics at work from external
interests, Kant argued. hus universities, the conduction of research, and teaching
must be independent and secularized from the state or any other interests7.
7 his contrasts to today’s Modus 2 and 3 debates. As a consequence Kant’s universal truth seeking project conined to the internal dispute aligned to ideas of the ivory tower, today’s Modus
1 debate. In contrast to Modus 1, Modus 2 and 3 do not uphold a clear distinction between
internal and the external ight. Rather it should be broken down, e.g. as user driven innovation,
civic science (modus 3) or enhancing relations and the value of universities’ ‘production’, e.g.
between science and industry (Modus 2).
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CHAPTER 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
”he university whose raison d’être, if one compares it to other teaching and research
institutions, lies in its contribution to the development of mankind and society
through the search for truth for its own sake and through its preservation and
dissemination in training elites, and (…) the fulillment of its mission of active
guardian of high level culture”
(horens 2006, p. 96).
Universities’ autonomy is a fundamental pillar for the conduction of independent
knowledge and the individual freedom to seek truthfulness and valid knowledge.
Insofar as knowledge production undergoes an internal ight where lower and higher ordered disciplines critically scrutinize one another, no discipline or individual
have full autonomy in validating the quality of own or others knowledge, and yet
philosophy had a special responsibility, Kant argued (Evans 2008). Philosophy,
Kant argued, has an authoritative role (or higher ordered status) as to the internal
ight, since the discipline has no conlict of interests (Kant [1798]1979). hough
the argument is respectable, its implications are problematic. First, the very
moment a discipline engages in validating applied knowledge on behalf of other
disciplines, it is no longer independent. No discipline, institution nor individual
researcher can be fully liberated from the societal, historical and geographical
context in which they work (see chapter 4). Second, accepting and reconiguring
disciplinary hierarchies exactly suggests that disciplines also serve their own interests. hus Kant directs power to his own discipline (claiming the high grounds,
see Stoddard 1987 in chapter 6), without considering how philosophy will become
iniltrated when ‘monopolizing’ the validating processes of knowledge. hirdly,
the elitist projects of Kant’s ivory tower are based on a philosophy of science in
which the relation between science and societal development is imperfect and
suggesting modus 2 or 3 research approaches as (partly) illegitimate8.
he recognition makes Kant advocate that academic disputes are not only of outmost relevance to the conduction of research, teaching, learning, and processes
of free and independent realization. hat is to say that the internal intellectual
ights serve the state: as a process of evidence, validation and emancipation to the
beneit of humanity (Gerhardt and Meyer 2005).
8 Scientiic production and the individual freedom to conduct research is a structural organization
of power. Obviously, magniicent and truthful knowledge is created outside the boundaries of
academic freedoms. Yet academic freedoms are regarded as one of the central ways in which
production of knowledge is ensured the best quality (horens 1996, p. 272).
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
41
hough Kant concludes the intellectual ight between lower and higher faculties
in particular validates knowledge from the latter, he is far from rejecting external
state regulation. his is a necessity. As long as the relationship between universities
and the state does not interfere with the internal ight, but is managed as an external political ight over size and allocation of resources, (in contrast to deining
problems, themes, approaches or theories) the autonomy of universities and the
basis for pure reasoning will remain intact.
As regulation of higher faculties is complex and subject to governance and control
over the relevant competences, the management of lower faculties is simple, Kant
suggests. he reason is that the only regulating force concerning lower faculties
is reasoning: Critique of Pure Reason (Evans 2008, p. 484). It is symptomatic to
note that Kant leaves space for theology in modern science. For now, however, it is
enough to note that Kant upholds the academic division of work into disciplinary
constructs as the core of serving scientiic ights. I shall return to interdisciplinary
academic spaces at the end of the chapter.
hough dictums from the church can be said to have been replaced by the market,
it is important to stress that the dynamics of the latter are fundamentally diferent9.
While Castree agitates for academic independence he does not share the same vision
of an ‘ivory tower’. Rather it is neither desirable nor possible “A principal function
of universities is not only to create new knowledge (concepts, arguments, evidence, etc.)
but also to ensure that this knowledge travels beyond its originators so as to participate
in the drama that is human existence on the planet” (Castree, 2014, p. xxiv).
Before I examine academic climate(s) and implications for sustainability analysis
under neoliberal changes, I shall irst address the academic dispute over climate
change in between an internal and external (il)legitimate ight.
9 As the church has no relevance on university governance in Scandinavia I do not consider
relations between the state and the church. Yet in claiming the church has been replaced by
the market, it is important to stress the governmental dynamics are fundamentally diferent.
As to the external power inluencing research and education, dictums from the Church were
based on religious dogmatism. hey can so to speak be replicated for centuries with only little change. Ideas of the market as an external power inluencing research and education, in
contrast, is less controllable, transformative and with ever changing dynamics – hence the
circumstances under which the competitive game takes place. hough (market) competition
is a competition (ight) against others to preserving business interests, it is very diferent from
an academic dispute (competition on truth seeking).
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CHAPTER 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
2.2 he Dispute over Climate Change
Chapter 1 addressed responsible geographies concerning the anthropogenic climate
thesis. As researchers produce knowledge that shapes thinking, imaginations and
future actions in ways that are particularly delicate on the matter of climate change,
universities have a particular responsibility, it was argued. As ordinary people (or
experts), we are not only sensible when judging the premises and circumstances
in which the ‘climate war’ takes place. As non-experts we (as individuals, politicians, citizens, students or researchers) are fundamentally dependent on the claims
and interests of others (e.g. climate researchers, Universities, IPCC, think-tanks,
private laboratories, media enterprises) both in shaping our own positionality and
in the reading and writing of diferent aspects of global environmental change
(Castree 2014, p. xvii). hese mediated climate writings are sometimes referred to
as third nature. hird nature in contrast to irst and second nature (see Glossary)
is represented through television, magazines and the media industry, providing
images as powerful means in shaping opinion and believes about nature (Braun
and Castree 1998). Media construct stories and narratives on climate change
readily to be consumed. hey perform social narratives (not necessarily critically
relected, scrutinized and realized by the reader) that may be further mediated in
debates and conversations, as socially transferred stories, that according to Braun
and Castree preserve the interest of the writer. Now one could suspect that third
nature is always entangled as an external ight10. Chapter 3 however examines third
natures within the academic practice of reading and writing. With the internal and
external ight in mind however, (the organization of knowledge production) I irst
address ‘wars over reading and writing the climate’ and academic responses to it.
In so doing, I consult the scientiic consensus thesis on climate change (chapter
1) and discuss it in between a legitimate and illegitimate ight.
In November 2009, University of East Angela’s Climate Research Unit (RCU),
one of the major British research institutions concerned with natural and anthro10 his is far from the case. Scientiic knowledge on the matter of climate is also written and
disseminated (inform policy maker perspective about the state of the climate, see chapter 1
and 8) in reports or mediated through students. hird nature being transferred through media
enterprises or through other forms of dissemination e.g. of scientiic knowledge, are quite different exercises, but the latter can nevertheless hold an element of third nature (though the
student researcher relationship in lectures or seminars may hold an element of dialogue to raise
critical awareness).
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
43
pogenic climate change, was hacked. Just prior to the Climate Summit in Copenhagen (2009), more than 1000 emails and 3,000 other documents from climate
researchers were leaked (UK House of Commons 2011, p. 5)11 and underscores
the controversy over climate change to be a political mineield (e.g. Lomborg). It
remains unknown by whom and why the research unit was hacked. Yet, one can
be certain that it was not in support of the unit, their work, nor validated their
scientiic results on scientiic premises. Rather it aimed to question the validity
of the anthropogenic climate change thesis as conspiracy from science itself and
thus to efect discussions over third nature. “Contributors to climate change debate
websites and written submissions to the former Science and Technology Committee
claimed that the leaked material showed a deliberate and systematic attempt by leading climate scientists to manipulate climate data, arbitrarily adjusting and “cherrypicking” data that supported their global warming claims and deleting adverse data
that questioned their their theories” (UK House of Commons 2011, p. 6). he
assault was external and illegitimate, disconcerting to the unit, its researchers and
to ‘science’ itself and illustrates the relevance for upholding a distinction between
the internal and external dispute. As Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society,
expressed: “It is important that people have the utmost conidence in the science of
climate change. Where legitimate doubts are raised about any piece of science they must
be fully investigated – that is how science works. he Royal Society will provide advice
to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this
reappraisal” (Royal Society 2010). Two years later, the UK House of Commons’
Science and Technology Committee (2011) inished an internal scrutinization of
the episode. he committee found the internal ight legitimate with ‘rigor and
honesty’, but noted that it is careless and inappropriate to share unpublished manuscript with third parties (UK House of Commons 2011, p. 24). hird parties in
this context are actors not directly involved in the research process (e.g. business,
NGO’s, governmental agencies or hink Tanks), hence external and potentially
subject to blurring the legitimate ight. he leak occasioned a wide public debate,
where diferent stakeholders (particularly in favor of climate skepticism) argued
that scientists were manipulating data to ‘make’ climate change happen, rather
than searching for legitimate, accurate and true knowledge. It is in this light the
position papers from Scientiic Associations listed in Chapter 1 (box 2.1), are both
part of a general dissemination of scientiic knowledge, and subject to writing
political ecologies over future climate(s).
11 See Giddens (2009) the Politics of Climate Change for an examination of the UEA case.
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Box 2.1: UK Meteorological Oice (MET) Statement in Response to the Hacking at University of East Angela’s Climate
Research Unit
“We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost conidence in the observational
evidence for global warming and the scientiic basis for concluding that it is due primarily
to human activities. he evidence and the science are deep and extensive. (…).hey come
from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across
the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity”
(UK Met Oice, 2009, p. 1)
As to the speciic leak scientiic responses followed in defense of science (Box 2.1).
By way of illustration the UK Meteorological Oice (Met) made a statement in
response to the stolen emails from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research
Unit (UK Met Oice 2009). he statement, in defense of science and scientiic
methods, were signed by 121 British Universities and 1700 scientists signed to
highlight the accuracy and rigorous scientiic evidence (Box 2.1).
Also the US National Academy of Science (NAS) responded to the hacking of
climate scientists at work. In a statement signed by 255 members of NAS the
organized power of scientiic response(abilities) both defend the politico-ecological
agendas set by the pursuit of knowledge on climate change and the legitimate and
internal ight; the scientiic climate under which scientiic methods, standards,
approaches and its integrity are shaped (Box 2.2). At irst sight this is paradoxical.
he statement rejects ‘public’ criticism and yet criticism is part of any scientiic
method. he problem to the UK Met Oice, NAS and approx. 1900 researchers signing the statements, however, is that the ‘public’ criticism is external and
should be subject to the same scientiic standards: processes of scrutinization,
examination of the empirical basis upon which claims are made, double blind
tests, peer-reviews and so forth.
Research undertaken under the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC)
by contrast, demonstrates an extensive internal ight (always legitimate?), both
within the body itself and between faculties (other research units, universities
and individual researchers). Giddens for instance makes the argument that more
than 2500 scientists, reviewers and authors from 130 countries have contributed
to the latest work undertaken by IPCC, all subject, peer review, evaluating proCHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
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Box. 2.2: Climate Change and the Integrity of Science
“We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general
and climate scientists in particular (…). here is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent
objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten or societies
and the ecosystem on which we depend. Many recent assaults on climate science and, more
disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special
interests or dogma, not by an honest efort to provide an alternative theory that credibly
satisies the evidence. he Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other
scientiic assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes.
When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. But there is nothing remotely identiied in
the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change”
(National Academy of Sciences: Letter published in Science magazine, May 7 2010, p 1).
cedures and a heavy scientiic ight. Yet, the anthropogenic climate change thesis
(chapter 1) has manifested a scientiic working climate where space for critical
intervention, e.g. from climate skepticism within a legitimate internal ight, are
limited, according to its critics (see below).
As to the tension between the internal and external ight the letter from NAS
(box 2.2) suggests the former is legitimate and predominated by those in advocacy of climate gradualism, the latter illegitimate, typically occupied by voices in
advocacy of climate skepticism12 “Most of the skeptics’ attack can be immediately
dismissed for a number of reasons that are not science-based. Some sceptics are funded
by special interest groups, often fossil fuel lobby groups that have much to loose if fossil
fuel use is signiicantly reduced. hey often use cherry-picked data and lawed logic
to cast doubt on science involved” (Oldield and Stefen 2014, p. 71). he ‘climate
wars’ and the external critic of scientiic evidence are characterized by being or12 By contrast to the scientiic consensus thesis on climate change no such consensus thesis can
be found in external ‘wars’ over the writing of climate change. For the external ights, 52 % of
the Americans for instance, believe that global warming is taking place (‘scientiic fact’) and
that it is mostly human caused (Leiserowitz et al., 2014, p. 7). According to the survey from
Yale and Georg Madison University, “half of the Americans (52%) think that global warming,
if it is happening, is mostly human caused. By contrast, one in three (32%) say they think it is
due mostly to natural changes in the environment” (Leiserowitz et al., 2014, p. 7). By contrast
Oreskes (2004) and Cook et al., (2013) suggest that 97 % of peer reviewed articles on climate
change ind it to be mainly caused by human activities (see chapter 1).
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CHAPTER 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
chestrated on political, not scientiic grounds and when claimed to be based on
scientiic grounds (hence internal and legitimate), it is funded by agencies with
particular (business) interests mediated through so-called think tanks or private
research institutions (knowledge for sale perspective). By way of illustration Newell
(2000) and Muttitt (2003) show how particularly the oil and coal industry and
their lobby organizations have been directly involved in activities with the aim
to undermine the evidence of climate scientists. hrough surveys of their literature Newell (2000) suggests these ‘think tanks’ have not only been well funded
and well organized by various lobby groups, they have been established with the
main goal to make sure that “climate change becomes a non-issue” (Newell 2000,
p. 98). So far, the external ight and illegitimate strategies used in the climate
“wars” have made no impact on the anthropogenic climate change thesis among
scientists (chapter 1). Nevertheless, the external ight and assault on climate
change research demonstrates the danger of the knowledge for sales perspectives,
precisely because the external (principal in authority) political battleields over
‘writing’ and envisioning future climate(s) seek to intervene in the management
of scientiic of knowledge (agent/researcher), with pre-deined results or results
serving the interests of those in authority.
Now one could think with the consensus thesis in mind that climate skepticism
is illegitimate. his is not the case. Climate skepticism can be both legitimate
and illegitimate as well as ‘results’ in favor of climate gradualism, climate catastrophism or any other perspective. Climate skepticism, climate gradualism or
climate radicalism, can be fought both on an illegitimate and legitimate basis
in the nexus between internal and external ights. Climate Skepticism (or any
other perspective) based on an internal and legitimate ight e.g. represented by
Charles Greeley Abbots or Henrik Svensmark is absolutely crucial (e.g. stemming
from inter-planetary activities like sun spot activity). It does not only question
established truths (or dogmatism), as that of the apparent scientiic consensus
on anthropogenic climate changes, but also enhances the pursuit of scientiic
evidence through rivalry over competing explanations. hus, if spaces for climate
skepticism and critical intervention are diminishing within academia, it is also
narrowing the purpose of ‘lower faculties’ that secure valid, evident and truthful
knowledge according to Kant’s text.
In consulting the legitimate and illegitimate ight, the consensus thesis on climate change (see chapter 1), nevertheless suggests, there is little internal ight
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
47
over the reality of human induced climate change. While the consensus thesis
on anthropogenic climate change seem to change toward a ‘fact’, controversy
continues to exist on the societal implications, tempi and consequences of these
changes, the methods, approaches and dynamics in modeling and explaining them
(Oreskes 2004). In the light of the consensus thesis Karl Popper have stated that
all knowledge claims (and their practical consequences) are only valid, if they
withstand ‘never ending’ criticism, from all sorts of theoretical angles, traditions,
and approaches. Only then, new insights can be accepted as valid knowledge.
For more than a century and since Spotswood Wilson (1858)13, John Tyndahl
(1872), Svante Arrhenius (1896) and the establishment of IPCC (1988), the internal ight over anthropogenic climate change has deeply tested, questioned and
examined the thesis. Evidence to support or reject the thesis has gradually been
found robust enough in wide epistemic circles, to transform toward a ‘scientiic
fact’ (see chapter 1).
In contrast to Kant that emphasized the role of lower faculties of particular importance to the ight over and completion between truthful explanations, it is
precisely because of the (political) implications that the climate change thesis has
been subject to such extensive review process and scrutiny (the internal academic
dispute). How struggles over climate change and the scientiic climate contingently
play out, facilitate or hinder possible sustainability futures as academic activism
from within and without, will be subject to analysis in the remaining part of the
chapter. In particular it is addressed what ideas of the knowledge economy are
related to academic responses concerning climate change or sustainability analysis
in geography. How does the knowledge economy afect climate(s) under which
academics work, and how do (critical) geographers respond to it?
13 J. Spotswood Wilson’s article (1858) ‘On the General and Gradual Desiccation of the Earth
and Atmosphere’ is known as one of the early contributions on emissions of greenhouse gases
and their possible implications. During the 1890’s the work of Arvid Högsbom and Langley,
in comparing CO2 cycles in nature with industrial emissions makes Svante Arrhenius (1896),
calculate that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to global average temperature
increases of 5-6 degrees. A halving of atmospheric CO2 would decrease global average temperatures between 4 and 5 degrees. Because of the emission data from 1896 he suggests that
global warming will take more than thousand years and be beneicial to humanity.
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2.3 he Dispute over Academic Climate(s) – Regimes of
Accountability and the Disciplining of Academics at Work
“If it can’t be measured it doesn’t count”, so said a university rector when interviewed
on the relevance of sustainability in higher education in negotiating with the
government (Interview, Pam Freedman).
While universities have always been tangled and governed in between the market,
the state and other authorities, governmental structures under which universities
work has changed considerably since the 1980s. As universities have grown in size
their importance to the so-called knowledge economy equally grows. Universities
have increasingly been recognized as engines for economic growth and studies of
the marketization of universities are often organized around various aspects concerning private/public funding (ownership and partnership), internal and external
inancial pressures (Pinheiro et al., 2014)14. Another entrance point comes from
STS studies and ‘technologies of power’ as an organizing principle of academic
life (Lave et al., 2010), BFI being an illuminating example (see below). A third
angle discusses the commodiication of scientiic knowledge; patenting, licensing,
and ‘knowledge for sale’ (Slaughter and Rhodes 2004). A fourth perspective addresses student and staf mobility in the forefront of wider globalization processes
imposing institutional change (Howells et al., 2014) by ways in which the commodiication of higher education forces students/staf to also move (geographically
and/or mentally) where the money is. Also human geographers have pointed to
the consequences of ‘neoliberal times’ and the scalar politics afecting academics
at work (Paasi 2005, Castree et al., 2006, Dowling 2008). For the purpose of this
dissertation, I draw on the ‘critical geographical’ tradition represented by Castree.
Few geographical studies however explore sustainability in relation to the corporate
agenda of universities (Higgitt 2006 and Maxey 2009 being an exception in the
British literature) in a Nordic context.
Since corporate discourses of Danish universities do not have a date of issue,
Aagaard (2011) and Gorm Hansen (2011) characterize it as an epochal process
14 he concept of knowledge economy has been heavily promoted by the OECD and the World
Bank. OECD and the World Bank have launched so-called performance based indicators based
on statistics that spatially create a competitive system where countries are ranked according
to their relative performance as ‘knowledge economies’. See e.g. the World Bank’s Knowledge
Economy Index (www.worldbank.org/kam).
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
49
from the 1980s. Gorm Hansen (2011, p. 161), Aagaard (2011, p. 368), and Andersen (2014, p. 1), among others, ind that a set of reforms ties universities and
the corporate world together in ways that the past decade demonstrates a neoliberal turn in Danish research policy. Andersen (2002, p.80) calls the governmental
transition a break with 500 years of democratic governance at the university, being
the largest change since the opening of Copenhagen University in 147915.
According to these authors New Public Management (NPM) models have been
implemented (Aagaard 2011, p. 424), reforms have imposed market-like competition within public funding (Box 2.3), discourses in favor of market competition
have become mainstream, competition over external funding has increased and
new accounting practices focusing on cost-efectiveness to the knowledge economy
have become commonplace (Auken and Emmiche 2010).
Box 2.3. Market like Allocation of Public Funding
he model designed to allocate extra means of Basic public funding establish market
competition over public in ways that 25 % is allocated through published research
output (BFI), 20% on the basis of external funding (the ones good at fundraising are
economically rewarded), 10 % on the production of Ph.D. students and 45 % after
the STÅ system (Auken and Emmiche 2010) . he Danish Government regulates the
university sector with a 2 pct. annual reduction in the total contribution from the
state. With respect to public funding of the STÅ system (STÅ = full-time student
equivalent) universities face declining STÅ-revenues due to lower ”taxi-meter” rates
resulting in lower ‘revenue per student’. As the state has administrative control over
the total number of students enrolled at Danish Universities, the student reduction
plans (2014) it imposes pressure on inancial stability, hence increasing competition
and reliance on external resources.
15 he professor kingdom (Professorvældet) until 1968 was not democratic at all. Rather the elitist
university (ivory tower) was organized as a feudal system in which the internal power relations
were fundamentally hierarchical. hus, universities were organized as a feudal system prior to
1968, highly problematic to Kant’s ideas in practice. It may only be a short period from 1968
or so, an internally democratic system was put in place. By the university reform of 2003 the
internal democracy was replaced by external representatives, NPM and top-down structures.
Today external board members coming from the business community occupy the majority of
the board of directors at Danish universities. Also the election of the university management
(e.g. rector) is no longer democratic within the university.
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Although discourses on the subject are growing and market like governance structures have been put in place, it is hard to think of any other sector being more
regulated. Insofar as one can speak of an actual marketization of Danish Universities, more bureaucracy follows. Academic capitalism is deined as the market
driven or market like universities that generate external revenue from education
and research (Slaughter and Rhodes 2004). In a Danish or Scandinavian context
the term is inadequate since the university system is not subject to these practices.
Nevertheless, competition over funding and students are becoming more important for the inancial sustainability of universities, hence market-like governance
structures with indirect markets, institutional and individualized competition, e.g.
self-promotion, fundraising and brand like activities. hough the Danish system
has undergone profound changes during the past decade, there are no student fees
and you can only speak of the creation of market-like competition within public
funding and marginally greater reliance on external funding. Likewise publish or
perish systems are not yet part of the Danish University System. To speak of an
actual neoliberalization of Danish Universities, therefore is far from the case. Yet,
“If, in even only a general sense, the idea of a knowledge society holds good, then it
obliges us to look again at the functions of the university as well as the wider context
in which it now operates” (Castree, Demeritt and Liveman 2009, p. 12).
As government policies and new administrative systems do not necessarily seek
to inluence academic freedom, it has nevertheless narrowed the academic space,
thinking and modes of production (From Science to Invoice, Patents, Development of Research Councils toward more strategic management of science). Critical
geographers have pointed to the growing salience of govermentalities and subject
formations changing the ways in which scientists work (Dowling 2010)16.
Like Kant found the governance structures and funding schemes a crucial subject,
authors like Castree and Sparke (2000) also stress that it is not inancial allocation
in itself that is of interest, but the performative character that follows. Likewise,
it is not the creation of market-like competition of universities that is the problem in itself, but the increasing political/ideological management, control and
16 Any university system involves particular governmentalities. It is not so that no govermentalitie(s)
exist under ideals of the Humboldt university system. Critics of the corporate agenda are often
orchestrated as if scientists come from a powerless space in a vacuum governed by: the romanticism of pre-capitalist universities. Power structures are just reconigured through new means
of organizing and valuating scientiic work in contemporary society.
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regulation over the internal ight that follows. Like Kant problematized external
pressures from the state, Harvey and Castree (e.g. Harvey 1974a, Castree and
Sparke 2000) problematize how the state is a primary agent promoting marketbased solutions in ways that change education from a public toward a private
good17. Neoliberal ideologies have also arisen from within universities as well
and even critical geographers by their critics both occupy subject positions that
they beneit from and reproduce neoliberalism themselves (Sheppard in Castree
et al., 2006, Berg 2012).
In the following therefore, I do not intend to examine the epochal changes nor
the form of appearance e.g. BFI accountability, ranking and audit systems (Auken
and Emmiche 2010), creation of market-like competition in public funding
(Aagaard 2011), ideas of strong leadership, grand writing and the new academic
fundraising cultures (Gorm Hansen 2011), or the increasing level of temporary
positions (Rigsrevisionen 2012)18. Rather it is the form of realization and how it
is related to conditions of sustainability analysis in academia, both as internalizing
and externalizing processes.
he co-production of governmental changes must also be considered and how
they do not only give form but are also performative to and shape contents (see
Castree et al., 2006). hus it is the dual character and how governmental restructuration transforms academic cultures within and beyond the university
17 In ‘A brief History of Neoliberalism’ Harvey (2005, p. 162) examines how the state is a primary
neoliberal agent in the case of British/American university policy. “he advocates of the neoliberal way now occupy positions of considerable inluence in education (the universities and
many ‘think tanks’), in media, in corporate boardrooms and inancial institutions, in key state
institutions” (Harvey 2005, p. 3). Critics of the corporate agenda in the Anglo-Saxon literature
argue “it has resulted in a new capitalist academic social order of inequality and exploitation,
in ways that challenge the common conception that academics should be motivated by the
pursuit of new knowledge and the elevation of learning over proit” (Hofman 2012, p. 12).
18 In 2012 he National Audit Oice of Denmark (Rigsrevisionen 2012) critiques the increasing
use of part time lecturers, assistant professors (adjunkter) or graduate student instructors to
undertake “research based education.” Among the critics of the neoliberal agenda, temporary
staf (cheaper and less qualiied) is often used as an indicator of ‘neoliberal universities’ (Hofman 2012, p. 13). Other indicators that the critics in the Anglo-Saxon literature often point
to (e.g. Lave et al., 2010) is a tendency to reliance on a higher private funding ratio, higher
student fees, a globalized market on knowledge for sale, a tendency to the winner takes it all,
increased competition between universities (inancial resources, reputational resources, the
most talented student scientist), calculating students investing in degrees and shopping for
qualiications and so forth.
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that is of interest. Henceforth, we turn to academic governmentalies in relation
to sustainability analysis.
2.3.1 Contested Ideas of Sustainability and what it Means to the Corporate
Agenda of University Management
Insofar as the external ight is internalized to the university management, it is
designed to measure the importance of knowledge transfer into the knowledge
economy. In consequence the dispute between faculties is as much an external
and internal ight between academia and the administration of it as well as a ight
over the management, jurisdiction and control over the academic ight. In the
following I consider two examples to build my argument of how these administrative processes change conditions for sustainability analysis in academia. First
I consider the Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator, BFI19 (equivalent to the
Research Excellence Framework, REF). In so doing I set a more abstract debate
of the ways in which auditing produces particular modes of thinking about (un)
sustaianability(ies) from within, often without academics become aware of it.
Secondly, I consider conditions for the internal (inter)disciplinary ight to illustrate that both examples are subject to internalizing and externalizing processes
determining conditions under which the ight over contested ideas of sustainability
become apparent.
he Danish bibliometric research indicator (BFI) is an illuminating example of
(dis)accounting practices that both projects internal and external pressures of
academic ights changing the conditions under which scientists work.
Assumed to measure the output and productivity of scientiic knowledge production, notions of quality and excellences are reduced to articles published in
journals that meet the requirements according to the BFI list (the methodology
of measuring quality is paradoxically undertaken through quantitative methods).
he quantitative output of scientiic knowledge is measured as papers published
in speciic journals and translated into BFI points (0.5 up to 8) according to a
number of criteria (Auken and Emmicke 2010). Note that journals indexed in
the BFI list with the highest points (impact factor) are mainly Anglo-Saxon hence
19 he beauty about ranking, meriting and auditing systems is that they can be a measure for the
level of bureaucracy itself. Insofar as these schemes measure cost-efectiveness, it is somewhat
contradictory that universities face more and more regulation due to the very same measurements imposing a new culture of administrative and governmental control.
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
53
intimately linked to the academic governmentalities imposed by the REF. BFI
points are converted into monetary forms, transferring money to the institution at
which the scientists work. Hence, the BFI system creates an individual monopoly
rent, institutionally marketable and ready for extraction afecting the inancial
sustainability of universities. As the individual researchers know how many points
they have ‘acquired’ each year, and as the administration recognizes (and is able
to individually account them) the value of these points, it creates a certain form
of governmentality. hese apparently objective, technical administrative systems
have progressively imposed ‘the law of monetary value’ (see Castree et al., 2006
for REF) onto the university system with the aim to measure the output and
quality of research (Auken and Emmicke 2010). hus, the performativity of these
appealingly neutral merit systems produce a particular form of governmentality
(though they are set in place to produce excellence) that intensiies economic
thinking as a rubric of subject formation, actions and responses forming and
form academic govermentalities allowed through technology of power (Dowling
2008, Berg 2012). It follows that scientiic work is no longer solely valued internally for its quality and externally for its usefulness, but in monetary terms, as an
assumed improvement of injecting marketable knowledge, improving ‘academic
competivity’ in the assumed global competitive system. Henceforth BFI (ranking
and impact factors) performs changing networks that constitute particular power
relations (ACME, Editoral collective, 2007) in ways, that subjected to Kant’s theorem inlicts an illegitimate ight (the political ight/competition over resources)
rather than insuring the ight between faculties (academics). he internalization
of external pressures to academics at work does not only transfer the validating
power inherent in the dispute between faculties toward the editors and reviewers
of journals, designers and administrators of these auditing schemes, but also
produces new subject formations as measuring a given piece of academic work
(Castree et al., 2006) changing conditions for sustainability analysis (Dowling
2010). As academics are becoming subject to fundraising activities, BFI or student ishing for the institution or for ‘own survival’, academic governmentalities
change toward fulilling the recruitments of performing factors (illegitimate and
external ight) rather than solely searching for truth and the highest quality in
education and research (internal and legitimate ight).
What I have argued so far is that the increasing level of administrative/political/
ideological control produces an asymmetry between academics and the management of these academics, as to the relevance, signiicance and quality of their
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work. Insofar as the administrative level advances governmental authority over
the quality of academic work, these judgment practices are illegitimate in Kant’s
sense, precisely because the power balance is shifting the internal dispute toward
administrative bodies. Academic self- governance and its relative autonomy
(governmentality) become narrowed as the researcher or student have to live up
to externally deined criteria for quality, impact or relevance that replace particular
interests with the pursuit of personal, independent and free knowledge. Hereby
we face a double bias in that the structural changes under which knowledge
production takes place, inluence the forming of scientiic thesis and premises
within a proit seeking mode of imagining problems, challenges and possibilities.
Under such disciplining regimes, inancial sustainability is of outmost relevance
to the university management (Appendix 2.1). Accounting schemes do not only
capture the colonization of higher education by market driven interests, but also
the public private boundaries in which normative assumptions of academic life
are being transformed (Berg 2012). Hence the fundament upon which scientiic
claims, quality, and relevance are based is changing. Facing the supra complexity
of climate change, (scaling from the body to the atmosphere) also commodity
sustainability dilemmas in academia and how academics actively respond to it
(Maxey 2009, Dowling 2010).
As research funding in meeting socio-environmental challenges grow, it is somewhat contradictory to the claim that these accounting schemes narrow spaces
for pluralism and in scientiic analysis of say sustainability. Rather than asking if
there is space for sustainability analysis, the question is what kind of sustainability
analysis the accounting, indexing and ranking practices produce. “If, through inancial or other levers, a discipline is steered heavily by outside interests, then there is the
strong possibility for a reduction in epistemic diversity and the rise of new paradigms in
Kuhn’s original, subject-wide sense” (Castree, Demeritt and Liveman 2009, p. 12).
2.3.2. Internal Dispute, Externalized Competition and (inter)Disciplinary
Academic Spaces of Work
Chapter 1 relected on geography through the binoculars of Mackinder. It argued
how disciplines like geography is under pressure. Insofar as the internal dispute in
examining socio-environmental change has intensiied (e.g. earth science, climate
research, sustainability science, geography or similar disciplines) interdisciplinary
spaces are most welcomed in Kant’s perspective. With the dispute between faculties
Kant particularly addressed disciplinary biases (monopolization of truth within
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55
disciplines or traditions) by subjecting disciplinary knowledge with interdisciplinary scrutinization (knowledge claims at all scales be it subjective, institutional
or disciplinary). It follows that ights in disciplinary space produce disciplinary
‘truths’ and when subjected to scrutinization in interdisciplinary space, new modes of ‘truth inding’ emerge. Kant’s project is both relexive and intersubjective
(Gerhardt and Meyer 2005). He sought to overcome the organization of higher
and lower faculties by challenging disciplinary hierarchies. he argument contrasts Evans (2008) in that he inds Kant upholds disciplinary constructs, never
being able to go beyond them. Disciplinary constructs, however, constitute and is
constitutive of interdisciplinary dialogue (see chapter 4). It follows that ensuring
dialogue between faculties fosters interdisciplinary spaces of organizing academic
work better ensures the free pursuit of knowledge at all scales (interdisciplinary
truth). In terms of academic spaces for geography therefore, it is most welcomed,
that geography does no longer uphold its disciplinary raison-d’étre, due to the
academic division of labor (see chapter 6). Spaces for geography (diferent from
academic spaces and their geographies), therefore internally depend on the development of related disciplines (hrift 2002). But irst and foremost it is the
disciplines own ability to pursue the highest quality and by being able to come
with relevant disciplinary angles to the interdisciplinary academic dispute (this
reproduces disciplinary citations, ranking and indexing).
As Kant found that uneven (disciplinary) academic spaces weaken the internal
academic dispute/competition, a number of studies (Paasi 2005, Castree et al.,
2006, Wells et al., 2009, Berg 2012) demonstrate that accounting schemes equaling to the BFI produce uneven, yet globalized (inter)disciplinary geographies
(Appendix 2.1). hese authors point to a hegemonic and geographically uneven
(Anglo-Saxon) knowledge production, less likely to accept localized and contextual
work. In the same vein Rafols et al., (2012) empirically illustrate how the REF
system structurally produces a bias against interdisciplinary research, but in the
case of business studies. Across journals, Lee (2006) argues it is generally harder
to get interdisciplinary work accepted, due to the fact that the culture of reviewing processes are often of disciplinary origin. As hrift (2002) notes, a young
say physical geographer in his/hers publishing strategy needs not only to consider
impact factors and BFI scores, but is less likely to publish in a human geographical
journal, since there is no audience (possible quotations) for one another beyond
their speciic journals. hus, the interdisciplinary disadvantage is also disciplinarily
manifested. As Wells et al., (2009) mentioned:
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“he RAE has come to so dominate British academic life that there is little incentive or reward for any other activity, be it teaching or local engagement, or any
form of publication outside the mainstream, top-ranked, academic journals. It
needs hardly be added that there are no environmental journals ranked within the
British business and economics disciplines, or highly ranked generally [18]. Given
that individual career prospects are also heavily inluenced by publication in top
ranked academic journals, there is a ‘double bias’ against engagement on local RSIs:
they involve a subject matter that is not recognized as a legitimate and deined
ield of activity within the discipline of business, economics and management in
academia; and by their local and practical orientation they are less likely to form
the basis of a publishable piece of work in a leading international (by which one
can often read ‘American’) journal”
(Wells et al., 2009, p. 1119).
As the current REF or BFI system designed to inluence publishing strategies so
researchers go for the highest credit (rational instrumentality), it does not award
time consuming activities (ieldwork), engagement, collaboration or dialogue
within the broader society (public lectures, action research) fundamental for sustainability analysis. he geographical dimension of research allocation, say from
a regional body in Denmark, faces contradictory elements in terms of the geographical distribution of research output. he globalized hegemonic academic cultural
space imposed by schemes like BFI rewards publication in prestigious international
journals, not transferring knowledge back to the region. hus national or local
funding and the system to measure value for money reward diferent spatialized
governmentalities (Paasi 2005). Against this background Maxey (2009) argues that
spaces for academics to set the research agenda themselves is diminishing hence
spaces for academic activism and radical research. hus, spaces for alternative
modes of dealing with sustainability diminish, Maxey (2009) concludes.
Securing the university’s inancial sustainability for conducting research and education aligns to Castree’s advocacy for taking the ight in our own households.
What Castree (2000, 2002) argues is that academics must challenge the neoliberal
restructuring of higher education by doing academic work that “makes universities
less sausage factories and more institutions where critical thinking is not grist for the
next peer reviewed article” (Castree 2002, p. 108). Likewise Hudkinson (2009)
argues that for those academics who believe in the ight for environmental and
social justice, it is by making academia a secure space with care for learning (Hudkinson 2009, p. 463). Facing agendas afecting sustainability analysis urges us to
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
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ask such questions addressing both conditions for the internal scientiic climate
and the external dispute over possible sustainability futures.
2.3.3. Contested Ideas of Managing Sustainability and What it Means to
Academics at Work20
Wherever universities are, there is an intellectual dispute. Humboldt’s university
reforms were indeed designed to spiral such intellectual ights (Gerhardt and
Meyer 2005). Universities are of course still places where researchers set diferent
agendas individually and collectively. By deining inancial sustainability as an
organizational concept, I take a perspective that addresses the academic division/
organization of labor in relation to sustainability analysis. In so doing it is the
sustainability of academic spaces that is my concern or rather how the academic
space organizes sustainability analysis. Maxey (2009) and Higgit (2006) addresses
sustainability in the context of neoliberal universities and demonstrates how the
greening (university) agenda often parallel neo-colonial corporate agendas (ecological modernization, market environmentalism). For Maxey (2009) sustainability
becomes a critical platform synonymous with academic freedom. For him the
individual student’s and researchers academic freedom best serves the sustainability
agenda. Hence sustainability in academia hold the Humboldt University as an
ideal. his require latter and more horizontal structures, ensuring the external and
interdisciplinary dispute, in contrast to hierarchical and neoliberal forms of organizing and managing knowledge productions, including corporate sustainability
agendas (Maxey 2009). As Mansield (2009) puts it, the power of representation
is never far from the rivalry over deining or incorporating (iniltrating) sustainability into academia, both as a cumulative strategy for improving the universities
images and as a concept for critical analysis. Both neoliberal and diferent critical
discourses demonstrate a ight over deining the core of the concept, legitimizing diferent agendas of sustainably. I recognize the importance of the ight over
diferent versions of sustainability and its possible meanings. A complimentary
approach I argue is equally important. A complementary approach in advocacy
for the interdisciplinary and academic spaces under diferent sustainability analysis
and agendas are fought.
20 recognize the analysis set is embedded in an Anglo-Saxon based literature only partly relevant
to the Danish university system being fundamentally institutional and that the sustainability
is addressed as an organizational concept. Accordingly, its presumptions and theoretical depth
are of institutional origin. In Part III, however, I examine the individual teacher’s beliefs on
the relevance, explication and conditions for sustainability
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A complementary approach needed concerning sustainability analysis in academia.
As Massey calls for a global sense of place she challenges the “understanding that
we care first for, and have our first responsibilities towards, those nearest” (Massey
2004, p. 9) scaling from our body, home, city, region and the state toward less
‘caring capacities’ (carrying capacities) at the global scale. Noting that ‘global space’
is no more than the sum of relations, connections, embodiments and practices
(Massey 2004, p. 9), she calls for an alternative and relational (interdisciplinary)
policy of space. hrough these lenses the integrative and relational dimensions
“is as much about managing ourselves and each other as managing resources, the sense
we make of ourselves can limit or leverage sustainability achievements” (Clarke and
Clarke 2012, p. 571).
Box 2.4: Academic Institutions and ‘Sustainable’
Response (abilities)
“At UBC, sustainability is not just a word to deine – it’s a word that deines us.
hrough our collective eforts in education, research, partnerships and operations, UBC
advances sustainability on our campus and beyond. Our goal is to commit, integrate,
demonstrate and inspire”
University of British Columbia, Strategic Plan – Place and Promise, 2014).
A complementary approach that, is to cultivate interdisciplinary discussion is
transformative and integrative academic spaces and thus spurring academic ights
over climate change and sustainable approaches to it. Sustainability is condemned
to the interdisciplinary approaches questioning the deep social, political economic
and socio-environmental transformation if it is to address responses and responsibilities that shape utopias to navigate upon (Box 2.4).
As Harvey argued forty years ago “there is the task of building a genuinely humanistic
literature which collapses the artiicial (almost schizophrenic) dualisms between fact
and value, subject and object, man and nature, science and human interface” (Harvey
1974a, p. 24) Sustainability is one of the concepts aiming at just that.
CHAPTOR 2. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
59
2.4 Conclusion
he chapter argued that the ways in which diferent notions of sustainability analysis are perpetuated in academia, both mobilize neo-liberal interests that accelerate
thinking of universities as marketable entities (organization of academic space)
and simultaneously serve as a concept for alternative and radical critics concerning
socio-environmental change and the commodiication of academia. Insofar as the
external ight is internalized to the university management, policy agendas and
governance structures are part of addressing the introduction, use and explication
of sustainability analysis in academia. hrough the marketization of universities,
I address how this is also internalized into academic sustainability analysis.
he corporate idea of university management (e.g. through sustainability) is
gaining terrain in the ‘knowledge economy’, and so ideals of the Humboldt University is narrowing. hen it was argued modern universities face a fundamental
tension in addressing sustainability response(abilities), tied up between scientiic
and educational processes in searching for scientiic knowledge and securing the
inancial sustainability (independence) for educational and scientiic purposes
(through marketing, branding and reputational capital). his will be subject to
analysis in chapter 6 where mainstream sustainability in higher education debates,
e.g. in journals like Cleaner Production or Sustainability in Higher Education,
orchestrates marketization of sustainability. his is relevant precisely because sustainability is a buzzword that legitimize diferent agendas in academia. As both
processes hugely inluence and (re)scale notions of sustainability and pre-ill positions often without being aware of it, chapter 3 addresses academic governmentalities
afecting the art of making reference to the socio-natural. As discursive strategies
tend to manage the heterogeneity of discourses to one’s own advantage, the use
of sustainability concepts in academia is a key for understanding how academics
respond to contradictory elements of (un)sustainability.
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Chapter 3
Keywords, Buzzwords and the
Power of Reference
“If the experiments of physics seem remote from humanities and social
science, it is worth remembering that among the instruments and apparatus employed for research, the most important are our concepts”
(Richards I.A., here quoted in Clark and Clark 2009, p. 316).
A Companion to Environmental Geography, (2009) edited by Noel Castree, David
Demeritt, Diana Liverman and Bruce Rhodes can be said to be one recent key
reading/writing in environmental geography. Divided into four parts: ‘Concepts’,
‘Approaches’, ‘Practices’ and ‘Topics’ the chapters are written by so-called leading
igures like Karen Bakker, Bruce Braun and Karl S. Zimmerer. Part I covers ‘concepts’. While the very irst chapter (written by Bruce Braun) features the concept
of ‘Nature’, the second chapter (written by Becky Mansield) features the concept
of ‘Sustainability’, not ‘Scale’ (chapter 7), ‘Vulnerability/Resilience’ (chapter 8) or
‘Biodiversity’ (chapter 4). Until recently, ‘Sustainability’ was largely considered a
buzzword. Is it no longer the case? Has sustainability now become a key concept
in geography? And what does it imply when referring to the socio-natural?
Chapter 2 examined the inculcation of sustainability concurrently brought into a
neoliberal agenda of maintaining and managing universities. he chapter argued
that the ways in which diferent notions of sustainability perpetuated both mobilize
neo-liberal interests and accelerate thinking of universities as marketable entities
and simultaneously as a source for critical intervention. While branding, marketing and securing universities’ inancial sustainability shape into ‘buzzwords’, it
is worthwhile irst to consider some characteristics distinguishing keywords from
buzzwords. hen, the chapter turns to what I shall call the power of reference. he
power of reference refers to an academic governmental form (tactics) in making
CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
61
references to the socio-natural in ways that hugely inluence and (re)scale notions
of sustainability and pre-ill positions often without the reader/writer is aware of it.
Question for the chapter:
•
•
Why is the power of reference crucial for how academics and geographers
(academia) incorporate/make use of sustainability in academia?
How can sustainability concepts in academia be entangled in between
buzzwords and keywords?
3.1 he Art of Making References - Distinguishing Keywords from
Buzzwords
According to Castree (2014, p. 8) three characteristics distinguish keywords from
buzzwords. Let us consider those three characteristics in relation to sustainability
in geography. First, Castree argues keywords do not come and go. Keywords
tend to be stable. Keywords are more or less unafected by economic, cultural or
ideological changes. Even in academia keywords tend to be unafected by political
pressure or changes in funding mechanisms. Although academics lean towards
key concepts and the power they inhere, they do not in general signify ‘state of
the art’. Currently a concept like the ‘anthropocene’ seem to indicate the ‘state of
the art’, and Castree has joined this efort (Castree 2015). Keywords, however,
are immune to quick ixes as the power of referencing, funding mechanisms or
‘politico-ecological winds’ at a given time and place (See chapter 2 and 5). If one
considers the use of sustainability in geography, it quickly becomes clear that the
concept does not meet the irst criteria. Nevertheless, the concept has been preached for forty years and seems to be one of the kind, that will not go away neither
in academia nor in civic society (Chapter 6 examines sustainability as marketing
geography, and points toward mixed feelings of using buzzwords in academia).
he second feature that distinguishes keywords from buzzwords has to do with
the context within which the words are used. According to Castree (2014, p. 9)
keywords are ordinary, used widespread and frequently in all sorts of contexts.
Keywords are familiar within or even beyond a given academic episteme. Sustainability better applies here “Sustainability is a concept that appears everywhere around
us and that we critically need to address. It is heavily used in the rhetoric of political
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CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
discourse and hard to avoid as a human geographer. It is a great example of a fuzzy
concept that all of us use intended and unintended” (Interview 22).
Also within academia the concept of sustainability inds widespread use. Although
the use of it always relates to criticism in geography and some refuses to use it,
it seems that it has found its way into academia being (being more than?) just
a buzzword. Despite of and because of its critics, sustainability orchestrates the
whole spectrum of political discourse, serving neoliberal agendas or the left, or
produces a critique of both (see chapter 2). Used in all sorts of ways, meaning
diferent things to diferent people, sustainability better applies here. It is precisely the widespread use and the ‘use’ of its difuse character (interests involved
in doing so), that provides the concept with its capacity to ‘go round the back’
and legitimizes a given agenda (Harvey, 1996, p. 144). Insofar as the concept is
used in academia it seems to make space for sustainability as external academic
activism (see chapter 1), while it gains little space for internal activism due to its
low status (buzzword) in geography (see Part III).
he third characteristic that distinguishes a keyword from a buzzword, according
to Castree, concerns the ‘social force’ these concepts inhabit (Castree 2014). In
academia the ‘social force’ accompanied by the use of sustainability does not apply as a keyword. In fact one could make a little academic test. By mentioning
sustainability a real academic will immediately ‘wrinkle his/her nose’, draw upon a
critical attitude, and instantly associate all the criticism attached to it. “When I hear
the term sustainability, I always step back – when it occurs I immediately get a critical
awareness” (Interview 7). In contrast keywords possess the ability to unhinderedly
sort our mode of thinking, give direction and draw upon the distinctive power
that lies in giving reference to something or somebody of general acceptance.
Whereas keywords are used unimpededly in thinking about the power of reference (conscious boundary making – one can only attend one arena at the same
time), terms like sustainability is heavily scrutinized though, frankly, it may be
equally diicult to clarify the word of nature. For Raymond Williams nature
“may be one the most complex word in the British language since the idea of it (…)
contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history…(…)
both complicated and changing as other ideas change” (Williams here quoted in
Harvey, 1996, p. 26). Hereby Williams examines how nature, this extraordinary,
complex, fuzzy, slippery and diicult concepts, holds power that is normalized
CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
63
by ways in which they govern and direct our thinking. Keywords produce imaginative geographies that positively lead the audience in a desired direction. At
this point I claim nature is a keyword, sustainability a buzzword and yet both are
extraordinarily fuzzy, slippery and contingent. he imaginary geographies both
comprehend and encompass huge amounts of tacit power, with quite diferent
political ecologies as a result (See box 1.2). Note how natural science historically
has been a branch of discipline(s) that by name engages in studying ‘nature’
(Demeritt 2002). Disciplines and departments that carry sustainability in their
name have only recently begun (see box 1.3). Whereas the former inds nature
to be external and objective, the latter recognizes that ‘nature cannot pre-exist its
construction’ as Haraway puts it.
he fact that humans can never escape their socio-natural embeddedness made
‘nature’ a keyword to Williams, and one that performs political action and analysis often without noting it (Harvey 1996, p. 27). Conceptions, abstractions and
the ways in which academics make reference to the (socio)natural therefore write
environmental geographies, whereby changing a concept provides an approach to
understand social and cultural changes. As humans can never escape their socionatural embeddedness other prevailing concepts arise when referring to, responding
to, writing and re-writing global environmental change. Whether regarded as key
concepts or not, they represent responses to those changes.
What should be clear is that the three characteristics do not only distinguish key
concepts from buzzwords, they are also deined out of time-space conigurations;
the time scales given, the spatial organization and through their historical and
contextual diferentiation (see chapter 4). Moreover, they co-produce mental
geographies with speciic connotations to the socio-natural. Both Castree (2001)
and Harvey (1996) pay particular attention to the incorporation of space and
place as in-situ-actions when theorizing over socio-environmental change. I want
to pay particular attention to this in chapter 5 (Spatio-temporal tides and waves)
in terms of referencing to the natural. In what follows I am not so interested in
whether geographers regard sustainability as a keyword or as a buzzword. I am far
more interested in how sustainability inds its way into academia, how geographers
refer to it, use it, respond to it and consider our responsibilities in referring to
global environmental change (Part III). What is the intended and unintended
’use’ within the academic ight as interview 22 (page 63) referred to?
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CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
To do so it is worthwhile spelling out what I mean by the power of references as
an academic practice. he following consider 5 dimensions of making (powerful)
references. hese will be re-examined in Part III.
3.2 Practicing Discourses and Discourses of Practice
Academics do tremendous work on deconstruction and reconstruction. Academia
produces genealogies, develops new concepts, theories and ideas that wonderfully spiral into manifestations and strategies embracing huge amounts of tacit
knowledge. In our individual academic work, we take a theoretical framework,
in my case David Harvey (1996) and Noel Castree (2014) and blend them in a
number of related theories, with a bit of caution to demonstrate the state of the
art. In so doing we spend great efort in framing our work as new (Harvey 2005,
p. 40). Again there is always an underlying caution to promote one’s own stand
and perspective in inding a place in academia. For a young researcher for instance,
it is a well-known strategy to kick-start the carreer attacking well-known researchers and hoping for response to the critiques given (Sheppard in Castree et al.,
2006, p. 134). As young researchers Harvey and Castree were taking part in that
game themselves (See Explanation in Geography 1969). Years later, as recognized
researchers, they are all too familiar with academic strategies using theoretical
icons to make a place in academia to make space for them. In inding one’s place
to undertake research for better, more accurate and valid scientiic knowledge,
one needs to ind a space to shape a career platform (ight over symbolic and
reputational capital).
As argued in chapter 2 policy agendas and governance structures are part of addressing the introduction, use and explication of sustainability in academia. Subject to
corporate, administrative and governmental processes, the chapter addressed the
subtle ways in which the organizational form possesses a structuring efect under
which academic work is carried out (Castree et al., 2006). In inding and shaping
place in academia, spaces of work have huge efects to govern-mentalities of that
work. Practicing power of references therefore is both shaping and is shaped by
the scientiic climate with efect on the sustainability of the work environment
itself, as well as the governmental forms under which sustainability develops is
orchestrated and theorized (Mansield 2009). Academic governmentalities, then,
are both illed with presumptions and statements concaving huge amounts of
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65
tacit knowledge, which is why the power of references as phenomenon becomes
a problem, particularly within discussions of sustainability in educational and
scientiic practices.
3.3 he Power of Reference
Originally coined by Michel Foucault the term governmentality refers to the selfgovernment (the conduct of people’s conduct) whereby individuals (willingly)
undertake work in the interest of the principal. hus, on the basis of (invisible)
principal-agent structures, individuals govern themselves in accordance with
the interest of the principal. BFI, insecurity in jobs and temporary positions are
examples relevant to spaces of academic work (see chapter 2). For Foucault it
describes how subjects are involved in projects of their own, through their own
free will, while the freedom is dictated by others (to live up to moral judgments,
institutional values, measurements, and accounting practices, etc.). Governments,
institutions, communities, and authorities have huge direct and indirect impact on
individuals’ norms, attitudes, and practices. Direct as regulative that the subject
is aware of, indirect as ‘hidden’ regulative shaping/guiding thoughts, modes of
thinking, imaginations, and practices that the subject is not necessarily relexive
about (Dowling 2010). Govermentalitie(s) thus take(s) part in shaping geographical imaginations. Academic governmentalities, refer to hidden and regulative
references in the making of scientiic knowledge and what is of particular interest
in this context is its signiicance for making reference to nature. Academic governmentalities refer to the process of self-governance within academia, seeking to
capture the ways in which university governance and knowledge management
afect the mind, belief, and mode of thinking. hus academic governmentality
holds a critical attitude towards the freedom to conduct research by addressing
a number of implicit structural layers of (assymetric)power, with reference to
symbols, codes of conduct, tacit norms, and tactics (Berg in Castree 2006, p.
766). Shaping the social valuation of splendid, superb, and excellence work
(e.g. through awards, credits, honors, merits, bonuses or in more subtle forms),
the power of reference describes how these processes come to justify theories,
methods, assumptions, themes or concepts, while they at the same time make
reference to nature. Power of reference connotes how academics make reference
and the powers involved in doing so, both as a process of self-governance within
academia, which afects reference practices in narrow terms (the ways in which
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we quote and reference) and in a broad sense how academics make reference (to
references) when representing cultures of nature(s) or vice versa. hus, it is an
academic form of governmentality, (in science and education, afecting the mind,
belief, and mode of thinking) that shapes social practices and the habitual power
in representing a given scientiic problem, paradoxes or phenomena in a certain
way that simultaneously produce layers of hidden (tacit and tactic) knowledge
yet authoritative truth (Haraway 1988).
As far as the ‘power of reference’ is concerned, it is relevant to address a number
of related dimensions in examining when academics refer to sustainability. In selecting any theory that work has developed on the basis of outstanding literature,
say Harvey’s analysis of the credit form, as reinements of Marx’s work (Harvey
1982). hat work includes an immense body of related theories (reference list of
13 pages) that, in turn, has been developed from previous work with an immense
body of literature. In our individual and collective knowledge production we enrich
a theory with a number of related theories; it may be a bit of Nigel hrift here,
a bit of Doreen Massey and Anthony Giddens there. While producing a hidden
critique of the latter, it is all framed within invisible layers of tacit knowledge when
framing our own work on Friedrich Von Hayek, Adam Smith or Marx, though
never explicated, of course (Harvey 1974b). he powerful layers of silence, however,
continue. In choosing brilliant and superb work by Michel Foucault, Michel Callon, Bruno Latour or Phillipe Descolar (geographies of choosing French, opposed
to Anglo-Saxon cultures of theory)1, there are also huge amounts of organized
power (and strategy) involved. Making theoretical reference embraces the irst
dimension of the ‘power of references’ and certainly has a geographical dimension
(Passi 2005), e.g. when given reference to the socio-natural (see chapter 6).
Choosing famous, well known, and established academic theorists (As I do), has
besides the tendency to represent superb work, also the tendency to produce an
1 he South American, South-Asian Subcontinent represent other cultural-continental geographies. Harvey’s or Castree’s work can also be geographically linked to an Anglo-Saxon tradition,
subject both to metropolitan zones, Eurocentric and North American regions and traditions,
with less focus on other parts of the world (Sheppard 2006). Likewise geographies of sustainability are highly Eurocentric, discussed and theorized mostly in the Western world, Northern
Europe and Japan (Chakrabarty 2009).
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67
authoritative argument2 (credibility, liability, evidence, and validity) to one’s own
work, while assembling well-known cultural-habitual references to the reader. Leading igures represent a layer of authoritative ‘truths’ or established ‘norms’ within
diferent research communities that among other things serve the body of shared
cultural references. Harvey and Castree can certainly be examples of this within
and beyond the radical geography tradition. What icons say or do have impact on
dialogues within that episteme, and how scientiic and (inter)disciplinary epistemic
communities develop. In this process the importance of icons has an impact on
regulative practices of how I and you conceive the world (Castree 2014, p. 22).
Harvey, and I would say, Castree, are such icons, academic celebrities or even
academic brands with canonical efects (hrift 2006, p. 225), with a demand for,
a market for them, that in turn perform that market (see number of references,
number of young students attending their public lectures, number of books sold,
etc.)3. Whether it is suitable that a scientiic community incorporates a language
of sustainability or not, epistemic work produces asymmetric power relations
with efects on the condition of sustainability (equity) as well as on inclusion and
exclusion of features, themes or approaches (Castree 2014, p. 97). he power of
references produces an efect on habitual power in representing a given problem
or paradoxes in a certain way (codes and conducts) in order to get recognition
(sustainability has little or no prestige in many scientiic communities)4.
he ‘power of reference’ can also be said to be organized within and between
disciplines. Massey (1999) wonderfully depicts how ‘the power of references’ is
organized as a strategy in referring to ‘harder sciences’. Hereby Massey depicts
2 Note, while there exist no commonly accepted scientiic rules for references, there are ertainly consensus on recommendations that can be subject to epistemic communities, disciplines
and journal articles. When is it necessary to quote, why and on what grounds?
3 David Harvey, for instance are quoted 19.804 times (Condition of Postmodernity) whereas
his less quoted articles come to approx. 500 quotations (as of September 2014). his makes
Harvey one of the most quoted geographers. In comparison Anthony Giddens accounts for
approx. 29.300 quotations (he Constitution of Society: Outline of the heory of Structuration) as one of the heaviest quoted social scientists.
4 One indicator for the power of references can be studied in the way in which phenomena like
name dropping are done, and how we respond to it. Did namedropping have the intended
efect? Name dropping for instance is a common feature in journal articles, as a simple way
to represent complicated matters, through an authoritative reference. Take a look at this text
for instance and mark the number of references you are already familiar with. References can
thus be supportive for arguments one cannot convincingly make oneself (see legitimation in
glossary).
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the ‘envy of physics’ as the tendency whereby ‘soft sciences’ often make reference
to ‘harder sciences’ to bolster one’s argument. It may be cultural geographers
who appeal to urban geographers, who in turn may plea to physical geographers.
Physical geographers in turn provide their work with a note to geologists or
chemists and even better a famous one that in turn may refer to physics. Note
how the ‘envy of physics’ relates to Kant’s higher and lower faculties afecting the
academic (interdisciplinary) spaces organizing the internal dispute (see chapter
2). She argues that this habit (why we do it) appeals to an implicit imagination
(stemming from the positivistic turn and among others manifested through the
spatial analysis, see chapter 5) that afects relations between disciplines as a form
of hierarchy (as auditing, meriting, and publishing strategies grow in importance
academic publishing tactics by making reference change).
his form of higher authority among others converts into reference strategies and
arguments that are deeply suspect since it incorporates a nomothetic approach (see
chapter 2). he irony to Massey is that physics have moved on (Massey 1999). his
observation has deep implications to the interdisciplinary dimension of sustainability and climate changes, and how these problems are researched, organized, and
tackled under a given episteme. By way of illustration climate changes modelling is
dominated by ‘hard sciences’ and economists (Urry 2011, p. 3), reducing human
behavior to a matter of instrumental rationality (see Chapter 8). Making power
to references, therefore, is a way of being relexive about how academic work
environments (climate) is inluenced by academic governmental(ities).
he ‘power of references’ also involves how academics give phenomena, processes
or themes ontological and epistemological status5. Whatever phenomena under
investigation, it is interesting how something is given status as a problem, how we
give it relevance, attention or impact, how we give explanation to it, and interests
involved in doing so. Questioning the existing order of representations therefore
is a question of when a phenomenon, object, theory or data are given ontological
and epistemological status, are given agency, are given explanatory power in relation to the problem at hand (Castree 2001). he question is what kind of data
we consider epistemologically relevant to that phenomenon. he question is what
5 Tacit knowledge also provides a ilter. Since tacit knowledge in contrast to codiied knowledge cannot be disseminated through texts, the power of reference is hugely associated with
tacit knowledge and situated knowledge (Haraway 1988).
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69
kind of explanatory power we give these data, whether we give it causal explanations, intentional explanations, functional explanations, rational explanations,
evolutionary explanations or some sort of combination. he question is how much
power and agency we give these data with what kind of explanation and with what
interests attributed to it (Rasmussen and Arler 2010, p. 42). But, perhaps most
challenging, the question is what kind of ontological status, and what kind of
explanatory power we give a phenomenon, in relation to other phenomena, and
what kind of status, weight, explanation and relation we give these phenomena
and data, theories and methods. his has deep implications to how we theorize
on sustainability; organize its complexity, its holistic and particular dimensions
(Mansield 2009). As Harvey (1969) puts it, ‘a theme gives rise to theorize’ and
how human-nature relationships are considered implicitly or explicitly can be
examined through the way we give phenomena methodological, ontological and
epistemological status and diferent kinds of explanations.
he power of references can also be attributed to a particular theme or a speciic
concept, i.e. environmental degradation, political ecology or environmental (in)
justice. Here it is not only interesting to observe how themes and concepts sometimes merge, overlap and blur into one another with particular efects, but also
how concepts or themes are organized (often implicitly) as power conigurations
that produce (epistemic) political ecologies in themselves. For instance concepts
like sustainability or the anthropocene have been promulgated in a multitude
of possible (and impossible) ways, from which e.g. 1) one distances oneself 2)
epistemic communities ind there center and points of identiication, 3) concepts
are replaced by others, they rise and fall (see Chapter 5), all with efects to how
we make reference to nature. Scientists are often hungry for attention, recognition and funding, which is why even ‘climate or sustainability scientists’ relect as
much about the power of reference, relations and career opportunities through
sustainability, than necessarily contributing to a more sustainable society in itself.
he power of reference, however, holds yet another dimension concerning the
economy of the power of reference or the economy of quotations. In returning
to chapter 2 and BFI as a funding scheme, it illustrates the economy in the making of references. Any research application is subject to BFI. Applications for
funding represent written words, carefully selected, that again are based on long
CVs, number of articles and their presumed impact (Berg in Castree et al., 2006).
Academic writings carefully refer to keywords mixed with concepts considered to
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CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
have the desired impact. he cultures of quoting (what, why and how we do it),
project assumed ‘impacts’ by the writer/reader in ways that transform arguments,
indings, and positions into calculative ‘impacts’, e.g. Journal Ranking, Impact
factors or BFI (Auken and Emmicke 2010). Hence the better rank/impact, the
better change for proiting from the economy of quotation/reference e.g. through
external funding. he neoliberilization of quoting is an important entrance
point in understanding diverse processes afecting the academic life (Angloication), not least the intensiication of economic thinking, subject positions
and academic govermentalities, through which sustainability, climate change and
response(ability) are understood (Sheppard in Castree et al., 2006, Dowling 2010).
How diferent sustainability concepts are inluenced by the power of references
illustrate an exercise that embeds multiple layers and possible political meanings.
hrough the neoliberal logic of quotation/reference making it follows that it becomes a strategy to take a stance e.g. a critical stance toward the consensus thesis
on anthropogenic climate change (Chapter 1), in order to improve the changes
to get quoted rather than (solely) contributing to the academic dispute.
Until know we have looked into ive dimensions of the power of references and
conveyed its relevance for science in general and for sustainability in particular due
to its extensive complexity and difuse character. In the following I shall argue for
the relevance of space-time dialectics in understanding all the silence, power, interests, and political implications involved in addressing sustainability in academia.
3.4 he Dialectics of Sustainable Discourse
here are at least four dimensions relevant for bringing a Marxist and dialectical
approach into the analysis of contested ideas, interests, institutionalization, and
paradoxes in the use of sustainability in academia. First dialectics ofer a consistent approach, and the the dynamics of the social production of nature thesis
are addressed through a number of moments entangling relations between labor
processes, production, technological development and knowledge related to capital
(Castree 2001, p. 191).
A second dimension worth to bear in mind concerns relations between science and
society, in that science has proved to be a signiicant force for societal development
(and vice versa) that also engages in reproducing environmental/sustainability
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71
problems. A history-geographical perspective is relational and reminds us that the
dialectics of human-environmental interactions as well as associated geographical
imaginations are nothing new (Harvey 1996). Hereby it ofers a way to go beyond
buzzwords and keywords by challenging dominant assumptions, conventions
and representational modes that accept the ‘reality of construction’. hird, as
sustainability is all about how to use nature and systems it is also worthwhile
looking at the politics and power in regulating production processes and social
practices within and beyond academia itself. Attached to the internal ight it offers a perspective that rather than avoiding criticism, (polished momentums and
engagement in the politeness of academic discourse fulilling the requirements
of the reviewers in order to publish) challenge and criticize everything there is,
including itself (Castree 2001). Finally the relevance of bringing a dialectical
perspective on sustainability involves a relational approach, not conined to the
disciplinary divide. Integrative to the three former it relates to the materiality of
ideas, thoughts and knowledge (science and education) for engendering economic,
cultural, social and technological change.
“he separation of the world into two distinct domains – nature and society – is
a habit of thought that demands to be challenged, both on conceptual and ethical
political grounds”
(Braun 2009, p. 22).
Much theory building in the social and natural sciences seems little established
with respect to its material dimension of reference making (see chapter 4), e.g.
how the academic division of labor is organized into separate disciplines in the
(natural versus social) sciences. Dialectics transcend a one-dimensional perspective in thinking about the material side of social practices that sometimes seem
underdeveloped in sustainability discourses. Consequently one has to look at
relations between social practices and habits of thoughts, (in academia) in ways
that fundamentally reject e.g. Descartes’ and Newton’s ontological dualism that
separates nature from society (Harvey 1996, p. 123). If one would like to explore
sustainable transition, one needs to establish relations between mind and matter,
society and nature. he matter matters, and there needs to be developed more appropriate methodological approaches not only in the interface between social and
natural sciences, but also in ways that templates the duality between the material
form and the social processes of valuation (Harvey 1996). Claiming that matter
matters rejects all non-materialist ontologies and theories, but also transgresses
disciplinary boarders and disciplinary identities, since they are both processors
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and owners of forming materials in new ways. his appears to be the case e.g.
when thoughts (innovations) are transferred into commodities and resources.
Simultaneously rejecting these processes bear reference to nature and is part of
shaping of peoples identities, values and behavior.
“Even when our relation to nature seems most immediate, it is profoundly shaped
by the narratives, knowledge and technologies that enable experience”
(Braun 2002, p. 15).
Such relections are fundamental as diferent concepts (ecology, sustainability, irst
and second nature) reside in diferent socio-material ontologies. It follows that
diferent socio-material ontologies produce radically diferent socio-environmental
geographies. Sustainability approaches cannot be reduced to be only a matter of
fact, but also a matter of concern, response and responsibility over representing the
human-environmental interface. Subsequently, we imagine connections between
modes of thought and materials, between modes of thought, societal practices
and planning. From this perspective dialectics are based upon an intra- and extradiscursive reality, implying that elements independent of human perception are
sometimes formed through human practices (and vice versa). he reverse is also
true, that elements dependent on human perception have sometimes (no) inluence
on material processes (Demeritt 2002, p. 779). Studying sustainability discourses
in academia is therefore also a journey in space and time; a journey into how different philosophies of science produce diferent geographies that inluence our
thinking and educational practices (Harvey 1996, p. 326).
To make sense of diferent forms of academic sustainability discourses and their
social nature(s) dialectics address science as a complex process of ordering statements of all sorts. As scientiic knowledge is organized in statements about the
world, the dialectics of sustainability discourses in academia are organized into
hierarchies and certain ways of governing power (Harvey 1974b). As scientiic
enquiry on sustainability is often considered a low status subject in geography as
well as in other social sciences, the concept sometimes serves as an academic dustbin
for the rest of us, the less excelling researchers. To reveal the use of sustainability
in academia, therefore, is as much a matter of power (concern) as a matter of fact,
given that the whole spectrum of reading and writing nature involves cognition,
moral reasoning, and aesthetic expression (Castree 2014, p. 25). As climate/sustainability science produces knowledge, from which socio-ecological decisions
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73
mutually change, forms of appearance, and forms of realization, states of being,
and modes of representing it becomes of evermore importance to understand how
academia also is a melting pot of political import (and export) with implications
to planning, organization and control of the otherness we call nature.
he complexity, ambiguity and contradictory elements of sustainability request
a relational approach that incorporates mode of reasoning on geographical imaginations; a mode of reasoning to make sense of sustainability challenges produced and distributed across multiple spatio-temporal scales (Mansield 2009).
As Harvey argues we “badly need a much more uniied language than we currently
possess for exercising the joint responsibility toward nature that resides with the social
and biological/physical sciences” (Harvey 1996, p. 190). Dialectics splinter the
disciplinary construct between social and natural sciences, sub-disciplinary or
thematic categorization.
3.5 Conclusion
To summarize I irst touched upon entangling sustainability between buzzwords
and keywords. hen I elaborated on ive dimensions of the power of reference and
conveyed its relevance for science in general and for sustainability in particular. Precisely because of their luid, complex, contradictory, and difuse character (open to
interpretation) the power of references has substantial importance to sustainability
and how the concept ind its ways and are represented in academia. he challenge
of course is that when examining the use of sustainability in academia, one is subject to the power of reference, why spaces of that work and uses of sustainability
needs to be turned upon oneself (and academia itself ). How can this be achieved
independently from the power of reference, will be addressed in chapter 4?
Next, we touched upon the dialectics of sustainability discourses in academia
pointing towards four dimensions in advocacy for a relational perspective. To
Harvey and Castree it is precisely links between these four dimensions that hold
the power of knowledge, the use of ideas, thoughts, mental habits, concepts and
theories that structure power as ordered representations, and then taken into the
domain of political struggles in the corridors (Harvey 1974b, p. 267). he power
and struggle for (un)sustainability can be viewed much in the same way, why an
integrative (holistic) approach is particularly relevant.
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In chapter 4 I shall critically elaborate on dialectical assumptions. his enables
me to bring the power of reference into an educational context in part III, and
discuss how it produces particular geographies as hidden curricula. Hereby we will
scale the power of references with speciic reference to geographical imaginations.
In doing so, I particularly address the material side of the power of references.
In navigating among all the tacit knowledge produced around the dialectics of
sustainability discourses in academia, it is worth considering space-time dialectics
as an endeavor to understand how a given thing, theory or phenomenon also
represent something other (representations of representations) than it seemingly
stands for, and how such representations also inhabit socio-material practices.
CHAPTER 3. KEYWORDS, BUZZWORDS AND THE POWER OF REFERENCE
75
Chapter 4
Space-Time Dialectics and
Contradictions of Sustainability
“An ecological history begins by assuming a dynamic and changing relationship between environment and culture, one as apt to produce contradictions as continuities”
(William Cronon in Harvey 1996, p. 27)
It is an ongoing discussion whether the world is fundamentally dialectic or
dialectics are a set of assumptions upon the world. In this chapter I will pursue
the argument that it is both. In chapter 2, the plethora of complex elements of
sustainability was outlined. It was argued that sustainability concepts unfold as
a double edged sword that both serves neoliberal agendas restructuring universities, and provides a critical platform from which conditions for academic work
on (for) sustainability can be addressed. Chapter 3 entangled sustainability in
between buzzwords and keywords. When sustainability concepts are that luid,
difuse and contradictory, it was argued, the power of references play a signiicant role on the ways in which sustainability concepts ind their ways and are
represented in academia. his chapter aims to address the power (within and
beyond) of knowledge production, and to explore how issues of sustainability are
framed with respect to diferent power relations. Much theorization of sustainability in higher education currently overlooks the corporate agenda that brands
universities as sustainable, while changing academic spaces for engaging with
critical and alternative modes of dealing with sustainability. Within the body of
sustainability in higher education (see chapter 6) these connections are often not
theorized why this chapter engages with contradictory elements of sustainability.
Hereby it establishes a methodological basis to address sustainability in academia,
tampered between scientiic knowledge and policy, between educational practices
and political agendas, whatever these are promoting sustainability or not. In so
doing, the chapter takes you on a journey into space-time dialectics. It is suggested
CHAPTER 4. SPACE-TIME DIALECTICS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
77
that space-time dialectics are particularly helpful in examining geographers at
work, inluenced by governmentalities, and how they make use of sustainability
in curricula programs. he objective of the remaining part of the chapter is to
clarify assumptions of space-time dialectics related to sustainability and I discuss
implications for further work. During the journey I do not only intend to outlay
and qualify some of the assumptions and positionality this work rely upon, but
also to engage, inspire, provoke, stimulate and cultivate debates.
Questions for the Chapter:
•
•
How is the dialectical approach developed to examine how geographers
respond to the paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas of sustainability?
Why are concepts like time and space important to analyze sustainability, and
how can dialectics be helpful in navigating among spatio-temporal scales?
4.1 Space-Time Dialectics, Sustainability and the Human
Environment Interface
David Harvey may be one of the most prominent thinkers to have brought dialectics into geography. His dialectics are probably best known in his geographical
theory of capital accumulation. Concerning the human-environmental interface,
his dialectics is most comprehensively theorized in Justice, Nature and Geography of
Diference (JNGD) in which Harvey describes his work as “a dialectical, historicalgeographical and materialist theory,(…)[that] deals with totalities, particularities,
motion and ixity in a certain way” (Harvey 1996, p. 9).
Dialectics is a broad plethora of philosophical thinking that derives from Hegel,
Leibniz, Marx and a host of others. Dialectics may be roughly subdivided e.g.
into systematic dialectics from the late Hegel, into historical dialectics, material
dialectics, universal dialectics or phenomenological dialectical thought (Castree
1996). hus, modes of dialectical reasoning appear in various forms. What is addressed in this chapter though is the relational dialectics developed by Harvey and
Castree, or what has also been termed space-time dialectics. As far as possible I
will render an approach to understand the dialectics of Harvey and Castree. One,
however, must be open (and skeptical) to individual creativity and variability, as
well as to a single methodological template that fully reproduce their work.
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CHAPTER 4. SPACE-TIME DIALECTICS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
David Harvey and Noel Castree can be read in many ways1. Whatever paths it may
lead through, there remains a fundamental critique of the power of knowledge
construction and the power of geographical imagination in its broadest sense.
hey both insist that mental representations and modes of thought cannot escape
geographical imaginations (Harvey 2005, p. 221, Castree 2003, p. 204) why geographical knowledge is not conined to any discipline in particular. Both insist that
representations are always structured geographically in one way or another, why
a critical analysis of concepts like space, place, nature and environment remain
fundamental to social theory or the production of scientiic knowledge itself (Harvey 1996). Both examine how capitalism has structuring efects on geographical
manifestations, knowledge production, beliefs, the functioning of research and
education in society and economic-ecological material practices.
“Although environmental policy is frequently a means whereby those in positions
of power further their own interests, it is also an essential instrument for achieving
a more just and sustainable future”
(Castree 2002, p. 360).
To Harvey and Castree, therefore, geographical knowledge, ideas, thoughts and
concepts, lies the heart of emancipatory potentials, geographical imagination and
sustainable alternatives, though structured under constraints of capitalism as a
dominant form of spatial governance (e.g. in Spaces of Hope).
1 he early Harvey has a positivist and hypothetical-deductive approach (Explanation in Geography) whereby geographical knowledge is logic, systematic and generalizable. he young
Harvey was certainly non-marxist, the older deeply engaged with readings through Marxian
dialectics. Castree, though in an earlier stage of his career, can similarly be read through his
engagement with Marxist theory related to dialectical environmental thought. Harvey and
Castree, also tackle the problems from diferent angles. While both assemble their work from
a Marxist tradition, Castree does in much of his work go beyond its borders, see Castree 2014
or his work related to ANT (Castree 2002). In contrast, Harvey sees capitalism as an integrated
whole (Harvey 1987). As the elderly Harvey uses the lenses of Marx in every turn, Castree,
has a prism that also uses other entry points to his analysis. Castree also adapts non-Marxist
theories and approaches in analyzing the human environmental interface. As Harvey develop
a spatialisation of Marx he extends the work into production of space, spatial ixes and its contradictory element to capital accumulations, he tirelessly works within the abbeys of capitalism,
as a dialectical totality. One could say that Harvey works in depth from a materialist register
inspired by system dialectics, Castree in breath and beyond the labyrinth of capitalism, always
from a dialectical approaches in analyzing the ‘politics’ of nature (Castree 2001, p. 191). he
former aims to develop a body of theoretical thought that emphasizes the spatial element of
the human environment interface, the latter the socio-cultural element.
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Now one could imagine that dialectics presuppose that everything relates to
everything in any given context. his is far from being the case. To Castree, dialectics is a “logical development of a system of categories, from the most simple and
indeterminate to the most rich and concrete, by virtue of the contradictory imperatives
of each successive form” (Castree 1996, p. 352). Rather dialectics spur a debate of
when phenomena relate, how they do so, and the state of such relations. hus,
the dialectics of Harvey and Castree do not hold a lat ontology, where everything relates e.g. unconstrained of power. Yet it is not a relational perspective that
produces a lat ontology (nature-society is network, assemblages or rhizomes that
we cannot go beyond), but the rejection of a deep ontology, (deep structures,
mechanism, dynamics and relations) not directly (or not) observable. hus, if
everything relates to everything it is at best in particular and asymmetric ways,
that cannot be observed unconstrained of deep structures, relations or dynamics.
While Castree speaks of system dialectics that hold certain power geometries
(Castree 2002, p. 121), Harvey (2011, p. 19) distinguishes between seven such
related power geometries that integrate (deep) dynamics between 1) technological progress and use of scientiic knowledge 2) institutional arrangements and
regulation 3) knowledge structures, and mental conceptions 4) organization of
material practices, production and consumption, 5) social practice, 6) and work,
7) all of which dialectically relate to nature (See igure 4.1.).
1) Technological development, Production
and use of technologies and scientific
knowledge
7) Man, nature and societies'
relationship to the physical
environment, e.g. resources
6) Work and labor processes
their organization and the
production of specific goods,
geographies, services, social
effets to people
Sustaianbility
as a certain form of
organizing socioecological and
politico-economic
processes between
seven moments of
interaction
5) everyday practises and
social reproduction
2) institutional,
governmental, and
regulatiory practises
3) Knowledge structure,
mental conceptions,
geographical imaginations
beliefs, desires and cultural
understanding
4) organizational forms of production,
exchange, and consumption
Figure 4.1. Sustainability, dialectics and seven moments of interaction. From Harvey 2011,
p. 19).
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At this stage the igure (Figure 4.1) seems banal. Yet, “the danger to social theory
is to see one of the elements as determinant of all the others” (Harvey 2010, p. 196).
To hold one of them constant makes an impotent theory, and yet it is what most
theorizing on sustainability in higher education does. More intriguing, a vast body
of theoretical work on sustainability in higher education relects upon one or a
few of these dimensions at best. In both cases, a tremendous exclusory process
with respect to their interrelatedness (interdisciplinary) efects goes one, precisely
because they fail to understand how they are relational to one another2.
“Each one of these moments is internally dynamic, marked by tensions and contradictions (just think of our mental conceptions of the world), but all of them are
codependent and coevolve in relation to each other within a totality”
(Harvey 2011, p. 19).
Imagine for instance how a theory of sustainable transition would look when
taking these seven moments of interaction, their relations and internal and
external contradictions into consideration. hen, one must address and
challenge internal contradictions of sustainable transition theory, to achieve
sustainable transition. It is another way of saying that changing to a sustainability language (in science and education) may not in itself produce physical
change as assumed by much theorizing over sustainability in higher education
or the ‘dissemination of scientiic knowledge’ perspective. Dialectics represent
a mode of thinking relevant to address the material dimension of representing sustainability issues in academia. Contemplating these dynamics into
sustainability in academia is no simple task yet illuminating to geographical
imaginations across discipline. In order to theorize over sustainability in academia as a comprehensive socio-environmental and interdisciplinary framework
(that enables us to examine contradictions as continuities) the remaining part
of this chapter is devoted to examine ontological prepositions related to the
2 Asbestos is an illuminating example. As early as in 1898 the irst concerns of asbestos’s injuring efects on human health were reported. It took precisely the UK Government a century
of thinking before responding to scientiic knowledge, when they inally banned asbestos in
1998 (EEA 2001, p. 11). hus 1) technological development and knowledge 2) institutional
government and regulation, 3) mental conceptions, 4) production and consumption 5) everyday
practices 6) work and labor environment and 7) natural resources were related to one another
both with regard to the introduction and the banning of asbestos.
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81
seven moment of interaction. In bringing these dimensions together, we ind
the heart of geographical imaginary.
4.2. Geographical Imaginary: Scaling and Materializing the Power
of Reference
What is interesting when one seeks to materialize the power of reference (or
academic governmentalities for the sake) is not only the diiculties and deep
methodological waters one enters touching the human-environmental interface,
but how scientiic responses have arisen out of academic (imaginary) boundaries.
Whatever perspective on the quest of socio-nature(s), imaginary boundaries are part
of assembling academic responses that (im)materialize and politicize our thoughts
and disciplines, curricula, and texts. Yet, transcending disciplinary borders have
historically proved extraordinarily diicult. his is for instance the case 1) when
biological concepts of ‘natural selection’, ‘evolution’ or ‘natural competition’ are
imported into economic theory e.g. in contrast to ‘diversity’, ‘symbiosis’, ‘succession’ or ‘food chain’; or 2) when disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences
demand that ecological or biophysical processes have no relevance to the project at
hand (Clark and Clark 2012). Castree’s and Harvey’s point is how imaginary (and
even disciplinary) boundaries have political efects, whatever perspective we take.
To materialize references has historically involved huge amounts of political import. A case in point is the biological vocabulary built into social theory (Social
Darwinism, Fascism, Nazism) why there are good reasons for keeping away from
the socio-natural interface or the ‘geographical experiment’ (Harvey 1996, p. 191).
hat others have fail however, does not imply that that the task is irrelevant in
understanding the antropocene (it is impossible without integrating the social and
natural as dynamically related), but suggests that assembling the interface involves
political import (and export), values and contradictions. Taking a dialectical approach involves an efort to understand how conceptions of the environment,
nature or sustainability change historically (Castree 2003).
It follows that a dialectical approach invites us to examine how our conceptual,
disciplinary and epistemic framing (Castree 2014) unavoidably builds theoretical
fencing posts. Conceptual fencing posts do not only (re)order epistemological
and ontological assumptions of the human-environment interface. Conceptual
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fencing posts are part of construing and de-construing disciplinary and academic
epistemes (borders) in ways that make us accept sustainability, ecology or the
environment, e.g. to conventional economic theory, inancial speculation or
mathematical modelling (see chapter 8).
Consequently, space-time dialectics insist on holding a materialist approach on
social processes. his has a number of implications: 1) he social forms relate to
structural and material forms, though structural forms apply to society, materiality,
social or external nature in diferent ways. By way of illustration, hydrological
lows are organized with and without inluence from human beings. 2) Furthermore, material practices relate in ways that social practices and/or individuals can
change or are changed by structural/material forms 3) and thus give rise to new
socio-material forms and relations between them (Castree 1996, p. 347). From this
follow conjunctures and productive tensions between epistemological relexivity
and its efects on real transformation. It implies that 4) even the generalizable
forms and analytical categories are always under transformation as part of reality
(Clark and Clark 2012). Consequently dialectics capture underlying processes or
intends to do so, (e.g. claimed in the power of reference) holding that underlying
processes and surface appearances intertwine as dialectical contradictions. herein
lies that physical, biological conditions and processes relate to social and economic projects, why biological and physical elements cannot be treated as passive
to the human geographical history (Harvey 1996, p. 192). Humans are actively
transforming them. Humans actively transform the ontology of our physical and
social realities (anthropocene, climate change, gene modiication). From this follows that, whatever ontology ‘we’ speak from it inhabits dynamic elements. hus
assumptions are analytical representations of what is assumed to be ontologically
distinct. To better grasp there internal and external interrelations, and the degree
to which they cover each other I have noted that Harvey elsewhere operates with
a number of assumptions that the seven moments of interaction rest upon. In
CHAPTER 4. SPACE-TIME DIALECTICS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
83
JNGD, Harvey summarizes 11 assumptions3 as a coherent and consistent mode
of reasoning (Harvey 1996, p. 46-57) over socio-ecological change. Anchoring
sustainability with these assumptions aims to transcend surface appearances and
address opposition, antagonism and contradiction within it. hus, challenging
imaginary boundaries of sustainability is also an act of changing mode of representation and vice versa.
3- 4) Objects and things have a
heterogeneous character and
possess opposites and
contradictory elements at
different scales
2) Elements and things,
structures, systems and
materiality are constituted
by flow and relations
1) Processes and flow do
not exist independtly
from materiality
structures and systems
5)Time, space and scale can be
absolute, relative or relational in
itself, but are constituted out of
materiality, processes and flow
Sustaianbility
as dialectics
6-7) Whole and
parts constitute
one another
8-9) Opposition
and instability is
a precondition
for all processes
10-11)
Observation is
intervention
Figure 4.2. Sustainability, dialectics, and seven assumptions (from Harvey 1996, p. 46-57).
3 Harvey summarizes 11 prepositions of his dialectical method: 1) processes, low and relations
must be prioritized over analysis of things, elements and structures, 2) elements and things are
constituted out of low, processes and relations, 3) systems and things are inherently contradictory through the processes that constitute them, 4) things are always heterogeneous at every
level, 5) space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes, but are contingent and
constrained with them, 6) Parts and wholes are mutually constitutive to each other, 7) parts and
wholes entail “interchangeability of subject and object of cause and efect”, 8) transformative
processes arise out of contradiction, 9) change is a characteristic of all systems and all aspects
of systems, 10) dialectical enquiry itself is a process that produce permanence, 11) Going back
to Aristotle exploration of possible worlds is integral to dialectical thinking (Harvey 1996, p
46-57).
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Harvey puts little emphasis in explaining where the 11 assumption stem from.
As I read Harvey though, the question is not whether there are 11, 16 or 25 ontological assumptions, since they cannot be looked upon in isolation4. Rather the
key lies in understanding them as distinct, but related categories so their genesis
is mutually linked and opposite elements on one another. Consequently, they
are overlapping and intersecting, sometimes knitted together with efects to one
another sometimes drifting apart. he challenge of course is that contradictory
elements in and between the 7 moments of interaction are to be turned upon
academia itself. Can this be maintained independently from the power of reference? he answer is simply that it cannot. Nevertheless, one can be more or less
relexive about it (see 4.3.7).
4.3 Assumptions, Space-Time Dialectics and Contradictions of
Sustainability
In the following I take a critical stane that considers contradictory elements and
diferent representational forms of sustainability. In doing so, I hold a critical attitude towards the interest involved in diferent expressions, explanations and representations. By looking closer into the seven assumptions, I strive for transgressing
disciplinary boundaries when examining (contradictions of ) sustainability, while
inhabiting the terrains of academic work in the making of the power of reference.
In the following, I spell each of seven assumptions out in relation to sustainability.
4 1-2). If elements and things are constituted by low and relations, then it follows that they do
not exist independently from one another. Harvey hereby suggests that processes, low and
relations must be prioritized over analysis of things and structures. Yet if they are mutually
constitutive one must emphasize both simultaneously. Prioritizing one of them will do a half
analysis. 3-4) are merged. Since things have a heterogeneous character and is constituted so at
every level, it also follows by taking preposition 5 into consideration. 5) space-time processes
are given their own dimension, though they are also constituted out of social processes. One
could likewise merge 3) 4) and 5) since they all deal with the matter of scale, between wholes
and parts. 6-7 is merged. If parts and wholes constitute each other, and taking 3) 4) into
consideration, it follows that parts and wholes, subject and object have and interchangeable
character. 8-9) are merged as transformative processes (change) arise out of contradictions it
follows that change is a character of all systems, subsystems and so forth (things, structures,
elements or even processes change character). herefore if one take 2) 3) and 10) into account
dialectical work itself produces permanence (and change) and have tensions to 8, if one look
upon it as an isolated phenomenon. Dialectical work produces permanence and change (permanent change) simultaneously as science explores new knowledge, giving rise to new possible
worlds. 10) are merged with 11).
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85
4.3.1 Processes, lows and relations do not exist independently from materiality,
structures and systems
Most people have a meaning of the weather, and for some of us, it has huge importance in shaping our everyday life. But can scientists speak about the weather
or climate change, without speaking about themselves?
In case we are unwilling to accept that scientists (ranging from the bodies, everyday
knowledge to expert knowledge) can speak objectively about the weather, it has a
number of implications. (i) First, in giving up the assumption that one can speak
objectively of the weather, the climate system and nature, without incorporating
oneself, (beliefs, desires, attitudes and aspirations), it splinters Cartesian assumptions that separate mind and matter, weather systems and knowledge systems,
thought and action, between consciousness and materiality, theory and practice
(Harvey 1996, p. 48). Yet, a classical example of the history of binary thinking is
powerfully reproduced in scientiic work manifested into disciplinary constructs
dividing the natural from the social. Such binary, dual and dichotomist knowledge
systems have no purchase and become absurd if one suggests that it is impossible
to speak about nature without speaking about ourselves. As Braun puts it “to speak
of nature is to presuppose an ontology” (Braun 2006, p. 193).
If one accepts to go beyond binary systems, absolutism and essentialism, then a
whole new set of ontological assumptions arises. (ii) If one cannot separate the
weather systems from society, materiality or consciousness, then any anthropogenic perspective on climate change needs ontologies that bridge the sociomaterial nexus. (iii) How to stratify them produces radically diferent forms of
assuming, producing and consuming the human environment interface (different sustainability assemblages and agendas). (iv) Out of them arise diferent
‘natures of environmental spaces’, in the range of diferent ‘hybrid’ forms to low
or intensiied interactions (no interactions here, and some there). Under one set
of circumstances there might be relations under another, there may not. (v) For
this reason, (among others) Harvey, Castree and a number of critical thinkers
ind internalized relations become a fundamental position in conceptualizing
the human-environment interface whether 1) in a low or high intensiied nexus
2) in geographical scale, disciplinary, physically or mentally 3) as well as in and
between diferent temporalities. (vi) herefore the quest is how to give weight
and ontological status to processes, dynamics, relations and low, rather than
materiality, structures or systems in itself. Epistemologically, it is only possible to
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study processes, low, and interaction, by analyzing relations between empirical
observations (Harvey 1996, p. 49).
In reading and writing the weather (climate change), ranging from everyday knowledge to expert knowledge, one should also study what Castree (2001) deines as
social natures. To Castree nature is not only deined and construed socially, but
also modiied physically by humans (at all scales, from genetics to climate change),
with particular social interests involved in such transformations (Castree 2001,
p. 3). In speaking about the weather nature is made social just as society is made
natural why one cannot read and write the weather without addressing what gives
rise to such conversations, interests involved in them and the production and
consumption brought about.
Addressing the irst assumption suggests that sustainability must be analyzed in
terms of relationships. Diferent ontologies on the human environment interface
produce radically diferent socio-environmental geographies and geographical
imaginations of dealing with sustainability. If processes, lows and relations do not
exist independently from materiality, structures and systems it has a number of
methodological implications. First, scientiic discourses are part of producing the
materiel realities; why any constructivist theory that does not incorporate material
realities, must be rejected. he powers of references and academic episteme(s)
certainly have a material side that cannot be reduced to simple semantics (Castree
2014). Neither can materiality be reduced to simple and objective facts. Hereby
it follows that diferent imaginative geographies have diferent material efects,
though never in isolation from other moments of interaction.
A dialectical approach on sustainability is particularly helpful because it transcends
classical socio-environmental (disciplinary manifested) divides that allow integration of other domains and social-material spheres of interaction. By approaching
social transformative processes on environmental change (and vice versa) it becomes
clear how the social dimension of environmental challenges is often excluded in
scientiic discourses (Harvey 1996, p. 119). hus, disciplinary arrangements (disciplinary order) and the order of the power of references are often contradictory
to socio—material processes, e.g. when the social side of human-environmental
interaction is detached from thinking about it.
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87
4.3.2 Elements and things, structures, systems, and materiality is constituted
by low and movement
As far as the irst assumption (4.2.1) is concerned, it suggests that there is a material
side of any aspect of social life. he second suggests that there is not only a material
side of social processes; they are also constituted out of them. To Harvey (1996 p.
49) it follows that things, elements, and structures that appear to have a ixed and
permanent status, must be analyzed in terms of processes as part of their being. If
process and lows constitute elements and structures, one methodological ix-point
becomes to examine through which processes a phenomenon is produced and sustained rather than accepting it as an object with a character of permanence in itself
(Harvey 1996, p. 50). It is indeed a hard endeavor and can make one’s head hurt to
think along these lines; but when we do so, it follows that ‘we’ give diferent elements,
things, processes and systems diferent temporalities (see 4.3.4). Accordingly, the
Andes Mountains, tectonic formations, glass, money or urban structures that seem
to have a permanent structure, are always in a lux. hings, elements, and structure
that have a permanent character do not resist the forces of low (as Harvey puts it)
why permanence is also constituted out of processes related to them. Processes also
take part in producing resistant and permanent structures (say glacial and interglacial
periods). hings that seem to hold a permanent character (organizations, institutions
or materiality) will at some point tip from one point to another in which a new
state of permanence will arise (Harvey 1996, p. 7). It is also true when (re)scaling
phenomena. By way of illustration when scaling or rescaling, processes also constitute
materiality and structures; “under one set of circumstances as a wave, and in another
as a particle” (Bohm and Peat, here quoted in Harvey 1996, p. 50). In other words,
electrons appear as both things and low simultaneously. Energy (low) and materials
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CHAPTER 4. SPACE-TIME DIALECTICS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
(thing) are constitutive to one another5. It makes Harvey suggest that neither energy
nor materials can be prioritized for analysis without serious loss of understanding
(Harvey 1996). If it is so, one must i) localize spheres of interaction ii) and what
kind (state) of interactions/forces (symmetric or asymmetric, synergetic or catalytic,
linear or un-linear, causal or chaotic e.g.) these relations are characterized by. hus,
small changes can have important efects in one circumstance and important changes
can have small efects in another. he method, therefore, only gives rise to examine
the state of relations and processes. Dialectics therefore have limited status when
analyzing linear, causal or absolute elements, e.g. in the physical environment, since
a phenomenon holding a causal relation may not do so under other circumstances,
unless treated as isolated with a permanent and universal character. At one scale a
dialectical perspective will reject concepts like planetary boundaries, since they hold
a ixed and absolute character explaining planetary limits. At another, a dialectical
perspective can incorporate planetary boundaries, precisely because of the planetary
limits sustainability (e.g. Rome Club) concepts rely upon. Consequently, dialectics
hold contradictory elements to sustainability in itself (see 4.3.4).
Addressing the second assumption suggests that sustainability must be analyzed in
terms of processes that constitute conditions for (un)sustainability in itself. If it
is true, as suggested in the irst assumption, that there is a material side of social
practices, and if it is true that these are constituted out of processes and low in
and between a number of spheres, then changes of dynamics, processes or relations
in one sphere may change relations in another sphere of interaction.
5 Note here an element of the envy of physics that Harvey may be subject to.
Harvey (1969, 2004) appeals to Einstein (power of reference). “he idea of simultaneity in
the physical universe, he taught us [Einstein red.], has to be abandoned. It is impossible to
understand space independent of time under this formulation and this mandates an important
shift of language from space and time to space-time or spatiotemporality“ (Harvey 2004, p. 3).
Harvey goes on to suggest that it was only when physicists began to think in terms of processes
and relations that modern quantum physics arises (Harvey 1996, p. 50). But as he does so, he
does not put much emphasis in addressing what a process is. As processes and energy can hardly
be separated, Einstein’s theory (E= mc2) that energy equals mass, implying that neither energy
nor mass can be destroyed, challenges dialectical thought since it imply absolute, universal
and constant boundaries (closed system). If we accept the concept of spatio-temporalities, it
follows it must be intimately related to energy. Time, however, is (like matter and energy) assumed a constant, at the speed of light, while space is what bends or is acknowledged as relative.
Nevertheless, the speed of light (the highest possible speed in time and space) is also absolute,
while simultaneously relative and relational. From Einstein’s viewpoint space is relative in the
double sense. What he meant was, that geometries are multiple, and the ones we choose, hence
a particular spatio-temoral frame, is relativized by the subject (Harvey 2004, p. 3).
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89
Consequently scientiic knowledge, technology, and (discourses) develop e.g. in
relation to economic growth, dialectically afecting one another. Development of
scientiic knowledge (and management of it), therefore also holds speciic ways of
dealing with nature (Castree 2001) that cannot be left unaddressed from validating
processes in monetary and non-monetary terms6.
he production of space cannot be thought of independently from the production of nature. No part can be construed without the other: In advancing the
assumption that a given material condition is constituted by processes and low,
into sustainability it provides a whole set of questions, that methodologically give
rise to asking by what process a phenomenon is constituted and how it is sustained
(Harvey 1996, p. 203)7. his question fosters a way of thinking in respect of sustainability, and I have spent great efort thinking about how the unsustainable
(society) is sustained? What sustains unsustainability in academia, that both engage with its solutions while forming, creating and reproducing unsustainability?
4.3.3 Objects and subjects have a heterogeneous character and possess opposites
and contradictory elements at diferent scales.
It is the core of academic work to generate scientiic facts, e.g. about the state of
climate change or conditions of (un)sustainability. Quite often, and despite the
two irst assumptions, material things, elements, and systems (not least processes) are treated as if they were irreducible facts, hence unproblematic assertions
about the world.
6 Flows of money link to material lows giving rise to understand how circulation of capital create
places, factories or cities, and how the lack of low of capital undermines other places, factories,
cities or neighborhoods (Harvey 2005). Suggesting there is always a material dimension to
money implies that increased productivity to better ones proitability rate changes how land
and resources are viewed, used and managed. hrough the process of valuation in monetary
and non-monetary terms, nature is reduced to resources. What can be turned into resources
in money terms and the way they are dynamic and changes over time, among other changes
through the process of knowledge and technologies. he point here is that low and circulation
of money have a quite diferent temporality than ecosystems.
7 if it is so as a number of neo-Marxian thinkers have claimed, that capital produces nature
(Smith 2010, Harvey 1996, Castree 2002), it may also be capital circulation (related to scientiic
knowledge, technological development and other moments of interactions) that will be the
vehicle for the future socio-ecological process (sustainability?). In fact, exploring sustainability
challenges through capital circulation may be an efective means in addressing contradictory
elements of sustainability, but also in understanding the forms it takes in an educational context
(chapter 2).
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When scientists, students or citizens explore the world it inevitably is also a sophisticated exercise of reductionism8. Reductionism is part of the analytical genesis.
At some point any person needs to give things, words or processes (temporarily)
a solid character to be able to speak of it. In so doing, one creates a beginning
and end simultaneously, wherein facts are given a valid and permanent status.
Facts, therefore, are always heterogeneous, and have opposites as a precondition
(Harvey 1996, p. 52). If there is anything to this assumption, it has a number of
consequences for our mode of thinking. his can be addressed by answering the
following question: Does reductionism have explanatory power in itself?
Everything (including abstraction) can be reduced to smaller parts of other (related)
things, hence with some element of diference or oppositional efects within it (see
4.3.5). Water is a molecular compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen and
oxygen are two atoms in the periodic system. Atoms may be reduced to protons,
electrons and photons that in turn may be reduced to fundamental fermions
(quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons) which are constituted by elementary “matter” and “antimatter” particles as well as fundamental bosons which are
said to intermediate interactions between fermions (National Research Council
2006, Kuhlmann 2013). As atoms (Greek for indivisible), elementary particles
are particles whose substructure is unknown.
Objects and things can always be subdivided into smaller entities in relation to one
another. What is interesting about the water I set out to explain, is that through
reductionism this type of explanation is undertaken by changing the scale to ever
smaller parts – to explain water consisting of something else? By reducing to ever
smaller spatio-temporal igurations, the entities are given apparent explanatory
power.
Coinciding with the two irst assumptions, a system at one level of abstraction,
only becomes part of a whole at another level of abstraction. I shall return to implications for spatial analysis (see 4.3.4 and 4.3.5), but for now, it is the material
dissolution setting academic (imaginary) boundaries that are of interest.
8 We say, when analyzing data, that every statement from our dataset is coded and categorized
to distill the essence (through abstraction).
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91
What is deined as an object a thing or a structure (setting boundaries and borders
for analysis), always has inherent diferentiation/diversiication (Castree 2014).
Heterogeneity, though, has a deeper meaning than diversity, dispersion or complexity as Harvey notes. Heterogeneity is much more than diversity since “the parts
and processes confront each other as opposites, conditional on the wholes of which they
are part” (Ollman in Harvey 1996, p. 54).
In consequence, if heterogeneity and complexity is part of what things (phenomena, subjects, structures and processes) are or their apparent manifestation, it
follows we should emphasize the processes internalized by opposites imbedded
within and between them.
Addressing the third assumption in the context of sustainability one therefore must look
into sustainability in terms of boundary making, also where these are not currently
imagined (disciplinarily, theoretically or conceptually). Imaginative geographies
then, are elaborately imaginative at the same time material with diferent spatiotemporal efects. Hereby the process of setting borders and boundaries (geography)
real or igurative, conceptually or modelled (thought and practice), becomes of
crucial importance, since borders (stretching from rhizome to absolute) determine
(localize) relations, processes and contradictory elements. Borders in breath (disciplinary, thematic, ields of research), and in depth (epistemological and ontological)
have set the bounds for the intangible development of concepts like space, time, and
scale, under which such theories and concepts develop. Changes in borders’ change
spatio-temporal igurations and hereby modify the circumstances (conditions)
under which concepts, theories and abstractions develop. hus, setting borders is
potentially constitutive as opposites in diferent spatio-temporal scales. his gives
rise to the fourth assumption, geographers across the ield have long engaged with.
4.3.4 Time, space and, scale can be absolute, relative or relational in itself,
but are constituted out of materiality, processes and low
As diferent societies have produced radically diferent thoughts and practices about
time and space, space is a system of social relations, shaped by human practice
and biophysical processes (Harvey 1996, p. 203). hough Harvey is concerned
with relational space and scales as relational, Smith (2010) remarks that there has
been: “an extensive silence on the question of scale”(…). he theory of geographical
scale – more correctly the theory of the production of geographical scale – is grossly
underdeveloped. In efect, there is no social theory of geographical scale, not to mention
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an historical materialist one. And yet it plays a crucial part in our whole geographical
construction of material life” (Smith 2010, p. 72).
Hereby Smith along with Harvey, Castree and others note that any social theory
collapses when not taking into consideration time and space. his point is true
when economists omit spatial dimensions of aggregated market demands, or when
Weber in his abstract theoretical work incorporate processes of temporal change,
keeping the spatial dimension constant (Harvey 1996, p. 9). Insofar as social
theories collapse when not taking into consideration spatio-temporal dynamics,
what implications does it have for socio-ecological relations?
To better hold a grip on the question, I follow six9 stepping stones Harvey laid
down toward a spatial analysis of socio-ecological process (Harvey 1996, p. 112).
It is now common among a large majority of human and physical geographers that
processes, dynamics or low do not operate in, but constitute time and space. In
accepting such a stance it follows that multiple time-spaces exist in diferent scales
in accordance with the phenomena under investigation. Subsequently, diferent
elements and processes produce diferent spatio-temporalities. Massey formulates
it in this way: “A number of human geographers are now trying to rethink space as
integrally spacetime and to conceptualize space-time as relative (deined in terms of the
entities ‘within’ it), relational (as constituted through the operation of social relations,
through which the ‘entities’ are also constituted) and integral to the constitution of the
entities themselves (the entities are local timespaces)” (Massey 1999, p. 284).
Whatever perspective, it be causal, intentional, evolutionary (ranging from intensive interactions apparent everywhere to low interactions apparent somewhere),
they produce diferent spatio-temporalities. hus, assuming where interactions link
9 1) he discursive activity of mapping space is fundamental to the structuring of any kind of
knowledge. Situatedness, location or positionality, therefore is mapping of the space in real
terms or metaphorically.
2) Mapping is a discourse activity that involves power, why it is a fundamental tool for political
control.
3) Social relations are always spatial, why social activities produce mapping activities in itself.
Spatial relations are produced of social relations. 4) Material practices transform spaces of
experience from which all knowledge of spatiality is derived. 5) Institutions are produced in
and produce space. Institutions manifestate territorializations – of control and surveillance,
terrains of jurisdiction, organization and administration. 6) he imaginary (thought) is a fertile
source of all sorts of possible spatial worlds (Harvey 1996, p.112-113).
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phenomena, systems and structures and with what efects measured, it produces
mental time-space coordinates. In assuming where interactions link phenomena,
we concurrently scale these links, and in scaling these links, we concurrently give
diferent spheres of interaction diferent temporalities (Harvey 1996, p. 203).
hen, it follows that claiming processes, and low do not exist independently from
structures, systems and things, produce a particular form of imagining spatiotemporal igurations itself. Concepts of time and space in other words, afect the
way one understands the world, and provide a whole set of representations that
act upon that world. In a splendid analysis by Casey (2001) he enfolds spatiotemporal dynamics stretching from bodies engagement with space-places to global
networks of organizing space: ”here is no place without self and no self without
place (…). A body is shaped by the places it has come to know and that have come to
it – come to take up residence in it (…). he reverse is also true: places are themselves
altered by our having been in them” (Casey 2001, p. 688).
here are seemingly no limits to spatio-temporal abstraction and theoretical complexity. he point, however, is: when time and space are also constituted out of
social processes, then the construction of geographical scales and space, are crucial
for discussion of socio-ecological processes (in and between diferent scales).
Insofar that processes, dynamics, and lows do not operate in but constitute time
and space, then time-space(s) “is neither absolute, relative, or relational in itself,
but it can become one or all simultaneously depending on the circumstances” (Harvey
1973, p. 13). Space is produced at one or all scales simultaneously, constituted
by the human practices related to it. Harvey goes on with a massive critique in
claiming that distance cannot be measured in a Newtonian metric abstracted in
pure absolute space. It “can only be measured in terms of process and activity” (Harvey 1969, p. 210). Distance or space cannot be measured in a Newtonian metric,
without I would hasten to say, incorporating process and activities that relate point
A with B. Here I think it reveals a problem to Harvey’s criticism of Newtonian
or Cartesian space, since he both rejects it (Harvey 1996, p. 123) and accepts it
(Harvey 2004, p. 4) at the same time. To my understanding Harvey emphasizes
relational space, but temporarily space can be absolute or relative. I myself have
the same struggle and accept absolute, relative, relational and other multiple spaces
as long as they potentially relate, link, and constitute one another. he diference
is that I have my doubt in accepting it to be only temporarily constituted and
accepting the hierarchies between them.
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“I often ind myself presuming in my practices that there is some hierarchy at work
among them in the sense that relational space can embrace the relative and the absolute,
relative space can embrace the absolute, but absolute space is just absolute and that
is that” (Harvey 2004, p. 7). hough I am not clariied, the reverse dimension
may also be true. By way of illustration, concepts like planetary boundaries or the
Anthropocene hold a planetary character hence absolute space (the assumption problematic too, e.g. Harvey 1974b), while sustainability concepts or socio-ecological
diference continuously re-scale such quests and produces global environmental
change. herefore absolute space may also be said to be able to hold relative and
relational space within it. In being willing to also sort the ‘hierarchy’ the other
way around; absolute space can also embrace relative and relational space, simply
because they interact and relate to one another, and are constituted out of the
interplay between them. hus, multiple time-spaces are related to and constituted
by diferent practices, why they are potentially contradictory to one another.
Addressing the assumption in the context of sustainability possesses a number of
challenges. heorizing over spatio-temporal dimensions of sustainability need to
take into consideration the multiple spatio-temporal dynamics produced within
and between ecological, geochemical, atmospheric or biosphere processes coupled with social practices and societal ways of organizing such practices. Diferent
disciplines, often without putting much attention to it, operate within particular
spatio-temporal assumptions. his is challenging to academic work, since spatial scales at which human beings operate as ecological agents (in academia and
elsewhere) are dynamic and also change. Geologists investigate in times over
periods over millions of years, whereas economics operate in quite diferent spatiotemporal scales (Rasmussen and Arler 2010, p. 43). Spatio-temporal ordering
then is a battleground of controversy between diferent disciplines. Economists,
when examining exploitation of natural resources, set time-scales in accordance
with the interest rate. In contrast geologists may look at exploitation of natural
resources diferently, advocating for quite diferent time scales. What I want to
argue is that inter-linkages between diferent spatio-temporalities ranging from
geochemical cycles, eco-systemic cycles to capital cycles, becomes crucial to any
debate on sustainability, and that understanding of spatio-temporal rhythms in
diferent spheres require a diferent framework, and yet a framework that is able
to approach inter-linkages between them if one wants to examine sustainability
or global climate change.
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Hence the challenges of dynamic and changing scales in and between diferent
spheres of interaction produce contradictory elements between them. If the time
horizon is set by practices of capitalism, then it may not correspond to eco-systemic
temporalities. he purpose of the rhetoric of sustainability is to some extent to
direct think about time horizons encountered in the market. What is rational or
considered to be rational or eicient in one spatial scale, may be irrational and
ineicient in another. he question of level of abstraction and scale has been raised
by geographers again and again (Harvey 1996, Massey 1999, Smith 2010). In the
context of sustainability, e.g. in education for sustainability or sustainable transition
theory, the issue of scale has largely been left unaddressed (Raven et al., 2012).
his will be examined more carefully in chapter 5 and 6. he power of reference
(power struggles) must take into consideration the capacity to understand how
spatio-temporal scales are produced within academia. As diferent disciplines
operate in quite diferent spatio-temporal scales, translation between culturally
embodied spatio-temporal organizations of socio-ecological processes is crucial if
to achieve “more” sustainable practices (Harvey 1996, p. 204). Hence, changing
spatio-temporal ordering (scalar politics) becomes vital to reshape contradictory
elements of socio-ecological processes in a more ‘sustainable’ direction.
4.3.5 Whole and parts constitute one another
When taken together, the previous assumptions (1) elements, structures and
things relate and (2) are constituted out of low, (3) have a heterogeneous character, and (4) operate at multiple spatio-temporal scales, suggest that parts
constitutes wholes and vice versa. he assumption that parts constitute wholes
is crucial to Harvey’s and Castree’s space-time dialectics. Assuming that parts are
constituted from wholes has a number of implications for processes of internalization that go much beyond dialectical reasoning10. he principle also applies
to (parts) of the natural science phenomena (Prigogine 1986). Rare earth metals
for example only occur in mineral and not in elemental form. his is not to say
that the whole always has relation to parts in a given situation or for a given
phenomenon. But assuming that the whole is constituted by its parts is to claim
that whatever phenomenon under investigation has always relations to something
10 It is a principle in Hermeneutics as it is in Anthony Gidden’s theory of structuration where
neither micro, macro nor meso-analyses are suicient. In his duality of structure, for instance,
Giddens suggests that institutions form structures and structures form institutions, agents and
institutions mutually afect and are afected by one another, while reproducing a particular
state of being.
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else, and the task is to understand what this might be (Harvey 1996). his has
further epistemological implications.
Insofar as parts and wholes constitute one another, it is possible to ind the general
(universal) in the particular (speciic) and vice versa. It is hard to undertake an
analysis of parts without taking into consideration their relation to the whole. Such
an analysis is impotent, and challenges the construction of much contemporary
research that divides and subdivides into ever more narrow and specialized ields
of study. Ever narrowing disciplinary constructs holds contradictory elements to
sustainability, since they have limited capacity to explore holistic and interdisciplinary dimensions related to that phenomenon (see chapter 2). Methodologically
it is equally important to swing the pendulum between whole and part.
By way of example, Harvey suggests (1996, p. 54) that as you are breathing, you
constitute yourself. It would be hard to live without the oxygen you are taking
in. Now, in that very same process the chemical composition of the air changes
within you. As you breathe out you transform the atmosphere. In other words,
you are constituted by the air, as you transform yourself; hence it gives a new
constitutive composition. If you disagree you may try to pull a placket over your
head and see if you change the micro-environment. his is why the outset of the
chapter claimed that dialectics is both a set of assumptions and that the world is
dialectic simultaneously.
he same can be said to be true, when you up- or downscale the assumption,
though it cannot be reduced to a matter of scale alone. I as a human being do not
constitute the Earth’s life crust. To argue that I constitute the atmosphere would
be deeply un-asymmetric, rather it constitutes me. he atmosphere whatever the
composition, does ine without me and in that sense it is external nature. My life
practices and breath have close to no efect on the atmosphere. In upscaling, my
efect on the atmosphere is reduced - the constitutive elements are reduced. Now,
take all human beings, their life practices, engines, houses, and helicopters. hen a
cumulative efect is said to transform the atmosphere, to (re)constitute the chemical composition of the atmosphere/stratosphere, among others through aerosols,
CO2 or ozone (Prigogine 1986). Dialectical links in the human environment
interface then constitute new atmospheric conditions, from which the asymmetric
component melts into air. Rather cumulative small efects co-constitute large
scale efects. Interactions, and connections become constitutive for down-scaling
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97
and up-scaling processes simultaneously. Whole and part are constitutive to one
another (Harvey 1996, p. 54).
Addressing the assumption in the context of sustainability implies that anthropogenic
climate change is constituted by the whole of which it is part. Conditions for
(un)sustainability potentially inhabit and operate at all scales why it can only be
imagined when recognizing how whole and part constitute one another. At irst
glance this has a character that seems to depict everything as equally important.
his is far from the case, since assuming that wholes constitute parts and vice versa
must be analyzed together with the other assumptions in play. To incorporate
the seven moments of interaction in a consistent language and their dialectical
socio-material temporalities, is to acknowledge how whole and part constitutes
socio-ecological and meteorological futures.
4.3.6 Oppositions and instability is a precondition for all processes
In the third assumption, it was suggested that elements, things, and structures
are inhabited by oppositions as part of their being. If opposition, contradictory
elements and heterogeneity are part of the apparent status of things, then processes
of internalization become oppositional with limited explanatory power. It is in the
interaction between elements, structures or things, potentials for transformation
are embedded. Change is part of what things, structures and elements are, and potential for change takes place in the interaction between wholes and parts, between
subject and object. hus individuals and things/institutions are both subject and
object to social processes of transformation (Harvey 1996, p. 54). his is both the
case in general, e.g. in the interface between human-environmental interactions
or for particular phenomena, e.g. in biology, where organisms are both subject
and object to evolution, as Harvey argues. In a footnote, Hans Jonas wonderfully
depicts that the metabolism of an organism is “not a peripheral activity engaged in
by a constant core: it is the total mode of continuity (self- continuation) of the subject of
life itself ’, its ‘constant becoming’” (Jonas 1966, fn. 13, in Szerszynski 2010, p. 12).
Tensions and contradictions take diferent forms (see igure 4.3). How contradictions are organized and represented hold diferent forms of power. Contradictions
can form binary tensions between two objects/subjects. Contradictions can be
organized as tensions between three elements (e.g. subject, object, structures)
or be multi-relational. Contradictions can be internalized or externalized to a
particular object/subject or phenomena. Contradictions and tensions however,
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can also be characterized by a spectrum of tensions between two or more objects.
A spectrum of tensions can upscale and downscale vertically, horizontally or
in multiple geometries and spheres, until a certain state break down (absolute
limit). To complicate matters further the spectrum can be organized symmetrically, be asymmetric, linear or un-linear, direct or abrupt/stratiied. Bridging a
given spectrum organized binarily or multi-relationally, is also subject to diferent
kinds of relations, it be causal, intentional, relative, evolutionary or emotional.
Consequently, contradictions of contradictions, may be causal and binary phenomena in one scale, but relate to emotional tensions in another, which is the case
for anthropogenic climate changes. Hence contradictory elements exists in and
between e.g. 1) diferent temporalities 2) causal events, intentional events, or
evolutionary events or 3) between absolute, relative and relational space (see also
4.3.4). Tensions and contradictions are also dynamic and subject to continuous
development. Under one set of circumstances a phenomenon can be constituted
out of causal relations under another by intentional relations. Contradictions
therefore are never held constant11, but change as rupture and response to various
material responses, socio-ecological responses and institutional regulations.
tripolar
contradi
ctions
binary
contradi
ctions
internal
contradictions
multipolar or
multirelational
contradictions
External
conctrad
ictions
Figure 4.3 Contradictions of contradictions and there organizational form (inspired by
Prigogine 1986 and Harvey 1996).
11 Can contradictions accumulate? Yes, until a certain point where they create a new state of
stability/contradictory phenomena.
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To say that oppositions and instability are a precondition to all processes implies
that change or transformation is a characteristic for all systems and subsystems.
herefore, transformation and change are always part of what things are or appear
to be. he implication are that change, transformation and instability are rather
the norm than the exception, why Harvey suggests ”the appearance of stability of
things or systems is what have to be explained” (Harvey 1996 p. 54).
Addressing the assumption with respect to sustainability is contradictory in itself.
Hence sustainability should also be considered in terms of the non-equilibrium
thesis, where irreversibility can lead to a new set of structures and organizational
forms (Zimmerer 1994) and by accepting balances and certain levels of stability.
he extensive methodological disentanglement of oppositions and instability is
a reason why dialectics generally make little appeal to causal explanations. With
multi-causality, instability and contradictory elements follow. In dealing with the
dialectics of climate change, however, it is hard to acknowledge and at the same
time reject causal efects. In chapter 8 I examine this in greater detail. As causal
relations are objective to absolute space, it is hard to reject absolute space and at
the same time accept anthropogenic climate change fundamentally triggered by
rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Climate change cannot be captured
in an absolute space alone, since dynamics actually change.
Oppositional forces therefore are nodal points with transformative activity (Harvey 1996, p. 54). he dialectics are embodied in material and social relations and
therefore is also a process that generates opposition and undermines permanence
while producing new. Whitehead (1969, p. 28 in Harvey 1996, p. 54) beautifully
relates the presumption to education in stating that ”the principle of process is
that being is constituted by becoming”. It follow that learning processes potentially
change practices, hence a possible solution to overcome contradictory elements of
sustainability (see Part III). hinking about (un)sustainability in terms of internal
and external contradictions is imperative, yet largely absent in the literature on
sustainability in higher education.
4.3.7 Observation is intervention
Taking into consideration the assumption of internalization, whole and parts,
instability or heterogeneity implies that relations between researcher and the ield
again are dialectical (between subject and object). Harvey calls this ’two active
subjects’ why one rather than asking whether the production of knew knowledge
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is ‘true’ or ‘false’, should engage in questioning under what circumstances is this
knowledge produced. Under what circumstances are knowledge produced and
what does this knowledge serve to produce (Harvey 1974b, p. 162). Haraway formulates it a little diferently in suggesting that ‘we’ always speak from somewhere
and this ‘somewhere’ has a particular reference to (embodied) time and space.
Tacit knowledge is not innocent but one of the greatest terrains of the power of
reference. hey are claims of being ‘nowhere’. To Haraway though, being ‘nowhere’
is another word for objectivism, which provide the powerful capacity to inluence
(authority) governmental cultures and schemes (Haraway 1988, p. 584).
According to her all knowledge is situated. Embodied knowledge is subject to
and requires responsibilities as to the production, use and dissemination of that
knowledge. Physicists like Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein
came to similar conclusions (note the envy of physics). Similar to Haraway, Heisenberg once famously noted ‘to observe the behavior of a system is to intervene in
it’ (Heisenberg in Harvey 1996, p. 56). Heisenberg is known as the father of the
uncertainty principle in quantum physics, which describes that the act of observation has an impact on the object observed. his recognition made him state
that the more you want to see the less you see, why atoms are not things, and
have no objective existence. Absolute causal determinism is impossible, according
to Heisenberg. It is nothing new that observation is intervention (Heisenberg,
Bohr). What is new is the emerging understanding that it happens both at an
atomic and planetary scale (See chapter 1).
What Harvey quests is rather diferent orders of normativity (false or true/good
or bad), or the distinction between descriptive and nomothetic sciences. Scientiic
work and scientiic knowledge change the world. Distinction between value and
facts is fundamental to post-normal science, but is impossible to achieve from
a dialectical perspective (Harvey 1996, p. 10). Rather it is about addressing a
second order of normativity engaged with how scientiic knowledge claims react
on dilemmas, power structures and interests that create contradictions themselves.
So, instead of value (truth or false/good or bad) it is the process of valuation that
is of interest.
If you imagine the third assumption (objects and things have always a heterogeneous character) it inhabits a contradictory element to processes of internalization,
hence limited explanatory power (Harvey 1996, p. 53). I absorb the world with
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101
regard to intentional characteristics. Interests subjected to any research agenda,
therefore hold processes of intentional internalization. he processes of internalization though, hold a number of unintentional characteristics beyond one’s control.
Knowledge, intentions and action/practice then, are created in and are elements
of the very same process (Casey 2001). hey are created in the same social space,
in the same space-time coordinates why processes of internalization take place in
relatively small spheres of realization, in which the intentional interests, individual or organizational are fundamental to that process of realization. According
to Harvey it is therefore never a matter of choosing between diferent forms of
neutral knowledge but choosing between diferent forms of normative knowledge
(Harvey 1996, p. 57). As man transforms nature, he transforms himself. As man
transforms himself and nature, he transforms the weather systems and himself in
a constant process of continuation. “In an era when nature is less natural that at any
times in human history – an era when even the human body is becoming subject to
social reengineering – it seems to me that geographers must become participants in, not
spectators of, the momentous socio-natural changes of our time” (Castree 2001, p. 18).
Critical examination of natural change is also a critical examination of society.
Socio-political projects are ecological projects and vice versa, why geographical
imaginary, regulation and concepts of nature and environment are omnipresent
in everything we say and do. “If, furthermore, concepts, discourses, and theories can
operate, when internalized in socio-ecological practices and actions, as ’material forces’
that shape history, then the present battles being waged over the concepts of ’nature’
and of environment are of immense importance” (Harvey 1996, p. 174).
Whatever perspective on the use of sustainability in academia one take, the positions are by no means exclusive to each other. Environmental-ecological issues are
interwoven in particular social purposes that also inhere in science and education.
Control over natural resources (of others and of work) in the name of climate
change, sustainability or resource scarcity is never far from scientiic knowledge
(Clark and Clark 2012). Looking more closely at the way(s) sustainability concepts
and politics interrelate becomes imperative if to better handle (valuable) approaches
to environmental/ecological questions in research and education.
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4.4 Conclusions
At the outset of the chapter I suggested dialectics is both a set of assumptions about
the world, but also that the world actually holds a multitude of dialectical relations.
In presuming that nature(s) is also socially produced at all scales, I argued that this
is actually the case while external nature is still omnipresent. Insofar as diferent
natures are socially produced out of diferent social practices (diferent philosophies
of science produce diferent geographies) this has a number of methodological
consequences for scientiic and educational practices (and beyond). Yet, there are so
many preixes, approaches, dualism, relations, tensions, and ways to methodologically embrace them that it will continue to be a battleield that constantly changes.
hrough the seven presumptions, I have tried to argue this: sustainability is contradictory in itself; it is fundamentally a multi-complex and wicked problem, since
there is no center in society from where the problem can be addressed, controlled
and managed. hough uncontrollable the processes need to be directed in one
way or another if to achieve towards sustainability.
Ultimately, when it comes to the end of the day, models, measurements, methods, though ever more specialized, are subject to questions of why we do it,
they are subject to references, ethics/norm, power and representation. Is it better
representations and models that can help us with the value/ethical dilemmas and
respond to climate change? he continuous expansion of complexity, specialized
and sophisticated knowledge, models and approaches as a means to deal with
uncertainty, cannot tell us what to do in practice, how to respond and what our
responsibilities are. Control and complexity become the greatest paradox. his
does not only apply to sustainability, but also concepts like geo-engineering, the
anthropocene, ecosystem governance that all provide geopolitical infrastructures
– to govern the socio-natural interface.
Locating sustainability discourses in the ontology and epistemology of chapter
4, produces a post-political space of engagement where the future is not given.
When envisioning sustainability in academia therefore, no simple strategies or
best practices exist in taking the seven assumptions into consideration. But, one
can point at contradictions and try to understand them, and ind better ways to
respond to them. In part III I am not so interested in what the contradictions are,
but how geographers respond to them. Henceforth I enter the ield of practice
CHAPTER 4. SPACE-TIME DIALECTICS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
103
to substance geographers at work and better understand how they ind ways to
respond to them.
heorizing over sustainability one needs to take into consideration multiple spatiotemporal dynamics produced within and between socio-ecological scales. his
is challenging to academic work, since spatial scales by means of which human
beings operate as ecological agents (in academia and elsewhere) are dynamic and
also change. As diferent disciplines operate in quite diferent spatio-temporal
scales, translation between culturally embodied spatio-temporal organizations of
socio-ecological processes is crucial if to achieve “more” sustainable practices as so
many these days advocate for. Changing spatio-temporal ordering (scalar politics)
becomes vital to reshape contradictory elements of socio-ecological processes in
a more ‘sustainable’ direction. Sustainability must be analyzed in terms of spatial
diference and yet much theorizing over sustainability in higher education is little
concerned with its geographical implications. Critical examination of sustainability in academia then, addresses inherent socio-natures produced, scales and
their impulses afecting management of socio-environmental change. Imposing
such relections into the body of sustainability discourses in academia and their
geographies of response(ability) is intimately linked to the power of reference and
the ways it gives reference to an emerging politico-ecological governmentality
through (supra-artiicial) sustain-abilities.
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Chapter 5
Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves
and Abstractions of the Human
Environment Interface
“We cannot talk about the world of “nature” or “environment” without simultaneously revealing how space and time are being constituted within such processes”
(Harvey 1996, p. 263).
As it has proved hard to methodologically engage with nature-society and explain
whether a particular phenomenon is anthropogenic or not, theory is vital to make
sense of how the human environment nexus gets established through concepts like
sustainability (Castree 2001). Approaches in conceptualizing the human-environmental interface has changed considerably historically. For those in advocacy of
sustainability concepts, this is important in two contexts: First the sustainability
approach does barely elaborate on this distinction. Environmental change becomes
anthropogenic per se. Secondly, and for this reason, one should look closely at
the ways in which environmental conceptualizations and politics interrelate if
to better handle approaches to environmental/ecological questions in academia.
Against this background, this chapter has two aims. Enabled with presumptions
from chapter 4, we irst theoretically develop what I shall call spatio-temporal
tides and waves of the human environment interface1. What is interesting about
the materiality of spatio-temporal tides and waves, is that it by no means follows
trends on the great acceleration and contradictions of sustainability as outlined in
1 With Spatio-temporal tides and waves there is nothing new under the sun theoretically. I do not
claim to establish a new theoretical framework. Rather, in following the social nature approach,
the history of human-environmental interactions is considered in relation to the anthropogenic
climate change thesis.
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
105
chapter 1. he remaining part of the chapter takes these co-productive nature(s)
into consideration when developing methods for the further analysis in Part III.
Questions for the chapter:
•
•
•
What does the ‘geographical experiment’ look like when confronted with
climate change and sustainability?
How do diferent history-geographical traditions (of determinism, spatial
analysis, radical geography, cultural turn and new materialism) respond/
incorporate concepts like climate change and sustainability, and what is
the signiicance to geographical imaginations?
How is the method in this project developed to research geographers’
response (ability) to concepts like sustainability and climate change and
contested socio-natures involved in this?
5.1 Anthologies and Ontologies of Social Nature(s)
For centuries geographers have been concerned with understanding and explaining human-environment interactions and geography is sometimes characterized
as one of the most prominent and oldest disciplines in the conceptualization of
human-environment interactions that integrates elements from natural and social
sciences (Rasmussen and Arler 2010).
It can be questioned whether Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) falls into the
epistemic boarders of geography and geographers. Nevertheless, he is repeatedly
portrayed as one of the immediate forefathers of modern human-environment
interactions in geography and early environmental science (Harvey 1998, Turner,
2002, Zimmerer 2006). Humboldt’s advocacy of geognocy (today’s Earth Science)
considerably contributed to modern environmental science along with a number
of other scholars at the time. According to Harvey his work marks an entry point
to modern geography. “Humboldt’s work lies at the end of a period that, beginning
with the Renaissance, experienced a massive explosion in geographical knowledge and
geographical sensibilities” (Harvey 1998, p. 724).
In a historical perspective it is interesting to observe that invitations to upscale
ecological themes have been numerous during the past centuries. ”he view of
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geography as human ecology has quite a long history” (Harvey 1969, p. 115) and
since Joachim Schouw (1789-1852), Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918), or John
Mackinder (1861-1947) geographers like Harlan Barrows (1877-1960), Carl O.
Sauer (1889-1975), Gunnel Forsberg (1962) and Stoddart (1965) have argued
for up scaling ecological themes deining the discipline in ways that geographers should study human beings in relation to their geographical environment
(Christiansen 1967, Harvey 1998, Turner 2002, Zimmerer 2006). hough these
authors are far from agreeing upon the meaning of what is environmental and
how to study it “he theme of the man-environment relation has never been far from
the heart of geographical research, and for many it has functioned as the overriding
theme” (Harvey 1969, p. 115).
As early as 1865 George Pekins March argued in Man and Nature or Physical
Geography as Modiied by Human Action that ancient civilizations collapsed due to
environmental degradation. hroughout the 1920s it was suggested that geography
efectively was human ecology studying humans’ inluence on and adjustment to
the environment (Barrows 1923).
he history of the human environment theme, however, has taken multiple forms
and methodological approaches over the years. Some geographers conceptualize
the human-environment theme more or less ad hoc, implicitly or explicitly whereas
others organize it into constructs separating human and nature or build certain
interfaces. hough assumptions of the human environment theme are sometimes
implicit, they hold ‘tacit information’ that is mediated through scientiic and
educational practices (Demeritt 2002). herefore we must never ignore the nexus
between (tacit) knowledge and power, e.g. in the construction and use of models
nor in representations of nature in science and education. Following Harvey,
geographers build explanations on the way a theme is constituted; “A theme acts
as a directive by indicating the sort of facts the geographer ought to collect and by suggesting a mode of organization of those facts” (Harvey 1969, p. 116).
A theme gives rise to theorize as Harvey puts it, and how the human-environment
theme is considered implicitly or explicitly can be examined through the way
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diferent kinds of explanations are perpetuated2. he history of studying the
society-nature interface, make us better understand the geopolitics of scientiic
and educational practices that constitute the ‘object of study’, and fundamentally
shaping questions asked and data collected (Braun 2006).
What is to be considered relevant to the human-environment theme varies from
discipline to discipline. I therefore refer to the human-environment theme as
organized assumptions about the way we categorize parts of the world that are not
to be considered only within the earth system and human system, respectively.
Whereas the human environment theme organizes the world thematically, humanenvironment interaction relects how we build explanation of interactions within
the human-environment theme epistemologically (Castree 2001). Methodological
relections on relations and dynamics are focal points to explain a given phenomenon and why it is so. hus, the explanation of efects and interaction (either it be
causal, intentional, functional or instrumental) also signiies conceptualizations
of problems and associated solutions (Hansen and Simonsen 2004).
Let us briely recapitulate some insights from chapter 4, before we consider spatiotemporal tides and waves. Smith (2010) formulates ‘the production of nature’ thesis
as a concept that extends spatial theoretical work of ‘the production of space’ and
amalgamates the spatial chronological theme with the human environment theme.
For Harvey, Castree or Massey human-environmental issues often are intrigued
by antagonistic discourses, habitually tightly bound to (implicit) political visions.
“Since spaces, times, and places are relationally deined by processes, they are contingent
upon the attributes of processes that simultaneously deine and shape what is customarily
referred to as ‘environment’…[T]he idea that spatio- temporality can be examined
independently of those processes evoked in environmental and ecological work cannot
be sustained. From this perspective, the traditional dichotomies to be found within
the geographical tradition between spatial science and environmental issues, between
systematic and regional (place-bound) geographies appear totally false precisely because
space-time, place, and environment are all embedded in substantial processes whose
attributes cannot be examined independently of the diverse spatio- temporalities such
2 It must be observed however, that facts are also a socially produced (It was not a concern to
the early Harvey). Facts are not objective, neutral, independent data constellations, but carry
the same value-ladenness as does a theme for which reason it is also of importance to consider
how facts are socially accomplished.
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processes contain. he implications for the philosophy of geographical thought are immense” (Harvey 1996, p. 263–4).
Massey grasps such methodological relections wonderfully and shows how nature
and society interactions must be studied as “endless, mobile, restless, given to violence
and unpredictability (Massey 2006, p. 38). Critical examination of sustainability
in academia then, addresses inherent socio-natures produced, scales and their
impulses afecting management and planning of socio-environmental change.
From a history-geographical approach I address ‘spatio-temporal tides and waves’
intersecting, overlapping and conlicting (Turner 2002). Whereas spatio-temporal
tides refer to, how diferent ontological and epistemological positions change the
ways in which scientists deal with the human-environment interface and hence
the diferent political ecologies inscribed within them, spatio-temporal waves
refer to the relevance, frequency and intensity given to the human-environment
themes, whatever topic explored.
5.2 Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves – Co-Constructing Nature(s)
Following Massey (2006), geographical representations are a mosaic of understandings often in opposition to other representations and the interface between
the spatial chorological approach and the human-environment theme has been a
dominating source of (often) conlicting identities in geography (Turner 2002).
For centuries there has been much controversy, enthusiasm and vigor around core
dimensions of human-environment interaction for which reason I will briely draw
attention to how determinism, spatial analysis, radical geography, the cultural turn
and the new materialism (new material turn) reconigured the human-environment
theme (See also Pattison 1964). Hereby the history of spatio-temporal tides and
waves are examined through the roots of determinism, possibilism, particularism
and absolutism and the way diferent traditions interpret and explain regularities,
rationalities and relations. I will consider each approach (tide) in turn, partly as
historical epoches (waves) and yet overlapping. he approach taken risk homogenizing the debate over the human-environmental nexus (epochs as colonializing
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trends)3 and could beneit from holding a more nuanced debate relecting on
epochal changes in representing the human-environmental interface. Keeping the
debate simple, I seek to relect on tensions between key characteristics and epochal
historical changes omnipresent to ‘the scientiic consensus thesis’.
5.2.1 Nature(s) of Determinism and Determining Nature(s)
According to igures like Birkeland (1998), Smith (2010) or Harvey (1996) the
history of environmental determinism can be characterized in epochs (waves),
though approaches conceiving nature as the ruling determinant neither gained
full recognition in geography (Christiansen 1967) nor can be said to have fully
died in contemporary debates (see below). Debates in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries were largely concerned with environmental determinism
(e.g. with roots from Darwin) versus possibilism and whether culture or nature
plays a determining part (Turner 2002). Deterministic explanations are often
causal and seek to demonstrate how bio-physical factors such as climate, soil
and altitude determine social and economic activity. Nature is external, and the
domination of nature thesis particularly inscribed in the enlightenment tradition
synonymously relate to other geographical dualisms as that of city and country,
center and periphery, civilization and wilderness (Castree 2001, Smith 2010).
By way of illustration, in ‘Jorden og Menneskelivet’ (he Earth and the Human
Life), the handbook that for some decades was core reading for Danish students
of geography, had deep roots in environmental determinism.
“he task of geography is to depict the Earth as the home and ield of activity of
human beings. Land and people, nature and culture, are the topics the geographer
strives to connect; his [sic!] goal is to demonstrate how human life and culture are
conditioned by the Earth’s natural conditions and utilize the possibilities aforded
by the Earth’s nature” (Vahl and Hatt 1922, p. 1; here quoted in translation
from Larsen 2009, p.15).
Environmental determinism presupposes a zero-sum game between the natural
and the social, of which and how one determines the other. In other cases environmental determinism separates the physical from the social, like the disciplinary separation of the natural sciences from the social (Christiansen 1967). he
3 For those less satisied with the proceeding, I suggest they consult Grove (1996), Harvey (1996)
or Castree (2005).
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dichotomy continuing in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries profoundly
captured debates into the question whether and how nature played a determining
part over society and culture, and how among others science provided a useful
tool to free humanity from these irksome fetters. Legitimation of knowledge in
the enlightenment tradition objectiied nature to be instrumentally used, tamed
and exploited (Harvey 1996, p. 121). Nature dominates culture not vice versa and
“the general good of mankind (…) is knowledge that is useful in life (…) to render
ourselves the masters and possessors of nature” (Descartes in Harvey 1996, p. 121).
Classical human ecologists in geography, e.g. represented by Stoddard or Christiansen, studied human practices through biology’s positivist binoculars (human
ecology has moved on, but at the time the positivist approach had a dominant
position e.g. in Danish geography). In so doing human beings was studied in their
habitat (Harvey 1996, p. 191) why environmental determinism were criticized
for incorporating a language (methods and approaches) e.g. from biology into
social theory (e.g. Social Darwinism, methodological naturalism or classical human ecology). hus environmental determinism presupposes a one-dimensional
ordering, a one-dimensional hierarchy between and within the physical and the
social in which ideological struggles are ‘naturalized’. he political implications
of the Berkeley4 and Chicago5 School (at which environmental determinism long
persisted) were criticized for looking upon culture as a super-organic phenomenon, as an independent object, producing a certain form of environmentalism.
Such antagonisms have political implications because they involve an attitude of
detachment while at the same time holding a perspective of scientiic objectivism
(Birkeland 1998). According to Stoddard (1987) the criticism gained to a point
where the ‘geographical experiment’ in the study socio-environmental interactions
nearly died as geography fractioned.
4 Carl Sauer (Berkeley School) was interested in the relation between culture and nature (nature
as culture and vice versa). Embedded in traditional geography and regionalism (prior to spatial
analysis) he is concerned with material cultures and how culture shapes material/geographical expressions and structures (Turner 2002). Sauer’s positivist theory concerned the cultural
understanding of human environmental interaction and how culture’s material aspects changes
over time. Henceforth he was aware of how ‘mode of thinking’ inluences how humans interact
with their surroundings in terming ‘the morphology of landscape’ (Christiansen 1967) but
never took the ontological and epistemological consequences of it.
5 he Chicago School e.g. remained insisting on a positivist version of resource geography, emphasizing human choices between diferent resources, and the (potential) environmental risk
and hazards associated a given practice (Turner 2002).
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While the teaching of geography has both in the past and in the present sought
academic identity through ‘the geographical experiment’; that is, ‘an experiment
in keeping nature and culture under the one umbrella’ (Livingstone 1992, p. 190),
the ‘umbrella’ of environmental determinism lost credibility in part because of
the critics coming from radical geographers, in part because of the environmental
movement ‘outdated’ the debate during the 1960s (see next section).
Heritage from environmental determinism still features in contemporary climate
debates, though debates whether nature dominates culture have shifted completely:
humans are now dominating nature, not vice versa. Humans are the determining,
overruling and driving force in global environmental change according to the
anthropogenic climate change thesis. In its extreme humans determine future
global environmental change to the extent it is portrayed as climate catastrophism
(E.g. James Hansen) or through concepts like the anthropocene (Stefen et al.,
2007). In arguing for sustainable planetary governance, geo-engineering or earth
system management (Barnosky et al., 2014) that “render ourselves the masters
and possessors of nature” (Descartes in Harvey 1996, p. 121), the domination of
external nature with technocentric means (Mansield 2009) undergo a process
of internalization. he human impact on nature thesis reconigures traditions of
determinism; culture determines nature while it is still considered external. Nevertheless, as soon as ‘we’ speak of sustainability, the anthropocene, geo-engineering
or anthropogenic climate change, nature is denaturalized as Castree (2014) coins
it. In one moment the anthropogenic climate change thesis speaks of observed and
objective changes, in the next, they become renaturalized when these observations
are taken into decision-making, e.g. in stabilizing the climate, hence balancing
human-environmental interaction.
Likewise, at the other end of the determinism debate, the domination of nature
thesis (internal nature undergo a process of externalization), can hardly address
anthropogenic processes of climate change, but remain undisputed in the tradition
of climate skepticism (the thesis is rejected by externalization). he atmosphere
remains external and unafected by human practices. hus, it resolves into the
terrains of external nature, implying that humans have no impact on the climate
or physical environmental change at its extreme.
Also in the context of theorizing over sustainability in higher education, the determinism thesis comes into being in acknowledging humans play the determining
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part of socio-ecological transformations (society harms nature destructively) while
reconiguring traditions of determinism to environmentalism (Castree 2001).
hose in favor of environmentalism hold the perspective that ‘we’ need to reestablish the balance between a zero-sum game of human-environmental determining
factors (equalizing the human and the social as a determining force as an attempt
to control global environmental change) e.g. promulgated through assumptions
of climate catastrophism or in avoiding ‘natural disasters’ that ‘bite back on us’
(see Castree 2001, Barnosky et al., 2014).
5.2.2 Nature(s) of Description – Descriptive Natures
Another shift in the way geographers have dealt with human-environment interactions relates to the descriptive tradition and the spatial analysis (Turner 2002,
Hansen and Simonsen 2004). During the mid-20th human-environment interactions (re)emerge and challenge simple environmental determinism (Rasmussen
and Arler 2010). Positivism became a platform to combat what was regarded
speculative science, why universal regularities and causal efects of the naturesociety nexus became a focal point of study. hus a dominant wave of the ways
in which geographers deal with human-environment interactions relates to the
descriptive tradition/spatial analysis (Hansen and Simonsen 2004). he move
from ideographic toward a nomothetic approach in geography reconigured the
human-environment theme, since it could not also encompass environmental
determinism. “his obviously implied that the traditional focus of Geography on
Human-Environment relationships lost its deining status” (Rasmussen and Arler
2010, p. 38)6.
Such mechanistic and universal perspectives (positivism) from which nature is
ultimately ixed and which encompasses a set of general rather than contextual
characteristics made human- physical geography drift apart. Ecology was looked
upon with much skepticism since it had limited possibilities of quantiication, not
well suitable for casual and quantitative approaches. he dualism of nature and
society was also (and widespread) institutionalized into disciplinary departments
of physical geography and human geography, into theoretical constructs, and
into education and curricula (Stoddard 1987). Subsequently, Kantian geography
6 In the same vein Turner (2002, p. 63) argues “he central place of the human-environment
identity was downgraded in geographic thought during the last half of the twentieth century,
a time in which the spatial-chorological identity held formal dominion”.
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emphasizing spatial or chorological topographies gained support in favor (and
often opposed to) of the human-environment theme (e.g. Humboldt’s note and
Mode see Zimmerer 2006), and especially the 1960s and 1970s marked a period
dominated by the spatial-chorological approach (Rasmussen and Arler 2010). From
the 1960s, however, the focus on environmental problems particularly emerged
within the natural sciences, and this in turn gave inspiration to (re)engage with
system ecology and human ecology (Rasmussen and Arler 2010). Correspondingly,
Zimmerer (2010) discusses nature-society articles from (1911-2010) in the ‘Annals of the American Association of Geographers’ and shows that the number of
articles is nearly as high around the 1960s as during the 1990s and 2000s.
he spatial analysis approaches presumes mechanistic and general characteristics
whereby ecological systems are studied as characterized by the thesis of equilibrium,
balance and stability (Zimmerer 1994). Interestingly, (according to Rasmussen
and Arler 2010) criticism mostly came from radical geographers (internal ight)
and the rise of the environmental movement (external ight) led to a reengagement with the human environmental interface e.g. in industries’ impacts on local
environments.
he spatio temporal tides and waves concerning determinism and the spatial
analysis have a common background: nature(s) is explored through assumptions
of scientiic objectivism. Nature is external and through the study of it, ‘we’
can ind the true condition of nature(s) (Castree 2001). In a holistic manner
the anthropogenic climate change thesis is organized within the framework of
cause and efect, limitations and opportunities by ways in which ‘we’ can speak
of diferent conditions caused by diferent human practices. It follows that the
‘unsustainability’ of natural management is when natural use is not maximized
fully due to devastating practices. Approaching sustainability as a technical issue
produces technocratic knowledge that is unable to treat nature as anything but a
resource (Mansield 2009). As a result diferent facts provided produce diferent
scenarios, which legitimize diferent uses of natural resources. Commitment to a
theory of knowledge, according to which any phenomenon natural or social, is
to be explained through systems of laws and causalities do not it well with the
social dimension concerning responses and responsibilities of climate change,
the anthropocene or sustainability. Yet, they are predominant in environmental
science, climate science, and earth observation, and will be critically addressed
through the culture of climate change modelling in chapter 8.
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5.2.3 Radical Geography: he Production of Nature and the Production of
(Scientiic) Climates
During the 1960s radical geography grew in response to the spatial analysis. Paradoxically radical geographers did not put much emphasis in the matter of nature
(wave). Rather they spend much efort in ighting the positivist heritage (tide) of
the spatial analysis. By way of illustration Fitzsimmons (1989, p. 106)7 argued
that “most work by geographers (…) has continued a peculiar silence on the question
of social Nature” and in doing so, she reacted from within radical geography. Fitzsimmons (1989) demonstrates how only a few geographers show interest in the
human-environment relationship during the 1980s, and by comparing conceptions
of space with conceptions of nature she emphasizes how geographical thought is
imbalanced, not emphasizing the latter. hough Smith (2010[1984]) had already
coined the term production of nature Fitzimmons pointed to radical geographers
reluctance in examining the social character of engaging with nature(s). One of
the reasons of the ‘peculiar silence’ (including Danish geography, perhaps most
notably apart from Bue Nielsen) was the fear of being associated with external
nature. It is precisely the dominance of external nature in science that inevitably
associates a taste for positivism that keeps radical geographers avoiding it. Hence
the danger of the concept of nature relates to the power of reference (chapter 3).
Fairly enough, also many other themes are on the agenda, e.g. production of space
in development geography, urban geography and the like, yet by ways in which
it establishes an ontological dualism separating from nature (another conceptual
way of keeping/accepting external nature). It follows that one must also criticize
the division of academic labor within radical geography that separated concepts
of society and nature, by not examining the latter.
hough the early stages of radical geography reduces the production of nature to
a quest for resources and production, it later came to embrace scientiic ‘progress’
as mutually conditioning global environmental change. To produce knowledge
about nature is to come to embody knowledge claims in relation with multiple
7 hough Fitzsimmons argued “the peculiar silence on the question of…nature” (Fitzsimmon here
qouted in Castree 2001, p. 111), Castree in his quotation leaves out the social nature “peculiar silence on the question of social Nature” (Fitzsimmons 1989, p. 106), the very same term
he envisions to develop, since he phrases it, social nature has the capacity to transcend one
dimensional nature toward recognizing the construction of human-environmental relations;
social nature(s). Her aim was not to argue for what later became the cultural turn (see below)
or a non-material approach, but having radical geographers to take up the quest of the social
production of nature.
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actors and regimes of expertise and their terms and conceptual claims about the
environment (Demeritt 2002).
By pointing back to chapter 2, the production of nature involves relations between capitalism and the governance of science and yet science and the economic
system are commonly thought of as separate, non-intersecting entities. “Science is
pivotal to present day human-nature relations, and yet the ‘nature’ of science is widely
misunderstood” (Castree 2001, p. 194).
With the production of nature thesis (and the production of space) radical geographers point to the socializing processes of (re)shaping nature always imbedded
in the abyss of capitalism. “It has been capital circulation that has made nature what
it is (…). It is not fashionable these days, of course, to evoke directly a triumphalist
attitude to nature. But I think it is important to understand that this is what both
the theory and practice of capitalistic political economy entails (…). he prevailing
practices dictate proit-driven transformation of environmental conditions and an approach to nature which treats of it as a passive set of assets to be scientiically assessed,
used and valued in commercial (money) terms” (Harvey 1996, p. 131).
he (un)sustainability of contemporary socio-environmental change, therefore
heavily depends on keeping capitalism going. By the same token Castree (2003)
argues commodities are not only things; but also processes and socio-natural relations, and their diferent spatio-temporalities are (temporality of climate change
and accelerating capitalism) constitutive to and mutually form each other. Along
these lines Sayer argues, when greener technologies or products are designed to
be more proitable than current ones, then capitalism would go for them - “not
because they were greener, but precisely because they were more proitable” (Sayer
2009, p. 350)8.
he production of knowledge, conversely produce efects for environmental
governance that cannot go beyond production of diferent kinds of political
ecologies, with authoritative claims, rights and regimes. “he translation of the
environmental problem into the domain of expert discourses permits the internaliza8 he capitalist countries, Harvey argues, keep preaching that overpopulation puts pressure on
resources, while at the same time arguing that the rich West needs to consume ever more resources to contribute to ”sustainable growth” (Harvey 1996, p. 144, see also Harvey 1974b).
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tion of environmental politics and regulator activity largely within the embrace of the
state apparatus, or more loosely, under the inluence of corporate and state inance of
research and development” (Harvey 1996, p. 375).
From this perspective the normative conditions science arrives from envisions different forms of political ecology, weather recognized throughout the scientiic practices or not. What counts as nature(s) depends on the perspective of the scientist
as Castree puts it, and interests involved in the research agenda, either relective
interests, commercial interests, self-promotion and recognition, political attitudes
or unconscious elements. Whatever perspective, nature as external, ecocentrism or
sustainability approaches, is selective according to the speaker’s purpose (Castree
2001, p. 9). Dealing with human-environmental relations, therefore, is neither an
objective nor neutral act. his seems extraordinarily important both in discussion
on education for sustainability, as well as politics of the knowledge economy, since
what is considered to be the material form, the social form and the value form
afects the production of nature in science and education and vice versa.
“It was science that revealed global problems (acid rain, global warming, and
ozone holes) demanding wide-ranging collective action beyond nation state boarders,
thereby posing a challenge (legal, institutional, cultural) to the closed bureaucratic
rationality of the nation state”
(Harvey 1996, p. 378).
While Castree has grown out of the production of nature debate he begins to
communicate with the cultural turn and new materialism, hence illustrative to
some of the later movements in radical geography (see below).“It [Capitalism red.]
is inherently growth-oriented: proit rather than, say, social equity or environmental
sustainability, is the primary goal” (Castree, 2001, p. 193) he also suggests that
“Marxism is a necessary but not suicient approach to understanding and responding
politically to the capitalist production of nature/s in the twenty irst century” (Castree
2001 p. 191). As the governance of science remains the largest producer of nonmedia representations of nature(s) with huge political implications for our rational, ethical and aesthetic practices, Castree (2014, p. 246) points to the relevance
bringing of a dialogue between radical geographers, the new materialism while
embracing insights that came out of the cultural turn.
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5.2.4 Natures of Cultures and Cultures of Natures
he cultural or linguistic turn is yet another spatio-temporal tide and wave that
inluenced human-environment debates, though it never gained much attention
in physical geography. he cultural turn can be viewed as a reaction to the materialism in radical geography, among others, with the discursive power of language
in mind. According to Birkeland (1998) the cultural turn led to a shift in the
relationship between nature and culture favoring socio-spatial formations so that
“cultural geography has lost touch with its basic relationship to the concept of nature”
(Birkeland 1998, p. 230). hough Birkeland advocates for quite diferent geographies than Fitzsimmons in dealing with representations of nature both agree that
the tedious waves dealing with nature are lacking. Correspondingly Zimmerer’s
(2010) analysis of the ‘Annals of the Association of American Geographers’ reveal
that articles thematically (waves) covering society environmental relations during
the 1980s is only half of that of the 1960s. Interestingly geographical representations of human-environment interfaces decline as a myriad of interdisciplinary
ields arise. (see chapter 1).
Discursive constructions share concern for the efects of the power of reference
for which reason constructionism, particularism and contextual approaches tend
to engage in critical examination of ways in which nature is socially construed
(Birkeland 1998). he culture of understanding nature nevertheless faces the
dilemma of the prison of language: that we can never know if our conceptual
construction of nature corresponds to how nature actually appears (Demeritt
2002, p. 774). Social constructivism as a purely linguistic project inds its base
in post-structuralism, that is – a project detached from the materiality of nature.
he problem of society – nature dualism lies in the culture (communication, narratives, images) while related to third nature. Social constructivism that involves
a material construction (e.g. through communications), are closer related to radical geography and social production of nature. Much of the diference between
post-structuralism/linguistic turn and radical geography, precisely lies in the fact
that the former is ontologically and epistemologically detached from its material
underpinnings (Hansen and Simonsen 2004). Immaterial versions of representations of nature, is fully rejected by Marxist scholars. Yet, while upholding the
language of Marxism, Castree brings dialogue into being in being enriched from
the ‘discursive materialism’ in the cultural turn and the new materialism, e.g. in
his latest book examining third nature and the construction nature(s) in the media
industry (Castree 2014).
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Associated with the problem of distinguishing anthropogenic from non-anthropogenic processes both the spatial analysis and the cultural turn have hard times
in distinguishing and knitting repercussions. hough methodological approaches
to the human-nature interactions have receded, explanations may not be reduced
to cultural turn(s) nor spatial analysis (quantitative revolution). Despite conceptualizations of culture are fundamental to environmental challenges and material
conditions, one of the problems I have with the social construction of the nature
perspective (social nature) concerning anthropogenic climate change is how to
deal with irreversible processes and tipping points (that cannot be construed back).
While it has never been the aim of social constructivism to deal with irreversible
processes or tipping points, it is a necessity if to seriously build a social nature
perspective concerning the anthropogenic climate change thesis. here remain
unsolved problems that the new materialism has taken into quest.
5.2.5. New materialisms – New (Interactive) Social Natures
hough social construction is part of reality, it does not imply that humans can
construct and reconstruct, manufacture and remanufacture global environmental
change in accordance with their will (Castree 2001). Above we saw how radical
geography in contrast to the cultural turn claims a strong ontological position about
the materiality of nature’s construction while both reject classical divides between
subject/object and society/nature dualisms. In so doing, both ind diferent ways
out of positivism and the external nature concept, and yet both face unsolved
challenges. One response has come from scholars inspired by Actor Network heory (ANT) and the new materialism (e.g. hrift 2002, Castree 2002, Whatmore
2006, Lorimer 2012)9. hese scholars challenge ‘privileged’ ontologies that favors
human agency as the transformative source for environmental change. Whatmore
(2006) is exemplary in illustrating attempts to overcome discussion that seeks to
determine ‘the agent(s)’ of socio-ecological change. To her relational ontologies
comprise ‘hybrid’ or ‘cyborg’ forms of human – environment interactions, e.g.
as co-existing inhabited landscapes, rhizome landscapes, multinatural ontologies,
vital materialism or dynamic ecologies, where non-human agencies are mutual and
equally emphasized. As Lorimer (2012, p. 594) notes“here is now a diverse array of
non-deterministic and non-dualistic materialisms that circumvent the realist-relativist
impasse that plagued debates between the social and natural sciences in the 1990s”.
9 In human geography the new materialism and the multinatural ontologies that follow have
been strongly inluenced by Latour and Haraway and their critique of ontological dualism.
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119
In contrast to scholars in favor of the cultural turn, the ‘new materialism’ sticks to
realism. But, whereas ANT holds a lat ontology critical geographers imbed their
work in critical realism and/or Marxism. ANT insists on interactive agents – alive
or not – with privileged multinatural ontologies. Whereas Harvey and Castree
do also acknowledge a non-human world (external nature with non-human ontologies/agencies) they hasten to add, that it becomes internalized either when
theorized or by human practices. Internalization involves (asymmetric) power
relations among others. For ANT in contrast, non-human actors and human
actors have privileged status, yet in diferent ways (Castree 2002). hings possess
their own agency. It follows that global environmental change is just as much
materially produced and transformed by non-human actors as it is by human
actors. Rather global environmental change is a result of changing relations and
networks between non-humans and humans (Lorimer 2012). While I am inspired
by the new materialism as the anthropocene narrative is much celebrated these
years, the new materialism sometimes bear connotations to a new positivism or
methodological naturalism for reasons not fully clear to me (see chapter 8).
he new materialism thus distinguishes between irst (external) and second
(human) nature(s) while knitting them. While second nature is deined on the
realms of a irst non-human and external nature, accepting external nature as its
pre-existence, social nature more aggressively insists that nature has always been
socially determined. Nature is made social just as society is made natural (Castree
2001, p. 18) why the ‘anthropocene’ must rather be though commensurable with
the ‘oecocene’.
By pointing to social nature he splinters the dichotomy between irst and second
nature. hough still not clariied I ind it problematic to uphold external nature
(with own agency) and still rejecting its dualism. While Castree (2002) criticizes
ANT in misinterpreting asymmetric power relations (and deep ontology) he is
willing to incorporate it, e.g. when discussing Marxism with ANT. Yet it is hard
to uphold social nature - that rejects nature to be external per se (non-human
nature is diminishing). Entering the ield of rhizome ontologies with interactive
agents become a misty zone with ‘equalizing’ interactive agents. In consequence
the anthropogenic climate change thesis can never be fully accepted, since humans
cannot be though independently as the dominant force. Castree (including myself )
inds inspiration from the new materialism e.g. when speaking of third nature in
media production. By pointing to the power of representations Castree extends
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and develops radical geography in dialogue with non-Marxist approaches. New
materialism and ANT, become inspirational sources, though he never accepts the
implications of its ontologies (Castree 2014), precisely because new materialism
(e.g. ‘anthropocene’) has little to say about political economy and the commodiication (neo-liberalization) of nature (e.g. ‘oecocene’).
Concerning sustainability in higher education, the history of spatio-temporal
tides and waves underline the relevance to critically explore how contested values,
norms, aesthetic expressions are omnipresent in representing the socio-natural –
the social natures in curricula constructs. As I take a social nature approach in
examining the use, integration and explication of sustainability in geography, it
is worth while briely to consider the relations between the two.
he social nature approach holds a perspective according to which nature is social. An example is the reinsertion of nature in cities arguing that cities are socio
natures with their distancing habitats and faunas (hrift 2002) challenging the
idea that processes of urbanisation progressively distance nature (external nature)
from the urban, rather it produces social natures. To Castree, nature is not only
deined, and construed socially, but also modiied physically by humans (at all
scales, from genetics to climate change), with particular social interests involved
in such transformations (Castree, 2001, p. 3). Nature is social all the way down
(genetic modiication to climate change) as Castree puts it, why nature is produced
in accordance with technological, cultural and economic interests. hrough the
exploitation of natural resources and commodiication of nature, humans actively appropriate, transform and change nature, and in doing so, ‘man transforms
himself ’. Nature therefore is historically constructed environments, why in an era
where the anthropogenic narrative gets so much attention (become an agent in
itself ) it seem relevant to relect upon science engagement in acting on the external
world and response(abilities) in changing it. “As long as men exists, the history of
nature and the history of men is mutually conditioned (…) by acting on the external
world and changing it, [we] at the same time change [our] own nature” (Marx here
quoted in Harvey 1996, p.173).
If the social nature approach holds nature to be ‘social all the way down’, in scale
and intensity and by ways in which social-ecological transformation proves to have
‘world change importance’ (Castree 2001, p. 1), then sustainability and the social
nature approach at least has one common platform: they both ind nature to be
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
121
anthropogenic. hey both reject external nature, that nature can be objectively studied. hey both reject absolute space, hence epistemologically unable to deal with
planetary boundaries, non-human and externally driven environmental change
(volcanic eruption or earthquakes). Rather nature is formed and made, produced
and remade by human actions at all scales (Castree 2001). Taking a social nature
approach enables me to examine how nature(s) are socially embodied in geography
education, through concepts like sustainability. It is another way of saying that
concepts like external nature, universal nature or social nature, not only change
over time, but vary between disciplines and academic traditions – inhabiting
spatio-temporal tides and waves concerning the socio-natural interface. he above
implies there are no simple facts, no standard solutions; knowledge is contextual
and culturally imbedded. he work undertaken in this dissertation, therefore, by
no means claims to ind the right way to address (the right) questions nor to ind
the right solutions to that problem (see chapter 4 and 5). Nevertheless, the work
insists on the relevance of the questions asked and the approaches undertaken
to address them, hence a qualiied and relective method that contributes to the
academic discussion over contested ideas of sustainability. his is imperative to
contemporary (un)sustainability debates in academia and higher education.
5.3 Co-constructing Methods: Approaching Spatio-Temporal Tides
and Waves
As illustrated in the previous section, the history of the human environment
theme has taken multiple forms and methodological approaches over the years.
hus, geographical representations perpetuate a mosaic of understandings often
in opposition to other representations (Turner 2002). his section elaborates the
methods used to examine the hypothesis that the human environment theme is
under reconiguration being denaturalized e.g. through sustainability and in what
ways contested ideas on sustainability have materialized in contemporary Danish
geographical education. In doing so the history-geographical approach conducted
can be viewed as an experiment that both develops and is developed from the
interplay between spatio-temporal tides and waves and the ‘messy’ empirical reality. he methodological experiment insisting on a framework that amalgamates
the spatial chronological theme with the human environment theme. It insists on
transcending classical divides between human and physical geography, disciplinary
traditions or cultural and natural divides (Birkeland 1998), whatever the infor122
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
mants say. his is radical in that the methodological approach insists that human
practices and discourses always relate to nature also when externalized, rejected
by the informants, practitioner or when informants are unconscious about it (See
e.g. Harvey 1996, p. 189). Many slip-falls lie waiting and though Braun welcomes
‘speculative’ biopolitics and experimental epistemologies since “socio-nature names
[are] an open rather than a closed ield, eco-politics must be orientated not towards
conversation (…) but to the possibilities and consequences of a ‘new earth’ and a ‘new
humanity’ that is still to come” (Braun 2006, p. 219), it places particular responsibilities on to the researcher’s shoulder10. It also places great responsibility on the
researcher as co-producer and re-representative of reality. he mental experiment
in keeping the socio-natural under one umbrella for geographical imaginations
(Livingstone 1992), then contrast more formal empirical test experiments, in
which “a broad and vaguely deined framework is seen as a prerequisite for gaining new
and unexpected insights into the op-ended and complex nature of society-environment
co-evolution” (Weisz and Clark 2011, p. 284).
Nevertheless, such an approach makes it possible to study how students become
geographically trained as to interpretive explanations of human-nature interactions. Consequently, the analysis of how issues of sustainability are addressed in
geographical education becomes as much a methodological and identical question
(researcher’s subject positions) as a thematic one (Turner 2002).
Intended learning outcomes always represent a ight over content that assemble ‘curricula constructs’ with efects to how the human-environment theme is
taught. For this reason it is found valuable to encompass educational-political
geographies of how sustainability themes are relected in curricula (and their
formal requirements); and how these formal (and informal) learning outcome
requirements are enacted in the education of geographers (Molin 2006). In this
way it is possible to comprehend inclusion/exclusion of features and themes as a
practice concerning the building of geographical explanation and how it afects
analyses, practices or policies.
10 hough always to be continued, at some point one has to come to an end and enter into a
dialogue on the work undertaken, its limitations and signiicance. In chapter 4 i have tried to
outline my positionality the best I can.
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
123
5.3.1 Data Collection and Sample
Discourses on materiality, whether mediated through text or in the classroom, become dialectically tides and waves (of internalized and externalized ‘facts’) by ways
in which diferent domains form habitual practices that also represent struggles of
interests. As any curricula development can be viewed as educational-ideological
conigurations, the empirical analysis is based on (peer) expert interviews with
research geographers (Table 5.1 and appendix 5.1) to particularly address their
teaching, opinion, use and explication of sustainability (Appendix 5.3 and 5.4)11.
Based on a phenomenological tradition (see below), departure is taken from the
individual interviewee’s experiences, and the focus is on the subjective perception
of the investigated topic. he respondents were asked if they ind climate change
and sustainability issues important to geographical education, what they think of
the sustainability concept in geography, and if they include sustainability themes
in their own teaching. hus, questions of the interview were centered on perceptions of sustainability as it appears to the teachers/researchers themselves and are
accepted as representations of their thoughts and ideas about a given topic. With
open questions, I was particularly interested in the direction the discussion is
taken by the responders’. It would, I though at the time, contribute to a diverse
set of dilemmas/contradictions and paradoxes within and between academics – in
a more nuanced way than predeining dilemmas and contradictory elements in
interview questions.
At the time of designing the survey and compiling the interviews, I was positioned
in a literature study on education for sustainability – not Harvey and Castree.
In this way the interviews and the later analysis (see below) relect a movement,
from education for sustainability typologies toward the social nature approach. In
retrospective, a mixture of Anglo-Saxon history-geographical literature, typologies
of teaching on sustainability/climate change issues in Swedish geography and interviews with Danish geographers, relect the diferent literature contexts in which I
have been. As I learned the discussion on education for sustainability in geography
are much stronger in Sweden than in Denmark a literature study was undertaken
to identify studies that has dealt with contemporary environmental geography
teaching in Scandinavia. No articles, however, dealt with teaching sustainability
in neither in the Norwegian, Danish nor Swedish Journals of Geography. his
11 Interviews, study regulations and declarations from the International Geographical Union
(IGU) are not featured in the reference list, but found in appendix 5.1and 5.2.
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CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
Table 5.1. Sample of Interview Participants: Interview with 31 Danish Research Geographers
Gender
Title
Institution
Age
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Male
Female
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Female
Male: 24
Geographical background
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Physical
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical:15
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Professor
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof: 24
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Aalborg
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg:3
40-49
50-59
60+
60+
50-59
50-59
60+
40-49
60+
50-59
50-59
60+
40-49
40-49
30-39
60+
50-59
30-39
50-59
40-49
40-49
50-59
60+
60+
60+
50-59
50-59
60+
50-59
50-59
40-49
30-39: 2
Female: 7
Human:16
Professor: 7
Copenhagen:17
40-49: 7
Roskilde:11
50-59: 12
60+: 10
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
125
illustrates the widespread skepticism that clings to this ‘un-academic’ concept in
geography while interring (iniltrating) academia, but also the relevance of the
publishing culture (chapter 3). Yet sustainability seems to receive more recognition in Swedish geography and the literature being more developed (E.g. Östman
1995, Öhman and Östman 2002, Sandell, Öhman and Östman 2003, Sund
and Wichman 2008). In a Scandinavian context Molin (2006), Sætre (2009),
Grahn (2011) dissertations serve as examples of how sustainability and climate
change issues have been dealt with in geography. hese authors discuss diferent
sustainability typologies (or undertake content analysis in geography teaching). As
Grahn (2011) most notably theorize geography teacher’s engagement in climate
change and sustainability his work is most applicable to the purpose of this study.
he second empirical basis comes from study regulations. Study regulations (see
appendix 5.2.) can be acknowledged as the ‘law’ that constitutes the legal and
administrative basis12, from which courses, curricula and educational practices
developed upon (Roskilde University 2005, 2006, 2014; Copenhagen University
2009a, 2009b and Aalborg University 2010a, 2010b, 2011, see appendix 5.2).13
hey state the administrative and juridical basis of the study and are written by the
individual study boards for each education, but are in practice heavily regulated
12 he discursive practices of the external censor body (censorkorps) were also examined to see
whether discussions on the role of geography on sustainability features had taken place. Nevertheless no results appeared and the external censor body will not be included further. Also
the Royal Danish Geographical Society (RDGS) were examined for featuring climate change
or sustainability issues in the geography education. Since its establishment (RDGS 1876) it
has never been detached from educational questions (Christiansen 2005, p. 7).
13 Studies at Danish universities undergo accreditation by an independent body appointed by
the Danish Ministry of Education and educational legislation can also form the content of the
study. In these years this process seems ever more relevant as the ‘quality’ of each education is
‘judged’ by ‘market-relevance’ (see chapter 2). Also the universities’ administration may propose
changes to the study board. Study regulations state the purpose of the study, structure of the
study, contents, acquired skills, competences, courses, projects and seminars, and examination
procedures. Sustainability has been integrated into study regulations at Copenhagen University
and Aalborg University from 2009. Before this the term was not present in study regulations
in geography.
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through direct and indirect political regulation (see chapter 2)14. Study regulations
are reformed independently by the study boards at the respective institutions,
yet on the basis of former study regulations and external accreditation. he the
method enables to comprehend how socially constructed ecosystems are represented in curricula. Sustainability themes were identiied in study regulations
and systematically, coded and categorized into the framework of Grahn’s (2011)
sustainability/climate change approaches.
During 2012 interviews were conducted with almost all permanent employed
geographers at three Danish universities, the only higher education institutions
in the country ofering geography programmes. Interviews were undertaken by
knocking doors and thus partly random in terms of who were present during the
three weeks interviews were undertaken. No informants refused to contribute
and 31 out of a total number of 43 permanent research professors involved in
educating geographers were interviewed hereof 24 full-time professors at Copenhagen University, 15 full-time professors at Roskilde University and four full-time
professors at Aalborg University (see appendix 5.1.)15. Accordingly, the number
of researchers interviewed follows the size of the study programs at Aalborg, Copenhagen and Roskilde Universities. Interviews were undertaken and recorded in
Danish of a length between 20-60 minutes (See appendix 5.3 for the interview
14 With the reform of 2004 (known as the Gymnasiereformen 2005), geography was threatened
and almost did not survive in secondary schools (like in the 1980s). he argument was that
geographical knowledge was obtained in other subjects. However, due to a focus on geography
as a science subject geography survived even more reduced and now under the name physical
geography. his has meant a restructuring of learning objectives and a focus on new teaching
approaches (Volkers 2007) whereby changes in the secondary geography curriculum have also
led to changes in the university curriculum. For example, the secondary school reform of 2005
and later changes have served as leverage at the university by introducing structural changes to
curricula in order to comply with upper secondary school teacher requirements (BEK nr 692
af 23/06/2010, and BEK nr 735 af 22/06/2010).
15 hough Ph.D. students, teaching assistants, external lectures and assistant professors (adjunct),
undertake part of the teaching, they were not included in the empirical design, since they are
not considered part of the core staf in deining curricula.
CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
127
guide)16. he sample deal with 31 interviews and transcriptions have only been
translated to English when used in quotations. Table 5.1 summarizes key igures
from the informants. Note the sample is dominated by elderly (white) men, as
for Danish universities in general where approximately 10 percent female become
professors. In order to examine geographical traditions and their diferent responses to issues of climate change and sustainability, responders were asked which of
Pattison’s (1964) four traditions best represent their work. If anything, however,
the interview material turned out to be random when categorized into gender,
human and physical geographers, age groups, Pattison’s traditions, professorship
or institution (as the problem of Molin’s and Gran’s typologies). he mosaic of
responses turned out to be random when categorized into these general features.
From a phenomenological approach, as we shall see, other mosaics of the cultural
politics of representing nature powerfully spur.
At the time being I listened through all the interviews with Grahn and Molin’s
conceptualizations in mind. It turned out that their categories (Grahn for instance
develops three categories through which geographers addresses climate change.
Grahn’s and Molin’s typologies have historical origin to some of the traditions
outlined above) did not it well with the empirical work17. By approaching Noel
Castree and David Harvey, I gained a more dynamic involvement with the interviews. At the time of approaching the empirical material I also turned to chapter
13 in JNGD (in which Harvey addresses market environmentalism, ecological
modernization and so forth), but once again, though I found the political ecologies applicable, they also came to violate with a more disperse and delicate tone.
16
It is important to stress that the irst part of the interview guide concerns ieldwork, the
second part seeks to join ieldwork and sustainability (as a learning methodology) whereas the
third part questions the use, explication, attitude, and opinion towards teaching sustainability in geography (see appendix 5.3). his is important because links between ieldwork and
sustainability were part of the research questions when the interview guide was designed, but
is not analyzed upon in the dissertation. Instead the interview data on ieldwork were applied
in another article (Appendix 5.5). In total, the dataset consists of approx. 20.6 hours recorded
interview material, whereby only the last half is used in the dissertation.
17 To begin with the qualitative analysis was constructed by thematically condensing the interview material for each individual interview, coding each interview on its own basis. hen,
interviews were cross analyzed to examine joint features as described by Braun and Clarke
(2006). Hereafter the interview material was categorized into Grahn’s (2011) classiication
of sustainability/climate change approaches in geography. he method allows us to make a
thematic analysis with Grahn’s (2011) the three sustainability/climate change approaches,
and at the same time examine if approaches and themes go beyond the theoretical framework
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CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
First, then I found a irmer grip of the analysis by turning to the social nature
approach. In this respect, a thematic approach is not inductive as elaborated in
Braun and Clarke (2006), but constitutes interplays between theoretical categories
and empirical material. he meaning being that the task is to represent (construed)
empirical data, (that represent a messy, sometimes conlictual and irregular world)
and translate them into an abstract theoretical domain18.
At the time of interviewing it may not have been clear that I wanted to shed light
on sustainability by relating it to the history of the discipline. My aim was to address the problematic through the history of the discipline. In retrospective, when
responders express their commitment to human-environmental debates through
sustainability or the anthropocene it is not the same as these should be colonialized into every corner of the discipline. My personal aim though is not to change
status quo and ill in sustainability in curricula whenever possible – (this sounds
ridiculous to me) but to understand how geographers respond to contradictions,
dilemmas and paradoxes and potentially ind more progressive ways of dealing with
them. Elevating these into investigation parameters, e.g. of sustainability typologies, seems to me to violate the phenomenological underpinnings of this study.
18 his is another way of saying that one, as a research strategy, can pick theories (references) that
you already agree with (or disagree with, hence write against), but this does not in itself provide
any meaningful veriication. See also chapter 3.
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129
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CHAPTER 5. SPATIO-TEMPORAL TIDES AND WAVES AND ABSTRACTIONS OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
Chapter 6
Geographers at Work:
Re-naturalizing the HumanEnvironment heme1
”It is a peculiar fact that, while environmental issues have always been central to
geography’s disciplinary identity, one rarely pauses to consider what is ‘environmental’ about the issues in question”
(Castree 2002, p. 357).
As outlined in chapter 1 consensus exists among scientiic and geographical
communities as to cause and efect of climate change and unsustainable production patterns. Controversy arises when dealing with strategic actions and solutions since a given position legitimizes a given political agenda (Morgan 2011).
Imagining climate change often transforms into remarkable geopolitical agendas
and sustainability is sometimes considered to be one of such possible solutions
(Appendix 1.2). Omnipresent to the nexus between research, policy and learning,
sustainability themes are inherently complex and their possible meanings iercely
contested. he geopolitics of education for sustainable development (ESD), environmental education (EE) sustainability in higher education (HESD), education
for sustainability (EfS) or similar acronyms produce complex dilemmas, that tend
to frame education as a change agent that socializes students to accept certain
kinds of explanations and pre-analytic assumptions to deal with an academic pro1 Part of the chapter has been published in an uncritical version in “Grindsted TS (2014) he
Matter of Geography in Education for Sustainable Development: he Case of Danish University Geography, Chapter 2 in W. Leal Filho (ed.), Transformative Approaches to Sustainable
Development at Universities, World Sustainability Series, Springer, Switzerland, 2014, DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-08837-2_2.).
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
131
blem (Lambert & Morgan 2009). While a number of studies engaged in dealing
with geography education and sustainability is growing, there are only limited
studies on the second nature approach in explaining, describing and evaluating
how students are taught in thinking about nature(s) of sustainability in higher
geographical education. his chapter aims to contribute to this particular ield of
knowledge by providing an empirical analysis of the education of geographers in
Denmark. Henceforth I examine the individual teacher’s beliefs, responses and
articulation of responsibilities concerning the relevance, explication contested
ideas and conditions for sustainability. Drawing from chapter 2, Part III begins
with a general relection on ‘corporate’ agendas of greening educational policy
and geographical responses to make sustainability subject to academic debates.
Questions for the Chapter:
•
•
•
•
•
How do geographers conceptualize response(abilities) to issues of sustainability and climate change in education programs?
Is the human environment theme being reconigured and denaturalized
more closely associated with sustainability in geography?
How do geographical education programs contribute to sustainability?
How are issues of sustainability addressed in Curricula?
What is the inluence of the Lucerne Declaration, EU or National ESD
plans concerning Danish University Geography?
6.1 Greening Educational Policy and Response(abilities) from
Geography?
Since the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972) that irst
established a relation between education and sustainable development, the Rio
Declaration (1992) and a number of subsequent declarations, policies and national
strategies have promoted the idea of integrating sustainability into all disciplines
and academic traditions. Today more than 31 declarations on sustainability in
higher education have been made and during the past few years also declarations
that address speciic disciplines have developed as responses that also serve the
corporate agenda (Grindsted and Holm 2012). In 2007 the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographical Education (IGU CGE) oicially
announced their commitment to the “Lucerne Declaration on Geographical
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
Education for Sustainable Development” in addition to the UN Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (UN DESD) 2005–2014 (IGU CGE
2007). Declarations as well as the UN DESD are designed to produce an impact
on policy. By way of example the 2005 Graz Declaration on Committing Universities to Sustainable Development (made under the umbrella of the European
University Association and UNESCO) was developed to encourage the European
Ministers of Education to integrate sustainability into the Bologna process. hus
the aim was to “Call on Ministers (…) to use sustainable development as a framework
for the enhancement of the social dimension of European Higher Education as well
as to contribute to the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area” (Graz
Declaration 2005, p. 2).
Sustainability issues have also gradually been incorporated in the Bologna process
(meeting in Bergen, 2005), and in Louvain-la-Neuve (2009) the European Ministers of Education decided to keep sustainability as a research topic for the next
decade. Furthermore, the EU Commission has encouraged EU member states
to use the UN DESD 2005–2014 as a point of reference in the development of
national educational policies and plans (EU Commission 2009). Correspondingly,
he European University Association’s annual rectors’ conference (2012) carried
the theme “Europe for Sustainable Universities”. he EUA President, Maria Helena Nazaré, recognized that the challenges of sustainability is one of the greatest
challenges for humanity: “Sustainability is the biggest issue for humanity on Earth;
universities should be a role model to integrate sustainability into its activities, should
contribute by informing (…) sustainable values and achievements should be part of
education” (Interview, Maria Helena Nazaré).
In a Nordic context, national sustainability strategies in higher education2 have
been prepared for supporting sustainable growth. How the greening agenda
of educational policies inluence various disciplines and academic traditions is
particularly interesting in geography due to its strong tradition concerning the
human-environment theme. As illustrated in chapter 2, geography as any other
scientiic discipline, changes as to external pressures, political responses, hot issues
and internal debates. Green washing have long been big industry. Also sustainable
2 National education for sustainability strategies have been prepared by the Norwegian Government (2007), Danish Ministry of Education (2008), Finnish strategy for the Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (2006), Iceland, (2002) and the Swedish Higher
Education Act (2006) that encourage higher education to integrate sustainability.
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
133
university policies and ‘the greening of curricula agenda’ is as much a way of inding new arguments for counter environmentalism as it has become subject for
branding universities, attracting funding and students (Brown and Cloke 2009).
To its critics, CSR is nothing else but PR exercises, based on the dictums of market environmentalism and regardless of the social and ecological costs (Harvey
1996)3. So, why should it be so diferent in academia?
6.2 Is the Human-Environment heme Being Reconigured in
Geography?
hree interesting perspectives substantiate the hypothesis that the environment theme is under reconiguration in geography, but also suggest a discrepancy between
‘responses and responsibilities’ concerning sustainability education in geography.
However this does not imply that all geographers working on human-environment
interactions conceive their research activities in terms of sustainability. Nothing
could be more contradictory4. Geography is much more than sustainability and
most research geographers ind their ield of study has no relevance to the topic
at hand. Nevertheless, when interviewed, the following three tendencies suggest
changes in discourse coalitions toward being associated with sustainability that
also marks spatio-temporal changes related to the power of reference.
3 My problem with Harvey (1996) is that though an institution’s carbon emission may continue to increase (stabilize or decline) it does not necessarily mean that nothing is done or
that it is not a real objective. Jevon’s theorem in chapter one illustrates why it is so diicult.
See e.g. Cornell University’s Back Casting model (Climate Action Plan) is one of the most
progressive carbon management plans I have seen so far. According to the homepage Cornell
has reduced carbon emission by close to 50% with 1990 as a baseline. Back casting with net
zero emissions in 2050 each year the plan sets a maximum limit of GHG emissions in metric tons (Co2e) (http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/initiatives/climate-action-plan).
hey may not succeed, but it is not the same as the plan was set up solely as a PR stunt.
Universities are also conined under the logic of capital, and subject to navigate within these
dynamics. To claim that any climate plan is a PR stunt is interlocking and speculative as if
nothing can be changed.
4 According to the methodological assumptions in chapter 4, geographers or scholars stating
they are not working on the human-environment theme or sustainability, bear relations to
it anyway. Yet, sustainability (or human-environment interactions) has no privilege above
other topics (hierarchies, thematically or approaches).
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
6.2.1 Educating Nature(s): Geographical Declarations and Emblems of Sustainability
he development of geographical declarations demonstrates a remarkable shift
in conceptualizing the human-environmental interface. he International Geographical Union (IGU) have developed three declarations, i.e. he International
Charter on Geographical Education (1992), he International Declaration on
Geographical Education for Cultural Diversity (2000), and he Lucerne Declaration (2007). he three declarations demonstrate a shift in the role of geography.
First of all it suggests a shift in the role(s) and geographical identities from the
spatial chronological theme, toward a discipline performing a key role in solving
sustainable challenges (Lucerne Declaration 2007). From a shrinking and globalized world (Charter on Geographical Education 1992), with spatial transformations
of economic, social and political signiicance, the Lucerne Declaration suggests
the discipline should take a leading role in academia addressing sustainable challenges on Earth.
By way of example the International Charter of Geographical Education (1992)
scarcely pays attention to the human-environment theme. hough human-environmental interactions are mentioned once “concern for the quality and planning
of the environment and human habitat for future generations” (Geographical Charter
1992, p. 1), issues of globalization related to human rights remain the central
focus. (he Geographical Charter (1992) was developed the same year as the Rio
(1992) conference and Agenda 21, Chap. “Experiences of ‘Relective Action’:
Forging Links Between Student Informal Activity and Curriculum Learning for
Sustainability”). he Lucerne Declaration by contrast states that the themes of
the UNDESD 2005–2014 are very much in common with geography’s objects
of study. hus the declaration “is a proposal to integrate sustainable development
(…) based on the conviction that knowledge, skills, attitudes and values learned in
the geography classroom inspire decisions and actions contributing to the goals of the
UNDESD. “he paradigm of sustainable development should be integrated into the
teaching of Geography at all levels” (Lucerne Declaration 2007, p. 243) 5.
5 In the declaration it is claimed that nearly all topics of the UNDESD 2005-2014 possess
a geographic dimension, for which reason geography is bound to integrate the concept of
ESD.
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
135
In table 6.1 below a word search condenses key aspects of the human-environment
theme in the Geographic Education Declaration (1992), International Declaration
on Geographical Education for Cultural Diversity (2000) and Lucerne Declaration (2007) sketching the role of geography (Appendix 5.2). As can be seen from
Table 6.1 sustainability was not mentioned in 1992, once in 2000 and 60 times
in 2007 which marks a noteworthy increase in the quantiication of “sustainable
related content”. Moreover table 6.1. shows changes of key concepts in geography
representing tides and waves of the social production of nature. Consequently,
declarations, through the means of abstraction, intend to reconigure educationalpolitico assemblages of intended learning outcome that come to embody scientiic
habitual traditions (Cotton et al., 2013).
Table 6.1. Sustainability and the human-environment theme in the Geographical Declarations
(IGU)
International Charter
on Geographical Education (1992)
Sustainable: 0
International Declaration
on Geographical Education for Cultural Diversity
(2000)
Sustainable: 1
Lucerne Declaration on
Geographical Education
for Sustainable Development (2007)
Sustainable: 60
Pollution, Contamination, Hazards: 0
Pollution, Contamination,
Hazards: 1
Pollution, Contamination,
Hazards: 1
Climate change/ global
warming: 0
Climate change/ global
warming: 1
Climate change/ global
warming: 2
Ecology: 0
Ecology: 0
Ecology: 7
Environment: 2
Environment: 13
Environment: 13
Emission, greenhouse
gas: 0
Emission, greenhouse gas: 0
Emission, greenhouse gas:
0
Nature: 0
Nature: 1
Energy: 0
Energy: 0
Biodiversity: 0
Biodiversity: 0
Human-nature interaction: 1
Human-nature interaction:
6
Nature: 8
Energy: 3
Biodiversity: 1
Human-nature interaction:
14
Examination of declarations suggests that social-ecological and political-economic
processes are not only intertwined, but also that core themes in geography, and
thus geographical identities are under reconiguration. Castree (2014, p. 19) refers
to such processes as processes of epistemic re-naturalization (re)deining the part
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
of the world (things, phenomena or processes) members of that community refer
to as nature. For whatever reason (see also chapter 5), the content analysis of declarations illustrates an intellectual history down scaling the human environment
theme during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Stoddart (1987), Fitzsimmons
(1989), Birkeland (1998) and Zimmerer (2010) among others have argued. Recall
for instance Zimmeres’s analysis in which he discusses nature-society articles from
1911-2010 in the ‘Annals of the American Association of Geographers’. Zimmerer
(2010) reveals that articles covering society environmental relations during the
1980s are only half of the 1960s. hen, from the 1990s the “Annals” reengage
with nature–society articles that more than doubled and became nearly as high
as around the 1960s.
Interestingly during this period (1960-1990) geographical representations of
human-environment interfaces decline whereas a myriad of interdisciplinary ields,
from ecological economics, environmental management, to sustainability science
grow (Rasmussen and Arler 2010). hough in the context of sustainability, the
declaration analysis suggest that over a period of 15 years, the human environment
theme represents such tides and waves, that does not only reestablish connection to
the concept of nature, but approaches it through the binoculars of sustainability.
6.2.2 Educating Nature(s) - Promoting Sustainable Cultures
Compatibly with the above section, the international literature review suggests it
is not hard to ind geographers pushing the agenda for up scaling sustainability.
For example, Bednarz (2006, p. 239) states: “It seems that non-geographers also
think that geography has an important role to play in environmental education (…)
many geographers have deined geography as a discipline with a major, if not primary,
interest in human—environmental interactions”.
As shown in chapter 5, geography has a long history of invitations to upscale
ecological themes that today partly seem to be ritualized around sustainability,
the anthropocene and similar globalized socio-environmental concepts. By way
of illustration a dozen of researchers (e.g. Huckle 2002, Chalkley 2006, Whitehead 2007, Westaway 2009, Sayer 2009, Firth 2011, Morgan 2011, Cotton
et al., 2013) to mention a few, ofer an explanation of why geographers ind
the human-environment theme to be a platform for linking sustainability and
geography. he recognition that geographical knowledge has importance for
sustainable development makes Westaway (2009, p. 9) state that geography has
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
137
a special role, maybe even above other disciplines: “Sustainable development is the
extrinsic educational purpose that geography is best, indeed almost uniquely, equipped
to serve (…). here is little doubt that geography is the best place to take the lead on
sustainable development in schools.”
Such claims are indeed problematic (see chapter 2 and section 4.6.2.), but
authenticating the human environment theme gives geography its raison d’étre
in the struggle for having a share in sustainability issues. Pushing the agenda for
up scaling sustainability also features in research politics. An example is the U.S.
National Research Council (2010) report that promotes the relevance of the
nature-society issues in geography; merely in the context of sustainability. hus,
the nature-society as well as the spatial dimension of sustainability becomes a
major pillar that geography seeks to patentee. hese both signify imagined (or
real) competition with other ields of studies and are inconsistent with the claimed
interdisciplinary dimension of geography (see below).
6.2.3 Natures of Cultures: Preaching Contradictions of Sustainability
Zimmerer (2010), Lui (2011), Kidman and Papadimitriou (2012) demonstrate
how geographers’ research of human-environment interactions particularly relating to environmental issues (like sustainability) has increased exponentially.
Karatzoglou (2013) illustrates how leading journals on sustainability in higher
education, like International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education and
Journal of Cleaner Production reveal a similar growth6 as well as in more disciplinary oriented journals like journal of geography in higher education. Despite
the increasing numbers of articles, Lui (2011) shows how the number of articles
contrasts with eforts to integrate sustainability into curriculum in practice. “An
examination of publications in sustainability education journals also reveals geography’s
lack of participation in sustainable education” (Lui 2011, p. 249).
A number of studies (Yarnal and Nef 2004, Bednarz 2006, Higgitt 2006, Chalkley
2006, Westawey 2009, Lui 2011, Morgan, 2011) ind that geography in the US,
UK and other countries has been reluctant to integrate sustainability issues into
6 I found no articles that dealt with education for sustainability neither in the Norwegian,
Danish nor Swedish Journals of Geography, nor in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (literature review undertaken in spring 2013). In a Scandinavian context
Molin (2006), Sætre (2009), Grahn (2011) serve as examples of how sustainability has been
dealt with in geography.
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
curricula. As Andrew Sayer puts it: “Global warming presents an enormous threat
to humanity, but the response from academia, including geography, has been relatively
slow (…). I ind this surprising, indeed astonishing, for there could hardly be a more
important geographical topic” (Sayer 2009, p. 350).
Despite of the fact that more than half of the world’s land surface is changed by
human activities with an ever-accelerating speed, in an increasingly unequal world,
geographers seem reluctant to take into consideration the notion of sustainability.
Additionally, Turner (2002), Yarnal and Nef (2004) Bednarz (2006), Sayer (2009)
and Lui (2011) identify an imbalance in that American and British geographers’
involvement in environmental and sustainability research has grown signiicantly,
e.g. in publications, whereas courses and curricula hardly not integrate sustainability7. his suggests a discrepancy between statements of the “role of sustainability
in geography” and geographers’ involvement in research on sustainability themes,
the claimed high grounds of geography. Hence, there appears to be little evidence
that sustainability is recognized as a central concern in geography within the US
or UK in practice (Lui 2011, Morgan 2011).
he power of reference addressed through thematic changes in the declaration
analysis, demonstrates changes in teaching nature(s), representing tides and waves
that: 1) suggest nature practically represented as externalised from disciplinary
constructs within human geography toward being associated with sustainability.
Consequently, nature as external is replaced with socio-natures as sustainability
approach treats nature as anthropogenic relations and does not elaborate on this
distinction. 2) Engagement with nature as addressed in the declaration analysis
represents a shift in norms, values and attitudes when dealing with such themes.
Hence, reconiguration of and re-representing key concepts, is as much a ight
over disciplinary borders, identities and core themes as it is over analysing for
change. To Harvey ”sustainability is a debate about the preservation of a particular
social order rather than a debate about preservation of nature” (Harvey 1996, p.
148). If this is also the case within academia will be addressed in the following
sections. Before addressing dynamics and related contradictions in greater detail,
I will irst address what research geographers’ ind their discipline contribute with
to the sustainability debate.
7 Especially at many universities in North America, Environmental Studies have replaced
Geography (Rasmussen & Arler 2010).
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
139
6.3 Curricula Constructs in an Era of the Anthropocene
In the previous section declaration analysis and the international literature survey
(e.g. Huckle 2002, Bednarz 2006, Sayer 2009, Firth 2011) suggested that sustainability issues ind resonance through human-environment interactions. For Bednarz
(2006) and Westaway (2009) this is an opportunity to articulate that geography
has a special role to play. Relected in study regulations (see appendix 5.1) and
interviews (see appendix 5.2) this section examines how geographers make use of
sustainability concepts. To do so, it is useful to scrutinize both what geographers
ind their discipline contributing with to the sustainability debate in academia, as
well as what contested ideas of introducing sustainability might entail.
6.3.1 How do Geographical Education Programs Contribute to Sustainability?
he duality of social and ecological problems takes an interesting turn when
asking geographers how geography contributes to sustainability analysis in academia. Two geographers interviewed reject to use sustainability concepts at all
(Interview 5, 17). hough sustainability concepts are heavily criticized and most
geographers prefer other terms they still feature in study regulations (table 6.2)
and are integrated into study regulations at Copenhagen University and Aalborg
University from 20098. Before this sustainability was not present in geography
study regulations at Danish universities, though a number of related terms e.g.
human ecology, manipulated ecosystems, ecological modelling, system adaption
and natural capacities can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s (e.g. Study
regulation, Copenhagen University 1983, p. 50). Similarly, interviews with the
heads of study boards suggest sustainability has found its way into the discipline:
“Sustainability is of huge importance to geography. I would say that sustainability is essential for the subject knowledge in geography, for courses, classes and an
underlying basis for comprehending the world. he study regulation in integrative
geography will be revised, but also in the new version sustainability will remain
central”
(Interview 13, Head of the Study Board Aalborg University).
8 he discursive practices of the external censor corps (cencorkorps) were also examined to see
whether discussions on the role of geography for sustainability or climate change had taken
place as well as the Royal Danish Geographical Society (RDGS) were examined for featuring
climate change or sustainability issues in the context of geography education. his was not
the case. See method chapter 5.
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
Table 6.2. Sustainability and the human-environment theme in the Geographical Study
Regulations at Aalborg University, Copenhagen University and Roskilde University
Study regulation Copenhagen University
Study regulation Aalborg
University
Study regulation,
Roskilde University
Sustainable: 2 (2)* (0)**
Sustainable: 79
(18)*(0)**(61)***
Sustainable: 14 (0)*(14)**
Pollution, Contamination, Hazards: 5 (5)(0)
Climate change/ global
warming: 24 (23)(1)
Ecology: 1 (0)(1)
Environment: 23 (18)(6)
Emission, greenhouse gas:
4 (4)(0)
Nature: 6 (2)(4)
Energy: 3 (2)(1)
Biodiversity: 0 (0)(0)
Human-nature interaction: 11 (7)(4)
Pollution, Contamination,
Hazards: 18 (0)(18)(0)
Climate change/ global
warming: 13 (0)(12)(1)
Ecology: 26 (8)(18)(0)
Environment: 64 (15)(10)
(39)
Emission, greenhouse gas: 1
(0)(1)(0)
Nature: 51 (23)(27)(1)
Energy: 11 (9)(0)(2)
Biodiversity: 1 (0)(1)(0)
Pollution, Contamination, Hazards: 0 (0) (0)
Climate change/ global
warming: 5 (0) (5)
Ecology: 2 (1) (1)
Environment: 10 (2)(8)
Emission, greenhouse
gas: 0
Nature: 17(1) (16)
Energy: 0 (0) (0)
Biodiversity: 0 (0) (0)
Human-nature interaction: 8 (1) (7)
Human-nature interaction:
37 (11)(12)(14)
Example from study regu- Example from study regula- Example from study regulation
tion
lation
”[Students analyse] human environment interactions from a broad range
of theoretical approaches.
[hey are able to critically]
address interdisciplinary
problems and global environmental challenges,
among others climate
change (…) and sustainability. (Study regulation,
Master, Copehagen University, 2009, p. 7).
“[Students obtain] skills and
knowledge to use scientiic
theories and concepts in
analyzing and assessing sustainability and spatial change
from an integrative perspective” (Study regulation, Master, Aalborg University, 2010,
p. 8).
”[Students demonstrate
insight] into geomorphological processes, landscape
structures and knowledge
on the development of
sustainability concepts,
their use in planning and
regulation of the landscape
(…). hey can independently formulate a policy,
strategy or plan to achieve
sustainable [bio]diversity”
(Study Regulation, Bachelor, Roskilde University,
2014, p. 12).
Roskilde University, Study Regulation in Geography, 2006 (bachelor, master)*, 2014
(bachelor)**; Copenhagen University, Study Regulation in Geography 2009 (master)* 2009
(bachelor)**; Aalborg University, Study Regulation in Geography, 2011(bachelor)*, 2010
(master, physical geography)**, 2010 (integrative geography)***
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
141
he concept of sustainability is of huge importance to geography at Copenhagen
University, but also related concepts as resilience, vulnerability or ecology. Sustainability is a silver-line to many topics, but it is nothing we have discussed
in the Study Board. It is just there” (Interview 1, Head of the Study Board
Copenhagen University).
“I think the responsibility for dealing with sustainability rests with geography is
necessary. Still it requires that students choose such themes in courses and projects.
We do not predeine thematic learning outcomes. Instead, we are much more speciic
as to which methods, theories and approaches they should acquire. Here holistic
approaches are central to the education” (Interview 3, Head of the Study Board
Roskilde University).
hough the interviews demonstrate great variety and geographers in the interview
sample both ind sustainability relevant and remain critical to the concept, 29
of 31 geographers (including members of the study board) ind their discipline
can contribute to sustainability analysis in three distinct ways (see Box 6.1-6.3).
1) Geography as an integrative discipline that merges the natural and social
sciences 2) geographical approaches concerning the spatio-temporal dimension
of sustainability 3) and geographical methods and interdisciplinary approaches.
hese dimensions will be examined each in turn.
6.3.2 Interdisciplinary Disciplines
he multiple ways geographers engage with sustainable issues, suggests it is an
interdisciplinary discipline (contradictory) that excels in analyzing socio-ecological
dynamics from a holistic and integrative approach: “Geography has a major role on
sustainability. Many disciplines concentrate upon relatively narrowed subjects, whereas
geography possesses the broadness which is an important dimension of sustainability.
Geography is particularly potent because of its interdisciplinary approach as many
other disciplines do not encompass. Moreover, geography merges the natural sciences
and social sciences” (Interview 1).
“Geography is an integrative discipline. Integrative approaches integrate economic,
social and physical aspects. Sustainability are not only well suited for geography that
deals with interactions between the human ecosystem and the earth system, but a precondition to understand its multiple dimensions” (Interview 14). he anthropogenic
climate change thesis precisely suggests that phenomena at global scales are caused
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
by cumulative small scale activities in local places. But the reverse is also true.
Activities in local places generate impact at global scale, that in turn exacerbates
phenomena in yet other localities. Henceforth, students may not appropriately
understand sustainability issues if they lack and understanding of the climatological, hydrological or environmental processes that work in nature. Likewise
explanations are misguided if sustainability analysis ignores social dynamics and
economic activities. “Geography knowledge is important to sustainability [ESD red.]
and distinguished from other disciplines, because a narrow disciplinary focus may not
unfold problems of sustainability that operates at multiple scales, but also because it
establishes an approach analyzing the material form the social and the economic form
of materiality (Interview 30).
Box 6.1 Reclaiming the High Grounds - he importance of Sustainability
to Geography or the Importance of Geography for Sustainability Analysis
“Sustainability is absolutely a central concept to the education. Much of what we
do is about sustainability in one way or another. I do not myself work on these issues, but it is my understanding that many colleguees engage with it, also as part
of their teaching” (Interview 16).
“As a geographer it is imperative to understand the spatial distribution of environmental harm, and how this distribution is organized in and between diferent
societies, between rich and poor or between the North and South” (Interview 2).
“I think geography is self-written in taking part in discussions on sustainability.
We range competences from the natural science and social science. To join these
competences is necessary to get a better understanding of the dynamics of socioenvironmental change, and hence be able to respond to it” (Interview 27).
“Sustainability is now and important part of geography, because it comply with
many interests in the discipline to integrate diferent perspectives - also because
sustainability has a highly discursive status in environmental and energy policies.
I ind sustainability is a political and ideological concept, even a strong yet difuse
one – thereby I haven’t said too much” (Interview 4).
“Sustainability is a considerable component in geography; it is part of our DNA and
much of what we do. Sustainability is a part of geography, a part of the identity,
but not a part of all the things we work on” (Interview 6).
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143
“Sustainability is absolutely central in the education [geography red.]. I am quite
certain that the concept in its modern form was born in the discipline. When I
think back to the 1970s sustainability and ecology was a central part of the education” (Interview 7).
“he way I look at education is as a process of “self-realization” and I ind that
related to be able to think in terms of sustainability. here is an implicit relation
between sustainability and education, not only for geographers but others as well”
(Interview 11).
“Sustainability is a concept relevant for understanding relations between natural
remises and natural capacities and how humans adapt to them. Human interactions
and feedback mechanisms are part of sustainability, like CO2 luxes, the carbon
budget and the like. he environmental changes we explore today are all relevant
to discuss in relation to human impacts and adaption. In that, I ind sustainability
relevant for geography” (Interview 10).
“I originally come from biology before I turned into the discipline. Biotopes came
long before sustainability. I can certainly follow that one often work on geographical
themes without sustainability is considered at all, but in reality it is deeply buried
in the stuf geography is made of. In our description and understanding of land
surface changes, then a metabolism perspective is always there, hence sustainability.
It is nothing new, yet it only exists as small niches. he broad sustainability notion
is quite hard not to be confronted with in the discipline, but as a frame of prepositions seldom unfolded in our daily discourses…(…). When I teach in planning I
always make it clear to the student that we cannot talk about regulation without
considering long term, efects and what we aim for (Interview 25).
Claiming that geography is distinguished from other disciplines in the analysis of
sustainability challenges as interconnected spaces does not only underscore the
envy of physics (Massey 1999), materialized as the envy of theoretically mastering
the human-environment nexus, but does also illustrate contradictory elements of
the use of sustainability in academia. First, it conveys disciplinary contradictions of
sustainability, as unsustainability is fundamentally an interdisciplinary real phenomenon, but analyzed from a discipline. More challenging, when de-construing the
study regulations of Roskilde University (2006, 2014), it turns out that ecological
themes, climate change, environmental or sustainable challenges are only written
into physical geography. Competition between diferent disciplines in claiming
the high grounds of analyzing sustainability (best cases, best practice, theories or
methodologies) contradicts the interdisciplinary ambition (chapter 2). hat is
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CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
analysis of the problem(s) from its core (though wicked or multiple), rather than
taking point of departure from a discipline.
6.3.3 Socio-Nature(s), Sustainability and Socio-Physical Disciplinary Omnipresence
Another aspect found critical is geography’s role in bridging the natural and social
sciences. “Geography can contribute in a unique way to sustainable development,
especially regarding the integration of knowledge between social and natural sciences.
In this way, geography plays a crucial role in dealing with sustainable challenges that
you do not ind in the tradition of many other disciplines, e.g. Sociology. Secondly,
sustainability has an immanent spatial dimension” (Interview 19).
As a result it is argued that current environmental problems not only call for
research and education that epistemologically transcend traditional disciplinary
divides, challenging the problems in its complexity, but also seek to bridge the gap
between natural and social sciences in dealing with sustainability. Sustainability
approaches are widely assumed to be able to encompass a gathering point for human and physical geography (Interview 27). To this may be added that geography
has a distinct role being able to enrich related disciplinary discussions on ESD. “I
ind that geography has a responsibility to deal with issues of sustainability. We range
competences and skills from the social and natural sciences – a holistic approach is
imperative for dealing with sustainability” (Interview 22). hus geographical imaginations, and identities of their imaginations, position the discipline to contribute to sustainability analysis in ways that not only epistemologically transcend
traditional disciplinary divides, challenging the problems in its complexity, but
also seek to bridge the gap between natural and social sciences.
6.3.4 Scaling Sustainability
Additionally, complex interaction between nature and society and the spatio-temporal
dimension of sustainability, requires methodological approaches to grasp such interactions that may even be impossible without geographical knowledge. ”Before specialization, all students will acquire a holistic and broad basis of knowledge and approaches,
about soil science, climate change, society and urban development. [1.5 years of study red.].
his broad foundation enables students to think critically and analyze side efects of a given
phenomenon or human action. his body of knowledge is vital for sustainability, in order
to understand side efects in very diferent areas and scales. Such questions I would say are
only possible to deal with through geographical skills” (Interview 8).
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
145
hus the arguments corralled in the interview material connote to Mike Hulme’s
(2008) argument, that geographical identities are central to climate change and
ways to address challenges of sustainability. “Making human sense of climate
change needs the distinctive intuition and skills of the geographer” (Hulme 2008, p.
5). Hence, he points to modes of thinking and connecting cultural assemblages
with ideas of sustainability patterns across scale. As diferent disciplines operate
in quite diferent spatio-temporal scales, translation between culturally embodied
spatio-temporal organizations of socio-ecological processes is crucial if to achieve
“more” sustainable practices as so many these days advocate for. If the time horizon is set by practices of capitalism, then they may not correspond to ecosystem
temporalities. he purpose of the rhetoric of sustainability is to some extent to
direct thinking about time horizons encountered in the market (Harvey 1996).
For much sustainability theorization therefore, it is not only about encouraging
students to understand the world in terms of relationships, rather than in terms
of objects and structures, but also to encourage students to think in terms of different spatio-temporal dynamics.
Integrating the production of space and nature as a fundamental perspective of
abstraction in e.g. area diferentiation generates geographical knowledge and methodologies that make it possible to manage risks involved in the spatial distribution
of problems. Non geographical methodologies fail to understand such dynamics of
spatial distribution and thus sustainability may even be seen as a common ground
bridging the spatial chorological approach and the human-environment theme.
he gradual perspective on climate change (scientiic consensus thesis chapter 1)
are particularly relected in study regulations (Study Regulation, Aalborg University 2010). If it is assumed that a dialectic approach comprehends the complexity
of socio-spatial and economic-ecological processes, and this, in turn, will make
us recognize that environmental/social problems mutually interact, are spatially
distributed, and produce diferent efects in diferent spatial scales. hese preanalytic assumptions are fundamental to the sustainability analysis in academia and
the interview suggests that geographers ind their education programs emphasize
how the matter of scale and the analysis of environmental problems are inseparable
(Interview,1,2,3… minus, 5, 12, 17 and 31).
As relected in the international literature (e.g. Bednarz 2006, Whitehead 2007,
Westaway 2009, Sayer 2009, Firth 2011,) also Danish university geographers
ind resonance in human-environment interactions by ways in which geography
is given a particular role for dealing with sustainability issues. hough the inter146
CHAPTER 6. GEOGRAPHERS AT WORK: RE-NATURALIZING THE HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT THEME
views reveal recognition of the importance of sustainability to geography it also
demonstrates that most geography teachers remain critical to the concept itself
and/or ind it is better as an implicit basis for educating geographers. “When I
teach in accessibility for instance, then the aspect of sustainability is in the background.
Whether or not sustainability is there [on the curriculum] depends how explicitly it
should be mentioned. I rarely mention the term, but implicitly sustainability is the
main objective for what we do and why we study it in this way. Sustainability is part
of all geographers mindset I would say; sometimes so penetrated that one may not need
to explicate it” (Interview 20).
his may be one of the reasons why the analysis of study regulations reveals that
sustainability has a limited status in geography educations in practice (see Box
6.2). In chapter 7, dilemmas of teaching sustainability as an implicit notion will
Box 6.2. Sustainability Critiques and Critical Intervention
“Sustainability is rejected fully by the top international writers in geography. Why
do we keep discussing it - It is completely irrelevant. Sustainability is about politics
and has nothing to provide in academia” (Interview 5).
“I only see the use of sustainability relevant if it can attract students to geography
(….). It is an elusive and imaginary concept, a concept of fantasies about paradise
like futures, without any directions or progress. I think that is unhelpful for critical
research in geography and elsewhere” (Interview 28).
“I do not like the concept at all; it is an empty signiicant and quite useless - I do
not use it. Much of the literature on sustainability bores me to tears. I think we as
geographers should be much more critical about it. he idea behind sustainability
is reasonable, it is reasonable to think of ways that can address the problems that
we face on global environmental stress. But I don’t think sustainability solve that
problem at all. It is misguiding. Another problem with the term is that it does not
consider class issues, sex, social diferentiation, it does not consider that we have
fundamentally antagonistic interests in this world. It is impossible to make an systematic analysis and address those issues with that concept” (Interview 17).
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“Sustainability is used an misused in all sorts of ways, but it is about how we govern the natural resources that we have in a given geographical location – how we
govern the relationship between humans and the environment. Do we maintain
our natural resources, and natural sinks in ways that consider future generations?
I think the concept have been misused to the extent that if we consider it in our
education, we should set critical criteria’s, methods and approaches for analysing it in
speciic contexts. Only if it is contextual and clearly deined it can be taken seriously
in science. What is the natural limit we cannot surpass? What is the climate limits
that we want? What are the visions that we have? If sustainability put that on the
agenda through speciic analysis I think it applies for geography. It is misused in so
many ways that I think it is a serious problem to consider it for scientiic analysis.
I think the concept is essential to geography, but it should be used speciically and
approach with scientiic standards to be useful” (Interview 31).
“No I don’t ind sustainability important to geography it is a buzzword if anything.
It is a concept without fantasy, without hope to imagine other futures – rather it is
a concept that has stranded still for 20 years. On the other hand, I have sympathy
with the underlying idea – but to me there is multiple and much more fascinating ways. We need new and much more progressive ways to address environmental
problems, climate change and resource problems. I think that we have run out of
alternative ways. I have undertaken much teaching these issues throughout the years
e.g. on natural resources, the ways we use them and the consequences, but I also call
it many other things.” What do you call it? “Environmental injustice, the carbon
inance game, the global warming experiment” (Interview 21).
“Since Harlan Brundland sustainability really came on everybody lips and it nearly
became a package that even geographers bought. So irst, we should be critical about
it and consider its political meanings. We study relations between human and nature, so it can be a relevant concept to geography, but it depends how broadly we
deine it. Only if it is broadly deined, it take a holistic we and integrate diferent
geographical traditions, I think it is relevant to us. If it solely regard natural resources
it is not relevant as a concept that can bring us together. But as a broad thematic
term, I could imagine it to bring us together and having great discussions from all
sorts of angles. I can see sustainability as a concept that all can identify themselves
with and contribute to” (Interview 27).
“Sustainability is a concept that appear everywhere around us that we critically
need to address. It is heavily used in the rhetoric of political discourse and hard to
avoid as a human geographer. It is a great example of a fussy concept that all of us
used intended and unintended. When it occurs I always step back - I get a critical
awareness” (Interview 22).
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be discussed in greater detail. As most remain critical to the concept itself, hence
reluctant to explicate it in the classroom, we shall now turn to explore how sustainability is addressed in study programs/curricula before considering dilemmas
and contradictory elements of addressing sustainability.
6.4 How are Issues of Sustainability Addressed in Curricula?
An examination of the preamble of the Aalborg, Copenhagen and Roskilde universities’ curricula indicates a methodological foundation in which interconnectedness, processes and lows are given a primary status rather than ixed objects,
direct causalities and permanencies. According to Rasmussen and Arler (2010)
ecological analysis often focuses on environmental problems from an interdisciplinary angel, often addressed through normative and problem oriented approaches.
Insofar as sustainability analysis in geography feature under the interdisciplinary
and normative umbrella study regulation requires that: “students should acquire
knowledge on human inluences on ecosystems and the most important anthropogenic
changes in history. hey should be able to critically relect on diferent philosophical
views upon nature and its implications (…) understand concepts of sustainability and
ecosystems in relation to elasticity and robustness to be able to analyze interactions
between human activity (demands) and nature’s capacity and limits” (Study Regulation, Aalborg University 2010a, p. 29). Emphasis on processes and dynamics
in study regulations undermines debates on environmental determinism, e.g. in
the context of inite resource constraints (see Box 6.3). In this way dealing with
issues of sustainability reformulates previous deterministic concepts into ecological
principles and balances, such as carrying capacity or the environmental footprint
(Interview 16) that corresponds to what Firth (2011) and Morgan (2011) call
sustainability learning as understanding interconnectedness, processes and dynamics in diferent spatio-temporal scales or particularly referring to spatially
and temporally nested eco-systems. Henceforth study regulations demonstrate
conceptual changes relecting spatio-temporal tides and waves in dealing with the
human environment nexus. Study regulations undergo what Castree (2014, p. 19)
terms renaturalization. A process by which what is regarded natural, also become
social, within that epistemic community. Hereby ‘larger’ parts of the natural as
external are epistemologically re-naturalized towards dynamic conceptualizations
of human-nature interaction that claims a strong ontological position about the
socio-material construction of nature as anthropogenic or simply unsustainable.
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here seems to be only little distinction between encouragements of the Lucerne Declaration and geographical education programs as to interdisciplinary
approaches. By way of illustration the study regulation at Roskilde University
Box 6.3 How can Geography Contribute to Addressing Sustainability?
”here are countless bookshelves on the top of sustainability. But, if we really want
to take it seriously you need to study it in practice. I think it is centrally to verify
theories on sustainability in practice, and one of the ways to do that is to go out in
practice, to use geographical methods that relate to real world experiments, to go on
ieldwork. Only in this way we can verify if all these fancy theories have anything
to say” (Interview 4).
“hat geographers in particular should be exceptionally skilled to analyze sustainability resource management, climate change and all the rest. I can certainly understand that somebody would claim so, but I don’t” (Interview 17).
“Is sustainability relevant to geography? - I taught about it yesterday. I think it is.
he topic we always address is how to plan a sound (prudent) interface between
the social and nature. (…). I think an teach always on environmental impacts,
economic and social impacts of a particular proposal. Maybe it is because that I
am from the human-environment tradition, that I ind sustainability to be that
important to geography” (Interview 18).
“A geographer should have a good understanding of the spatial context and of multivariable problems. Sustainability is one of such. Sustainability is not important
to the education but I think the students should have an idea of what sustainability
is” (Interview 19).
“I do ind sustainability relevant to geography, but I would hasten to add that it
is extremely complex and involve a good spatial understanding. It takes a lot of
efort to see these connections e.g. in land use analysis, where sustainability is only
meaningful if connected to the experiences, and practices of those who use that area”
(Interview 11).
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“Nothing is sustainable in modern societies and our western lifestyles have been
exported globally. Half of the world’s populations now live in cities. Nutrients are
exported from the farmland as import to the cities. Now we feed the farmland with
fertilizers- nutrients exported to the cities are not returned to the farmland an in
that we break the nutrient cycle – at a larger and larger scale as global urbanization grow. I need to reine the picture…. For the nitrogen cycle, this is not really a
problem. For phosphor though it is truthfully an unsustainable story. In the future
this will worsen, as we begin to pour NPK fertilizers [Nitrogen, Phosphor, Potassium red.] at marginal farmland, to increase production, to expand production,
to stay competitive, to feed growing populations or whatever, then … When irst
India and China also expand their production through NPK pouring, then we
got phosphor mines for approximately 50 years, we ind a few more, say to sustain
production for 150 years, but then the game is over (…). It is an elementary part
of being a geographer to be able to think along these lines, at diferent scales. he
same apply for the course in soil science. 50 years ago the entire education was production oriented, to expand production and be more eicient. Today, it is equally
important to address environmental stress. I am not sure if my fellow geographers
in India and China do that. I am sure they do, but they have another project going on… Nevertheless, when we optimise farmland production through fertilises,
leaching increases. We respond to that. What levels will we accept, and what is
unacceptable” (Interview 24).
“Sustainability is related to geography yes, we can only study sustainability by studying places and through spatial analysis. To me everything else would be meaningless”
(Interview 9).
“I have taught on sustainability themes. hough I think it is an awful concept we
should be highly sceptical about, it is relevant to consider in relation to domination
and power over nature, world views upon nature and the like. Sustainability is part
of such political analysis” (Interview 22).
“students are given a body of knowledge on economic geography, natural processes
and planning – also in an context of sustainability – so that they will be able to
analyze the impact of a given plan or action in ecological, economic and social
terms” (Interview 3).
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requires problem based group work so that ”Students should be able to look upon
scientiic problems and solutions in an interdisciplinary approach – not only from
particular disciplinary premises, but also by including relevant theories, methods and
philosophical interpretations from related disciplines” (Study Regulation, Roskilde
University 2006, p. 23). hough study regulations do not go into detail in describing which methods to be used, it stimulates the basis for methodological and
interdisciplinary relection on real world problems. A holistic understanding of
wicked problems like sustainability or climate change requires a relective rather
than an explanatory or commercial ambition (Interview 2,8,11,27). In terms of
sustainability critical thinking is essential to understand diferent practices and
agendas in play to be able to ind possible solutions to sustainability challenges.
he spatial-temporal dimensions of sustainability in curricula focus on processes in diferent time scales and spatial contexts. By way of example the graduate
geographical qualiication proile Ecological climatology and climate change, causes,
efects, limitation and adaption at Copenhagen University seeks to integrate the
range from geological to economic time scales in its very complexity, processes
and dynamics e.g. when integrated into modelling . he aim is to gain fundamental knowledge on climate change in history, relations between climate systems,
ecosystems and land use, as well as relations between climate and the content of
GHG gasses in the atmosphere. hus the learning outcome is to be able to work
with climate data and environmental observation in various scales to grasp complex relationship between physical and economic activities afecting the global
climate (Study Regulation, Copenhagen University 2009b, p. 8). Moreover students will be able to analyze consequences of mechanisms used to prevent climate
changes and assess its consequences, modeling GCM’s to construe previous and
future climate scenarios (Study Regulation, Copenhagen University 2009). he
specialization illustrates how curricula seek to explain contemporary challenges
to sustainability (e.g. desertiication and deforestation) in its interconnectedness
and complexity (see chapter 8).
However, it seems that Aalborg and Copenhagen Universities attach greater importance to the human environment theme as sustainability and environmental challenges. he reason is that urban geography is dominant at
Roskilde University that has a strong spatial tradition in favor of the spatialchorological approach. Likevise at it is only one of six qualiication proiles
(transformation of cities) at Copenhagen University that do not explicate su152
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stainability, climate nor energy and resource themes (Study Regulation, Copenhagen University 2006, p. 5). Here too, the reason may be that urban geography
traditionally has identiied itself as being closer to the spatial chorological theme.
his will be further addressed in chapter 7, as it contrasts Castree’s and Harvey’s
theoretical work (Chapter 4). Whereas Aalborg and Copenhagen Universities
require various courses and projects in which sustainability or climate change
is central, Roskilde University does not address sustainability as a mandatory
theme in its curriculum, except from one course in physical geography (Study
regulation, Roskilde University 2006, p. 4). Aalborg University ofers the most
proactive geographical program dealing with issues of sustainability at BA level
where 80 of 180 ECTS (and similarly at MA level) are allocated to various humanenvironment themes, mostly within issues of sustainability, climate change and
environmental stress.
6.5 What Is the Inluence on Danish Universities of the Lucerne
Declaration, EU or National ESD Plans Concerning Geography?
he interviews revealed that the Lucerne declaration was unknown for geographers
at Copenhagen, Roskilde and Aalborg Universities and has neither been dealt with
in the study boards nor on any other occasion. “I have never heard of the declaration
and it has neither been discussed in the study board nor during teachers meetings”
(Interview 1). It therefore goes without saying that the Lucerne Declaration has
not produced an impact at the Danish universities. Additionally heads of the study
boards in geography as well as the general interview sample, suggest there has been
no direct or indirect impact thematically (in terms of sustainability) on geography
education, neither from EU, national plans nor legislation. he inding suggest
that geography has been relatively unchanged regardless of sustainability policies
in higher education. Instead the declaration (and curricula) can be considered
to be a product of speciic history-geographical circumstances signaling geographical representations of the human environment theme. What sustainability in
geography is instead inluenced by is university governance, funding and external
reputational capital (Box 6.4).
And yet, as the Chair of the Study Board at Copenhagen University explains:
“sustainability is not something we discuss, it is not necessary to discuss what you agree
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upon and which already is there” (Interview 1). hough sustainability themes take
various forms in geography at Copenhagen and Aalborg Universities, the chairs of
the study boards do not ind it is necessary to develop the study of sustainability
further: “Well, I see no need for improving the sustainable content quantitatively. I
would say it is saturated. Sustainability issues are illing out much of the education
Box 6.4: Making space for sustainability in geography – marketing the
ambition?
“Sustainability is an important concept in geography. It is important that what
we aim to strive for sustainability. It is not easy. We can only make sustainability
work in our educations if there is money for it. If there are no students applying
for those courses then we will have no sustainability in our education. How do we
secure that the program is not just thrown away when there is no more money and
the funding stops” (Interview 30).
“All the research I do or teach, is contributing to a knowledge base that is used in
planning and practice, in directing it toward a more sustainable path. It is absolutely central and geography should grasp a hold on these issues more seriously. he
problem for not doing that is that all of us now think so much on what the young
people think (…). his is problematic, student enrollment is now a business and
we need to attract student” (Interview 16).
“I think sustainability is unhelpful for critical research in geography and elsewhere
(…). I only see the use of sustainability relevant if it can attract students to geography” (Interview 25).
“I think geography has a responsibility to take aspects of sustainability into consideration in the bachelor program. (…). Sustainability or environmental issues does
not interest many young people in Denmark. As a rector I saw how less and less
students enrolled in studies like environmental science. It is a problem that we do
not have more students that engages with environmental change. he issues have
less concern for students than 10 years ago and we see these studies have problems
with low student recruitment. We have also seen how relations between physical
and human geography are widening. his give less opportunity for establishing the
holistic approach that sustainability require” (Interview 3).
“I think the concept is essential to geography, but it should be used speciically and
approached with scientiic standards to be useful. If our soundings see the concept
as a non-scientiic term and we use it, it is a problem for our reputation in the
ield” (Interview 31).
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already, so I see no need of giving it more room, but sustainability will remain a core
dimension of geography also in the long run” (Interview 3). Also at Aalborg University
geography seems to be saturated: “Sustainability is already integrated at many levels
and has a strong critical mass. I do not see a point in enhancing it further. Environmental sustainability has the strongest position though, so in a way we could enhance
aspects of social sustainability” (Interview 13).
hematic shifts in declarations thus relect tides and waves that also illustrate a
move toward moral obligations (Lucerne Declaration 2007). he Lucerne Declaration (2007) as the only declaration explicates a norm based learning approach
dealing with nature. “Sustainable development implies (…) development of new
production and consumption patterns, as well as new life styles, and last but not least
by the creation of a new ethic for the individual through lifelong education, including
Geographical Education” (Lucerne Declaration 2007, p. 245). Study regulations
and interviews by contrast never explicit ethics, norms or attitudes associated
sustainability (Aalborg University, 2010, 2011; Copenhagen University, 2009a,
2009b; Roskilde University, 2006). To provide students with skills that enable
them to become change agents that serve the normative agenda of sustainability
has no purpose in geography; interviews suggest: ”Sustainable values and ethical
questions is an individual matter, and have not been debated at an institutional level.
It is nothing we seek to form common consensus about – that we will like to form
students in a certain way. Teachers possess diferent agendas and enrich students with
diferent perspectives” (Interview 9). In contrast to the Lucerne Declaration that
resembles discourses of climate catastrophes and what Lambert and Morgan (2009)
have termed ESD as moral development, the interview analysis demonstrates that
Danish university geography rejects ideas of dealing with ESD moral, and only
inds sustainability notions acceptable if considered as an analytical concept.
6.6 Conclusion - Toward Analyzing Contradictions
As we saw geography inds resonance in human-environment interactions, therefore an opportunity to articulate that geography has a particular role in dealing
with sustainability. he analysis of study regulations, interviews and geography
declarations suggests that the human-environment theme is re-naturalized toward
more notably being associated with sustainability. hough nearly all Danish geographers interviewed remain critical to the concept, hence reluctant to explicate
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155
it in the classroom, 29 of 31 geographers ind sustainability concepts relevant to
geography. Two geographers interviewed rejected to use sustainability concepts
at all. hough environmental issues are important to geography, they suggested,
related concepts are better suited for studying environmental concerns. Nevertheless, geographers ind their discipline makes a particular contribution to sustainability analysis in three important ways. First, geography’s strong tradition in
the human-environment theme provides a methodological basis for dealing with
issues of sustainability. Second, the spatio-temporal dimensions of sustainability
call for geographical approaches to be able to understand the dynamics, complexity and interactions in various scales. hird, it is widely claimed that geography
contributes by its interdisciplinary approaches to bridge the social and natural
sciences. Dealing with geographical imaginations may not only better prepare
students, teachers and practitioners in understanding sustainability challenges
in various spatial contexts, but also may help us better understand that, what
appears to be a solution in one scale may produce sustainability challenges in
another. To achieve such an understanding is not only relevant for geographers,
but is relevant to sustainability analysis in various (inter) disciplinary contexts.
Although issues of sustainability and climate change have been materialized in
Danish geographical curricula, it has a limited status in practise. Geographers
remain critical to the concept itself, hence reluctant to explicate it, and/or ind it
more suitable as an implicit notion.
Distinguishing between external nature and co-created natural environments is
an extraordinarily diicult task. As sustainability is an anthropogenic concept it
cannot transcend that distinction (see chapter 4). hus the epistemological process
of re-naturalizing nature within the geographic episteme is also a process by which
imaginative geographies of external nature shrinks. Hereby, nature that previously
was regarded as external, reconigures and is de-naturalized to also be part of the
social. Insofar as sustainability concepts gain terrain, spatio-temporal tides and
waves suggest that the process of diminishing external nature is taught implicitly,
simultaneously demonstrating changes in ethics. his inding is problematic not
only to contested ideas of sustainability, but also demonstrates internal and external contradictory elements when dealing with the dual character of the moral,
policy, ethical and facto-contextual spatio-temporal changes attached to it. As a
concluding remark, engagement with sustainability as an implicit notion rather
than explicit, opens the paradox that global climate change is catalyzing examination of ecological ethics, both in society and within academia, while humanity’s
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failure in responding to climate change turns into a moral storm that is hidden
away. he chapter thus critically addresses how political ecologies and ethics are
both supporting and challenging the current range of practices by incorporating
and hiding them simultaneously. his dual character will be addressed in the following chapter that critically deals with internal and external contradictions of
hiding and promoting sustainability simultaneously.
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157
Chapter 7
Educating Geographers in an Era
of the Anthropocene: Paradoxical
Natures – Paradoxical Cultures1
“he remaking of nature (…) becomes, quite simply, a focal point for a nexus
of political-economic relations, social identities, cultural orderings, and political
aspirations of all kinds”
(Castree and Braun 1998, p. 5).
In chapter 6 we saw how nearly all geographers interviewed found sustainability
issues essential to geography, but remained critical about the notion. his illustrates
that there are contradictory elements to the claimed relevance of geographical work.
he aim of this chapter is to examine in greater detail how geographers respond
to paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas of sustainability and how they address
these dilemmas in their teaching. his chapter argues that sustainability takes form
as hidden politics by the ways in which geographers respond to sustainability
dilemmas. Hereby the cultural politics of representing nature produce political
ecologies embedded as hidden curricula. In the remaining part of the chapter we
critically address paradoxical natures and cultures. It is concluded that geographers
both seek to distance themselves from produced politics while at the same time
elucidating them. First, however, we shall see how this converts into two educational strategies for putting sustainability on the agenda and at the same time hiding
it. his contrasts the critical research agenda we set out in chapter 1, stating that
scientiic biases do not arise from having ethical or political positions. Rather,
1 Part of the chapter is forthcoming in Grindsted, T.S. (2015). Educating Geographers in an Era
of the Anthropocene: Paradoxical Natures – Paradoxical Cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086.
CHAPTER 7 EDUCATING GEOGRAPHERS IN AN ERA OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
159
biases arise from not acknowledging them or simply hiding interests and agendas
involved in coping with them. We shall return to that at the end of the chapter.
Questions for the chapter:
•
•
How do geographers respond to the paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas of sustainability?
How do research geographers address dilemmas of teaching sustainability?
7.1 Paradoxical Cultures - Paradoxical Natures: Integrating
Sustainability into Curricula as an Implicit Notion
Before we turn to educational strategies for putting sustainability on the agenda,
let us briely recapitulate the second nature approach. In chapters 4 and 5 we
discussed Castree (2001) and Harvey (1996), and it was argued that nature is not
only deined and construed socially, but also modiied physically by humans, with
particular social interests involved in such transformations. It follows that knowledge is complex mixtures of knowing nature(s) that constitute power relations
with diferent socio-material efects. hen we saw how both the second nature
approach and sustainability have a common stance –natural transformation is
anthropogenic per se, why these concepts are unable to distinguish between nonhuman and human impacts on environmental change. If we have ever been able
to do so, the history of spatio-temporal tides and waves underline the relevance
of addressing the social character of nature. In tandem the social nature approach
encourages us to critically explore how in thought and practice politically contested values, moral or ethical aspects are assembled when representing the ever
accelerating interactions of the human-environment interface (Castree 2001). As
neither scientists nor students can escape the value-laden proxy of sustainability,
it inevitably produces fractions and frictions and the ways we perceive such tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas hugely inluence how we (inter)act (and vice
versa). With these relections in mind, let us turn to how sustainability dilemmas
get assembled in curricula constructs. In what follows these response(abilities) are
discussed through two subcategories, namely 1) the substitution of concepts and
2) sustainability as implicit curricula. hese represent two educational strategies
for dealing with dilemmas that both put sustainability on the agenda and at the
same time hide it.
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7.2 Frictions and Fractions: the Importance of Sustainability and
the Substitution of Concepts
he irst source of reluctance to explicate sustainability in the classroom involves
criticism of values, ethics, moral and norms implicated in framing scientiic work
around such concepts. Dilemmas lie in the nexus between multiple normative
agendas and diferent sustainability concepts that simultaneously reject the valueladen content from which the concept cannot escape. ’Sustainability is a considerable
sub-component to geographical work. Sustainability is a part of geography in itself as a
mass balance principle, systemic contemplations and its holistic and interdisciplinary
dimensions. Having said that, many other aspects are important to geographers and
the phrase is sometimes inevitable. I prefer other terms, but the underlying basis is
crucial to geography” (Interview 13).
hough a substantial number of the geographers interviewed ind sustainability
themes relevant to geography, the concept in itself rather belongs to the political
sphere than the scientiic (Box 7.1).
It is indeed funny that interview 25 refers to interview 26 (Box 7.1) and by doing
so contradicts itself. My aim though is not to expose geographical ambivalences,
rather I point towards mixed feelings in between using ‘buzzwords’ in academia,
Box 7.1. Dilemmas of practicing sustainability in geography
I have the problem as [a geographer at Copenhagen University red. See Interview
26] that sustainability is okay for politicians, but it has a lack of clear deinition
and a lack of methods and research on it, hence for science (…). It is so politically
biased that it is unhelpful for any scientiic analysis. herefore it is not relevant
to geography. I only see the use of sustainability relevant if it can attract students
to geography (…). he concept is extraordinarily bad, because it more or less correspond to geography. Competences in humanities and arts, social sciences and
natural sciences all possess variables that have something to say on that concept. It
is so politically biased that it is unhelpful for any scientiic analysis. It is an elusive
and imaginary concept, a concept of fantasies about paradise like futures. I think
that is unhelpful for critical research in geography and elsewhere” (Interview 25).
“Sustainability is a frequently used concept and absolutely central to the education.
It takes up a considerable part of my teaching and a central part of the discipline
in general” (Interview 26).
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161
littering within geographical identities. Yet, as “the concept is extraordinarily bad,
because it more or less correspond to geography” (Interview 25), it produces hyper
complex dilemmas (see also Lambert 1999) that follow two trajectories of criticism contradictory to the claimed relevance for contested ideas of geographical
work. he irst form of disputed criticism encapsulates substitution of concepts
as a speciic strategy related to the power of reference. Because of the norm and
political by-products sustainability concepts rely upon (as well as any theme, key
concepts or disciplines obtain power relations) one solution at irst glance, is to
replace the concept with another. “I don’t think sustainability should be part of
geography education. But it is. Sustainability is rejected fully by the top international
writers in geography. In Sweden resilience is now the concept in use among geographers. In UK and the US it is replaced with robustness and vulnerability. hey have
all recognized that sustainability is empty. Nobody knows what sustainability is - but
we keep it! Why do we keep discussing it - it is completely irrelevant. Sustainability is
about politics and has nothing to provide in academia. We need to eliminate the concept
of sustainability and replace it with ecology. Sustainability is an empty concept that
leads to nowhere. Instead robustness or resilience for instance, concentrates ecological
discussions into awareness of the conditions of a particular matter. So, resilience and
ecology that is what should be central in geography” (Interview 5).
A number of things are going on here. Replacing the concept with another enacts
the power of reference in ways in which it appears that dilemmas, challenges and
contradictory elements are overcome by replacing them to more speciic terms,
yet with similar normative agendas. he implication appears to be to replace concepts, rather than replacing the relevance of themes and underlying dynamics such
concepts envision to represent. As challenges of sustainability cannot be reduced
to semantics, frictions of being sympathetic to the notion of sustainability collide
with the political implications (Box 7.2).
An interview with John Urry (2013) exempliies the extraordinary diiculties in
studying conditions for (un)sustainability while substituting the concept because
of its fallacies. In the interview, he was asked about his recent book at the time,
’Climate Change and Society’ (2011), in which models for social innovation toward
a low carbon society are depicted. ‘In many ways one may argue that the essence
of your book unfolds around the concept of sustainability. You do not use the
term; are there any particular reasons for that’?
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Box 7.2. Replacement of Concepts as a Strategy to Address Dilemmas of
Sustainability
“When I am a counselor, I ask students to use other terms because it is more precise.
Still it is about how we respond to climate change – to environmental change and
how we consider that in our planning (…). So it is there and is not there. I think
much of it has to do with inding less political concepts. We use other terms instead”
(Interview 8).
“I think sustainability concepts bring important perspectives to our education. I do not myself work on the concept though. I work on arctic research.
We call it diferent things, but it is essentially the same, when we talk about
responses to climate change in the arctic. How the international climate negotiations develop on the basis of research on how sealers in Greenland adapt
to their climate or if we study agricultural farming in Africa, then sustainability is all there” (Interview 30).
“I teach in climate change, relate it to the Kyoto Protocol and international politics. We discuss if there are any long term solutions to the problem – hence sustainable. In this sense sustainability is relevant for geography, but I do not use the term
very often. I use other terms instead” (Interview 11).
”What is sustainability about? – I ind it too difuse, abstract and multifaceted to be useful. It appears as social, environmental and economic sustainability and is misused to the extent that you can’t imagine. I do not know
why sustainability should have any more status – why it should be given
special emphasis and stand before any other concept in our geographical
repertoire” (Interview 22).
“Sustainability is an extremely political concept and we all have huge diiculties
in deining it. Sustainability is a concept that raises awareness on certain problems.
It is suitable for that. As an analytical concept it is not part of the geographical
vocabulary why I do not ind sustainability important to geography. I regard the
whole question of environmental change, climate change and all of that important
to the future of geography, but what concept we ind best suitable for describing
these processes - if sustainability is one of those concepts I am not really certain. Yet
the underlying basis is there” (Interview 9).
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I think sustainability is an important concept for the education, not least
when we teach on approaches to grasp the human-environmental interface.
But we also work with a number of related concepts like resilience, vulnerability, climate change and so on. We should not limit ourselves, but consider
the contributions of each individual concept, their dynamics and relations. It
is urgent I think” (Interview 28).
“I regard the interface between human and nature a considerable aspect of geography, so in this way I think sustainability is relevant. But if it is the concept of sustainability or another concept - I am not so sure if sustainability should have any
more status than other concepts, maybe it is because I have great diiculties with
that concept in the irst place.(…) I do not teach in sustainability or in topics that
I call sustainability. But it is not the same as I don’t consider the global environmental crisis. he body of environmental though is there” (Interview 20).
“I don’t ind sustainability important to geography it is a buzzword if anything. (…). On the other hand, I have sympathy with the underlying idea
– the integrative aspect of addressing economic, environmental and social
issues at the same time – but this need not to be framed within the corridors
of sustainability” (Interview 21).
“I think sustainability must be very central for the geography education - I will
say so, though I never thought about it before - sustainability is central to our discipline, how we understand ourselves and how we understand the world. I never
use the term myself though” (Interview 14).
“I don’t like the term sustainability, I almost never use it. I do not think sustainable
means anything. I think it was a very helpful term to use in the 1980s, but it is
now got used like a free low taken over by almost all organizations and irms, so
that everything is now sustainable development and therefore it is a kind of meaningless empty term. hat’s one problem, but secondly I don’t really think that any
development is sustainable. I simply use the term low carbon or carbon restrictions,
which obviously is too simple as well (…). So, low carbon practice is a phrase I
would use and low carbon ethic and that should be embodied and embedded into
education. Values to me again is quite interesting and most people don’t have them
in terms of low carbon societies, depicting diferences in what they say and what
they do (...). So that is a challenge for education isn’t it?” (Interview, John Urry).
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Replacing sustainability by low carbon society is way more precise. Nevertheless,
though more precise, the complexity, normative horizons, and political biases are
neither destroyed nor eliminated. Material changes are concurrently going towards
more intensiied carbon practices, fundamentally in an unsustainable direction
(Rockström et al., 2009, Barnosky et al., 2014).
Harvey (1996) once called for a ‘political theory of nature’ that particularly takes an
entry point from which one can re-conceptualize an increasingly hybrid economic,
technological, societal, conceptual and cultural world. One can of cause avoid
the concept of sustainability or replace it with another – but conceptual spaces
of addressing complex, anthropogenic and interconnected global environmental
change require broad, interdisciplinary and hence inevitable concepts.
hough related concepts may be more dynamic, progressive and intriguing,
(or simply serve another academic agenda) they cannot escape the complexity,
normative horizons and policy igurations involved in representing global environmental change. To replace one concept with another as a solution in itself is
to ignore the material changes the concepts seek to explain, if it solely ends up
in dispute about terminology. “Is sustainability relevant in the education? - Hmm,
yes, and especially because it got all the media publicity – but you could easily think
the education without sustainability at all. hen, we just approach the same thing,
the same goal, from another angel. All the research I do or teach, is contributing to a
knowledge base that is used in planning in practice, in directing it toward a more
sustainable path” (Interview 16).
When using related concepts, it is also a strategy to avoid all the political commitment and branding arising from sustainability, assuming this is not transferred
(or to replace the politics of sustainability with another politically value socionatural concept e.g. the anthropocene). Such proposals seem just as problematic
and fall into the arms of the prison of language, in which ight over terminology
is also a debate about preserving a particular epistemic (academic) order. Another
dimension of the power of reference is also going on. When we shift concepts, we
shift scale, spatio-temporal dynamics, hence the normative horizons are always
inherent in academia (Harvey 1996). he power of reference and rivalry over
replacement of concepts, consequently transform into a struggle over diferent
spatio-temporal tides and waves.
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he whole question about environmental issues is of importance to geography,
but which concept is most suitable in analysing human-environmental concerns,
encapsulates discussions of the analytical and ontological status such concepts rely
upon. “Sustainability does not have the same ontological status as do a number of key
concepts in geography. Landscape, region, place, nation to global – all bear a strong
ontological status. Sustainability is not part of these concepts (…). It is a political
concept rather than an analytical concept” (Interview 17).
As sustainability does not have the same ontological status as a number of geographical key concepts e.g. (external) nature, the strategic use of concepts to direct
our thinking (geographical imaginations) become powerfully apparent (Chapter
3). Making reference to the socio-natural through sustainability in contrast to
(external)nature makes us aware of the powerful and normative reference to
governing the socio-natural, hence subject for discussion, whereas consulted with
concepts like(external) nature, the socio-natural is re-represented as if descriptive,
apparently without governing forces. As any concept that intends to represent
the natural, non-natural or certain interfaces, sustainability ontologically integrates human and nature as an inescapable reality. In bridging environmental,
economic and social domains, it ofers an alternative epistemology (Chapter 4).
Hence it provides a way of thinking that raises key political issues of our time.
hus sustainability ascends as an (political) practice that only exists if the natural,
material and social are addressed collectively (Whitehead 2007). In that sense it
is both a political and analytical concept (Box 7.2).
To claim that the concept is only political, hence non-analytical, is to assume
there is no relation between the two, when key concepts with high ontological
status are used. his raises a number of related issues: It ignores that a number
of geographical concepts with high ontological status have historically changed
and separated humans from the environment (the use of the term money in conventional economics being an obvious example2). herefore ontological ‘status’
(as power of reference) also holds a preserving (paradigmatic) element, accepting
assumptions as unquestionable. It assumes that the use of concepts in academia
correspond to the use of it in the political domain. Insofar as sustainability is used
2 It is to argue that the debate over deinition of money is an academic exercise with no political implications, while in conventional economics e.g. the implication of the deinition is to
ontologically separate society from the environment.
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diferently among diferent social groups and in diferent epistemic communities,
its normative meaning and ideologies of nature shift. To hide it by replacing concepts or redeining it is a strategy that downplays the political aspects of scientiic
work. Henceforth sustainability spur debate on how one integrate the natural
and social linked to the social dynamics in modern society, how one respond
to it, and why when analyzing socio-ecological systems in diferent spatial and
temporal scales it turn out to be unsustainable (Mansield 2009, p. 38). Another
relevant aspect however, that the methods concerning the empirical work is not
fully able to relect upon, is to consider how replacement of concepts in itself may
be a political strategy. hough nearly all Danish geographers interviewed remain
critical to the concept of sustainability itself, hence reluctant to explicate it in
the classroom, they ind sustainability or related concepts (resilience, vulnerability, ecology, anthropocene etc.) representing socio-ecological issues essential to
geography and choosing or rejecting the language of sustainability or any other
concept serve particular political ecologies.
Addressing sustainability is like swimming against ontological tides and waves.
As action or inaction with respect to sustainability or assembling the humanenvironmental nexus is unavoidably value laden. We need to address the hidden
normative, moral and policy conigurations of sustainability and discuss dilemmas,
contradictions and paradoxes involved in hiding diferent agendas, as well as their
epistemological and ontological consequences.
7.3 Frictions and Fractions: Integration of Sustainability as Implicit
Curricula – Learning Agendas of Socializing ‘Sustainable’ Nature(s)
Another subcategory identiied underlines the teaching of sustainability as an
implicit notion (see box 7.3). Most of the researchers interviewed, when relecting on their teaching, rarely address sustainability explicitly, but integrate
sustainability into curricula as an implicit notion. “Sustainability is absolutely
central in geography – at least implicitly. he reason why it is not important as an
explicit concept is because I do not as such teach in sustainability, but much of my
teaching nevertheless concerns artifacts of sustainability. Students are highly interested
in these matters, but we do also call them climate adaption, resilience, vulnerability
among others” (Interview 29).
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Box 7.3. Teaching Sustainability as an Implicit Notion
Sustainability is a considerable sub-component to geographical work. Sustainability
is a part of geography in itself as a mass balance principle, systemic contemplations
and its holistic and interdisciplinary dimensions. Having said that, many other
aspects are important to geographers and the phrase is sometimes inevitable. I prefer
other terms, but the underlying basis is crucial to geography” (Interview 10).
“If I directly teach in sustainability it is a matter of how explicit it should be
mentioned. I do not mention the term very often, close to never, but implicitly
it is there as an aim we are striving for. Sustainability is part of all geographers’
mindset, and the way we look upon things, sometimes so strongly that it is
not an explicit part of our references. We think of it in this way, because we
naturally are interested in minimizing efects of climate change pollution and
the use of natural resources” (Interview 6).
“he concept is extraordinarily bad, because it more or less correspond to geography.
Competences in humanities and arts, social sciences and natural sciences all possess
variables that have something to say on that concept. In geography however, we bring
these aspects together. he term (sustainability red.) is so politically biased that it is
unhelpful for any scientiic analysis. I think that is unhelpful for critical research in
geography and elsewhere so. But you ask me if I have ever taught in sustainability –
yes implicitly. I teach in water security – how we manage and maintain our water
resources, risks, uncertainty, balances, improvements and decline – in this way one
can argue that it embraces sustainability – but only implicitly” (Interview 25).
“Sustainability plays a major role in geography. It is such a central dimension,
so - sometimes we do not talk about it, because it is an underlying basis from
where we work” (Interview 13).
“Sustainability is an important part of geography, at least implicitly. he reason
why it is not that important as an explicit concept is that much of the teaching I
do, does not necessarily relate to sustainability, so it is more like artefacts of sustainability” (Interview 4).
“I have taught sustainability in various ways, but never as an overall theme.
A number of the studies I have undertaking draw on sustainability implicitly,
and the concept could very well address part of my work. But I would tend
to say that we also did ‘sustainability work’ long before the concept became
present” (Interview 23).
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“Is sustainability relevant for geography? I am not sure. I work on climate change
and there is a clear element of sustainability. But to me the concept means everything
and nothing. It can be a natural system in balance with the surrounding environments, or the same system developing in some way that humans ind sustainable
or not. I work on perm frost. When the perm frost melts is it then a result of things
not being in a stable and balanced condition? Is it afected by humans? I ind the
whole question on feedback mechanism, balances and tipping points relevant for the
ield and questions on human efects on these dynamics. So as an overall [unspoken
red.] frame it is there” (Interview 11).
“Sustainability is a concept to understand the greater aspects of many processes
that relate to one another – I think along these lines in my research and teaching, but I never use it explicitly” (Interview 15).
“When I teach in accessibility for instance, then the aspect of sustainability is in
the background. Whether or not sustainability is there [on the curriculum] depends
how explicitly it should be mentioned. I rarely mention the term, but implicitly
sustainability is the main objective for what we do and why we study it in this
way. Sustainability is part of all geographers’ mind-set I would say; sometimes so
penetrated that one may not need to explicate it” (Interview 20).
hus, most of the researchers relecting on their teaching ind sustainability
inherent, but rarely expressed as a concept, or ind the whole question about
sustainability of importance, but the concept unhelpful. he trajectory enfolds
criticism of values, ethics, moral and norms implicated in framing scientiic work
around such concepts.
his implicit dimension of teaching sustainability is not at all easy to capture and
holds huge amounts of cultural schooling (Turner 2002, Cotton et al., 2013). Nearly
all geographers interviewed found sustainability issues essential to geography,
but remain critical to the concept itself, dilemmas of using sustainability remain
looping. As the Chair of the Study Board at Copenhagen University explains:
”Sustainability is not something we discuss, it is not necessary to discuss what you
agree upon and which already is there” (Interview 1). However, this does not imply
that the human-environment theme undergoes transformations toward uniform
conceptualizations, but that normative and methodological horizons change as
new knowledge emerges.
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his outlines the contradiction that the importance of sustainability contrasts
the teaching of it as hidden curricula. hus, tacit conigurations depict the
supra-complexity of sustainability in curricula constructs. Along these lines another contradiction comes into play: the willingness to teach sustainability as an
implicit norm orientation is highly acceptable among geographers, but contrasts
the criticism of the concept given by the very same geographers. he criticism of
the concept is projected back on the ield, hidden because of its political biases
(Interview 1, 7, 16, 22, 24, 28). In this way the speciic knowledge claim is produced by scholars that intentionally ind an objective enquiry to be an integral
part of philosophy of science according to which the world exist independently of
the observer and can be transferred into unbiased and objective knowledge. hus
the non-human world is framed as quasi-objective (though particularly within
the fact-based approach). Yet, most geographers fully reject the idea that the
human-environmental interface can be studied on objective grounds. Nevertheless the form of appearance seems exactly to be ‘objective’ (forms of realization)
when biases and modes of representing (power of reference) convert into hiding
the moral and political incarnation of sustainability. Replacing concepts like the
anthropocene, resilience, climate change or geo-engineering faces the same challenges, and the strategy rather turns the ‘moral’ and ‘political’ appreciation into
a technical issue (Mansield 2009).
Does this imply, if scientists, scholars or geographers do not make sustainability
explicit, but are willing to accept it, inherent politics are not there? Tacit information neither is logical, consistent nor relected methodologically; still it carries huge amounts of knowledge that exists in the interface between subject and
object, between human and nature relevant to the spatio-temporal igurations
of co-constructing nature (Demeritt 2002). he human-environment theme
therefore embeds organized assumptions through the way we categorize parts of
the world, whatever concept we attach to it.
Similar to the replacement of concept strategy, sustainability as an implicit notion
becomes bearer of policy intrigued dilemmas in the nexus between science and
policy, human and environment. Whether explicated as particular contributions
that ‘reclaim the high grounds’ of geography (Stoddard 1987) or intrinsic depictions that (both) seek to distance from produced politics and elucidate them
simultaneously, the implicit extrapolation of sustainability converts into a form
of hidden curricula, tacit holism, accompanying hidden political ecologies. While
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seemingly expressing neutrality, as if sustainability is not there, it bears relation to
the co-construction of environmental consciousness that tends to be in advocacy
of the teacher’s belief (cultural embodiment), without the student (observer)
becoming aware of it (Cotton et al., 2013).
he dilemma of course is that sustainability requires critical thinking, which
is why tensions, conlicts and rivalry become constitutive and contradictory to
sustaining sustainability simultaneously. hus it ends up with the same dilemma
as does the eco-centric perspectives; it produces instantaneous objectivism on
subjective grounds (Castree 2001). Implicit sustainability in curricula however
may encourage several other explanations, controversies and contradictions.
To hide discussion of tacit curricula is contradictory e.g. to the ‘sustainability as
politics’ itself, since students are excepted to be aware and critical towards agendas,
interests, and strategies involved in claiming particular sustainability agendas:
except from the hidden curricula taught, the intrinsic social nature(s) associated
with sustainability teaching. he puzzle, from the second nature perspective is that
students learn to analyze the politico-ecological jigsaw of sustainability approaches
as well. hese strategies of hiding political ecologies, whatever sustainability approaches on the agenda, uniform intrinsic natures about sustainability cultures.
Dilemmas in explications of the value-laden proxy of sustainability may be one
of the reasons why the analysis reveals that sustainability has a limited status in
geography educations in practice.
7.4 Discussion: Dilemmas, Paradoxes and Contradictions within
and between Sustainability Approaches
While contemporary education for sustainability literature is grossly nested in
the need for critical, holistic and interdisciplinary learning approaches (Rieckmann 2012) the mainstream literature on sustainability in higher education is
little established on the paradoxical natures and cultures in engaging with ever
accelerating human-nature interactions (Nor the neoliberal agenda as discussed in
chapter 2 and 6). he two sustainability typologies identiied in this chapter: 1)
sustainability approaches as implicit curriculum, and 2) sustainability approaches
as replacement of concepts, paradoxically enough hide the fact that dealing with
the socio-natural interface is a matter of choice, whatever perspective one takes
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(it be external nature, universal nature or intrinsic nature). Hereby the two subcategories of scholars seek to distance themselves from produced politics, whilst
at the same time elucidating them. his contrasts the critical research agenda we
set out in chapter 1, stating that scientiic “bias comes not from having ethical and
political positions – this is inevitable – but from not acknowledging them” (Griith
1998, p.133) or hiding them. In this inal section, I discuss how striking it is to
what extend power relations (political ecologies) are written out of dealing with
sustainability approaches in the classroom, and I relate it to the education for sustainability literature, that ’uncritically’ inds critical approaches to be imperative.
hough analyzed in the context of geography, ‘unwritten power’ and the contradictions that follow, surpass the borders of geography, relevant to academics
and practitioners engaged in teaching and writing global environmental change
in various interdisciplinary contexts. Rieckmann (2012), for instance, points to
sustainability competency in handling incomplete and complex information.
With the two sub-typologies in mind this could be extended to also envision
competency in analyzing and handling contradictions and paradoxes that align
with particular sustainability problems at hand. To use higher education as a means
and strategy through which ‘sustainable’ solutions spur, the mainstream literature
frequently turns into search for ‘best practices’, drivers and barriers, challenges
and opportunities (Martin and Jucker 2005, Karatzoglou 2013).
he implication of this analysis is that scholars, scientist and students must deconstruct concepts like barriers and drivers, challenges and opportunities and
more carefully relect on power and interest involved in producing such agendas.
Similarly, scholars across disciplines need to relect more carefully on contradictions
and paradoxes. he implication of the former is that journal articles, teaching and
dissemination of knowledge also risk being subject to green washing and branding
itself (Chapter 2). he increasing regime of accountability, instrumentality, BFI,
ranking and quantitative measuring of ’quality’, when reduced to best practise,
drivers, barriers and oppotunities, seem to be based on certain values and simpliied forms of quality narratives (the innovative power of competition), while such
accounting systems may be dysfunktional to sustainability analysis in itself. his is
particularly related to the power of reference and interests involved in being highest
on sustainable metric leagues, best practice cases, and referencing inluenced by
the politics of indexing and ranking (appendix 1.2). he implication of the latter
is that students should also be invited to think critically about the subtle power
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plays and political ecologies engaged in diferent sustainability approaches and
their socio-material efects. his encourages students, teachers and practitioners to
explore the double level of controversy (Lambert 1999, Morgan 2011) of thematic
and methodological and socio-environmental paradoxes, whatever perspective on
nature we take.
Dialogue about these issues may not only better prepare students, teachers, researchers and practitioners for dealing with wicked and controversial problems
like sustainability and anthropogenic climate change, but may also make students
better understand the geopolitics of scientiic and educational practices, interests
and political ecologies produced. While sustainability concepts promote multiple
and conlicting visions it is interesting to observe that ecocentric and gradual
sustainability perspectives are neither represented in the interviews nor study regulations. Approaches outside mainstream sustainability (ecological modernization,
market environmentalism, environmental justice), e.g. critical or radical approaches
(climate catastrophism, eco-Marxism or eco-feminism) are neither relected in
interviews nor study regulations (Study regulation, Roskilde University 2005,
2006; Copenhagen University, 2009a+b; Aalborg University, 2010a+b, 2011).
What types of social natures exist within the sustainability approaches taught with
what interests involved? Who beneits from those political ecologies produced
and with what socio-ecological consequences? he simple answer is that hiding
agendas of sustainability is a peculiar response(ability) in tackling climate change.
Responding to climate change require fundamental change in power relations and
the dominant form of business as usual developments (Sayer 2009), but in the
context of teaching on sustainability, the co-productive practices, power, domination, ideology and control within educational practices are hidden.
Taking a critical perspective on higher education encourages students to addressing
the multiple dilemmas, complexities and contradictions involved in agendas for
sustainability – and the role of education and science in the 21st century (Harvey
1974a). Rather, the hidden curricula serve as a form of status quo development.
he empirical analysis (and the limitations hereof ) suggests that geographers’ (un)
engagement in the sustainability discourse, co-produce socio-material thought
with material efects, whereby the critical attitude towards sustainability, fundamentally turns into non-academic activism or uncritical critical engagement
in responding to sustainability challenges. Whatever approach or perspective on
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global environmental change we take, political choices and values are situated in
the play of power that strives for particular normative goals. Harvey (1996) points
to values and normative horizons as ‘utopian moments of relectivity’ embedded
in practices of power over possible futures.
As Harvey (1974b) has once argued, the possibility futures produced in science and
education are never a question of choosing between diferent forms of objective
and neutral knowledge, but between diferent forms of normative knowledge. he
multiple ways geographers and academia respond to anthropogenic climate change,
co-produce educational-politico assemblages of intended learning outcome, with
particular socio-ecological efects. Dealing with dilemmas of sustainability is a
matter of choice, in line with what Castree (1999) calls activism inside and outside
the discipline. hus, avoiding taking (multiple) stances, whatever they might be,
as a response to the huge dilemmas of dealing with global environmental change
(rivalry over diferent political ecologies) suggests we must live with the biases,
contradictions, frictions and fractions of producing paradoxical cultures and paradoxical nature(s). here might, however, be more progressive ways of responding
to them than hiding them away.
Whatever perspective, the knowledge produced and modelled engender diferent
scenarios, which legitimize diferent actions and uses of natural resources. his
recognition, produces a double level of controversy since, when willing to accept
sustainability as inherent in curricula, it is like accepting not being relective about
the values, norms, ontologies, and organized assumptions. he concept of sustainability involves value-laden choice (as any other approach, theme or concept), but
framing (un)sustainabilities amongst geographers hides this by replacing concepts
and producing implicit curricula. he hidden teaching approach on sustainability
is contradictory in itself, since students are expected to be aware of interests, and
strategies involved in claiming particular sustainability agendas, except from the
hidden curricula, and the immanent social natures of (sustainability) teaching.
As humanity is faced with the global environmental change in an era of the
anthropocene (Crutzen 2002), spatio-temporal tides and waves of dealing with
the human environment interactions are ever more complex, producing ever more
complex paradoxical natures and cultures. he quest for geographers is how to
tackle these paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas and how we respond to them.
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7.5 Conclusions
his chapter presents an empirical analysis of research geographers’ dilemmas of
teaching sustainability. From the second nature perspective the study addresses
contested ideas of integrating sustainability into curricula. Despite the multiple
ways and agendas researchers are engaged in when teaching university geography
some common features of addressing dilemmas, paradoxes and contradictions have
been identiied. While a large majority of research geographers ind sustainability
themes central to educating geographers, they remain highly skeptical to the notion, hence reluctant to use the concept of sustainability in the classroom. hus,
sustainability is more often addressed implicitly than explicitly. his is partly due
to the normative and political character of the concept, partly due to its fuzziness
and the criticism attached to it. he claimed relevance of sustainability is found
contradictory to the actual practice of addressing sustainability as an implicit notion. As a consequence, the ways geographers engage in teaching sustainability is
predominantly hidden or non-existent (according to whose perspective). In both
cases paradoxical natures of paradoxical cultures are taught.
Further, the chapter reveals two sub-typologies: 1) sustainability as implicit curricula, and 2) sustainability as replacement of concepts, which represent two
diferent educational strategies for putting sustainability on the agenda while at
the same time hiding it. As a consequence it is concluded that the multiple ways
geographers deal with sustainability issues produce paradoxical culture-natures(s),
as they both seek to distance themselves from produced politics while at the same
time elucidating them.
his has deep implications across disciplines (e.g. science, engineering, business
academics) since frictions and fractions within and between diferent sustainability
approaches are inherently interdisciplinary, yet geography in particular seem to
be under pressure when confronted with sustainable dilemmas due to its history.
his illustrates how diicult it is to deal with global environmental change for
academia, as biases of scientiic work fall back on academia as both observation
and intervention. With the objective science we changed the world why the denaturalization of nature is an argument for (re)considering the concept in geography.
In order to transcend the paradoxical-culture-natures identiied, scholars, students, and practitioners across disciplines need to address normative, fact or
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175
policy conigurations of sustainability and discuss dilemmas, contradictions, and
paradoxes involved in diferent agendas to better respond to them. In the inal
chapter I point to the cultural politics of climate change modelling. In so doing
I both address what human geography may ofer climate change modelling as to
assembling the human-environmental interface and I consider it as an experiment
in how geographers more progressively can participate in shaping environmental
debates in the anthropocene.
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Chapter 8
8. he Social Natures of Climate
Change Modelling1
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. ... [T]he practical question
is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful” (Box & Draper 1987, p. 74).
Research on society-environment interactions on climate change often reduces
human behaviour to economic rationality when construed in sophisticated climate models and sometimes in non-geographical representations. Based on the
previous chapters the need to comprehensively take into consideration methodological approaches concerning the interface of society-environment interactions
seems highly relevant to contemporary conceptual modelling of climate change
adaption and mitigation, as also ethical dilemmas and contradictions (chapter
7) are deeply problematic to climate modelling. he geographical experiment of
keeping nature and society under one conceptual umbrella is not least relevant
to the modeling culture of socio-environmental change. his requires enormous
engagement across disciplines and the disciplinary boundaries. he inal chapter
therefore takes the mental experiment and projects it to conceptual models. hat
is, a mental experiments of imagining the socio-cultural interface within the modelling culture as “an unusual, but insightful element in an academic article” (Weisz
and Clark 2011, p. 284). Mental experiments concerning conceptual modeling
of global environmental change, contrast mathematical approaches of modeling
(the system under consideration is deined a priori as a means of designing and
testing hypotheses), but seek to cultivate interdisciplinary debate, transcend and
enrich ever more specialized disciplines. From a history-geographical perspective
1 A previous version of the chapter is published in Grindsted T.S. (2014). What Can Human
Geography Ofer Climate Change Modelling?, in M. Singh., and R.B Singh (eds.), Climate
Change and Biodiversity, Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences, Springer,
DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-54838-6_18
CHAPTER 8. THE SOCIAL NATURES OF CLIMATE CHANGE MODELLING
177
(chapters 4 and 5) it is discussed how notions of objective models are increasingly
challenged in an era of the Anthropocene. It points towards a discussion of interdisciplinary challenges and the ways in which diferent traditions conceptualize
the human environment interface. hen, rhizome ontologies are considered and
how diferent traditions interpret and explain regularities, rationalities, and preanalytic assumptions. Lastly we discuss challenges of constructing nature(s) and
how we better understand the (geo) politics of climate change modeling. Human
geography ofers an understanding of the (geo) politics of climate modelling that
addresses diferent kinds of political ecologies inscribed in them. hus it is concluded, regardless of which perspective on nature we take, that climate models
are agents themselves and equally perform diferent kinds of political ecologies.
Questions for the Chapter:
•
•
What can critical human geography ofer climate change modelling?
What kind of climate modeling for what kind of socio-ecological future?
8.1 Human Environment Interfaces in an Era of the Anthropocene
In chapter 1 we outlined the consensus thesis among scientiic communities as
to the cause and efect of climate change and unsustainable production patterns.
Consensus exists to the extent that 97 % of research articles in high-impact factor
journals like Science suggest that climate change is fundamentally anthropogenic
(Oreskes 2004). he history of human-environmental interaction is indeed astonishing. Today, the scientiic consensus on anthropogenic climate change (chapter
1) suggests humans interact with the physical environment to the extent that
humans are transforming the planet at multiple scales, and manifests the idea that
humans are an geological agent moving the Holocene toward a new geological
era, i.e. the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). he Anthropocene refers to the magnitude, scale and acceleration of per capita exploitation of natural resources that
transforms the biogeography for millennia to come. During the past century we
have witnessed massive land cover and land use changes of the Earth. From 1900
to 2011 the world’s population has grown by a factor four (from 1.6 billion to 7
billion in 2011) accompanied by a growth in cattle and pig production to more
than 1400 and 800 million respectively. Irrigated areas constitute ive times the
amount. Urbanization grew by a factor of 13, energy use by a factor of 16, and
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industrial output by a factor of 40 (Crutzen 2002, Stefens et al., 2011). In the
same period rainforests were reduced by 20 %. Deforestation, however, is only
a droplet compared to the reduction of manifold biotopes by the agricultural
demand for cropland (appendix 1.3). Today, more than half of the world’s land
surface has been changed by human activities which illustrates the very need for
geographical representations in understanding transformations of the Earth life
support system (Reenberg 2006).
he journey of geographical transformations is also a journey of the nature of time
and space (Massey 1999) as argued in chapter 4. he changing geography of the
world’s physical environment, the biogeography and land use mutually transform
humans and their environments. herefore methodological and geographical relections of the human-environment interactions seem more relevant than ever.
Prediction of future climates and planetary constraints are indeed beneicial and
the geographical imagination is central to climate- and land-use model building
(O’Sullivan 2005).
By way of illustration Eugene Linden has showed how interdisciplinary constructs
needed to be coupled with geographical imaginations, before climate modelling
came about. hus satellite images needed to be assembled before a uniied account
of past, present, and future climate data formed global assemblages of explaining
the climate systems2: “A system in which everything, from earth’s position in its orbit
around the sun to what’s growing on the ground, inluences climate. How the climate
system balances these various inputs and feedbacks is a problem complex as life itself ”
(Eugene Linden here quoted in Urry 2011, p. 23).
8.2.1 Human and Nature: integration of data and disciplines
Human and physical geography will change remarkably in decades to come if
the processes of climate change predicted is even half right (IPCC 2013). Global
Climate Models (GCM) integrate Earth Observation Data (EO), Remote Sensing (e.g. Landsat) coupled with socio-economic data that help us understand
the material and biogeographical transformation of the environment (Reenberg
2006; Dangermond & Artz 2010). he study of human-environment interfaces,
however, is a subject in which many traditional disciplinary approaches often fail
2 Note that the conclusions drawn e.g. from he Club of Rome (Meadows et al. 1972) and
Our Common Future (Brundtland 1987) are subject to computing models (See chapter 1).
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to properly address methodological, epistemological and ontological pre-analytic
assumptions in time and scale (chapter 4). In fact many contemporary challenges
cannot be adequately addressed within the boundaries of traditional disciplines. ”
Even that ingrained counterposition between so-called ‘natural’ and ‘social’ is increasingly being questioned, and my conviction is that if they are now up for reinspection
and problematization, then geographers should be in a good position to make a leading
contribution” (Massey 1999, p. 261).
he idea of institutionalizing interdisciplinary approaches constantly challenge
traditional disciplinary boundaries of human-environment interface(s), e.g.
Human Ecology, Environmental Studies, Earth System Science, Geography,
Ecological Economics, Landscape Ecology and Sustainability Science. Divergence
and convergence between these contested disciplinary constructs in reorganizing
sciences engaged in environmental change are confronted with a number of multiscalar methodological problems not to mention constructions of geographical
imagination.
By way of example much contemporary climate change modeling assumes seeming neutrality and objectivity while at the same time often designed with nonspatial representations (Globium is an exception of the latter). Climate models
as well as land modeling are based upon huge amounts of sophisticated statistical
properties including assumptions of behavior of many features (human or nonhuman). Compounded as ‘neutral landscape models’ (Turner 2005, p. 324), these
models are (whether GTAP, IMAGE, AgLU, IMPACT, GLOBIOM, ABLUM,
GIS or GCM) organized reductions of geographical representations, or more
challengingly, super artiicial objective reductionism of human-environment interactions often construed as partial or general equilibriums (Hertel et al., 2010).
As there are no correct models (see quotation in the introduction to the chapter)
nor analogies (Part II), these need to be conceptually challenged (Norgaard and
Kallis 2011 in Weisz and Clark 2011). Not only because mental experiments
(models are experiments themselves) are particularly useful to epistemological
ights that cultivate and foster relexive debates over the use, explication and the
consciousness (culture) these models assemble, but because they are co-producers
of socio-environmental interaction.
8.2.2 Anthropogeography
Geographers have long challenged the idea of objective non-human nature, giving
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rise to concepts like ‘second nature’, the ‘politics of Nature’ or even ‘multinatural
ontologies’ well before Paul Crutzen (2002) coined the term `anthropocene´
(Harvey 1996, Lorimer 2012).3 Interaction between the natural and social worlds
has indeed proven diicult to conceive epistemologically, e.g. in social physics, when ecological economists seek to integrate the language of biology into
economic theory, or more notably when biological concepts have entered social
theory (Harvey 1996, Clark and Clark 2012). Nonetheless, anthropogenic climate
change is a socio-material phenomenon and we need better epistemological and
methodological approaches to grasp these challenges (Lorimer 2012).
hus, we examine if the multiple traditions of human-environment interactions
within human geography (spatio-temporal tides and waves in chapter 5) have
anything to ofer climate change modeling. Can we possibly draw some insightful
perceptions from the history of human-environmental interactions in understanding the ‘nature(s)’ of climate change modeling?
8.3 Spatio-Temporal Figurations and the Geopolitics Modeling
As previously discussed space conigurations vary considerably in diferent sciences.
Geologists assemble processes of ecological climatology over millions to billions
of years. Evolutionary biologists assemble explanatory power to data stretching
thousands to millions of years, whereas many social scientists and economists in
particular, are constrained into time-scales of weeks, years and decades due to
the practice of discounting (Rasmussen & Arler 2010). hese pre-analytic assumptions are fundamental to modeling climate change, and illustrate how the
matter of scale and environmental problems are inseparable processes in diferent
time-scales and spatial contexts. According to Prigogine (2000) natural science
has proved an experiment that held time as a constant. In contrast conventional
economics held space as a constant (Harvey 1996) and prove huge epistemological
challenges when modelled together, or mixed in climate change models. Unifying
such a (inter)disciplinary spectrum of diferent spatio-temporal igurations into
representations of climate models poses huge methodological challenges. Moreover,
3 he idea of the Anthropocene can also be traced back to a number of thinkers in the early
19th century, e.g. Valdimir Vernadsky’s , mankind’s geochemical work, Eduard Suess’s concept of the anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere into the noösphere or man as an
geological agent (Stefens et al., 2011).
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the complexity involved in understanding global climate changes and humans’
engagement in transforming it, integrate data with causal, functional and intentional explanations (Rasmussen & Arler 2010). Debate over which data to give
explanatory power (agency), is strongly inluenced by the time-space igurations
and “the way that spatio-temporal processes are studied is strongly inluenced by the
model of space and time that is adopted” (Raper & Livingstone 1995, p. 262). he
word for the weather, in fact, bears reference to environmental change and has
etymological roots in words for ‘time’. In Latin the relation between weather and
time is galvanized in words like tempestas, in Frensh its derivate is temps, and
tempest in English, in Greek Kairos, as well as in most other European languages
(Szerszynski 2010). Reading of weather and weather systems is also today an
exercise of imagining changes in time and space.
8.4 Multiple Spatio-Temporalities – Multiple Rationalities
Among Human geographers it is widely acknowledged that space is neither
absolute, relative, nor relational in itself. Space is produced at one or all scales
simultaneously, constituted by the human practices related to it. Some phenomena are represented one dimensional or assumed to be constituted in absolute
space as freely unconstrained entities (Harvey 1987). Within human geography
it is a general disciplinary assumption that spatio-temporalities are constituted
through social processeses and interaction with entities with which they mutually
constitute entities of indeterminism (Massey 1999). Also in physics and natural
sciences such ideas have developed, e.g. as biogeochemical ontologies of ‘interdependence’ (Prigogine 2008). For authors like Harvey, hrift or Massey, space
and time are integral elements to one another, encompassing multiple spatiotemporalities, constituted by interactions between entities, by which entities are
constituted themselves (Harvey 1987, Massey 1999). hat is, phenomena, e.g.
in absolute space, cannot be captured with certain representational characteristics
of behavior or be given certain actions under which they act rationally (humansor non-humans), without taking into consideration interactions with other
spatio-temporal scales (see section 4.3.4). It is essentially another way of saying
that linear modeling produces linear results, and such constructs do not capture
multiple-spatio temporal interactions. As Massey (1999) points out, complexity
increases as it becomes apparent that entities conceived epistemologically are also
constituted by multiple scales and temporalities inhabited within them (relational
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space). hus we experience conlicts and contradictions between diferent spatial
scales. Subsequently, what seems to be rational in a given scale may not be rational
in another; what may be conceived rational in a given spatio-temporal coniguration may not in another (Harvey 1987). Human geographers have much to ofer
conceptual model building in this regard.
By way of example, at one level deforestation is rational to the local farmers in
order to expand their production. As biofuel production puts pressure on land
use in one location, it may afect e.g. price elasticity elsewhere, not to mention
prices on cropland. hus, relative and redistributive factors are at play. On another
scale deforestation is irrational and produces externalities to e.g. tourism, a netloss of biodiversity (for the biotech industries’ ‘diversity bank’), or climate change
mitigation strategies. he problem of land demand is geographically redistributed
so in one (relational) scale, aforestation is a rational human action, irrational
in another. It therefore becomes more and more evident that contested ideas of
‘the market eiciency hypothesis’ as equilibrium constructs in climate change or
land use modeling are challenged by conlicts between diferent scales, ranging
from local to global spatio-temporal igurations “his scale mismatch between an
ecosystem (function) and the management set by humans to control or use it constitutes
challenges of a theoretical as well as of a more practical nature” (Reenberg 2006, p.
2). his is not to say that we cannot build models that seek to generate scenarios
for the futures(s) that fundamentally rely on equilibrium theses, but that we may
have several equilibrium conigurations in diferent scales, potentially in conlict
with one another. It is not the same as diferent spatio-temporal scales outrage
one another and produce a certain kind of status-quo (a new super-equilibrium),
with implications of creating new balances or states of stability. his would be like
accepting slicing up time and space – ontologically in absolute space. Rather than
prioritizing multiple time-scales (in a kind of competition) they are constitutive
and contradictory to one another (Massey 1999).
Correspondingly, even in physics, Prigogine formulates ‘a far from equilibrium
thesis’ assuming that any system is both linear and un-linear and Kleidon (2012)
even form a planetary disequilibrium thesis. While Prigogine accepts relations to be
causal in some spheres of interaction, he refuses simple linear processes (Prigogine,
2004). Causal efects do exist within particular relations in certain spatio-temporal
scales. Causal efects exist in multiple versions. But what is causal in one time and
scale may not be causal in another: from small changes that generate large efects
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(and vice versa), from general processes to contingent events (and vice versa), from
local geographical contexts to general or global phenomena (and vice versa). As
Cohen and Stevard remarkably note, any system is “Regularities of behavior that
somehow seem to transcend their own ingredients” (Cohen and Stevard 1994, p. 232)
why concepts of cause relations or equilibrium need to be viewed dynamically, as
always over-loating and interchangeable contingents within and across supposed
social and physical spheres. hus the potential of tipping from domain to domain
is always apparent, why emphasis on tipping points, thresholds, abrupt changes
or unpredictability, should equally generate deep relection by the ways in which
we assemble conceptual climate modeling (Prigogine 1986, Zimmerer, 1994,
Kleidon 2012). A world view of such complexity and ‘multi-causality’ suggests
that simple linear and mechanistic scientiic approaches sometimes needs to be
substituted sometimes supplemented with dialectical reasoning (Harvey 1996).
System thinking refers speciically to the assumption of self-regulating systems,
implying that systems possess self- regulating mechanism (much like the Gaia
hypothesis). Prigogine terms them as dissipative structures, because future is always un-given. hough neither Prigogine nor Bertalanfy explicated ontological
assumptions that established a spatio-temporal theory of human-environmental
interactions, they emphasize holism over reductionism and organism over mechanism. If human geography has anything to ofer climate change/land use modeling
it is to engage in debates on spatial representations that treat concepts like time and
space relationally, produced by the nature(s) and behavior of entities that inhabit
them, rather than time and space themselves independent from the entities they
are containing (Massey 1999). To perceive entities as relational constitutions is
a fundamentally diferent approach to spatial modeling of environmental problems, as well as fundamental to the ontological dualism between society-nature
(Raper & Livingstone 1995, Castree 2001). his has further implications that
might be relevant to consider in relation to spatio-temporal tides and waves and
pre-analytical assumptions adopted in any ‘modeling culture’.
8.5 Modeling Spatio-Temporal Tides and Waves in an Era of the
Anthropocene
To deine systems, their character and relations to other systems is a journey of
geospatial imagination, where one should always question conceptualizations of
entities. In this section, the context of space-time relations objectifying nature(s)
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is examined. hen spaces of (i)rrationalities are discussed as to diferent spatiotemporal tides and waves adopted. Lastly relational ontologies are discussed in
the context of Agent Based Modeling. It is argued that Agent Based Modeling
engage in such integrative methodological constructs, why we need to develop
more appropriate methodological approaches taking into consideration the history
of human material interaction.
8.5.1 Anthropogenic models and objectiications of nature(s)
While models focus on the constitution of entities this operates within an objectoriented universe (Brown et al., 2005, Dangermond & Artz 2010). To Massey,
approaches in diferent kinds of representational modeling are “explicitly objectoriented and the objects come before the space-times” (Massey 1999). By way of
example, Hertel (2011) concludes that prominent long term agricultural models
(e.g. GTAP), tend to treat supply and demand elasticity based on near term characteristic, why they are not well suited to envision long run economic/environmental dynamics. hus, GTAP tend to adopt short term elasticity characteristics
in predicting long term trends. “he tendency to date has been to focus on readily
observed, high frequency events, while neglecting some of the important factors which
drive the long run dynamics of the system” (Hertel 2011, p. 271). While supply and
demand of say corn are aggregated so that a global prize appears as an empirical
fact, supply and demand are constituted by multiple heterogeneous characteristics.
hough global demand or supply may be aggregated, it is constituted by multiple localized events, responses and capabilities. Interactions are geographically
constituted across diferent spatio-temporalities. hus relational ontologies accept
an aggregated global prize, but are far from reducing it to an objective reality.
he surface has its right, but should not dominate at the expense of theory or the
philosophy of model building.
he state of much scientiic climate change modeling is not only challenged by
the objectivism of the social side of climate change, but also the very nature thesis
it relies upon. he anthropocene incurs core challenges to the modern (science)
understandings of nature as a pure, singular and objective thing separated from
human-environmental transformations in multiple scales (Lorimer 2012). By way
of illustration it is inconsistent to both talk about anthropogenic climate change
adaption or mitigation and at the same time argue for a purely objective nature
(of science) opposed to culture. hus the anthropocene challenges the modern
science-politics settlement, where natural science speaks for an objective nature
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(Deremit 2002). hus the consequence of the modelled (and objective results)
telling us that humans take an active part in changing the climate, and denaturalize nature. he material/relational human-environment ontologies force us to
develop a move from a purely mechanical and external view of nature towards
more dynamic conceptualizations of human-nature interfaces in climate (land
use) model building. Mutual construction implies a rejection of classical divides
of subject/object and society/nature dualisms central to anthropocentrism and essentialist assumptions of conceptual models (Birkeland 1998). Yet, subject-object
and society-nature reunioning have to be conceptualized in much climate change
modeling and suggest that we engage in explaining entities of reductionism, indeterminacy, path-dependency or irreversible processes that our conceptualizations
derive from. he following is to argue that debate, questions, rivalry and ‘tentative’
struggles over problems of ‘rhizome interfaces’ that both natural and social sciences
have in common, provide a simulative platform to engage in the challenges of
reimagining the multiple dynamics shaping conceptual climate change modeling.
8.5.2 Spaces of (i)rrationalities and the equilibrium thesis - mimicking the
quantitative revolution
he systems of geospatial imagination are often organized hierarchically with
related systems and subsystems, and accompanied interactions whether causal,
linear, abrupt or unpredictable. Systems and models are closely related and widely
used as representations of reality in natural and parts of the social sciences. Yet,
the terminology of models is extremely difuse and preoccupied with much skepticism in social sciences, perhaps except for economics (Rasmussen & Arler 2010).
Much conceptual climate model building reduces human-nature interactions to
questions of economic calculation. hough economics is important, a lot more
than economics is going on in human-environmental interfaces, and economy
has a limited explanatory power in itself (Urry 2011). By way of illustration,
mainstream economics have historically treated energy as a free good. In fact
any natural resource has been considered a free input to economic growth. hus
energy or material resources are irst treated as a free good (despite we live on a
inite planet), then like a commodity as any other, not perceiving the dynamic
relations and the material constraints they rely upon (Kock 2012). Discussions
on environmental determinism precisely engage in portraying ixed entities (like
resources) and weighting them as cultural and natural factors (spatial and temporal igurations) in competition to one another, and thereby a sort of hierarchy
also weighting disciplinary knowledge like economic factors opposed to cultural
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knowledge, implicitly or explicitly (Harvey 1974b). he problem of cause is how
ixity, stability and equilibriums explain change and socio-ecological transformations. Models are not able to deal with all uncertainties in complex non-linear
dynamics systems, nor interconnections between systems and subsystems (Zimmerer 1994), hence we should comprehensively and critically question how models are assembled and what type of knowledge for what purpose that arises from
them. When Monica Turner (2005) for example advocates that landscape ecology
should “develop a more mechanistic understanding of the relationship between pattern and process” (Turner 2005, p. 319) it contrasts Zimmerer’s (1994) advocacy
for landscape ecology and its efort in understanding biophysical environments
also under non-equilibrium conditions. Geographers have long challenged the
equilibrium and stability thesis. hus human geographers are in a good position
to critically scrutinize e.g. the sub-politics of elasticity parameters construed as
well as consequences of spatio-temporal igurations associated with it (Hertel et
al., 2010).
Commitment to a theory of knowledge, according to which any phenomenon
natural or social is to be explained through systems of laws and causalities mimicking the quantitative revolution, does not it well with the social dimension of
climate change, irreversible processes nor abrupt changes (see chapter 5). According
to this perspective climate change can be instrumentally adjusted as a form of
global technocratic climate management (Urry 2011). In this sense the gradualist
perspective of climate models carries references to the quantitative revolution. In
recent years the human-environment theme dominated by gradualist approaches
to climate change seems to convent a new form of positivism’ in much climate
change modelling. If it is assumed that a dialectic approach comprehends the
complexity of socio-spatial and economic-ecological processes, this, in turn, will
make us recognize that environmental/social problems mutually interact, are spatially distributed, and produce diferent efects in diferent spatial scales (Harvey
1996). Interdisciplinary approaches seem fundamental to the analysis of wicked
problems, multi-complex and multivariable interactions associated with climate
change, and the methodological challenges associated with rhizome ontologies,
giving diferent kinds of data agency in models.
8.5.3 Agent Based Modeling and rhizome ontologies
For various reasons Agent Based Modeling (ABM) has received much attention in
recent years. First of all ABM ofers a methodological approach integrating human
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decisions e.g. on land use, based on monetary and non-monetary ‘calculations’
from particular agents as a starting point. Particularly the integrative approach to
model individual decision making, interactions, and social non-monetary processes
that dynamically link to environmental processes has been considered a central
advantage (Brown et al., 2005, Turner 2005, Matthews et al., 2007, Barton et
al., 2010). Privileged ontologies that favor human agency in transforming the
environment have long been challenged by much human geographical work that
also gives non-humans agency (Lorimer, 2012). To give non-humans agency is
precisely what ABM does (Turner 2005). hese actor-networks originate from the
ield of artiicial intelligence and individual based modeling. Accordingly actors are
given agency that simulates certain characteristics so they interact both with each
other and their environment. hus more than human interactions (Whatmore
2006) in ABM is modeled in ways that agents can take and change decisions based on interactions with other agents and the environment (new methodological
naturalism). As responses dynamically change, Whatmore’s notion of more than
human agency becomes integrated into the framework of ABM, and implies that
the environment is an agent too4. Whether human or non-human they become
subject to subjectivity. his makes a whole lot of diference to modeling dynamics,
yet it seems to promulgate new forms of positivism in modeling of land use/climate change. “he behavior of the whole system depends on the aggregated individual
behavior of each agent. his allows the inluence of human decision-making on the
environment to be incorporated in a mechanistic and spatial explicit way, also taking
into account social interaction, adaption and decision-making at diferent levels”
(Matthews et al., 2007, p.1448). Consequently, ABM operates in an objective
universe, with ever more sophisticated aggregation matrixes of interactive events,
not encompassing that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Non-humans
are multiple automated agents, yet regarded autonomous in the software language,
created with rules for formulating decisions while interacting with the environment: hey are instantiated (‘activated’) on virtual landscapes and allowed to act
and interact over time without intervention by the researcher”(Barton et al., 2010,
p. 5383). AGM gives agency as a form of new positivism, where ‘deterministic
reductionism’ is assembled to simple models as a sum of perceived components
(Urry 2011). As to Whatmore’s (2006) conigurations of ‘more than human’ ABM
opens the journey for an ‘objective structuralism’ as mechanistic arrangements of
4 Note chapter 1 in which Jevons theorem were outlined and the coal question in which he
consider coal as an agent – non-human agency.
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these human and non-human conigurations, while ignoring the very subjective
model culture they are design from. ABM however, is in a position to integrate
diferent rationalities in play in diferent scales, their relational dynamics, contradictions and subordinate characteristics. If greater reliability of models, they should
be able to run forward as well as backward simultaneously (historical approach);
should be able to start at diferent points in time, space and scale, and derive the
same results. Complexity increases, however, as it is argued that models and their
seemingly neutrality (O’Sullivan 2005; Barton et al., 2010) is challenged by the
very idea that models are agents themselves.
8.6 he Geopolitics Models (Continued)
“here is now the promise of what Wark (1994) calls “third nature” – that is, the
simulated natures of everyday TV and magazines, games like SimEarth, or the
extraordinary optics of the geographical information system (GIS) all of which
provide new, powerful means of manipulating nature as information”
(Castree and Braun 1998, p. 4).
In this inal section I discuss some of the contributions the social nature perspective
in geography can ofer climate change modeling. he terminology of models and
modeling is extremely difuse and human geographers are in a good position to
make a leading contribution as to the spatio-temporal implications associated with
it. he famous quotation by Box and Draper (1987) quoted in the introduction
of the chapter, spurred a vivid debate as to the use (fullness) of models. Today it
is more relevant than ever as the emerging state of much modeling integrates the
social side of (inter) action. he ways we perceive the world hugely inluence how
we act (and vice versa). By analogy, Clegg and Hardy state that the normative
connections embed “ways of seeing which act back on and relect existing ways of
seeing” (Clegg and Hardy in Alvesson & Sköldberg 2009, p. 248). To frame models as objective unbiased observation of human-environment interaction is to
ignore the power relations inherent in any research agenda. Power relations form
the very interpretative categories the models are designed from (Demeritt 2002).
At conferences you hear again and again the debate over representing data of
climate change, and how to disseminate complex data so that policy makers
take them seriously and respond to them (RGS Conference 2014, who devoted
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a theme to the Anthropocene in which the question was heavily debated and
receive the title of the RGS 2015). he ‘inform policy makers’’ perspective builds
on the assumption that the right knowledge (precise, accurate and valid) will
inform but also produce an impact. Drawing from chapter 4it was argued that
models, though ever more specialized, are subject to the power of representing
the socio-natural interface, reading and writing future climates. hose generally
positioned in the canvas of objectivism, natural science or economics generally
better succeed in arguing they purely ‘inform policy makers’ (external activism)
by producing apparently descriptive scenarios and imaginations of future climates. he (geo)politics of climate change models have bearings to actions taken
and therefore ‘interact’ with the environment itself. Models are then an agent
in it-self that acts and interacts with other agents, and consequently take part in
shaping new meteorological and socio-ecological futures. Models also become
a political tool that helps construe diferent scenarios to take decisions upon.
hus modeling diferent climate future(s) or land use scenarios exactly is value
laden representations with an intention to impact other agents (Harvey 1974b).
In that sense climate models convert into sophisticated forms of geopolitics and
geo-engineering. he gradual perspective in much model building assumes that
better technical management of human-environment relationship, e.g. through
better and more accurate modeling, is needed and enhance the knowledge decision
relies upon (Urry 2011). For this reason, responses cannot be reduced to a simple
quest of techno-ixes as carbon control5. hus models are also emergencies of geoengineering or planetary management, that foster model scenarios of adjustment,
themselves taking part in modifying metrological future(s). Political settlements of
modeling future(s) where scientists speak of an objective nature, providing facts
about that objective nature, and politicians ask for facts to take decisions upon,
makes Haraway conceptualize dynamics of charm as a sense of ‘response-ability’,
by which diferent kinds of agents have adaptive transformative and resistive
capabilities that afect and is afected by others’ actions in that relationship. Such
hybrid ontologies do not only pose questions to models as neutral representations
of reality and illustrate the need for critical approaches to the intentional content
of model results; they also unfold that it is politically insuicient to analytically
constrain debates into the endless dialectics, hybridity and uncertainty involved
in future climate scenario building (Loritmer 2012). What I have argued here
5 his accompanies techniques of carbon ofsetting, carbon storage and all sorts of management models.
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is that the cultural politics of climate change modelling enfold second and third
natures, but modelled fundamentally on the basis of irst nature. he social side
of land use/climate change models are crucial for designing future scenarios and
associated decisions based on such models, why another approach to modeling is
required as to the politics of modeling, not least an awareness about the limits to
what policy input these models arrive from and the politics produced. We therefore also need to ask what kind of climate or land use modeling for what kind
of socio-ecological future? Who decide the culture of modeling construction, on
what grounds and through what processes, and how do they inluence decision
making processes? Agent Based Modeling has brought much dynamism into the
modeling culture. It will be interesting to observe whether or not climate change
models will also be able to take into consideration themselves as agents and the
geopolitical implications hereof.
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Chaptet 9
Final Discussion
“Sustainability is the art of keeping the future navigable”
(Hägerstrand 2009, p. 187 here quoted in Weisz and Clark 2011, p. 286)
Representing Global Environmental Change as Information –
Academic Co-constructions of Socio-Ecological Futures
In this dissertation I show that sustainability in academia is as much a concept for
branding and marketing universities, disciplines and educations as it is an analytical concept. Anyone who makes use of the concept, e.g. institutions, politicians,
researchers, students or individuals take part in re-deining what it means – hence
struggle over possible futures within academia and beyond. Outlining the successful mobilization of sustainability discourses among others manifested through
the ‘scientiic consensus thesis’ I show how sustainability across disciplines and
institutional domains respires a whole set of conceptual (and contested) responses
and responsibilities, envisioning particular sustainable post-carbon futures. In examining the propagation of sustainability within academia and in political discourses
of university governance the concept both functions as sustaining and naturalizing
neoliberal regimes of contemporary university governance and as a critical platform
to reinterpret and criticize the former. Hereby I address the internal and external
ight over shaping space for academics’ responses (and responsibilities) to global
environmental change in between two university ideas of very diferent origin;
academic sustainability among critical geographers is aligned to (illusory) ideals of
the Humboldt University and a system of ideas (Zeitgeist) associated with NPM,
inancial sustainability and market environmentalism. As such, the dissertation
demonstrates richness of academic uses, responses and responsibilities that lay
open the terrain of dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes in co-producing socioenvironmental change mixed in between the idea of sustainability as a market
oriented or commercial strategy or sustainability as an interdisciplinary, holistic
and academic concept imbedded in academic independence.
CHAPTER 9. FINAL DISCUSSION
193
As a consequence, and precisely because of its luid, complex, contradictory and
difuse character I consider the power of references and its substantial importance
for how the concept inds its ways and are represented in academia. By pointing
to the power of reference, sustainability is entangled in between buzzwords and
keywords, demonstrating two diferent strategies of legitimation. Turning to the
concept of ‘nature’ I claim that whereas ‘nature’ features a key concept in geography, sustainability features as a buzzword. Yet both nature and sustainability
are extraordinarily fuzzy, slippery and contingent. In the same vein and precisely
because of its luid character, academic governmentalities hugely inluence and
(re)scale and preill notions of sustainability in academia.
While external nature is relevant, it is increasingly challenged since one cannot uphold external nature and the anthropogenic climate change thesis at the
same time. In consequence, I turn to the modelling culture in the inal chapter
and expose climate models to the epistemological implications of the modeled
thesis of anthropogenic climate change. In turning to the epistemology of climate change models I discuss how they are fundamentally based on an external
and objective nature (positivism). As it is discussed throughout the dissertation,
ideas of an external and objective nature (irst nature) is challenged at all scales
by the anthropogenic climate change thesis, precisely because, the models tells
us, human activities are a driving force of global environmental change (second
nature). One cannot uphold an objective and external nature and claiming its
transformation is anthropogenic. Hence the models become self-contradictory,
I argue, and remain an analytical problem that cannot be left unaddressed. he
scientiic process of making socio-environmental change sensible as information
(third nature) either based in or modeled through the epistemology of internal
or external nature, universal or social nature, involves taking a stance, because
diferent ontologies produce diferent geographies. Hereby it follows that diferent
imaginative geographies have diferent material efects, e.g. by the ways in which
scientists ‘inform policy makers’ of observed and modeled changes. Modelling
climate changes scenarios afects the media, individuals and international policy
why the duality of social responses (to model scenarios) and the imaginative and
possible atmospheric futures that stem from them, makes us act (emotionally,
cognitively, morally and economically) by internalizing third nature. Insofar as
academics take part in co-producing global environmental change, this call for
critical engagement with inherent socio-natures produced and their impulses afecting management of socio-environmental change. Global environmental change,
194
CHAPTER 9. FINAL DISCUSSION
whether conceptualized through concepts like anthropogenic climate change, the
anthropocene narrative or sustainability, forces academics to take a stance, respond
and take responsibility, precisely because the thesis implies that also academics
at work co-produce socio-environmental change in the reading and writing of it.
his is the basic reason why I pose the following question.
•
What is the role of sustainability in geography in shaping responses to
environmental change in the Anthropocene?
One of the irst attempts in addressing the question is to turn to interviews. Based
on interviews with 31 research geographers I address the relevance of sustainability
in geography and ind a number of internal and external reasons. he research
suggests that the main internal reasons are the following:
Although geographers are highly reluctant to explicate the concept in the classroom
and 2 of 31 researchers refuse to use the concept at all, one inding is that the
relevance of sustainability in geography is subject to the internal academic ight for
having a share in sustainability. his is repeated, irst, through geography’s strong
tradition in the human-environment theme that provides a methodological basis
for dealing with such issues. Second, the spatio-temporal dimensions of sustainability call for geographical approaches to be able to understand, its dynamics,
complexity and interactions in various scales. hird, it is claimed that geography
contributes by geography’s interdisciplinary approaches to bridge the social and
natural sciences. Reclaiming the high grounds due to the interdisciplinary history
over assembling socio-natures, as well as the spatial dimension, convert to internal
reasons why geography has a major role for sustainability analysis and in turn a
disciplinary pillar that geography seeks to patentee. hese signify both imagined
and real competition with other ields of studies, hence become externalized and
inconsistent with the claimed interdisciplinary dimension of geography. In contrast
to internal explanations, the external reasons are the following:
If it is so that sustainability is able to attract students it has a role to play in
geography, a number of interviews suggest. Such claims concern the discipline’s
attractiveness, through which sustainability becomes a matter of marketing.
Insofar as sustainability provides geography reputational capital and becomes
a means through which funding and students can be attracted, it has a place in
CHAPTER 9. FINAL DISCUSSION
195
geography (Interview 20, 16). Enrolment and the number of students is now big
business. Hence a number of the interviewed researchers address and criticize
the martetization of universities in arguing for the relevance for sustainability in
geography. Despite being considered a low status concept for critical analysis the
internal ight is also becoming externally marketed since individuals, disciplines
and institutions are more dependent on securing their inancial sustainability. he
external reason of marketing the discipline through sustainability, however also
enfolds the other way around. Sustainability is absolutely central to geography,
but the problem of including it is that it has little appeal to students and student
recruitment. Another concern with using sustainability in geography relates to
the disciplines and the individual researcher’s reputational capital. hus, if it is
regarded non-scientiic within geography or in related disciplines, it is not only a
problem for research collaboration, but also for funding and publishing. Hence,
the external reasons for keeping or rejecting sustainability in geography is part of
the wider marketization of universities, which has little to do with the concepts
analytical capacity. Hence, representing socio-environmental change through
concepts like sustainability, climate change or the anthropocene is as much a
ight for disciplinary boarders, identities and core themes as it is over analyzing
for change. Rather it concerns the internalizing and externalizing processes of
what Kant’s labeled the external ight (chapter 2) and the power of representing
the socio-environmental interface through buzzwords and keywords (chapter 3).
he future of sustainability in geography becomes more dependent on its ability
to attract students and external research funding. he analysis suggests that geographers also ind themselves subject to preserving the academic and disciplinary
social order that makes geography have a seat at the ‘high scientiic table’ (Turner
2002). Hence sustainability has a place in geography if it supports the discipline’s
or the individual geographers’ reputational capital (that I am also subject to) rather
than if it provides an insightful approach to analyze global environmental change
(See Harvey 1996, p. 148).
hen I examine the internal ight over curricula constructs in Danish university
geography. Addressing geographers’ responses to paradoxes, contradictions and
dilemmas of sustainability in their teaching I conclude that though geographers
ind sustainability themes important to geography, it is rather taught implicitly
than it is explicitly. As a consequence the ways in which geographers engage in
teaching sustainability is predominantly hidden or non-existent. hus the claimed
‘high grounds’ are contradictory to the actual practice. his is partly due to the
196
CHAPTER 9. FINAL DISCUSSION
normative and political character of the concept, partly due to its luid and open
character and the criticism attached to it. his research suggests geographers ind
two strategies in responding to the dilemmas for putting sustainability on the
agenda and at the same time hiding it.
1) Teaching sustainability as replacement of concepts. It involves the power of
reference to replace one concept with another. hough one can agree or not with
changed power conigurations and the analytical capacity it entails, one has to be
aware of the interests involved in doing so. 2) Teaching sustainability as hidden
curricula. his is a related response in dealing with the political byproducts and
the critique of sustainability, one cannot hide from.
While seemingly expressing neutrality both strategies engage in the co-construction
of environmental consciousness, without the student (observer) becoming aware
of it. Insofar as teaching sustainability by hiding it, it is contradictory. It is contradictory when study regulations specify students should excel in critical analysis and
be able to relect upon the social, economic and environmental consequences over
a given planning proposal, but not being so as to the education, teachers positions,
claims and hidden agendas. To hide discussion of tacit curricula is contradictory
when students are expected to be aware and critical towards agendas, interests,
and strategies involved in claiming particular sustainability agendas: except from
the hidden curricula, the (intrinsic) immanent social nature(s) of promoting sustainability cultures. he dilemma of course is that sustainability requires critical
thinking, which is why tensions, conlicts and rivalry become constitutive and
contradictory to sustaining sustainability simultaneously. Against this background
it is concluded that the multiple ways geographers deal with sustainability issues
produce paradoxical culture-natures when dealing with dilemmas of sustainability,
as they both seek to distance themselves from produced politics while at the same
time elucidating them. hus, avoiding taking (multiple) stances, whatever they
might be, as a response to global environmental change (rivalry over diferent
political ecologies) both reproduce and challenge the status quo.
Studying contradictions, frictions and fractions create progressive ways of analysing global environmental change. As geographers and academics we already take
part in writing the story of socio-ecological futures. Why should we hide it away?
CHAPTER 9. FINAL DISCUSSION
197
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Glossary
Anthropocene: Is sometimes said to be coined by Paul Crutzen (2001), though
it bears relation to Valdimir Vernadsky’s, mankind’s geochemical work, Eduard
Suess’s concept of the anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere into the
noösphere or man as an geological agent. In addition, the Italian geologist Antonio
Stoppani coined the ‘anthropozoic era’ a century ago (Stefens et al., 2011). he
concept refers to humanity as the driving force transforming the planet from one
geological epoch (the Holocene) toward a new geological era, the anthropocene
(Crutzen 2001). hus, the anthropocene refers to an epoch from which human
actions’ impact global environmental change. By pointing to a set of data, from
atmospheric aerosols, Co2 and NH4 concentration, to biodiversity loss over consumption of fertilizers and so forth, the anthropocene encompasses the magnitude,
scale and acceleration of per capita exploitation of natural resources changing
the biogeography for millennia to come (Stefen, Crutzen and McNeill 2007,
Rockström et al., 2009). What is fascinating about the concept is that it describes cumulative global environmental impacts driven from human activities since
the industrialization or so. Global environmental change, however, is assembled
in an artefact interdisciplinary fashion (the natural sciences) e.g. from geology,
plant geography, climatology, earth science and oceanography that describe social
impacts on the physical environment (see chapter 3). From apparently objective
reasons, it describes how human activities enforce global environmental change.
herefore, I also have some concerns as the concept assembles non-human world
changes produced by human practice. First and foremost the concept possesses
no explanatory power as to the social dynamics that have brought about the
Anthropocene. Consequently, it blurs relations between human and nature as if
it is all the same and yet gives explanatory power to social forces (Loritmer 2012).
he concept bears no relation to its own political ecologies, nor the socio-politico
and economic power it tries to depict. In that sense, it has a lat ontology, from
which relations are all symmetric (e.g. no power asymmetries), for instance not
being able to analyze, the ‘geological agent’ that irst and foremost concerns the
most wealthy on earth. Finally, the concept’s interdisciplinary character is at best
only ‘half interdisciplinary’. It is paradoxical that the anthropocene narrative is
dominated by science, not by social science, and portrays the very need for a
social theorization of practices and power that also melt into the natural sciences
(Malm and Hornborg 2014). What is interesting is that the anthropocene has no
GLOSSARY
211
explanatory power concerning societal change as does the concept of sustainability. Both concepts are highly fascinating and problematic. Both concern global
environmental change, whereas sustainability is a scalar concept, the antropocene
is a planetary assemblage, holding planetary boundaries. Both concepts describe
global (to local) environmental change, but from diferent ontological and epistemological grounds. But most fascinating to this study, whereas the former
concepts have high ‘reputative’ status in the (socio)environmental sciences, the
latter is often regarded as non-academic. See the power of reference chapter 3.
Academic episteme: Refers to academic boundary making, whereby a group
of people (students and researchers) mix disciplinary identity with ontological
presumptions, disciplinary knowledge, methods, scientiic standards, norms and
guidelines as to validity, truthfulness and acceptability of what is regarded scientiic knowledge. Academic episteme form cultural-habitual references within that
disciplinary community (Castree 2014, p. 42-43). he term episteme is developed
by Foucault based on the Greek word for science or knowledge. hus an episteme
refers to a system of thoughts that conditions particular sciences, practices, cultures
and indings. Foucault also links epistemes to the rules that govern knowledge,
judge and evaluate knowledge, hence the production of validity, reliability and
criteria for truth and scientiic knowledge (Dictionary of Hum Geography 2009,
p. 206). See academic governmentality.
Academic activism: Within geography academic activism is sometimes corralled as the (political) relevance of the discipline to address real-world problems.
In Radical geography, Harvey (1974a+b) brought the idea into being as direct
involvement in solving social and ecological problems. In that respect the concept
is practice oriented and bears relation to action research and the civic science
tradition. It frequently concerns ‘whom’ research and knowledge is produced for.
In this context I approach the concept to ‘the classroom’ (Gould 1973) inspired
by what Castree has called activism inside and outside the discipline. Academic
activism also spans from those taking an active part in politics outside the ivory
tower. Nevertheless, I concur with those who ind academic activism a theoretical
and academic endeavor that engages and fuel, negotiate and enrich contemporary
debates. he bottom line, however is, regardless of perspective, that academic
activists seek to bridge the theoretical and practical interface (See Dictionary of
Hum Geography 2009, p. 5).
212
GLOSSARY
Academic governmentaly(ities): Originally coined by Michel Foucault as the
conduct of people’s conduct. Governmentality refers to self-government, through
a process whereby individuals (willingly) undertake work in the interest of the
principal. hus, on the basis of (invisible) principal-agent structures, individuals
govern themselves in accordance with the interest of the principal. Insecurity in
jobs and temporary positions is an example relevant to spaces of academic work
(see chapter 2). For Foucault, it describes how subjects are involved in projects of
their own, through their own free will, while the freedom is dictated by others (to
live up to moral judgments, institutional values, measurements and accounting
practices, etc.). Governments, institutions, communities and authorities have
huge direct and indirect impact on individuals’ norms, attitudes and practices.
Direct as regulative that the subject is aware of, indirect as ‘hidden’ regulative
shaping/guiding thoughts, modes of thinking, imaginations and practices, that
the subject is not necessarily relective about. Govermentalitie(s) thus take part
in shaping geographical imaginations, why the inluence one poses on another,
holds power asymmetries. I bring governmentality into the context of academic
work. Academic governmentalities, refer to hidden and regulative references in the
making of scientiic knowledge and what is of particular interest in this context is
it’s signiicance for making reference to nature. Academic governmentalities refer
to the process of self-governance within academia, seeking to capture the ways in
which university governance and knowledge management afect the mind, belief
and mode of thinking. hus academic governmentality holds a critical attitude
towards a number of implicit structural layers of (assymetric)power, with reference to symbols, codes of conduct and networks, shaping the social valuation
of splendid, superb and excellent work (e.g. through awards, credits, honors,
merits, bonuses or in more subtle forms) that come to justify, theories, methods,
assumptions, approaches themes or concepts.
Area of responsibility: (see also responsibility) refers to individual anchoring
points that remind the teacher of the aim and ethical codex of his/her teaching. I
distinguish from Sund and Wickmans (2008, p. 145) ‘object of responsibility’ in
holding a scalar dimension to (areas of) responsibility. As deined by Sund and
Wickman (2008) object of responsibility refer to an academic ethical codex that is
based on the normative values aiming for sustainability, socio-environmental justice
that the teacher/student habitually care and take responsibility for. I project areas of
responsibility as an entry point to examine contested ideas and tensions and political
ecologies over assembling curricula concerning the human environmental interface.
GLOSSARY
213
Environmental romantics: Is an aesthetic and emotional expression that has a
conservative element of bringing nature ‘back’ as it ‘was’. Politically it aims to
‘restore’ the beauty of nature, landscapes and the human relationship with it. It
draws from emotional aesthetics in claiming to care for nature in ways in which
‘we’ listen to nature itself (Smith 2010, p. 280).
Climate gradualism: Applies to the IPCC perspective on climate change and
its projections between six scenarios and social cost. he vast majority of earth
and climate scientists hold the gradual perspective. IPCC models gradual global
climate change as a linear process. In terms of planetary boundaries, it holds that
natural resources will not limit the expansion of global production, for a while.
Natural limits will only occur in the long run due to planetary boundaries and
the earth-systems carrying capacity as ‘natural sinks’, particularly carbon sinks.
Climate catastrophism: James Hansen is one of the main proponents of climate
catastrophism. He inds scientiic evidence on climate change is underestimated.
Hansen argues that a ‘safe level of operation’, climate geo-engineering should not
exceed 350 ppm (Today it is 498 ppm). From space science, and knowledge on
Venus, Hansen claims that as atmospheric Co2 concentration and temperatures
increased the planet’s surface water vanished into space. Hansen inds ‘a runaway’
could be possible for the earth too. “I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial change, we will initiate the runaway
of greenhouse” and continues, that if all the tar sands and all the shade oil is also
burned “I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty” (Hansen 2009, p. 236).
Also James Lovelock holds the climate catastrophism perspective, as well as other
so-called prominent researchers. Climate catastrophism also applies to other
genres, from religion to all sorts of public opinions. hese non-science claims are
termed climate apocalypse.
Climate optimism: Holds the perspective that climate change in general will
beneit humanity. While some may bear the burdens (in some geographical areas
and regions), global warming will generally contribute to humanity’s welfare globally. Arguments often turn to pre-historical climates, e.g. the little ice age and
how it harmed societies.
Climate skepticism: Scientists and lay people in advocacy of climate scepticism
believe there is not such a thing as anthropogenic global warming. Climate
214
GLOSSARY
skepticism critically examines the validity and uncertainties of ‘gradual’ climate
science, and does on the existing basis not ind solid facts that climate change a)
is happening and b) if happening, is anthropogenic. Proponents of climate skepticism spend much time and eforts in testing and undermining scientiic ‘facts’
conducted over the past thirty years (falsiication). As climate change portrayed
in the media frequently attributes to single events (like a hurricane, drought or
looding), climate sceptics certainly have a point as to the level of hypocrisy that
also guides the debate. Climate sceptics, however, seldom conduct their critics
based on scientiic standards (Newell 2000, Muttitt 2003, Urry 2011, p. 88,
Castree 2014, p. 263) but also represent a political viewpoint that serving those
with ‘carbon interests’.
Cultures of nature(s): refers to the cultural understandings of what is natural. he
concept therefore represents nature as culturally deined. Representing nature is
an epistemological endeavor relating to the thinking and understanding of nature,
knowing and transforming nature in science and everyday practice. Cultures of
nature are a set of ideas about nature, what nature is and what is considered natural
in a given time and place (Castree 2014, p. 84). See also natures of culture(s).
Denaturalization: A concept derived from Noel Castree that captures a process
by which a thing or process that normally and until previously was regarded to be
natural is argued unnatural, e.g. genes as genetically modiied as product of society
(Castree, 2014, p. 7-8). hus, denaturalization refers to human intervention in
natural processes. Confronted with the anthropogenic climate change thesis it is
emphasized to happen at a planetary scale. In a strong version nature is dead, in
a weak version what is regarded as natural is shrinking.
Epistemic Community: In contrast to the academic episteme, an epistemic
community refers to a disciplinary community of researchers and practitioners
that share common themes, approaches, interests, norms, values and ethics.
hough it is ‘interdisciplinarily organized’, e.g. in the study of interdisciplinary
phenomena like sustainability and climate change, the epistemic community that
share the interests for a particular subject, drawing joint academic boundaries. In
any case, the community is shaped around (inter)disciplinary borders that distinguish it from other epistemic communities. For Castree (2014, p. 45) epistemic
communities exist around two frameworks, spatially linked, that also apply for
academic epistemes. First, they all occupy the same institutional space, the uniGLOSSARY
215
versity ground and the campus in which they work. Second, they share academic
values and standards for knowledge production; to ind new knowledge, search
for the truth(s), and accuracy in a systematic, rigorous, methodologically sound
and comprehensive way. (See academic episteme). What should be clear is that
both academic epistemes and communities relate to Kant’s powerful and spatial
framework of higher and lower faculties.
Epistemic (geographical) identities: Any epistemic discipline embraces norms
and cultures that invite researchers and students to play roles that are recognized
as valuable to that community. Hereby the student identiies him- or herself to the
culture, norm, practice and interests of that community in order to be member
of the discipline (Castree, 2014, p. 78). What is relevant in this context is how
epistemic identities produce space. An earth scientist or physical geographer, when
describing a nature in a speciic geographical location, say Copenhagen, make reference to the physical landscape, geological and hydrological processes, vegetation
systems – features that stretch from years to millennia. An economist will project
another spatio-temporal scale on the same area that is culturally framed within that
discipline, e.g. reading environmental change through the lenses of discounting.
A biologist would read and write the very same landscape through habitats, soil
science, biodiversity and zoology. All give insightful readings, writings of nature
and conditions for (un)sustainability. All readings of ‘the condition of nature’ in
that landscape that incorporate disciplinary boundaries and identities. It follows
that a discipline does not exist prior to space, it occupies space, produces space
and is also manifested through culturally imbedded geographical imaginations.
Epistemic identities that represent a mixture of institutional settings, universities,
institutes, research communities, disciplines and bodily scalar associations to these
settings, exemplify how loose identities can be (Castree 2014).
External nature (irst nature): Describes what is considered to be naturally deined
as the non-human part of the world. Nature is ‘out there’ ontologically separated
from society. A number of theorists make an efort in describing the ontological
dualism arising from the enlightenment tradition (Harvey 1996, Smith 2010).
hese critical geographers point towards discussing irst nature as an organized form
of reductionism within modern sciences that marginalized other perspectives on
nature. Smith (2010) traces the view of irst nature to the rise of modern science
with igures like Copernicus, Descartes and Newton that fundamentally separate
nature from society. In that, the separation of nature from society also produced
216
GLOSSARY
academic spaces organizing spaces of academic work into distinct disciplines.
Whereas irst nature has even functioned as a paradigmatic construct both within
the natural and social sciences it suggests nature to be universal, autonomous and
attributed conigurations of absolute space (Hansen and Simonsen 2005). Such
mechanistic perspectives on nature separated subject from object, while it at the
same time promoted the idea (e.g. Bacon) of producing scientiic knowledge to
gain control over nature (Harvey 1996). What I want to point toward here is
how the perspective of an objective and external nature is increasingly challenged
by anthropogenic climate change and yet external non-human nature(s) are real
(volcanic eruption, earthquakes etc). Further, if one holds to the idea of an external
nature, it implies that there are ‘more out there than we humans’ can imagine,
know, inluence and control.
Geographical imagination: In the Dictionary of Human Geography (2009)
the very irst sentence on geographical imagination runs like this: “A sensitivity
towards the signiicance of place and space, landscape and nature, in the constitution
and conduct of life on earth… he geographical imagination as he saw it [H.C. Prince
(1962) red.] was a response to places and landscapes, above all to their co-mingling
of culture and nature that calls into action our powers of sympathetic insight and
imaginative understanding ad whose rendering is a creative are” (Cosgrove 2006 in
Dictionary of Hum Geography 2009, p. 282). hus disciplines like geography are
subject to its own imaginary production of space, that Cosgrove called abstract
geographical paintings. Harvey (1974b) brings geographical imaginations into a
wider debate over individual recognition of the role of space and their own position in that environmental/spatial surrounding. Hereby he points to the speciic
use and spatial forms created by others (institutions, science, state, etc.) that the
geographer is subject to. he way geographical imagination is used in this context
projects the (inter)disciplinary and intellectual bordering, as spatially nested entry
points for imagining possible socio-ecological futures. Hence, in the contest of
sustainability, it advocates to acquire the capacity to think in abstract, planetary
and environmentally interdependent term (Hulme 2008). hus, processes of
learning (identity) are linked to responsibility and possible responses to global
environmental change (Massey 2004). Geographical imagination is a process of
spatial contextualization through practices and learning (Dict of Hum geography
2009, p. 284).
GLOSSARY
217
Geographical identity: Comes in several forms. he novelty of being is constituted by becoming, and holds a process whereby identity becomes professionally
embodied in civic life. Every human being holds geographical identities (e.g. nationalism). While the term is loosely and vividly used, it seeks to capture changing
conceptions as related to human subject positions, and identities (and vice versa)
and how these changes also connote modes of thinking about sustainability. hus
it is a project of spatial self-realization that also becomes a question of who we are
and where we are going (Dict of Hum Geography 2009, p. 366). his is irmly
rooted in learning processes and actualization of a being through education and
desires for understanding, exploring as part of imagining ones future being.
Geo-engineering: Can largely be divided into two strategies of earth-system governance, one that relects the sun’s radiation back into space and one that removes
GHG from the atmosphere. So far IPCC has concluded that geo-engineering
projects are “largely speculative and with the risk of unknown side efects”. Also
he Royal Society also elaborated a report on geo-engineering arguing that we
have to explore all technical possibilities (except social and political) to challenge
climate change (Royal Society 2009, Geo-engineering the Climate, London).
he report concluded that no geo-engineering methods are currently promising.
hough geo-engineering is likely to be technically possible uncertainties of their
efectiveness and side efects are widely unknown. he Royal Society notes that no
major research projects on geo-engineering exists and notes that the international
scientiic community should carry through such studies to provide evidence of
what might be feasible (the politics of producing knowledge). Yet, geo-engineering
is a technological ix that does not consider the social dynamics, international
governance and climate wars that lie behind the challenges (see Jevons chapter
1). Further geo-engineering is a neoliberal project in that it is probably one of the
cheapest ways to ‘deal’ with climate change (cost-efectiveness) though it rather
postpone problems of accumulating Co2 in the atmosphere into the future. Since
geo-engineering is designed to ‘protecting’ earth from warming as projecting sun
rays back into space, is like allowing GHG content in the atmosphere, without
increasing temperatures.
Global Commons (Global good). Global commons is a geographically scaled
concept in which planetary boundaries can only meaningfully be conceptualized
as common (Harvey 2004, p. 549). UNEP have been successful in promoting
the concept. Aligned with carrying capacities, global or planetary commons’ as218
GLOSSARY
semble the (non)planetary-resource governance that lie outside of the political
reach of any nation state.
Intrinsic nature: Refers to a certain quality or deining the property of something
“the distinguishing quality of living and inanimate phenomena, including human
beings” (Castree 2014, p. 10) as Castree puts it. he quality includes aesthetic
expressions. Furthermore it connotes the idea that entities in nature have agency,
properties, and exhibit behaviors. Deep ecologists build their theories within that
position, commonly relected in Mother Nature or that nature has value of its
own (see Castree, 2014, p. 10).
Naturalization: To Noel Castree naturalization refers to a process by which, individuals, groups or societies commonly (re)deine the part of the world (things,
phenomena or processes) we call nature. hus, naturalization refer to conventions
about what is natural (Castree, 2014, p. 19).
Moral valuation/judgment: Behavior, attitudes and statements with the aim to
tell others and make others act in accordance with what is regarded proper, correct and responsible thoughts and (in)action. In an educational perspective Sund
and Wickman (2008) ind moral judgments as culturally codiied into a habitual
codex assembling areas of responsibilities.
Legitimation: refers to a process whereby the creation and maintenance of ideas,
actions and decisions is argued, organized and sorted in accordance to diferent
legitimation strategies, implicit or explicit. Diferent legitimation strategies include
the argument for a decision or position by making reference to e.g. authority (authorization), utility (rationalization) or narrative (mythopoesis) or value systems
(moral evaluation). Se power of reference and note that no of these strategies are
commensurable to scientiic standards (for the pursuit of truth, accurate and valid
knowledge). Yet academics are subject to them.
Planetary Boundary: he concepts planetary boundary is universal and ultimately ixed, thus relating to external nature and yet afected by humans. Planetary
boundaries imagine the Earth as a closed system. Inter-planetary boundaries refer
to astronomic processes in the solar system afecting climate on Earth (Rockström
et al., 2009, Oldield and Stefens 2014). he diference from planetary boundaries is that inter-planetary boundaries are by no way afected by humans, whereas
GLOSSARY
219
(some) planetary boundaries are said to be so e.g. in earth science, global climate
science, that come to determine the politics over deining carrying capacities.
Political Ecology (in Science and Education): With igures like Humboldt
and Haeckel a number of biologists and geographers originally developed ideas
of ‘oecologie’ as the science of living organisms in relation to their environment
(Zimmerer 2006). Political ecology is broadly deined as the study of relations
between society and the humanized nature. Herby the study of political struggles
takes point of departure in the environmental/ecosystem to be explicitly addressed in the analysis of local-global cultural dynamics, international trade relations
or relations between past and present as well as relations to political economy. In
this context Political Ecology in Science and Education, addresses the scientiic and
educational character of evaluating and producing nature(s) in its bio-culturalpolitical complexity. hus the scientiic and educational character of political ecology involves the nexus between the state, knowledge production (technology and
education) and the market. As far as political ecologies in science and education
are concerned, they relate to the nexus between the ‘politics of space’, (state, territories, organizational and institutional structures), ‘environmental spaces’ involve
spatially nested ecosystems, ‘spaces of knowledge’ and ‘spaces of work’ referring to
the market dynamics as also relating to natural transformation. Political ecology
and political economy coincide. hus, political ecology is nested in the link between power distribution and productive forces and their relationship to nature.
Political ecology expands political economy with an analysis of political-economic
activities not only with regard to how political/economic activities relate to and
transform the environment, but also how it deines ecosystems/nature. Whereas
political economic thinkers (ranging from conservative thinkers like Malthus to
Marx) had accepted the value-laden character e.g. of disciplines like economy
(Harvey 1974a), 20th century economists are among others characterized by
separating politics from economics, economics from nature as an scientiic and
objective enterprise in itself. Wherein diferent agents (previously termed class
relations/struggles) had diferent interests over organization of economic activities, scientists similarly have struggles over deining, analyzing and valuing the
human-environmental interface. How these processes are embedded in science
and education is of interest political ecology.
Production of nature: Is a concept developed by Niel Smith, David Harvey among
others based on a Marxist understanding of the human-environmental interface.
220
GLOSSARY
he concept extends to the spatial theoretical work of ‘the production of space’
and amalgamates the spatial chronological theme with the human environment
theme, particularly produced through economic forces organized under capitalism. Nature and society are dimensions of the same phenomena continuously
knitted together, so that “We cannot talk about the world of nature or environment
without simultaneously revealing how space and time are being constituted within
such processes” (Harvey, 1996, p. 263).
Power of references: Refers to the-self governmental processes by which statements, assumptions or themes are represented. he concept seek to capture the
academic form of governmentality that bear efects to the habitual power of
representing a given scientiic problem or paradoxes in a certain way by also producing layers of hidden (tacit and tactic) knowledge yet, authoritative truth (see
also academic governmentality).
Responsibility: Responsible geographies refer to epistemic ethics or more broadly
academic ethics based on codex associated with environmental justice (see. Dictionary of Human Geography 2009, p. 211). Responsibility orchestrates processes by
which the ethics of producing and representing socio-ecological change (within an
epistemic community) also manifest in culturally codes and conducts of responding (answering to what, by whom and why are we responsible) in theoretical and
practical terms to anthropogenic driven global (and local) environmental change.
Confronted with planetary borders, whatever perspective one takes on responses
and responsibilities they all form particular socio-natural climates inhabiting
distinct political ecologies. In the broader society these response(abilities) range
a pamphlet of connections and disconnections that advocate particular social
practices, from denial of climate change to activism, from climate scepticism to
climate catastrophism.
Social nature (second nature): A perspective according to which nature is social,
e.g. through processes of urbanisation that progressively distance nature (external
nature) from the urban it produces social natures. An example is the reinsertion of
nature in cities arguing that cities are socio natures with their distancing habitats
and faunas (hrift 2002). To Castree, nature is not only deined, and construed
socially, but also modiied physically by humans (at all scales, from genetics to
climate change), with particular social interests involved in such transformations
(Castree, 2001, p. 3). Nature is social all the way down as Castree puts it, why
GLOSSARY
221
nature it appears to us, is produced and transformed appreciably to technological, cultural and economic interests (Castree 2001, Harvey 1996). hrough the
exploitation of natural resources and commodiication of nature humans actively
appropriate, transform and change nature, and in doing so, ‘man transforms himself ’. Nature therefore is historically constructed environments through planning;
maintaining and regulating intensiied practices that (re)shape “he intertwinnings
of social and ecological projects in daily practices as well as in the realms of ideology,
representations, esthetics, and the like are such as to make every social (including
literary or artistic) project a project about nature, environment, and ecosystems, and
vice versa” (Harvey, 1996, p. 189). While second nature is deined on the realms
of a irst non-human and external nature, thus accepting external nature, social
nature more aggressively insists that nature has always been culturally determined.
Nature is made social just as society is made natural. Nature is socio-nature.
Spatio-temporal tides and waves: refers to (inter)disciplinary and historygeographical assembles of the socio-natural interface, by which natural or social
phenomena, things or processes and the interface between them are given geographical references and are geographically abstracted Whereas spatio-temporal
tides refer to how diferent ontological and epistemological positions change the
ways in which scientists deal with the human-environment interface and hence the
diferent political ecologies inscribed within them, spatio-temporal waves refer to
the relevance, frequency and intensity given to the human-environment themes,
whatever topic explored (See Castree, Demeritt and Liverman 2009).
Sustainability: is a contested and widespread concept within academia and beyond. Sustainability is both an analytical concept, a theoretical concept, a political
concept and an ethical concept, and an utopian concept, rejecting that these spheres
can be fully separated. As Harvey argued forty years ago “there is the task of building
a genuinely humanistic literature which collapses the artiicial (almost schizophrenic)
dualisms between fact and value, subject and object, man and nature, science and
human interface” (Harvey 1974b, p. 24) sustainability is one of the concepts aiming just that. hough sustainability means diferent things to diferent people, it
concerns the management and planning of the human-environmental interface. As
Mansield (2009, p. 37) note, sustainability is “wildly popular as a way of thinking
about the needs of people and the environment by enhancing human well-being
without undermining ecological integrity”. In academia sustainability insists in
integrating environmental, economic and social (material)assemblages in ways
222
GLOSSARY
that the study of any social, economic or environmental development can only be
acknowledged if it takes place in all (three) aspects simultaneously. In that social
nature and sustainability have a common background, non-human and external
nature cannot be incorporated into the framework – hence external and ‘natural’
global or local environmental change. hus academic sustainability is interdisciplinary and holds an integrative perspective that assembles socio-environmental
changes in multiple spheres of interaction. In practice sustainability connotes
a mass balance principle determined under planetary boundaries. Any analysis
of ‘sustainability’ produces particular political ecologies, holding a conservative
element. Yet proponents in favor of sustainability argue that basing an analysis
on external nature is just as political as basing it on social nature. Nevertheless
sustainability is also politically used in ways that intent to preserve the interests
of those conceptualizing it. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to deine a
commensurable understanding of the political meanings of the use of the concept
in academia. If such a thing exists, it is individually contingent, multifaceted and
contested. Yet, as discussed in chapter 1, a number of science societies emphasize
sustainability as responsibilities to addressing climate change, whereby it represent
the visions and ight over understanding, regulating and managing (local)global
environmental commons, referring to equitable post fossil-carbon societies. Sustainability gathers a planetary common and yet orchestrated at all scales.
In politics the concept captures the ight over deining the efects on any development that occurs in the social, economic or social sphere, in a way (e.g. economic
growth) that it does not exist on behalf of the other (e.g. environment). If so,
development is only a matter of geographical redistribution of goods and bads,
hence said to be unsustainable. hus sustainability is a political socio-material
vision for the future. Sustainability refers to a particular political-ideological process of regulation, sorting, directing and planning socio-material interaction. In
this project political ecologies of representing sustainability (global environmental
changes through sustainability) relates to the intellectual dispute and deined as a
ight over and responsibilities acknowledged for representing socio-environmental
interactions, to conceptually assemble and theoretically understanding socioecological and politico-economic processes between seven moments of interaction
(see chapter 3). Furthermore the concept contemplate a standpoint from which
the student or researcher have the freedom to individually challenge, address and
produce and actively respond to the political ight over reading and writing socioecological, within academia. Hence, sustainability is also a utopian concept over
GLOSSARY
223
envisioning and imagining possible geographical futures, whereby the concept
does only have a discursive existence that is yet to be materialized and converted
into practical future existence.
224
GLOSSARY
Appendix
Appendix 1.1
Joined Science Academy Statement:
Global Response to Climate Change (2005)
“he scientiic understanding of climate change is now suiciently clear to justify nations
taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-efective steps that they can
take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse
gas emissions (…).We urge all nations, in the line with the UNFCCC principles, to take
prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts and ensure
that the issue is included in all relevant national and international strategies. As national science academies, we commit to working with governments to help develop and
implement the national and international response to the challenge of climate change.
G8 nations have been responsible for much of the past greenhouse gas emissions. As parties to the UNFCCC, G8 nations are committed to showing leadership in addressing
climate change and assisting developing nations to meet the challenges of adaptation and
mitigation”
Signed by the following Science Academy Presidents: Academia Brasiliera de
Ciências, Brazil; Royal Society of Canada, Canada; Chinese Academy of Sciences,
China; Academié des Sciences, France; Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Germany; Indian National Science Academy, India; Accademia dei Lincei, Italy; Science Council of Japan, Japan; Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia; Royal Society,
United Kingdom, National Academy of Sciences, United States of America.
Box 1.2. – G8 + 5 Science academies (2005), Joined Science Academy Statement:
Global Response to Climate Change, p. 1-2.
Climate Science Letter (AAAS 2009, p. 1):
“We, as leaders of scientiic organizations, write to state the consensus scientiic
view. Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientiic research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases
emitted by human activities are the primary driver. (…). Moreover, there is strong
evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. (…). If we are to avoid the most
severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition, adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts
that are already unavoidable. Adaptation eforts include improved infrastructure
design, more sustainable management of water and other natural resources, modiied agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to storms, loods,
ires and heat waves”
APPENDIX
227
Signed by the following Science Academy Presidents: AAAS and American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Meteorological Society. American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Biologists, American Statistical Association, Association of
Ecosystem Research Centers, Botanical Society of America, Crop Science Society
of America, Ecological Society of America, Natural Science Collections Alliance,
Organization of Biological Field Stations, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Society of Systematic Biologists, Soil Science Society of America, University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research).
228
APPENDIX
Appendix 1.2
he so-called top universities and institutional ’sustainable’ responses (abilities)
to climate change
Rank*
Institution
Location
SustainReference
Example of key strategy
ability plan/
statements/ Rector Statement
strategy
1
California United
Institute of states
Technology
2013 Annual www.
Sustainability sustainReport
ability.
caltech.
edu/
“Sustainability at Caltech
aims to enhance Caltech’s
core mission of research and
education”
2
Harvard
University
United
states
Harvard
University
Sustainability
Plan
http://
green.
harvard.
edu/commitment/
our-plan
“Creating a sustainable
campus strengthens our core
research and teaching mission, and it acknowledges that
the challenges before us are
complex and interconnected”
President Drew Gilpin Faust
3
University
of Oxford
United
Environmen- sustainKingdom tal Sustaina- ability.
bility Report admin.
2012/2013
ox.ac.uk.
“Environmental Sustainability
is the responsibility of all of
us” Andrew Hamilton, ViceChancellor
4
Stanford
University
United
States
sustainable.
stanford.
edu/
“Stanford’s approach to
sustainability research and
curricula (….) recognizes that
addressing key global sustainability challenges, such as
climate change and universal
access to clean energy, water, and food for a growing
population, will require the
collaboration of experts from
many disciplines”.
5
University
of Cambridge
United
Environmen- http://
Kingdom tal Policy
www.
environment.admin.cam.
ac.uk/
“he need to reduce carbon
emissions and improve the
sustainability of the world’s
activities provides Cambridge
with responsibilities and opportunities. Our world-leading research in many diferent
areas of energy, environment
and sustainability will make
major contributions to fundamental understanding and to
everyday practice, while our
teaching needs to equip the
next generation of leaders to
understand and inluence the
future.”
APPENDIX
Campus
Sustainability Progress
2013
229
6
MassaUnited
chusetts
States
Institute of
Technology (MIT)
Next Genera- https://
tion Strategy sustain2014
ability.
mit.edu/
“Here at MIT, we have set out
to establish a Next Generation Campus Sustainability
Platform”
7
Princeton
University
United
States
he Princeton University Sustainability Plan
www.
sustain.
princeton.edu/
“What will Princeton look like
with Climate Change?”
8
UniverUnited
sity of
States
California,
Berkeley
Campus
Sustainability
Report and
Climate Action Plan
sustainability.
berkeley.
edu/
“UC Berkeley works to ind
solutions to global environmental, economic, and social
challenges--inequality, climate
change, food security, water
shortages and more”
9
Imperial
College
London
United
Carbon
Kingdom management
and sustainable activities
report 2013
www.
imperial.ac.uk/
sustainability
”we take our environmental
responsibilities very seriously
and aim to implement the
most sustainable means in our
operations”
9
Yale University
United
States
11
12
230
Yale Sussustaintaianbility
ability.
Strategic Plan yale.edu/
2013-2016
“Global climate change and
its consequences are critical
challenges of our time, and
Yale has important and necessary roles to play in addressing
them. Yale’s commitment to
sustainability is a fundamental
part of the University’s enterprise” President Peter Salovey
University United
of Chicago States
Strategic
sustainSustainability ability.
Plan
uchicago.
edu/
“At the University of Chicago,
we are seeking to place clear
parameters and identify measurable results around what it
means to be truly sustainable”
University
of California, Los
Angeles
(UCLA)
UCLA
www.
Grand
sustain.
Challenge in ucla.edu/
Environment
and Sustainability:
hriving a
Hotter Los
Angeles
“UCLA is a living laboratory
for climate and sustainability
research where undergraduate, graduate, and professional
students engage with staf and
faculty to pilot new technologies and policies on the
university campus.”
United
States
APPENDIX
13
ETH
SwitzerZürich
land
– Swiss
Federal
Institute of
Technology
Sustainanbility Report
2013
www.ethz.
ch/en/theeth-zurich/
sustainability.
html
“Sustainability at ETH Zurich
is integrated into research,
teaching, and operations and
is a substantial element of
university life”
14
Columbia
University
United
States
Sustainable
Columbia
2014
http://
environment.
columbia.
edu/
“we’re proud as an institution
to join in a shared commitment to a more sustainable
environment in our local
community and across the
globe.” Columbia University
is taking action to reduce our
carbon footprint. If we lead
by example, we will improve
the sense of responsibility felt
by our community for their
actions through both education and demonstration”
15
Johns
Hopkins
University
United
States
Sustainability Report
and climate
change task
force report
www.
sustainability.
jhu.edu/
“Sustainability has been a core
part of the Johns Hopkins
experience for decades”.
United
States
Climate Action Plan 2.0
www.
upenn.
edu/sustainability/
“I am pleased to present the
University of Pennsylvania’s
Climate Action Plan 2.0, our
roadmap for environmental
sustainability (…). he future
of our University, and beyond,
depends on it” Amy Gutmann, President
United
States
Oice of
Sustainability
Business Plan
& Annual
Report of
Activity
sustainability.
umich.
edu/
”To compliment our academic
work, we are establishing an
oice of campus sustainability to be on the front line of
accessing and improving how
the university uses energy,
recycled materials, and builds
facilities.” Mary Sue Coleman,
President
16
University
of Pennsylvania
17
University
of Michigan
18
Duke Uni- United
versity
States
APPENDIX
Sustaianbility sustain“Duke University seeks to
Strategic Plan ability.
attain and maintain a place of
duke.edu/ leadership in all that we do.
his includes leadership in environmental stewardship and
sustainability on campus.”
231
19
Cornell
University
20
University Canada
of Toronto
Sustainability www.
Yearbook
sustainability.
utoronto.
ca/
“An innovative culture of
sustainability thrives on our
three campuses thanks to the
combined eforts of students,
faculty, and staf” Meric
Gertler, President
21
Northwestern
University
United
States
Strategic Plan www.
for Sustainnorthability
western.
edu/
sustainability/
“As one of the world’s leading
academic institutions, Northwestern University recognizes its role in addressing the
global challenges of sustainability and climate change.
Northwestern University’s
strategic plan states that we
will “Engage with the world…
expanding our impact at home
and abroad.” he University’s
approach is to immerse our
students and faculty in leading
environmental curriculum
and research and to commit
to improving our own carbon
footprint”.
22
University
College
London
(UCL)
United
UCL’s EnKingdom vironmental
Sustainability
Strategy
232
United
States
Cornell Climate Action
Plan
cornell.
edu/sustainability/
http://
www.ucl.
ac.uk/
greenucl/
our-commitments
“Cornell supports research,
scholarship, and the practical
application of knowledge that
address one of humankind’s
greatest challenges: achieving
a sustainable world for all. It
is imperative that Cornell continue to work across campuses,
sectors, and continents to meet
the needs of society: strive for climate neutrality, innovate, and
lead the way to a cleaner, safer,
more stable world.” David J.
Skorton, President
“UCL’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy establishes
a framework to tackle the
environmental impacts of the
Institution’s operations (e.g.
carbon emissions, …) in the
context of supporting and enhancing the Institution’s core
academic activities”
APPENDIX
23
he University of
Tokyo
Japan
TSCP
Sustainable
Campus
Project
24
Carnegie
Mellow
University
United
States
Leading the
www.
Way. Setting cmu.edu/
the Standard. environment/
http://
www.
tscp.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
en/index.
html
“he University of Tokyo has
made it one of its missions to
contribute to the realization
of a sustainable society by
creating a sustainable campus,
while at the same time vitalizing research and education,
by drawing on its wealth of
existing intellectual resources”
“Environmental innovation
is an integral part of Carnegie
Mellon’s culture, curriculum
and practice (…).
Sustainability has been integrated into the curriculum
in all seven colleges of the
University”
25
National
University of
Singapore
(NUS)
Singapore Sustainable
NUS
http://nus.
edu.sg/oes/
“To efect a total shift to
environmental sustainability
in all aspects of campus life
by integrating sustainability
into our operations, planning,
construction, education, research, instruction, and public
service”
*Times Higher Education 2014. Webpages accessed during December 5 to 16 2014.
APPENDIX
233
Appendix 1.3. Anthropogenic Climate Change?
Year
Range
interglacial
periods
(400-0
KYR BC)
Range Glacial periods
(400-0
KYR BC)
1000
1500
1600
1700
1750
1775
1800
1825
1850
1875
1900
1925
1950
1959
1960
1961
234
Atmos- Annual Economic OECD
Total
Per capita
pheric
mean
Growth
Total
Global
emission
Co2 Con- growth (OECD, Primary CO2 Emis- estimates
centration rate Co2 GDP TO- Energy sions from (metric
(ppmv)
TAL, PER
Con- Fossil-Fuel tons of
CAPITA, sumpBurning
carbon)
US DOLtion
1750-2010
LAR,
(Oil,
( million
1970Coal metric tons
2013)
Gass) in of carbon)
Quadrillion Btu
~262-300
~180-205
279
282
276
277
277
279
283
284
285
289
296
305
311
315.97
316.91
317.64
0.94
0.54
0.95
3
4
8
17
54
188
534
975
1630
2459
2569
2580
0,69
0,83
0,85
0,84
APPENDIX
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
APPENDIX
318.45
318.99
319.62
320.04
321.38
322.16
323.04
324.62
325.68
326.32
327.45
329.68
330.18
331.08
332.05
333.78
335.41
336.78
338.68
340.10
341.44
343.03
344.58
346.04
347.39
349.16
351.56
353.07
354.35
355.57
356.38
357.07
358.82
360.80
362.59
363.71
0.64
0.71
0.28
1.02
1.24
0.74
1.03
1.31
1.06
0.85
1.69
1.22
0.78
1.13
0.84
2.10
1.30
1.75
1.73
1.43
0.96
2.13
1.36
1.25
1.48
2.29
2.13
1.32
1.19
0.99
0.48
1.40
1.91
1.99
1.25
1.91
3 551
3 824
4 160
4 604
5 019
5 448
5 970
6 512
7 215
8 040
8 788
9 736
10 261
10 893
11 722
12 468
12 996
13 705
14 730
15 760
16 697
17 342
17 977
18 510
19 339
20 078
20 955
21 945
179,13
175,14
170,33
170,06
177,7
180,3
182,39
187,59
193,6
197,71
198,59
200,85
202,97
206,57
210,11
215,1
222,08
224,61
2686
2833
2999
3130
3288
3393
3566
3780
4053
4208
4376
4614
4623
4596
4846
5026
5087
5369
5315
5152
5113
5094
5280
5439
5607
5752
5965
6097
6127
6217
6164
6162
6266
6398
6542
6651
0,86
0,88
0,92
0,94
0,97
0,98
1,01
1,05
1,1
1,12
1,14
1,18
1,16
1,13
1,18
1,19
1,19
1,23
1,2
1,14
1,11
1,09
1,11
1,12
1,14
1,15
1,17
1,17
1,16
1,16
1,13
1,11
1,11
1,12
1,13
1,13
235
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015 (January)
Source:
366.65
368.33
369.52
371.13
373.22
375.77
377.49
379.80
381.90
383.76
385.59
387.37
389.85
391.63
393.82
396.48
398.55
399,96
2.93
0.93
1.62
1.58
2.53
2.29
1.56
2.52
1.76
2.22
1.60
1.89
2.42
1.87
2.65
2.05
2.28
22 682
23 599
25 079
25 886
26 655
27 467
28 950
30 450
32 461
34 003
34 780
33 823
35 034
36 325
37 139
37 876
225,11
229,36
233,69
232,27
234,11
236,54
241,94
243,18
243,78
245,44
242,64
231,76
240,48
238,71
235,2
6643
6610
6765
6927
6996
7463
7807
8093
8370
8566
8783
8740
9167
1,12
1,1
1,11
1,12
1,12
1,17
1,21
1,24
1,27
1,28
1,3
1,28
1,33
1
2
3
4
5
6
1.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_data U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), Earth System Research Laboratory Global Monitoring Division (Accessed
February 19 2015)
2.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_growth U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), Earth System Research Laboratory Global Monitoring Division (Accessed
February 19 2015)
3.
http://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm OECD statistics, Gross Domestic Product (Accessed February 19 2015)
4.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=44&pid=44&aid=2&cid=CG5,&syid=
1980&eyid=2012&unit=QBTU US. Department of Energy (EIA), International Energy Statistics
(Accessed February 19 2015)
5.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2010.ems US. Department of Energy (EIA) Carbon
Dioxide Information Analysis Center (Accessed February 19 2015)
6.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2010.ems US. Department of Energy (EIA) Carbon
Dioxide Information Analysis Center (Accessed February 19 2015)
236
APPENDIX
According to Barnola et al., (2003) there is a close correlation between main
trends of atmospheric CO2 concentration for each glacial cycle. hus, major
transitions from the lowest to the highest values recorded are associated with
glacial-interglacial transitions, during the past 420 kyr. Barnola et al., (2003) ind
atmospheric carbon cycles (CO2) rises from 180 to 280-300 ppmv between glacial
and interglacial cycles. hus, Pre-industrial Holocene levels of are around 280
ppmv are found during all inter-glacials period the highest record (~300 ppmv)
found approximately 323 kyr BP (Barnola et al., 2003). Similarely historic CH4
Records demonstrate similar glacial and interglacial cycles, and Atmospheric
concentrations of CH4 during the Holocene ranged from 676 to 716 ppb before
about 1750 “After 1750 concentratios began to increase to their present value of more
than 1700 ppb”(Etheridge et al., 2002). Between 1800 and 2000 atmospheric co2
concentration from 283 to 369 accompanied by an immense industrialization (…).
Between 1800 and 2000 population grew more than six-fold, the global economy
about 50-fold, and energy use about 40-fold” (Stefen et al,. 2007, p. 616). What
should be clear is with the rise of modern capitalistic societies atmospheric Co2
records have increased 25 % since 1960. Compared with the past 400 kyr glacial
and interglacial periods, the atmospheric Co2 concentration is approx. 100 ppm
higher than recorded during that period.
In 2008, the Advanced capitalist societies in the Western World, inhabited 18 %
of the world’s population, but were responsible for 72 % of global CO2 emissions
emitted since 1850 (Malm and Hornborg 2014, p. 64). Roughly, the geographical diference of emissions, accompanies the distribution of wealth globally. he
poorest 45 % of the worlds population account for 7 % of the global GHG emissions, while the 7% riches are responsible for 50 % of the global emissions. hus
an average American, despite the huge inequalities within the country, bear the
same emissions for their lifestyle and social practices as 500 citizens from Burundi,
Nepal, Mali, Cambodia or Afghanistan.
APPENDIX
237
Appendix 2.1: Regimes of accountability and uneven geographical academic spaces
ISI web of knowledge is another example of the creation of personal monopoly
rent outlined in space. Ranking, Merit Systems or Audit systems, depending on
their technical construction, also create the credit form in terms of institutional
rent. Institutional rent is the institutionally marketable capital of reputation (Harvard and Oxford) and the inluence these imaginaries have on funding, quoting
etc. (which in turn, improve funding opportunities). What should be clear is that
ranking and audit systems of individuals, departments and universities are critical
for research funding and ‘inancial attractiveness’. Some Editorial collectives of
well-established journals have been critical to the development. By way of illustration the Editorial collective of ACME (2007) points out how indexing and
auditing produce neoliberal practices of accounting research, which has nothing
to do with double blind reviews. Since audit schemes are originally developed
for inancial purposes, they are not only making and creating markets. Ranking
and audit systems are also performing markets (Castree et al., 2006). What BFI
ensures is that the work of an individual researcher (or a collective) is no longer
solely qualitatively valued, examined and judged, it is also quantitatively valued
in monetary terms. “Academics are thus being asked to become responsible for
the increasingly capitalist-like accumulation strategies of universities, and one
way of ensuring that they do so is through the disciplining practices of impact
factors and journal ranking systems” (Editoral Collective, ACME, 2007, p. 132).
Hence these forms of accountability create a new scientiic climate for individuals
and collectives. I want to point to two paradoxical elements the scientiic climate
of marketing knowledge. First, asymmetric power relations appear to contradict
any form of competition. In tandem and more challenging the methodological
assumption is based upon the idea that quantitative methods are able to measure
quality (not qualitative methods). If you introduce market like competition of
say public funding, then it may have the intended efect for a period of time: it
incites researchers to spend all their might and efort in writing the best proposals,
but as time passes by, some institutions become richer than others (Auken and
Emmicke 2010). Consequently richer institutions have the possibility to set aside
resources to make better proposals, employ highly estimated researchers, have a
better record, and so on. What you produce is no longer competition, but uneven
geographical development. Consequently there is a fundamental contradiction in
that funding councils (e.g. Danish Ministry of Education) on one hand commit
themselves to competition for quality, and on the other hand the very same com238
APPENDIX
petition rewards uneven power relations. Secondly, I pointed to the credit form of
BFI. When BFI and other merit systems capitalize academic knowledge (so called
high quality journals), then they are not so diferent from the pay journals (which
are considered low quality) and are now commonplace. So called high impact
factor journals are often corporate owed by a group of global media enterprises,
and the wider indexing e.g. ISI Web of Science Journal Index is owned by the
private corp. homason Scientiic. A number of so-called high impact factor are
proit driven Journals and turn into business with exactly the same circulation of
knowledge economies as do the pay journals.
APPENDIX
239
Appendix 5.1: List of interview participants
Nigel hrift: Professor, Geography, Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Warwick, UK.
Maria Helena Nazaré: Professor, Physics, President, European University Association, Brussels,
Belgium.
John Urry: Professor, Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
Pam Freedman: Professor, Neurochemistry, Vice-Chancellor, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Will Stefens, Professor, Sustainability and Earth System Science, Executive Director, ANU Climate
Change Institute, Australian National University, Australia.
Danish Research Geographers
NB the list is random and not chronological with the coding numbers in interview references.
Anne Lorentzen: Professor, Human Geography, Aalborg University, Department of Development
and Planning.
Niels H. Jensen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Roskilde University, Department of
Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
horbjørn Andersen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Henrik Toft Jensen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of
Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Torben Birch-homsen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Henrik Breuning-Madsen: Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Anne Gravsholt Busck: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Kirsten Simonsen: Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Bo Elberling: Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences
and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Rasmus Fensholt: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
240
APPENDIX
Peter Skriver: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
homas Friborg: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Birger Hansen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of
Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Høgni Hansen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of
Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Kristine Juul: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Martin Rudbæk Jepsen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Aart Kroon: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of
Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Marianne Larsen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Morten Lauge Pedersen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Aalborg University, Department
of Development and Planning
Lasse Møller-Jensen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Jesper Brandt: Professor, Physical Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental,
Social and Spatial Change.
Morten Pejrup: Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences
and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Peter Frederiksen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Roskilde University, Department of
Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Kjeld Rasmussen: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Lasse Kofoed: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Anette Reenberg: Professor, Physical Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
Keld Buciek: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Lars Winther: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Copenhagen University, Department of
Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography.
APPENDIX
241
Henrik Gutzon Larsen: Associate Professor, Human Geography, Aalborg University, Department
of Development and Planning
Eva Bøgh: Associate Professor, Physical Geography, Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Anonymous Lecturer: Geography Department in Denmark.
242
APPENDIX
Appendix 5.2. List of study regulation documents
Study regulation for geography at Roskilde University (2005), Bachelor, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Study regulation for geography at Roskilde University (2006), Bachelor and Master, Department
of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Study regulation for geography at Roskilde University (2014), Bachelor, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University (2009a), Bachelor, Department for
Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University (2009b), Master, Department for
Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2010a), Bachelor, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2010b), Master, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2011), Bachelor, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for integrative geography at Aalborg University (2010), Master, Department of
Development and Planning.
List of IGU Declarations concerning the environment
IGU GCE (1992). International Charter on Geographical Education. he Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union (IGU CGE).
IGU GCE (2000). International Declaration on Geographical Education for Cultural Diversity. he
Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union (IGU CGE).
IGU GCE (2007). Lucerne Declaration (2007). International Geographical Union Commission
on Geographical Education (IGU CGE), Geographiedidaktische Forschungen, 42, 243—250.
APPENDIX
243
Appendix 5.3. Interview guide, open interview questions
English
1. In 1964 Pattison published a paper on his thoughts on geographical traditions. He identiied 4 distinct traditions within the discipline of geography. In
1990 the paper was re-published. Pattison’s four traditions have been used by
a number of geographers, including David Harvey that in a paper from 2009
used Patterson’s nomenclature. Patterson’s four traditions are:
a. he spatial tradition with a focus on localization, distance, position, and
place. Later the spatial tradition became more diverse.
b. he area study tradition represents a regional focus, analysis of regional
development, regions and boundaries, inclusive relations to nearby regions
connections and networks.
c. he man-land tradition emphasizes relations between human interactions with their environment, resources, opportunities and constraints
concerning the physical environment and nature.
d. he earth science tradition concern, the study of the earth, soil, oceans
and the atmosphere as well as related aspects of nature, its processes and
dynamics.
Which one of the above mentioned traditions do you ind best relate to your
teaching?*
*We assume that your research and teaching activities will largely correlate to the same
tradition. If not so, please include more traditions in your answer.
2. In continuation of the tradition or the traditions you have pointed out, we
will like to ask more speciically to scientiic methods in education: Are there
(geographical) methods that are more relevant for students to acquire
than others within the geographical tradition you relate to?
3. We are interested in understanding the role of ieldwork for the education of
geographers: What is the role of ieldwork in the education of geographers
at your institution?
4. What do you understand by ieldwork?
244
APPENDIX
5. What do you consider the most important students acquire through ieldwork?
6. Can you become a geographer without being on ieldwork as part of your
education?
7. We are also interested in the use of the concept sustainability in geography education: Do you see a connection between sustainability and ieldwork?
8. Do you regard the sustainability concept as an inluential/important concept
for the education of geographers?
9. What is your opinion concerning the use of concepts like sustainability in
the education of geographers?
10. Have you taught on sustainability issues yourself?
11. How do you regard the use of sustainability concepts within your area
of expertise?
APPENDIX
245
Appendix 5.4
Interview guide –Will Stefens (June 17, 2014), Nigel hrift (May 23, 2013),
Pam Freedman (April 22, 2012) and Maria Helena Nazaré (April 22, 2012).
he role of universities in society
•
•
Do universities have a particular responsibility to address sustainability?
Do discipline like geography; have a responsibility to deal with issues like
sustainability?
Education
•
•
•
Universities educate future leaders and decision makers – their decisions
also rely on a certain academic culture – Do you think universities should
include sustainable values and achievements as criteria for curriculum
development? (competences and skills)
How can higher education models integrate sustainability (vision)?
What do you regard as the key tensions in rethinking the university system
to become more sustainable?
Universities
• In 2012 we saw among others “the Council for the Defence of British
Universities (CDBU)” as responses to politic-economic models of the
neoliberal university. First, do you see a marketization and instrumentalization of universities?
• Do you see notions of the neoliberal university have relation to how academia responds to climate change?
• Should inancial structures and grant models address issues of sustainability?
• What do you regard as the key tensions in rethinking the university system
toward producing social-innovative models for a low carbon society?
246
APPENDIX
Interview guide, John Urry, January 25, 2013
•
•
•
•
In your book, Climate Change and Society, you introduce the concept
carbon sociology. How do you see sociology transforms toward a carbon
sociology, and what are the main drivers for that?
Could the idea of carbon sociology be extended to all ields of sciences?
Do universities have a particular responsibility to address sustainability?
Do discipline like geography; have a responsibility to deal with issues like
sustainability?
Education
• Universities educate future leaders and decision makers – their decisions
also rely on a certain academic culture – Do you think universities should
include sustainable values and achievements as criteria for curriculum
development? (competences and skills)
• In chapter six, you depict models for social innovation toward a low carbon society. Do you ind processes of social innovation (utopia) may be
relevant in higher education?
University
•
•
•
•
In 2012 we saw among others “the Council for the Defence of British
Universities (CDBU)” as responses to politic-economic models of the
neoliberal university. First, do you see a marketization and instrumentalization of universities?
Do you see notions of the neoliberal university have relation to how academia responds to climate change?
Should inancial structures and grant models address issues of sustainability?
What do you regard as the key tensions in rethinking the university system
toward producing social-innovative models for a low carbon society?
In,’ Climate Change and Society’, you depict models for social innovation toward
a low carbon society. In many ways one may argue that the essence unfolds around
the concept of sustainability. You do not use the term; are there any particular
reasons for that?
APPENDIX
247
Appendix 5.5
Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical
natures e paradoxical cultures
Thomas Skou Grindsted*
Roskilde University, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, University Road 1, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 2 April 2014
Received in revised form
24 October 2014
Accepted 27 October 2014
Available online xxx
Geographical imaginations are vital to make sense of challenges to sustainability which are produced and
distributed across scale. Yet, a number of studies find that geography has been reluctant to integrate
sustainability issues in its curricula. Geography is particularly interesting and can contribute to education
for sustainability debates in various disciplines due to its strong tradition within the humanenvironment theme. This article presents an empirical analysis of contested ideas of sustainability approaches in Danish University geography degree programs, and the significance given to them by geographers. Hereby the paper critically examines political ecologies when introducing sustainability
themes into the curricula. In so doing, it is discussed how different sustainability typologies in education
bear relation to different ways of dealing with spatio-temporal tides and waves of the humanenvironment interface. It is concluded that though geographers find sustainability themes important
to geography, sustainability is more often implicit than it is explicit. This produces a number of dilemmas
and contradictions since geographers both seek to distance themselves from produced politics while at
the same time elucidating them. This finding reveals contradictions within and between traditional ESD
approaches, counterproductive to the aims of different typologies themselves. Since frictions between
different ESD approaches are fundamentally interdisciplinary, the relevance of this finding is significant
across disciplines. Thus, scholars and students should learn to go beyond the geopolitics of education in
order to transcend the paradoxical-culture-natures identified.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Geography education
ESD approaches
Curricula constructs
Human-environment interface
Political ecologies
Second nature
1. Introduction
Humans interact with the physical environment to the extent
that humans are now transforming the planet from one geological
epoch, the Holocene, towards a new geological era, the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2002; Steffens et al., 2011). The history of humanenvironmental interaction is indeed astonishing and the anthropocene conceptualizes the magnitude, scale and acceleration of the
per capita exploitation of natural resources (Reenberg, 2006; Griggs
et al., 2013).1 The journey of geographical transformations is also a
journey of the nature of time and space, which is why geographical
representations are absolutely vital to make sense of humanenvironment interaction and their policy implications (Castree,
2001). As Sayer states, “Global warming presents an enormous
* Tel.: þ45 46752127.
E-mail address:
[email protected].
1
The idea of the Anthropocene, can be traced back to a number of thinkers in the
early 19th Century, e.g. Valdimir Vernadsky's, mankind's geochemical work, Eduard
Suess's anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere into the ne€
osphere or
humans as an geological agent (Steffen et al., 2011).
threat to humanity, but the response from academia, including
geography, has been relatively slow (…). I find this surprising,
indeed astonishing, for there could hardly be a more important
geographical topic” (Sayer, 2009, p. 350).
In a world, where more than half of the planet's land surface
has been changed by human activities, geographers like Yarnal and
Neff (2004), Westaway (2009) and Lui (2011), reveal that the
integration of sustainable themes into curricula is desirable in the
UK and US and in some other European countries, e.g. Germany. In
general there is consensus among scientific and geographical
communities concerning the cause and effect of climate change
and unsustainable production patterns. Cook et al. (2013) find that
in 97.1% of more than 4000 peer reviewed articles published over
the past 20 years it is asserted that global warming is mainly or
entirely human induced. Correspondingly Oreskes (2004) shows
that 97% of research articles in high-impact factor journals like
Science, find climate change to be fundamentally anthropogenic.
Controversy, however, arises when dealing with strategic actions
and solutions to sustainability challenges since a given position
legitimizes a given political agenda (Morgan, 2011). Thus, the
geopolitics of education for sustainable development (ESD),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
0959-6526/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
APPENDIX
249
2
T.S. Grindsted / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10
environmental education (EE) sustainability in higher education
(HESD) or similar acronyms, produce complex dilemmas
(Corcoran and Wals, 2004; Sterling et al., 2013). This inevitably
tends to frame education as a change agent that socializes students
into accepting certain kinds of explanations, values and preanalytic assumptions (Lozano et al., 2013a; Hesselbarth and
Schaltegger, 2014).
While studies dealing with ESD and geography are growing
(e.g. Chalkley, 2006; Westaway, 2009; Firth, 2011), there is only a
limited number of studies on the second nature approach in
explaining, describing and evaluating how sustainability is socialized in geography in higher education. A second nature
perspective argues that nature is inescapably social. Nature is not
only defined and construed socially, but also modified physically
by humans (at all scales, from genetics to climate change), with
particular social interests involved in such transformations
(Castree, 2001, p. 3). According to the second nature perspective,
nature-society relations intertwine through socio-ecological processes in such a way that any dualism becomes meaningless, why
any examination of nature cannot ignore the social interests
involved in such work, either in research, in the classroom or text
books. Consequently, in any examination inheres political ecologies that cannot escape from the social processes of valuating
nature(s). The need to comprehensively take into consideration
methodological approaches in the interface of societyeenvironment interactions seems highly relevant to contemporary and
future sustainability challenges (Yarnal and Neff, 2004). Thus the
background of this study is based on a geographical approach,
addressing spatio-temporal figurations associated with ESD
theorization of the human environment interface. The rationale of
the study takes a second nature perspective, to explore ESD approaches in geography.
This paper contributes to this particular field of knowledge by
providing an empirical analysis of the ESD in education of geographers in Denmark. By providing a retrospective view of the
development of the human-environment theme the study explores what geographical approaches may offer to the ESD
debate. Secondly, it presents an empirical analysis of contested
ideas of sustainability approaches in Danish University geography, and the significance given by researchers for the education
of geographers. Lastly, the politics of representing nature in
relation to society (Greenberg and Park, 1994) when introducing
sustainability themes into curricula are critically examined.
Through the case of Danish University geography the following
questions have been addressed. 1) What ESD approaches are to
be identified in geography? 2) What political ecologies can be
associated with them? and 3) how do research geographers
address dilemmas of ESD? The remaining part of the paper discusses ESD typologies and contradictions, dilemmas and paradoxes of representing sustainability nature(s). Hereby the
findings of this paper on ESD as a fact based approach, ESD as a
norm based approach, and ESD as a policy based approach are
discussed (Molin, 2006; Grahn, 2011) and a comparison is made
between Vare and Scott (2007) ESD 1 and ESD 2 approaches,
Burandt and Barth (2010) syndrome and scenario approach. First,
however, it is valuable to reflect upon what the author has
elsewhere called spatio-temporal tides and waves (Grindsted,
2013) to examine how different ESD approaches bear relation
to representing the human e environment interface. Whereas
spatio-temporal tides refer to how different ontological and
epistemological positions change the ways in which scientists
deal with human-environment interactions, spatio-temporal
waves refer to the relevance, frequency and intensity given to
the human-environment interface, whatever topic is explored.
2. Spatio-temporal tides and waves and representations of
the human e environment interface
Geography may be one of the most prominent and oldest disciplines concerned with the conceptualization of humanenvironment interactions (Rasmussen and Arler, 2010). In a historical perspective it is interesting to observe that invitations to
upscale ecological themes have been numerous during the past
centuries. Geography goes much beyond dealing with the humanenvironment nexus, sustainability or climate change. Still to many:
“The theme of man-environment relation has never been far from the
heart of geographical research, and for many it has functioned as the
overriding theme” (Harvey, 1969, p.115). Since Vidal de la Blache
(1845e1918), Alexander von Humboldt (1769e1859) or John
Mackinder (1861e1947) geographers like Harlan Barrows (1923),
Carl O. Sauer (1927), Forsberg (1962) or Stoddard (1967) have
argued for upscaling ecological themes by defining the discipline in
such a way that geographers need to study human beings in relation to their environment (Christiansen, 1967; Stoddard, 1987;
Turner, 2002).
The history of the human environment theme, however, has
taken multiple forms and methodological approaches over the
years. Some geographers conceptualize the human-environment
theme more or less ad hoc, implicitly or explicitly, whereas others
organize it in constructs separating human and nature or build
certain interfaces.
Dialogue about these issues in ESD may not only better prepare
students for dealing with wicked and controversial problems like
sustainability, resilience or climate change. Dialogue about these
issues may also make students better understand the geopolitics of
scientific and educational practices that constitute the “object of
study” and fundamentally shape the relevance of geographical
thinking, questions asked and data collected (Castree, 2001).
Turner (2002) illustrates how the interface between the spatial
chorological approach and the human-environment theme has
been the dominating source of (often) conflicting identities.
Therefore the issue of human-environment reconfigurations is
addressed in the interface between identities that have dominated
in geography. These are conceived of as complex spatio-temporal
tides and waves intersecting, overlapping and conflicting; as a
mosaic of understandings often in opposition to other geographical
representations. For this reason next section, briefly consider how
determinism, the quantitative revolution and the cultural turn
reconfigured the human-environment theme.
2.1. Determination of nature e natures of determination
One spatio-temporal tide and wave concerns the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries' debates on environmental determinism with
their roots in Darwin. This debate argued against possibilism and
whether culture or nature played the determining part in the relationship (Christiansen, 1967). Explanations of determinism are often
causal and seek to demonstrate how bio-physical factors such as
climate, soil and altitude determine social and economic activity or
vice versa. Nature is external, is objective and exists independently
from humans (Castree, 2001). Legitimation of geographical knowledge relates to how geographers construct their object of study and
within the enlightenment tradition geographers built explanations
that objectified nature to be instrumentally used, tamed and
exploited (Harvey, 1996). Environmental determinism is still present
in today's sustainability debates, though the discussion whether
nature dominates culture has shifted completely. In the context of
ESD much environmentalism acknowledges that societies harm nature destructively across scales ranging from climate change to
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
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biodiversity loss. Humans play the dominant part of such socioecological transformations and reconfigure traditions of determinism; culture determines nature not vice versa (e.g. climate
catastrophism).
2.2. Natures of description e descriptive natures
Another shift in the way geographers have dealt with humanenvironment interactions relates to the descriptive tradition and
the quantitative revolution. Both studies on industrial society's
impact on local environments and the rise of the descriptive
tradition challenged simple environmental determinism (Turner,
2002). Positivism became a platform to combat what was regarded as speculative science, which is why universal regularities and
causal effects of the nature-society nexus became a focal point of
study. Mechanistic and universal nature(s) refers to nature as
external assuming society and nature are to be separated ontologically. Nature is non-social and it follows that natural resources
are fixed why ‘sustainable solutions’ refers to more efficient environmental management of these (external) resources. Such
mechanistic and universal perspectives from which nature is ultimately fixed and which encompasses a set of general rather than
contextual characteristics made human- and physical geography
drift apart: “This obviously implied that the traditional focus of Geography on Human-Environment relationships lost its defining status”
(Rasmussen and Arler, 2010, p. 38). Thus, ontological dualism, as
that of separating nature and society, was largely institutionalized
into disciplinary departments of physical geography and human
geography, into theoretical constructs, and into education and
curricula (Stoddard, 1987). The concept of nature is often constructed in opposition to the concept of culture, either implicitly or
explicitly, and suffers from dualist thinking as does much Western
philosophy. Such antagonisms have political implications because
they involve an attitude of detachment while at the same time
espousing a perspective of scientific objectivism (Birkeland, 1998).
In the context of ESD, nature is explored through assumptions of
scientific objectivism e nature ‘can speak for itself’. By way of
illustration, the gradualist perspective of climate change carries
references to the quantitative revolution whereby researchers only
need to elaborate the best methodological tools to be able to find
“objective facts” about nature's condition (Castree, 2001).
2.3. Cultures of nature e nature of cultures
The cultural or linguistic turn is yet another spatio-temporal tide
and wave that influenced human-environment debates. According
to Fitzsimmons (1989) and Birkeland (1998), among others, the
cultural turn led to a shift in the relationship between nature and
culture favoring socio-spatial formations so that “cultural geography
has lost touch with its basic relationship to the concept of nature”
(Birkeland, 1998, p. 230). Discursive constructions do share concern
for the effects of power for which reason constructionism tends to
be engaged in a critique of the way nature is construed. Constructions of nature nevertheless face the dilemma of the prison of
language: that one can never know if our conceptual construction
of nature corresponds to how nature actually appears (Demeritt,
2002). Yet, conceptualizations of culture are fundamental to environmental challenges. First, different traditions interpret and
explain (ir)regularities, (ir)rationalities, and pre-analytical assumptions differently; from environmentalism, determinism,
particularism, absolutism to essentialism (Rasmussen and Arler,
2010). Consequently, scholars fail to understand human environment interactions when ignoring the power relations, domination
and contested ideas involved in explaining socio-natural transformations. Second, knowledge is complex mixtures of knowing
3
nature(s) that constitute complex power relations with different
socio-material effects (Harvey, 1996). Dealing with humanenvironmental relations is neither an objective nor a neutral act.
Further, and more intriguing, knowledge produced tends to be
technocratic and politically biased, while claiming objective scientific status (Fitzsimmons, 1989; Lambert and Morgan, 2009). In
the context of ESD, the history of spatio-temporal tides and waves
underline the relevance of addressing the social character of nature
and critically exploring how in thought and practice the politically
contested values, moral or ethical aspects is dealt with when sustainability gets assembled in curricula constructs.
3. Methods
Discourses on materiality, whether mediated through text or in
the classroom, become dialectically tides and waves (of internalized
and externalized ‘facts’) by ways in which different domains form
habitual practices (Cook et al., 2013; Barth et al., 2014). This study is
based on the use of (peer) expert interviews and analysis of study
regulations (Table 1; appendix 1). As any curricula development can
be viewed as educational-ideological configurations, the empirical
analysis is based on interviews with research geographers to particularly address their teaching, opinion, use and explication of sustainability. Interviews were based in a phenomenological tradition,
whereby departure is taken from the individual interviewee's experiences, and the focus is on the subjective perception of the investigated topic. Thus, educational-political configurations were studied
in line with three ESD approaches, discussed by Skolverket (2001),
Molin (2006) and Grahn (2011). These authors discuss the
following three ESD typologies, here briefly reflected in a condensed
Table 1
Sample of interview participants.
Responder
Gender
Geographical Title
background
Institution
Age
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Responders
Total: 31
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Male
Female
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Female
Male
Male
Female
Male: 24
Female: 7
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Physical
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Physical
Physical
Physical
Physical
Human
Physical
Human
Human
Physical
Physical:17
Human:14
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Aalborg
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Copenhagen
Roskilde
Aalborg:3
Copenhagen:17
Roskilde:11
40e49
50e59
60þ
60þ
50e59
50e59
60þ
40e49
60þ
50e59
50e59
60þ
40e49
40e49
30e39
60þ
50e59
30e39
50e59
40e49
40e49
50e59
60þ
60þ
60þ
50e59
50e59
60þ
50e59
50e59
40e49
30e39: 2
40e49: 7
50e59: 12
60þ: 10
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Professor
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Professor
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof
Ass Prof: 24
Professor: 7
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
APPENDIX
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T.S. Grindsted / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10
form. First, the fact-based sustainability approach is based on the idea
of providing students with the right facts (that the teacher/science
claims to possess) that will make them able to become knowledgeable decision makers taking sustainability into consideration
(Skolverket, 2001; Grahn, 2011). Fact based sustainability approaches
connote tides and waves from the quantitative revolution. Solutions
are to be revealed from science itself, through better methods and
scientific facts. This implies that previous knowledge has been misguiding sustainability practices or is essentially wrong (typology of
essentialism). The norm based sustainability approach in contrast,
portrays values and norms as one of the core problems of unsustainable production patterns (Molin, 2006) closely aligned to ecocentrism. Ecocentrism outlines a profound critique of existing
production systems, as it relies upon a mechanistic/technocratic
worldview. Ecocentric perspectives incurred into the norm based
ESD approaches produces a moral/ethical critique of the mechanical
view on nature within the descriptive tradition. Thus it suggests that
humans have lost touch with nature, and need to replace the mechanistic world view (that produces technocratic knowledge and is
unable to treat nature as anything but a resource), with an esthetic
ecological perspective (Castree, 2001). In many ways norm based
sustainability learning bears reference to a reciprocal form of environmental determinism that aims to enable students to take norm/
ethical decisions based on scientific facts (that the teacher/science
claims to possess). But, it can also take form within the quantitative
revolution, replacing mechanical conceptualizations of nature with
an ecocentric perspective. The policy-based sustainability approach
depicts unsustainability as fundamentally a political matter (politics
involved in decision making in various scales, individually or collectively). In contrast to the previous ESD approaches, students are no
longer expected to take the right decision (Skolverket, 2001). Instead
multiple perspectives are presented, conflicts, interests and democracy perspectives, in understanding fights and negotiations
about natural resources and equity debates between and across
generations. Thus, (re)-constructivism provides the underlying basis
that enables students to critically examine alternatives, prospects and
interests involved in pursuing particular plans, solutions and strategies (Grahn, 2011). In practice the three typologies are intertwined in
ways that go much beyond the rhetoric of sustainability. Yet, the three
ESD typologies bear relation to different ways of dealing with spatiotemporal tides and waves. How these developments influence ESD
debates in various disciplines is in particular interesting in geography
due to its strong tradition in the human-environment theme (Turner,
2002; Bednarz, 2006; Cotton et al., 2013).
3.1. Data collection, process and sample
A thematic analysis was used to structure the empirical data
(Braun and Clarke, 2006). The interviews were produced in line
with Skolverket (2001) and Grahn (2011) using meaning condensation as described by Bryman and Bell (2011). Study regulations
(see appendix 1) can be acknowledged as the ‘law’ that constitutes
the legal and administrative basis, from which courses, curricula
and educational practices developed (Roskilde University 2005,
2006; Copenhagen University 2009a, 2009b and Aalborg University
2010a, 2010b, 2011). Study regulations state the administrative and
juridical basis of the study and are written by the individual study
boards for each education.2 Since 2009 the term sustainability
2
Studies at Danish universities undergo accreditation by an independent body
appointed by the Danish Ministry of Education. Also the universities' administration may propose changes to the study board. Study regulations state the purpose
of the study, structure of the study, content, acquired skills, competences, courses,
projects and seminars, and procedures for examination.
features in study regulations at Copenhagen University and Aalborg
University.
For this reason sustainability themes were identified in study
regulations and systematically, coded and categorized into the
framework of the fact, norm and policy based sustainability approaches. Examination of study regulations were combined with in
depth interviews with the chairs of the study boards including
interviews with 31 of 43 fulltime associate professors and professors attached to the education of geographers at Copenhagen,
Roskilde and Aalborg University (the three Danish universities that
offer an MA in geography). Thus, 31 out of a total number of 43
permanent research professors involved in educating geographers
were interviewed, hereof 24 full-time professors at Copenhagen
University, 15 full-time professors at Roskilde University and four
full-time professors at Aalborg University. Accordingly, the
numbers of researchers interviewed follow the size of the study
programs at Aalborg, Copenhagen and Roskilde Universities. Interviews were undertaken and recorded in Danish during 2012. As
the sample deal with 31 interviews, transcription has only been
translated into English when used in quotations. Interview were
anonymized and coded, following a qualitative content analysis
approach as described by Bryman and Bell (2011). Table 1 summarizes key figures from the interview participants. Note the
sample is gendered by being dominated by elderly men, as for
Danish universities in general where approximately 10 percent
female become professors.
The respondents were asked if they find climate change and
sustainability issues important to geographical education, what
they think of the concept of sustainability in relation to geography,
and if they include sustainability themes in their own teaching
(Adriansen and Madsen, 2009). Based upon open questions, interviews particularly address geographers' opinion, use and explication of sustainability in their teaching (Bryman and Bell, 2011).
Thus, interview questions were centered on perceptions of sustainability as it appears to the teachers/researchers themselves. The
qualitative analysis was constructed by thematically condensing
the interview material for each individual interview, coding each
interview on its own basis. Then, interviews were cross analyzed to
examine joint features as described by Braun and Clarke (2006).
Hereafter the interview material was categorized into Skolverket
(2001) and Grahn (2011) classification of ESD. In this respect, a
thematic approach is not inductive as elaborated in Braun and
Clarke (2006), but constitutes interplays between theoretical categories and empirical material. This method allows us to examine
the interplay between different data and return to the theoretical
constraints to examine their validity.
4. Curricula development at the human e environment
interface: dilemmas of approaches to sustainability
In what follows, a combination of interviews and study regulations are analyzed according to the Norm-, Fact and Policy based
ESD approach. As appears from the international literature (e.g.
Huckle, 2002; Bednarz, 2006; Sayer, 2009; Firth, 2011) geography
finds resonance in human-environment interactions, so an opportunity to articulate geography's particular role in dealing with
sustainability. Jahn et al. (2011) serves as an example of how geographers find the human-environment theme to be a platform for
linking ESD and geography. “The subject geography is of importance
in the context of ESD due to the analyses of human-environmentinteractions and their implications on a geographic area” (Jahn
et al., 2011, p. 22). Though nearly all Danish geographers interviewed remain critical towards the concept of sustainability itself,
29 of the 31 geographers interviewed find sustainability or related
concepts representing environmental issues, essential to
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
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5
Table 2
Interviews on sustainability approaches in geography: Examples of fact-based, norm-based and policy-based learning perspectives.
ESD as fact-based sustainability learning:
ESD as norm-based sustainability learning:
ESD as policy-based sustainability learning
Key characteristics
� Providing students with the right facts based on a
mass-balance principle between humans and their
engagement with nature
� Possess knowledge on and exceling in analysis of
ecological variables
� Damage control, minimize current environmental
problems through science and technology
� Ontological dualism, nature as external
� Essentialism/absolutism, based on scientific facts, it
is obvious what needs to be done
Key characteristics:
� Values and norms as a central means for addressing
sustainability
� Sustainability as a value that challenges existing
production and consumption patterns
� Developing a sense of a balanced relationship between human and nature
� Distinguish between facts and norms
� Ontologically intertwining the natural and the
social
� ESD as discursive constructionism
Example by quotation
“One of the core questions is: Are the data we observe
today in balance? In many respects such questions
are the same as the idea of sustainability.
Geographers are qualified in explaining facts about
the spatial dimension of data observed. Students
should be exemplary in analyzing the spatial
dimension of environmental facts” (Interview 16).
Example by quotation
“Occasionally I reflect upon the normative horizon in
planning and what we want in a teaching perspective.
As I teach in adaption and transferability the
sustainability approach is strongly integrated. But, I do
not use the term very often. Rather sustainability is an
implicit notion, an overall goal to strive for. (Interview
3).
Key characteristics:
� Depicts unsustainability as fundamentally a political matter
� Critical engagement with the politics of (un)sustainability and relation/correlation between
geographical location of natural resources and
geographical distribution of wealth, economic
growth and environmental harm.
� Multiple perspectives, power conflicts, interests
and democracy, in understanding fights and negotiations about socio-ecological challenges
� Nature as internal and external
� ESD as reconstructivism
Example by quotation
“Sustainability has become important to geography
since it corresponds to the interest of geography in
always integrating different perspectives to address a
problem. Because sustainability is a politico-ideological
concept, even a strong one I teach students to remain
critical about its implications, theoretically,
methodologically and epistemologically” (Interview
25).
geography. Two geographers interviewed rejected using sustainability concepts at all. Though environmental issues are important
to geography, they suggested related concepts like ecology, resilience or vulnerability are better suited for studying environmental
concerns (Interview, 5, 17). The analysis therefore also illustrates
fractions and frictions in the interface between the fact-based,
norm-based and policy-based ESD. As can be seen from Table 2,
norm-based, fact-based and policy-based ESD approaches are
identified in the interviews and both human and physical geographers contribute to them.
Norm-based ESD approaches are least represented in the interviews. Whereas a few interviews are explicit in teaching ethics
and values (Interview, 2, 3, 8, 10, 14, 24, 27, 30) they structure
normativity agendas as implicit curricula (Cotton et al., 2013).
Normativity agendas in favor of sustainability are generally rejected. If considered at all, they are represented as democracy perspectives, a critical understanding of power relations, and in favor
of a holistic approach. Moreover it represents an interdisciplinary
and integrated understanding of the physical, ecological, economic,
socio-cultural and political systems that shape the world (Interview, 3, 6, 10, 24, 30). To provide students with skills that enable
them to become change agents that serve the normative agenda of
sustainability has no purpose in geography; interviewees suggest,
“Sustainable values and ethical questions are an individual matter,
and have not been debated at an institutional level. It is nothing we
seek to form a common consensus about e that we will like to form
students in a certain way. Teachers have different agendas and enrich
students with different perspectives” (Interview, 9). Study regulations
never explicitly address ethics, norms, nor attitudes associated with
ESD or similar topics, though any curricula can be said to exist
outside the boundaries of implicit curricula constructs (Aalborg
University, 2010aþb, 2011; Copenhagen University, 2009aþb;
Roskilde University, 2006; Interviews). Thus, Danish Master degrees in geography seem, though reluctantly, to engage in what
Vare and Scott (2007) have termed ESD 2 learning. Whereas ESD 1
refers to moral development under“the promotion of informed,
skilled behaviors and ways of thinking, useful in the short-term where
the need is clearly defined” (Vare and Scott, 2007, p. 191), ESD 2
learning, is about building learners' capacity to think critically
about sustainability problems, also “about what experts say and to
test ideas, exploring the dilemmas and contradictions inherent to
sustainable living” (Vare and Scott, 2007, p. 191).
Fact-based ESD approaches as described by Skolverket (2001),
Grahn (2011) among others, represent nature as an integrated
part of socio-environmental interaction, still to be epistemologically objectified. Students become experts in producing, describing,
and using scientific facts, and in testing their validity, limitations
and possible application in society (Copenhagen University, 2009a;
Aalborg University, 2011). The dominant position connotes ‘a more
than fact-based perspective’. Facts represent complex climate systems and social practices. Assumptions of synthetic cause and effect
scenarios need supplementation of the social dimension of climate
change (interview, 1, 4, 9, 11, 12, 16, 19, 26). Despite the recognition
that 1) facts are historically contingent and change over time, and
2) sustainability is a contested term that cannot be reduced to
simple facts, assemblages from the quantitative revolution is
reminiscent. Thus, the fact-based ESD approach relies on the
grounds of scientific objectivism from where scientists can speak
about “the true condition of nature” in absolute terms. Hereby
science can derive objective facts about nature and how society
harms the biosphere. It follows that ESD as facts about sustainability or climate change, outlays a profound critique of existing
production and consumption systems, while judgments on the
basis on scientific facts convert into normative, moral or policy
formulations, that replaces a mechanistic worldview of nature with
‘objective’ ecocentrism (Castree, 2001). Also in study regulations
fact-based curricula constructs deal with ‘management of sustainability, through objective methodologies’ (Interview, 6, 8, 15, 18,
21, 28). Though facts are dynamic and change over time, it is
assumed that sustainability can be instrumentally controlled and
adjusted by decision making based upon objective scientific facts.
Thus, the ESD as facts ignore that these facts derived on objective
grounds are extrapolated to provide adequate knowledge to better
manage the very same objective nature. Rather it replaces previous
facts about nature with new facts, the one derived from a mechanistic/instrumental world view, the latter from an ecocentric one,
while both are claimed to be ‘objective in nature’.
Policy-based ESD approaches bear connotations to the second
nature perspective, power dynamics and interests involved in
education. Policy based ESD therefore suggests that issues of sustainability are a matter of politics rather than moral or empirical
facts. The understanding of wicked problems like sustainability or
climate change requires a reflective rather than an explanatory or
commercial ambition asking, what kind of sustainability with what
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
APPENDIX
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kind of agendas (Interview, 2, 5, 12, 13, 16, 28). “Sustainability requires a holistic approach, thus different agendas and perspectives are
part of education to let the students think critically” (Interview, 25).
Sustainability concepts are not only complex because they convey
multiple meanings; they are also outlived in images and storylines,
(from commercials, to media and utopian thinking) used by businesses (that pollutes and profits from nature simultaneously),
governments (who possesses the legal power to control and
manage human environment interactions) and organizations (that
politically engage in rights to manage nature) to argue for particular ‘sustainability’ interests (Castree, 2001). Critical thinking and
interdisciplinary approaches, therefore, are essential to understanding different practices and agendas in play as different
agencies acknowledge sustainability challenges and solutions
differently (Interview, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15, 20, 23, 31). While explication
of sustainability concepts promotes multiple and conflicting interests, it is assumed that nature is produced differently under
different governmental forms, “As a geographer it is imperative to
understand the spatial distribution of environmental harm, and how
this distribution is organized in and between different societies, between rich and poor or between the North and South” (Interview, 3).
It is interesting to observe that ecocentric and gradual sustainability perspectives are represented in the interviews. Approaches
outside mainstream sustainable development, e.g. critical or
radical approaches (deep ecology, eco-Marxism or eco-feminism)
are neither reflected in interviews nor study regulations (Study
regulation, Roskilde University 2005, 2006; Copenhagen University, 2009aþb; Aalborg University, 2010aþb, 2011).
The multiple ways geographers engage in teaching sustainability suggest responses that go beyond the traditional ESD 1 and
ESD 2 (Vare and Scott, 2007), fact-, norm- and policy-based ESD
approaches (Skolverket, 2001; Molin, 2006; Grahn, 2011). In practice the three ESD learning approaches enfold and unfold into one
another and produce complex dilemmas that encompass
educational-politico geographies of how sustainability themes are
enacted.
5. Findings: paradoxical cultures e paradoxical natures:
integrating sustainability into curricula as an implicit notion
As nearly all geographers interviewed found sustainability issues essential to geography, but remain critical about the notion, it
illustrates contradictory elements to the claimed relevance of
geographical work. As neither scientists nor students can escape
the value-laden proxy of sustainability significant dilemmas, fractions and frictions emerge when integrating sustainability into
curricula. Dilemmas, however, also go beyond fact-, norm- and
policy-based ESD approaches. In what follows this is discussed
through two subcategories, namely 1) the substitution of concepts
and 2) ESD as implicit curricula. These represent two educational
strategies for putting sustainability on the agenda and at the same
time hiding it.
5.1. Frictions and fractions: the importance of sustainability and the
substitution of concepts
The first source of reluctance to explicate sustainability in the
classroom involves criticism of values, ethics, moral and norms
implicated in framing scientific work around such concepts. Dilemmas lie in the nexus between multiple normative agendas,
different sustainability concepts that simultaneously reject the
value-laden content from which the concept cannot escape. ’Sustainability is a considerable sub-component to geographical work.
Sustainability is part of geography in itself as a mass balance principle
and systemic contemplations, through geography's holistic and
interdisciplinary dimensions. Having said that, many other aspects
are important to geographers and the phrase is sometimes inevitable. I prefer other terms, but the underlying basis is crucial to
geography” (Interview, 13).
Though a substantial number of the geographers interviewed
find sustainability themes relevant to geography, the concept in
itself rather belongs to the political sphere than the scientific.
Because of the norm and political by-products sustainability concepts rely upon (as well as any theme, key concepts or disciplines),
one solution is at first glance to replace the concept with another
(Interview, 1, 5, 6, 10, 12, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 31). “We need to
eliminate the concept of sustainability and replace it with ecology.
Sustainability is an empty concept that leads to nowhere. Instead
robustness or resilience for instance, concentrates ecological discussions into awareness of the conditions of a particular matter. So
resilience and ecology that is what should be central in geography”
(Interview, 22).
The implication appears to be to replace concepts rather than
replacing the relevance of themes such concepts envision depicting. As challenges of sustainability cannot be reduced to semantics,
frictions of being sympathetic to the notion of sustainability, collide
with the political implications. Though related concepts may be
more dynamic, progressive and intriguing, they cannot escape the
complexity, normative horizons and policy figurations involved in
dealing with nature. To replace one concept with another as a solution in itself, is to ignore the material changes the concepts seek
to explain, if it solely ends up in dispute about terminology
(Demeritt, 2002). Thus, the whole question about environmental
issues is of importance to geography, but which concept is most
suitable in analysing human-environmental concerns, encapsulates
discussions of the analytical and ontological status such concepts
rely upon. “Sustainability does not have the same ontological status as
a number of key concepts in geography. Landscape, region, place,
nation to global e all bear a strong ontological status. Sustainability is
not part of these concepts (…). It is a political concept rather than an
analytical concept” (Interview, 17).
Ontological assumptions as to displacements of concepts,
however, reveal another aspect that should be borne in mind.
From the second nature perspective, the human environment
theme amalgamates the spatio-chorological theme and cannot be
construed as being opposed to one another (Harvey, 1996). In
contrast curricula constructs in favor of the spatial-chorological
approach like urban studies (transformation of cities, one of six
MA qualification profiles at Copenhagen University), do not
explicate nature and environment, sustainability, climate change
nor resource themes (Study regulation, Copenhagen University,
2009, p. 5; Roskilde University, 2006). The reason may be that
urban geography is dominant in these courses. Urban geography
has a strong spatial tradition often separated from the human
environment theme (Turner, 2002). This is inherently paradoxical since much of the theoretical work urban studies rely upon
(e.g. David Harvey, Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift), refuse
ontological dualism, separating human and nature. Addressing
sustainability is like swimming against ontological tides and
waves in the spatio-chorological tradition (Interview, 5, 6, 9, 14,
15, 18, 21, 22, 25, 31). These concepts however are generally little
reflected upon with respect to their epistemological and ontological status. As action or inaction is unavoidably value laden,
scholars, students, and practitioners need to transcend normative, moral or policy configurations of ESD learning and discuss
dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes involved in different
agendas, as well as their epistemological and ontological
consequences.
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
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7
5.2. Frictions and fractions: integration of sustainability as implicit
curricula e learning agendas of socializing ‘sustainable’ nature(s)
6. Discussion: dilemmas, paradoxes and contradictions
within and between ESD approaches
Another subcategory identified underlines sustainability as an
implicit notion (Interview, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 22, 23, 25, 26,
28, 29). Thus, most of the researchers interviewed, when
reflecting on their teaching, rarely address sustainability explicitly, but integrate sustainability into curricula as an implicit
notion. “Sustainability is absolutely central in geography e at least
implicitly. The reason why it is not important as an explicit
concept is because I do not as such teach in sustainability, but
much of my teaching nevertheless concerns artifacts of sustainability. Students are highly interested in these matters, but we do
also call them climate adaption, resilience, vulnerability among
others” (Interview, 29). This outlines the contradiction that the
importance of sustainability contrasts ESD as implicit curricula.
Thus, ESD as tacit configurations depicts the supra-complexity of
sustainability in curricula constructs. This illustrates another
contradiction: the willingness to teach sustainability as an implicit norm orientation is highly acceptable among geographers,
and contrasts reluctance and criticism to explicate the concept in
classroom because of its biases. It merely hides them (Interview,
1, 7, 16, 22, 24, 28). The finding contradict the fact-based, the
norm-based and the policy-based ESD approaches, and are
counterproductive to the claimed and explicit relevance of them.
Then, if scientists, scholars or geographers do not make sustainability explicit, but are willing to accept it, inherent politics are
not there? Tacit information is neither logical, consistent nor
reflected methodologically; still it carries huge amounts of
knowledge that exists in the interface between subject and object, between human and nature relevant to the spatio-temporal
figurations (tides and waves) of co-constructing nature (Demeritt,
2002). The human-environment theme therefore embeds organized assumptions by the way one categorizes parts of the world,
whatever concept attached to it (Harvey, 1996). Similar to the
replacement strategy, sustainability as an implicit notion becomes bearer of policy intrigued dilemmas. Whether explicated
as particular contributions that ‘reclaim the high grounds’ of
geography (Stoddard, 1987) or intrinsic depictions that (both)
seek to distance from produced politics and elucidate them
simultaneously, the implicit extrapolation of sustainability converts into a form of implicit curriculum, accompanying political
ecologies. While seemingly expressing neutrality, as if sustainability is not there, it bears relation to the co-construction of
environmental consciousness that tends to be in advocacy of the
teacher's belief (cultural embodiment), without the student
(observer) becoming aware of it (Cotton et al., 2013).
The dilemma of course is that sustainability requires critical
thinking, which is why tensions, conflicts and rivalry become
constitutive and contradictory to sustaining sustainability simultaneously. To hide discussion of tacit curricula is contradictory to
‘ESD as politics’ itself, since students are taught to be aware and
critical towards agendas, interests, and strategies involved in
claiming particular sustainability agendas: except from the implicit
curricula, the immanent social natures associated with sustainability teaching. The puzzle from the second nature perspective is
that students learn to analyze the politico-ecological jigsaw of ESD
approaches as well. These ESD approaches uniform intrinsic natures about sustainability cultures. Dilemmas in explications and
explanation of the value-laden proxy of sustainability may be one
of the reasons why the analysis of study regulations reveals that
sustainability has a limited status in geography educations in
practice.
While contemporary ESD literature is nested in the need for
critical, holistic and interdisciplinary learning approaches (Rieckmann, 2012; Adomßent et al., 2014) few turn into theoretical discussions on the paradoxical natures and cultures in engaging with
ever accelerating humanenature interactions. From the second
nature perspective (Castree, 2001), traditional ESD typologies
(Skolverket, 2001; Vare and Scott, 2007; Grahn, 2011) have been
analyzed, and a number of contradictions, frictions and fractions
have been conveyed within and beyond the fact-based, norm-based
and policy-based ESD approaches. Thus, researchers engaged in
teaching university geography both find sustainability themes
central to educating geographers, and are reluctant to use the
concept of sustainability in the classroom. Both categories of
scholars seek to distance themselves from produced politics, whilst
at the same time elucidating them.
Though analyzed in the context of geography, these contradictions surpass the borders of geography, and are therefore relevant
to ESD practitioners in various interdisciplinary contexts. Rieckmann (2012), for instance, points to ESD competency in handling
incomplete and complex information. With the two sub-typologies
in mind, this could be extended to also envision competency in
analyzing and handling contradictions and paradoxes that align
with particular sustainability problems at hand, in order to produce
solutions that can overcome them. One implication of the paper is
that scientists, scholars and practitioners must deconstruct concepts like barriers and drivers, challenges and opportunities that
s et al., 2010; Karatzoglou, 2013).
much ESD builds upon (Segala
Similarly, scholars across disciplines need to reflect more carefully
on contradictions and paradoxes as well. The implication of the
former is that journal articles, teaching and dissemination of
knowledge also risk being subject to green washing and branding
itself (interests involved in being highest on sustainable metric
leagues, best practice cases). The implication of the latter may be
that students should also be invited to think critically about the
subtle political ecologies engaged in different ESD approaches and
their socio-material effects. This enables students, teachers and
practitioners to explore the double level of controversy, (Lambert,
1999; Morgan, 2011) thematic and methodological, socioenvironmental paradoxes, whatever perspective on nature is
taken. Thus, different ontologies (tides) and anthologies (waves)
have different socio-material effects, as e.g. norm-, fact- and policybased sustainability approaches produce different political ecologies. What types of social natures exist within ESD with what interests involved? Who benefit from those political ecologies
produced and with what socio-ecological consequences? Such a
perspective encourages students to understand the multiple dilemmas, complexities and contradictions involved in ESD itself.
Though fact-, norm- and policy-based ESD approaches are
identified, contradictions, frictions and fractions suggest one must
not only live with, but also address and respond to social biases of
producing paradoxical cultures and paradoxical nature(s). What is
considered the right knowledge, skills and attitude in norm-, factand policy-based ESD approaches exhibits rivalry over different
political ecologies. Henceforth educational-politico assemblages of
intended learning outcome, produce different social natures, why
scientists and students must strive for better understandings of
how such depictions come to embody scientific habitual traditions
(Castree, 2001; Cook et al., 2013).
By analogy, Burandt and Barth (2010) discuss the syndrome ESD
approach and scenario ESD approach in the context of sustain-
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
APPENDIX
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ability science. The syndrome approach is based on the thesis that
the dynamics of global change can be attributed and addressed
through a number of manageable and functional patterns. It is the
non-sustainable courses of these dynamic patterns that are identified as syndromes to global environmental change (Burandt and
Barth, 2010) e and thus can be re-managed and manufactured in
more sustainable ways. In contrast the scenario approach fosters
systematic thinking about future socio-ecological change, integrating complex, long-term and uncertain issues. In an educational
context, therefore, the scenario approach benefit from being
fundamentally interdisciplinary. It fosters interdisciplinary
thinking that engages in critical thinking about setting future results, back-casting and modelling them.
The syndrome approach bears relation to the fact-based
learning approach by analyzing facts about the assumed syndrome conditions of nature. Developed by the German Advisory
Council on Global Change the syndrome approach represents
spatio-temporal tides and waves from which ESD practitioners and
scientists “as doctors” need to intervene in nature. Fact-based
learning transforms complex systems into organized ‘objective’
knowledge constructs, by ways in which scientific knowledge
mutually becomes organized power relations as to what kind of
knowledge to be instrumentally used to adjust interaction with
nature (Urry, 2011). In this approach, nature is a source and a raw
material for production that can be exploited in different ways
(Burandt and Barth, 2010). It follows that the syndrome of natural
management is when natural use is not maximized fully due to
devastating practices. In a holistic manner organized within the
framework of cause e effect, limitations and opportunities of natural resource management, one can speak of different syndrome
conditions caused by different actions. As a result different facts
provided and modeled produce different scenarios, which legitimize different actions and uses of natural resources. Thus, syndrome and fact-based ESD approaches concurrently produce ESD as
politics. This recognition featured in ESD as an implicit notion
produces a double level of controversy since, when willing to
accept sustainability as inherent in curricula, it is like accepting not
being reflective about the values, norms, ontologies, and organized
assumptions. Consequently also implicit curricula convert into
implicit political ecologies.
Also the policy based-ESD approach faces controversy that
represents different spatio-temporal tides and waves. Vare and
Scott (2007), Burandt and Barth (2010), and Grahn (2011) suggest
different ESD typologies (e.g. ESD1, ESD 2, syndrome approach,
scenario ESD approach) and innovative approaches to integrate ESD
(Barth et al., 2014). These approaches, in different ways distinguish
values from facts and policies from norms, while at the same time
they claims the importance of ethics and values (Lozano et al.,
2013b; Wals, 2014). Policy based ESD suggests students no longer
learn the norms, values, explanations or attitudes that the teacher
or those in authority claim most suitable. Thus, the typology appears as if political ecologies are no longer embedded within them.
The implicit curriculum either ESD represented as an implicit
notion, or manifold through the policy-based ESD approach, is
contradictory in itself since students are expected to be aware of
interests and strategies involved in claiming particular sustainability agendas, except from the implicit curricula, and the immanent social natures of (sustainability) cultures in teaching.
Whatever ESD approach or perspective on nature one takes,
political choices and values are situated in the play of power that
strives for particular normative goals. Harvey (1996) points to
values and normative horizons as ‘utopian moments of reflectivity’
embedded in practices of power over possible futures. Therefore
the possible futures produced in science and education are never a
question of choosing between different forms of objective and
neutral knowledge, but between different forms of normative
knowledge. In this perspective ESD connotes to nature(s) aligned
with bio-centrism and/or ecocentrism assumed to process society
toward a more sustainable condition (Hesselbarth and Schaltegger,
2014; Wals, 2014). As humanity are faced with the Anthropocene
era (Crutzen, 2002), spatio-temporal tides and waves of dealing
with the human environment interactions are ever more complex,
producing ever more complex paradoxical natures and cultures.
The quest for ESD is how to tackle these paradoxes across disciplines since frictions and fractions within and between different
ESD approaches are inherently interdisciplinary.
7. Conclusions
This paper presents an empirical analysis of research geographers' considerations when integrating sustainability into Danish
University geography curriculum programs. From the second nature perspective the study addresses contested ideas of integrating
sustainability into curriculum and discusses the relevance of
geographical imaginations on humanenature interactions when
dealing with ESD approaches.
From the analysis it can firstly be concluded that, though 29 of
31 research geographers interviewed find sustainability essential to
geography, nearly all remain critical of sustainability concepts,
hence reluctant to explicate them. Thus, sustainability is more often
addressed implicitly than explicitly. The claimed relevance of ESD is
contradictory to the actual practice of addressing sustainability as
an implicit notion. Secondly, it can therefore be concluded that the
ways geographers engage in teaching sustainability also go beyond
the ESD 1 and ESD 2, fact-, norm- and policy-based ESD approaches.
Thus, the study reveals two sub-typologies: 1) ESD as implicit
curricula, and 2) ESD as replacement of concepts, which represent
two different educational strategies for putting sustainability on
the agenda while hiding it. This finding reveals contradictions
within and between the fact-based, the norm-based and the policybased ESD approaches, which are counterproductive to the aims of
different typologies themselves. It is thirdly concluded that geographers produce paradoxical culture-natures(s) when dealing with
dilemmas of sustainability, as they both seek to distance themselves from produced politics while at the same time elucidating
them. This has deep implications across disciplines (e.g. science,
engineering, business academics). In order to transcend the
paradoxical-culture-natures identified, scholars, students and
practitioners across discipline need to address normative, fact or
policy configurations of ESD and discuss dilemmas, contradictions
and paradoxes involved in different agendas to better respond to
them.
8. Further research
The research presented in this article opens the terrain of a
second nature approach in exploring contested ideas of ESD.
Though the study analyzes the ‘nature(s)’ of ESD in geography,
contradictions surpass the borders of geography, and the findings
are relevant to ESD practitioners and future research across discipline. In particular this study suggests further examination should
address contradictory elements in and between different ESD approaches. This may include but are not limited to:
� Examination of ESD practices that look beyond barriers and
drivers, challenges and opportunities as much ESD built upon,
since sustainability contradictions and paradoxes are imbedded
in them as well.
� ESD need approaching sustainability challenges with
geographical imaginations in various spatial contexts. What
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
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T.S. Grindsted / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10
�
�
�
�
appears to be a solution in one scale may produce sustainability
challenges in another. To achieve such an understanding is not
only relevant for geographers, but is relevant to ESD in various
(inter) disciplinary contexts
Critical self-examination and studies of scholars, students and
practitioners own reflectiveness towards the normative, moral
or policy configurations within ESD learning and the dilemmas,
contradictions and paradoxes that cling to them.
Examination of ESD as a practice that addresses and produces
particular socio-natures.
Further research, across discipline on ESD as replacement of
concepts and ESD as implicit curricula. Can similar tendencies
be found in other disciplines, areas or themes?
Examine and develop curricula so that students learn to analyze
the contradictory elements of sustainability, ESD approaches
and the implicit curricula as well. How can curricula programs
further develop and integrate this?
Acknowledgment
The research undertaken has not received financial support.
Instead, it has been valued with insightful contributions, discussions and critical reflection by Associate Professor, Henrik Toft
Jensen, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change,
Roskilde University, Denmark; Professor, Bo Elling, Department of
Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University,
Denmark; Associate Professor Juanita Sundberg, University of
British Columbia, Canada, Associate Professor, Rodrigo Lozano,
Utrecht University, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Netherlands. Additionally I am indebted to thank four
anonymous revivers as well as Andrew Crabtree for language
assistance.
Appendix 1. List of study regulation documents
Study regulation for geography at Roskilde University (2006),
Bachelor and Master, Department of Environmental, Social and
Spatial Change.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University
(2009a), Bachelor, Department for Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University
(2009b), Master, Department for Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2010a),
Bachelor, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2010b),
Master, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2011),
Bachelor, Department of Development and Planning.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.06.007.
Westaway, J., 2009. A sustainable future for geography? Geography 94 (1), 4e12.
Yarnal, B., Neff, R., 2004. Whither parity? The need for a comprehensive curriculum
in human-environment geography. Prof. Geogr. 56 (1), 28e36. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1111/j.0033-0124.2004.05601005.x.
Please cite this article in press as: Grindsted, T.S., Educating geographers in an era of the anthropocene: paradoxical natures e paradoxical
cultures, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.086
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Appendix 7.1
Review of International Geographical Education Online ©RIGEO Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2013
‘One just better understands.....when
standing out there’: Fieldwork as a
Learning Methodology in University
Education of Danish Geographers
Thomas S. GRINDSTED1
Roskilde University, DENMARK
Lene M. MADSEN2
University of Copenhagen, DENMARK
Thomas T. NIELSEN3
Roskilde University, DENMARK
Abstract
The process of becoming a geographer is by no means simple and incorporates huge amounts of
disciplinary embodiment. This paper provides an example of how this is enacted by exploring the
perceptions of fieldwork within the education of Danish geographers. Firstly, the history of education
of Danish geographers is unfolded. Secondly, it is shown that despite quite different organisational
structures, in terms of the way that fieldwork is introduced and the educational structure in general;
only little variations in learning objectives can be identified between the three Danish universities that
educate geographers. Thirdly, based on an empirical study of Danish university geographers, we find
three different perceptions of fieldwork as a learning methodology: fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory,
fieldwork as sensuous realisation and fieldwork as a meta-theoretical practice. The results show that
these three perceptions are not allocated to different academics or traditions, meaning that the
individual researcher often encompasses more than one view of fieldwork either in relation to his or
her own research or in relation to the education of future geographers. The categories of fieldwork
presented, therefore, do not support the often claimed dichotomy between physical and human
geography. Instead, the openness of geography as a synthesis discipline is found.
Keywords: Perceptions of fieldwork, learning methodology, university level, Denmark
1
Corresponding author: PhD. Student, Geography, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University,
Universitetsvej 1, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark. tskoug[at]ruc.dk
2 Associate Professor, Lene M. Madsen, Department of Science Education, Østre Voldgade 3, 1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Lmmadsen[at]ind.ku.dk
3 Associate Professor, Thomas T. Nielsen, Geography, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde
Universitetsvej 1, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark. nielsentt[at]ruc.dk.
© Review of International Geographical Education Online
ISSN: 2146-0353
260
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Introduction
In the public imagination geographers tend to be identified with maps, globes, travel
plans and fieldwork. The research field of geography is constantly contested both from
within the research field itself and from the outside when, for example, new fields of
knowledge emerge like climate change (for a UK example see Sidaway & Johnston
2007).
All this has relevance to the education of new geographers. They are entering a field
in constant development and are supposed to navigate their own enactment of being a
geographer. The process of becoming a geographer is by no means simple and enfolds
huge amounts of disciplinary embodiment. Studies have shown that adapting
geographical competences is significantly different in different cultural settings, which
give emphasis to various elements of geography (Simandan 2002, Nairn 2007). A
growing number of papers in this journal (RIGEO) focus on geography education in
different countries and cultural settings. Through their analyses of the great variety of
geography education we have a rich source of understanding the issues of becoming a
geographer, however more implicitly explored (e.g. Resnik Planinc 2011, Giorda & Di
Palma 2011, Segeren 2012).
In this paper we aim to contribute to this particular field of knowledge by providing
an empirical analysis of the education of geographers in Denmark. This is done by,
firstly, providing a retrospective view of the development of geography at university
level and its relations to secondary school level. Secondly, we present an empirical
analysis of contested ideas of fieldwork given significance by researchers at universities
for the education of geographers. The analysis is framed by Zenlinsky’s three fieldwork
categories (Zelinsky 2001). Finally, we discuss the results that have bearing on the
education of future geographers and the importance of different cultural settings when
studying fieldwork traditions in geography.
The methodological approach of emphasising fieldwork to embrace contemporary
geography consists of a duality. Firstly, it suggests the notion of becoming familiar with
the field(s) of geography throughout education. Secondly, it suggests the idea of being
situated in the field as a learning methodology. By exploring contested ideas of
fieldwork, it is hoped to go beyond this being and becoming in geographical education
(Gould 1999, Zelinsky 2001).
Human geographers’ fieldwork is sometimes cocooned as the art of collecting shared
memories in public space, while physical geographers tend to associate fieldwork with
objective data collection and their spatial characteristcs in the physical environment
(Fuller et al. 2006, DeLyser & Karolczyk 2010). Others see fieldwork as the art of
bringing together theory and practice. For others again fieldwork represents a
methodological approach to bring space into being in theoretical formulations.
Certainly, most of us agree that fieldwork is a learning methodology (Scott, Fuller &
Gaskin 2006, Hovorka & Wolf 2009). Fieldwork is relevant to many geographers and is
by many considered to be among the core ‘cultural’ training and educational efforts in
becoming a geographer (Kent et al. 1997, Fuller et al. 2006, Hope 2009). This brings us
to our research questions: How, therefore, is fieldwork taught in contemporary Danish
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geography? How is fieldwork represented in curricula? And how do university
geography researchers conceive of fieldwork as a learning methodology?
Methodology
The methodological approach to analyse the current teaching of geography is designed
to examine, firstly, the history of Danish geography – in particular, to emphasise the
human-nature theme, in which fieldwork traditions dominate – secondly, the present
educational-politico framework of how fieldwork is given priority in curricula (and their
formal requirements); and thirdly, how these requirements are enacted in practice, their
status in university geographers’ interpretation of fieldwork as an educational tool. For
many university geographers’ fieldwork has served as a central component not only of
their own education but also later in their research and teaching activities. For this
reason, we found it valuable to consider the plurality of geographical interpretations by
exploring the complexity and multi-dynamical ways in which fieldwork is practised and
contested by Danish university geographers (Hope 2009). The concept of fieldwork is
indeed dynamic and enriches geographical work in multiple ways and traditions. Often
clear geographical imaginations blossom when fieldwork is mentioned. Yet, it is
sometimes hard to give a concise and condensed answer of what fieldwork actually is
and how we learn to practise it. This is simply because fieldwork is something we do
tacitly, implicitly and explicitly (Sæther 2007). The methodological approach, therefore,
aims to grasp the duality between becoming familiar with the field(s) of geography and
being situated in the field as a learning methodology (Gould 1999).
To address this duality of being and becoming, we analyse the empirical data through
an analytic design inspired by Zelinsky’s (2001) argument for three general categories
of fieldwork. The first is a commercialised form of fieldwork, in which the fieldwork is
based on the normative agenda to support the interst of a client. Fieldwork with a
reflective rather than a commercial ambition is included in Zelinsky’s second category.
Here, fieldwork is conducted to solve a research question. Fieldwork may be
standardised through new ways that need to be integrated into the existing schema. The
last category is fieldwork as an ad hoc, impulsive and informal practice (Zelinsky
2001). In this paper, the fieldwork categories of Zelinsky are used as a framework for
analysis since they stress multiplicity in explaining human-nature representations, while
leaving room for understanding how such depictions come to embody scientific habitual
history-disciplinary traditions. Thus, all empirical interview data and study regulations
were categorised and condensed into Zelinsky’s framework. In this way, we hope that
the analysis has much to say about contested ideas of fieldwork within geography and
can unfold how fieldwork encompasses multiple geographical disciplinary approaches.
Moreover, emphasis on fieldwork serves as a way of highlighting traditional
distinctions between physical and human geography. Thus, recognition of the diversity
among human geographers and physical geographers who, for instance, do not work
with human-nature relationships, is combined with asking, for example, about humannature relationships within fieldwork in the contemporary education of geographers.
This approach makes it possible to see how fieldwork is conceptualized and how this
influence how students become geographically trained and their understanding of
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human-nature interactions developed (Hovorka & Wolf 2009, DeLyser & Karolczyk
2010).
Data collection, process and sample
During 2012, interviews were conducted with almost all permanent employed
geographers at three Danish universities, the only higher education insitutions in the
country offering geography programmes. The interviews had a special focus on
fieldwork in relation to the education of geographers. All full-time, permanent scientific
staff, associate professors and professors teaching geography at Copenhagen, Roskilde
and Aalborg universities were interviewed, except researchers who were either on
fieldwork themselves, visiting other universities, attending conferences, or authors of
this paper. Thus, 31 of 42 university geographers were interviewed – 42 being the total
number of permanent researchers of geography involved in the education of
geographers in higher education programmes in Denmark. In total, 24 full-time
associate professors and professors at Copenhagen University, 15 full-time associate
professors and professors at Roskilde University and four full-time associate professors
and professors at Aalborg University were interviewed.
The authors of this paper are both insiders and outsiders in relation to former and
present colleagues within this group of university geographers. Further, all three authors
are insiders in relation to the research matter, because we are all doing research within
the field of geography like our interviewees. To address this double insider role, we
have followed the recommendations of Adriansen & Madsen (2009). Firstly, we
acknowledged that some interviewees were too close to establish an
interview/interviewee relationship and, therefore, certain that the author doing the
interview was not too close to the interviewee. Secondly, we paid special attention to
pursuing ‘you know’ answers. In the interview-situation the responders were all asked
similar questions about the role of fieldwork for the education of geographers. What did
they understand by fieldwork? And what did they regard as the most important things
they learnt through fieldwork? Further, in their opinion, can one become a geographer
without being on fieldwork during his or her education? These questions qualify our
examination of contested ideas of fieldwork as a learning methodology. To be insiders
in relation to one’s research matter means that we have access to and produce valuable
research results otherwise not found (within the field of geography, see e.g. Simadan
2002, Madsen & Adriansen 2006, Madsen & Winsløw 2009).
A thematic analysis was used to analyse and structure the empirical data (Braun &
Clarke 2006). The thematic analysis was situated in a phenomenological approach,
where departure is taken from the individual interviewee’s experiences, and the focus is
on the subjective perception of the investigated topic. The research data were produced
in line with Zelinsky’s fieldwork categories using meaning condensation as described
by Kvale (1996). In this respect, a thematic approach is not inductive as elaborated in
Braun & Clarke (2006), but constitutes an interplay between theoretical categoreis and
empirical material. To organise the data material and construct the resulting categories,
we posed an analytical question: what are the interviewees’ perception of the role and
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relevance of fieldwork in the education of geographers in relation to the outcome for the
students, and in relation to the students’ process of becoming a geographer?
Interview methods are valuable in the analysis of contested ideas of fieldwork, but
were also supplemented by examination of study regulations to explore the formal
depictions of fieldwork. Since study regulations can be acknowledged as the ‘law’ that
constitutes the legal and administrative basis, they are considered to be a useful
analytical object reflecting the background from which courses, curricula and
educational practices develop (Roskilde University 2006, Copenhagen University
2009a, 2009b and Aalborg University 2010a, 2010b, 2011). Thus, in these documents
fieldwork, field courses and fieldwork requirements were identified.
Findings
History of geography education in Denmark
The teaching of geography in Danish universities has both in the past and in the present
sought academic identity through ‘the geographical experiment’; that is, ‘an experiment
in keeping nature and culture under the one umbrella’ (Livingstone 1992:190). Indeed,
in ‘Jorden og Menneskelivet’ (The Earth and the Human Life), the tellingly entitled
four-volume handbook that for some decades was core reading for Danish students of
geography, the field was (with an underlying measure of environmental determinism)
specified in this way:
The task of geography is to depict the Earth as the home and field of activity of
human beings. Land and people, nature and culture, are the topics the
geographer strives to connect; his [sic!] goal is to demonstrate how human life
and culture are conditioned by the Earth’s natural conditions and utilise the
possibilities afforded by the Earth’s nature (Vahl & Hatt 1922: 1; here quoted
in translation from Larsen 2009:15).
As one may note, fieldwork is not far from the heart, the methodological study that
brings together nature and culture, land and people.
In their emphasis on the physical conditions for economic life, Vahl and Hatt could
be said to follow the tradition of Malthe Conrad Bruun (1775–1826), the exiled Dane,
who in Paris (as Malte-Brun) authored the renowned Précis de la Géographie
Universelle (1810–1829) and, in 1821, co-founded the first geographical society,
Société de Géographie (Bredal 2011). As we will outline in this section, such focus on
the human-nature relationship has been both a cornerstone and a stumbling block in the
evolution of Danish university geography, in which the notion and use of fieldwork
seems to play its part.
In name, if certainly not always in practice, geography has been a part of the Danish
university world since c.1635, when the first professor of geography and history was
appointed at Copenhagen University. Until the establishment of Aarhus University, in
1928, Copenhagen housed the only university in Denmark. Yet, the field was for long a
more or less neglected appendage to other teaching and research interests, and we have
to look to the second half of the nineteenth century for the emergence of geography as a
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distinct university discipline (Christiansen, Kingo Jacobsen & Nielsen 1979). As in
several other countries, the establishment of Danish university geography was preceded
by the 1876 formation of a geographical society: The Royal Danish Geographical
Society (RDGS). The establishment of the RDGS was not detached from educational
questions. Its object was (and is) thus ‘both to further knowledge about the Earth and its
inhabitants and to extend the interest in the geographical science’ (quoted in
Christiansen 2005:7), and one of its architects, Edvard Erslev (1824–1892), was a
prominent autodidact geographer, a teacher of school geography and the author of
several influential geographical textbooks. Yet, the initiators mainly represented
military, commercial and explorative interest (Illeris 1999, Christiansen 2005).
The RDGS played a part in the establishment of Danish university geography, but it
was particularly the introduction of geography as an upper secondary school subject –
and the resulting need for qualified teachers – that, in 1883, led to the appointment of
Ernst Løffler (1835–1911) as reader in geography. Løffler’s position, which five years
later was transformed into a professorship, was thus directly linked to the 1883
introduction of a graduate-level final examination (skoleembedseksamen) in natural
history and geography aimed at teaching in the upper secondary school. Shortly before
his death, Løffler wrote that it had been the vocation of his life ‘to bring geography to
our university as an established and fully-entitled subject’ (quoted in Buciek 1999:41),
and his personal struggle to get an academic foothold was intimately linked with the
establishment of geography at Copenhagen University. Much like Halford Mackinder
argued that it ‘is the duty of the geographer to build a bridge across the abyss’, between
the natural sciences and the study of humanity, ‘[l]op off either limb of geography and
you maim it in its noblest part’ (Mackinder 1887:145), Løffler found that ‘neither nature
nor the human life can be excluded without in that way maiming geography as a
science’ (quoted in Christiansen, Kingo Jacobsen & Nielsen 1979:393). Also, for
Løffler, a ‘holistic’ approach to human-nature relationships was a key to the academic
identity of geography. He emphasised the human side, however, and was not pleased by
the discipline’s drift towards the natural sciences in the last decade of his life (Buciek
1999). It should in this respect be kept in mind that the introduction of geography had
been met with scepticism at the Faculty of Science, which questioned the need of
geography, as ‘all the component parts of the field are already present’; this opposition
was particularly overcome by the new need for geography teachers (Christiansen
2005:13). The education of teachers for the upper secondary school came in many ways
to mark the development of Danish geography education for the next hundred years. In
the words of Martin Vahl (1869–1946), professor of (physical) geography (1921–1940):
‘the vast majority of those who study geography at Copenhagen University intend to
become teachers in the upper secondary school’ (Vahl 1924:122). In fact, looking back
on the early history of geography at Copenhagen University, three geography professors
found that ‘scientific geography has paid dearly for sacrificing so much of its strength
on the altar of the school’ (Christiansen, Kingo Jacobsen & Nielsen 1979:391).
To qualify graduates for the upper secondary school was also the primary reason for
establishing Danish geography education at Aarhus University. More specifically, the
aim was also to qualify history graduates to teach geography. For this reason, and in
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contrast to the situation at Copenhagen University, the chair in geography was situated
at the Faculty of Arts. This was undoubtedly the reason for the Copenhagen professors’
emphasis on physical geography!
Today, Aarhus University no longer offers a Master’s Degree in Geography, and
many related disciplines at the university have substituted much of what geographers
previously regarded to be core geographical themes. In contemporary Danish
universities, a Geography Master’s Degree is offered at Aalborg, Copenhagen and
Roskilde. The three institutions, however, have quite different educational structures
and organizational traditions, which make them interesting subjects for analysis. The
diversity in teaching geography is still set to be inherited by the history-geographical
battlefields described above of which human-environment relationships continue to
provide dynamism, enthusiasm and lively discussion. Intended learning outcome is
always influenced by political configurations. Fieldwork by no means counteracts, but
remains a gathering point for human and physical geography to assemble as ‘curricula
constructs’ and to determine how fieldwork is taught (Illeris 2012).
Present education of Danish geographers and fieldwork affiliations
In the Danish school system geography is taught as an independent subject from lower
secondary school (7–9 class) and in upper secondary school (1–3 G)4; it is mandatory in
the first year and optional in the following two years. In primary school, geography is
taught in 1–6 as ‘Natur og teknik’ (Nature and Technology) together with physics,
chemistry and biology.
The education of teachers in Denmark is split in two: one for primary teachers that
takes place at University Colleges (CVU), and one for secondary teachers and
university teachers that takes place at the universities. Besides the keen relationship
between geography at university and in upper secondary school, which is demonstrated
in the history of geography education, contemporary geography is also characterised by
strong relations between the geography curriculum at university and the secondary
level. Within the last 30 years, the subject of geography has lived a turbulent life in
secondary school (STX and HF). The relation between human and physical geography
has been in focus especially. In the beginning of the 1970s, geology disappeared from
the school subject of geography and physical geography could only be included to
explain cultural problems. Thereby, human geography alone denoted the subject (Dolin
2007). In the 1980s, the role of geography in secondary school was threatened and the
number of hours was reduced significantly. However, today the relation between human
and physical geography is equal. With the reform of 2004 (known as the
Gymnasiereformen 2005), geography was once again threatened and almost did not
survive in secondary schools. The argument was that geographical knowledge was
obtained in other subjects. However, due to a focus on geography as a science subject
geography survived even more reduced and now under the name physical geography.
4
In Denmark there are four types of upper-secondary schools giving equal opportunity to enter the higher education system
(HTX, HHX, HF and STX). STX is a non-vocational general type of upper secondary school; HF is the same but focused and
can be completed in two years compared with three years for STX. Both HHX and HTX are vocational schools specializing in
business and science and technology respectively. Only at STX and HF is geography part of the curriculum.
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This has meant a restructuring of learning objectives and a focus on new teaching
approaches (Volkers 2007).
There has been a dual relation between the development of geography at the
universities and the secondary level. It has been argued that the ‘collapse’ of the subject
in secondary school was the result of the extensive discussions in the 1970s about the
identity of geography at the university level as regards human and physical geography
(Dolin 2007). However, the changes in the secondary geography curriculum have also
led to changes in the university curriculum. For example, the secondary school reform
of 2005 and later changes have served as leverage at the university by introducing
structural changes to curricula in order to comply with upper secondary school teacher
requirements (BEK nr 692 af 23/06/2010, and BEK nr 735 af 22/06/2010).
At all three universities (Copenhagen, Roskilde and Aalborg), where an education in
geography is offered, both physical and human geography are taught. Thus, both
research and teaching in physical and human geography take place.
Geography at Copenhagen is organised to allow students to have a minor subject
besides geography (and vice versa). Therefore, 45 of 180 ECTS at the undergraduate
level are allocated to a subdicipline to meet the upper secondary teacher requirements.
The structure of the study complies with secondary school reform to educate two
disciplinary teachers. Thus, bachelor students are introduced to core geographical
theories and methods that correlate themes required to educate upper secondary school
teachers. Based on problem-based analysis students are introduced to obligatory courses
in physical and human geography. Obligatory courses for undergraduate students are,
among others, Basic Statistics (7.5 ECTS), the Physical & Human Landscape (15
ECTS), GIS & Cartography (7.5 ECTS) and Climate, Soil & Water (7.5 ECTS) (Study
regulation 2009a).
At graduate level secondary school requirements no longer give precedence to
courses offered. Students choose one of the six specialisations offered that differentiate
the Master of Science in Geography & Geoinformatics into the following qualification
profiles: 1) Ecological Climatology and Climate Changes, 2) Geomorphology,
Processes and Landscapes, 3) Global Environmental Soil Sciences, 4) Remote Sensing
of the Bio-Geosphere, 5) Environment, Society and Development and 6)
Transformation of Cities and Landscapes (Study regulation, 2009b). Thus, the education
is structured to give core geographical qualifications supplemented with qualification
profiles of the student’s choice.
As for fieldwork requirements in study regulations at the University of Copenhagen,
two obligatory field courses are given at bachelor level. The organisational structure
does not per se encourage interdisciplinary links between physical and human
geography – one field course is given in human (7.5 ECTS) and physical (7.5 ECTS)
geography respectively. At graduate level 15 ECTS are allocated to six optional courses
of which four are field courses: Field- and method course (15 ECTS), Field and method
course SLUSE (15 ECTS), Faces analysis and field techniques (7.5 ECTS) and Process
studies and field technique (7.5 ECTS) (Study regulation 2009b).
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Geography at Roskilde is strongly influenced by the university’s tradition in
problem-based learning (PBL) since its birth in 1972. Today, all education is still
organised around one and a half year’s interdisciplinary study either within arts and
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences or human-technological sciences. For this
reason, specialisation within geography takes place after one and a half years of study.
Moreover, students supplement geography with another discipline at bachelor and
Master level. The diversity and multivariable skills among the students gives a profound
interdisciplinary milieu when introduced to geography. This is continued in geography;
the study regulation requires problem-based group work so that students ‘collaborate
with each other – also with students from another scientific background (…) which
fosters different perspectives and resources to solve a scientific problem’ (Study
regulation 2006:23). Secondly, the organisational structure of the education seeks to
establish overlapping functions between physical and human geography: ‘students
should be able to look upon scientific problems and solutions in an interdisciplinary
approach – not only from particular disciplinary premises, but also by including relevant
theories, methods and philosophical interpretations from related disciplines’ (Study
regulation 2006:23). Thus, students have courses, seminars and lectures accounting for
15 ECTS each term and problem-based group work accounting for 15 ECTS, in which
students under supervision specialise in a geographical topic of their choice.
As regards fieldwork requirements, one obligatory field course (7.5 ECTS)
encompasses ‘further specialisation within cultural, human and physical field methods’
(Study regulation 2006:12). The course requires 2–3 weeks of fieldwork in another
country plus planning and reporting. It is worthwhile emphasising that the fieldcourse is
not seperated in terms of human and physical geography as is the case at Copenhagen
and Aalborg universities. In practice, however, physical and human geographers tend to
form groups and lecturing activities within their particluar discipline during the course.
Geography at Aalborg University has a similar model; problem-based learning (PBL)
as a fundamental learning approach throughout education. However, geography remains
a full-time study both at undergraduate and graduate level. Hence, the education of
geographers is organized around problem-based group-work (Study regulation 2011).
Geography is a five-year study, however; education is structured in such a way as to
allow students to have a minor or major subject besides geography in order to meet the
upper secondary school teacher requirements. You may choose to study geography for
one and a half years and another discipline for three and a half years (or vice versa), or
geography for five years. In relation to fieldwork requirements, in the study regulation
we find a similar structure as that at Copenhagen University. At bachelor level two
obligatory 5 ECTS courses are offered, in human and physical geography. At graduate
level two obligatory courses are offered in physical geography which includes fieldwork
methods (Applied Methods in Physical Geography, 20 ECTS and Measurement
Technology and Data Acquisition, 5 ECTS). Both courses emphasize the ability of
students to: ‘plan a literature review and field and/or laboratory work. […] and plan and
carry out the measurement program for field and laboratory measurements’ (Study
regulation 2010c:10). There are no obligatory fieldcourses or requirements for the
Master in Integrative Geography (Study Regulation 2010a).
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In terms of all three university educational programmes in geography, the fieldwork
supplements the students field projects as well as problem-based groupwork projects,
bachelor and master theses. Despite quite different organisational structures, as regards
how fieldwork is introduced to future geographers or the educational structure in
general, only little variation in learning objectives is identified between the three
educations in Denmark. Thus, the ability to identify and methodologically process
complex geographical questions as well as understand spatial differentiation and how
physical and social structures work in different scales remain core requirements.
Moreover, students should be able to evaluate critically their own geographical
qualifications and relation to other fields of science, and differentiation in theory,
methods and empirical data from neighbouring disciplinary constructs (Study
regulation, Copenhagen 2009b:3, Roskilde 2006:23, Aalborg 2011:4). Furthermore, it is
emphasised that becoming a geographer allows students to plan their own learning
strategies, visions and contexts that lead to critical and independent geographical
analysis. Differentiation and the mobility of learning- and interpersonal skills are
accentuated geographical qualifications, which enable students to collaborate in
interdisciplinary teams as well as reflect upon their own field in relation to associated
disciplines. These competences are, according to the interviewing material, in particular,
associated with inclusion of fieldwork in the education of geographers (Interview 2012).
Fieldwork as a learning methodology
In the following, we examine the notions of fieldwork among current university
geographers in Denmark. We found that the ways in which geographers perceive and
conduct fieldwork are endlessly varied. Still, it is possible to condense common and
conflicting fieldwork characteristics that are considered valuable in becoming a
geographer. Fieldwork means being situated in a multitude of interconnections that
allow students to reflect upon their own geographical imaginations; the context or
community they are situated in brings together a range of tacit knowledge, everyday
knowledge and expert knowledge (interview 2012). Through a multitude of interactions
the fieldworker slowly develops a sense of what should be considered important,
contradictory or repulsive: ‘Fieldwork is like a handicraft; one needs to learn through
education, especially students should obtain a critical attitude towards their field and
their own situatedness in compiling field data’ (Interview 2012).
Fieldwork is a craft that students should excel in, because it is a learning
methodology that can be used to build up a good sense of geo-spatial appreciation.
Thus, Danish university geographers strongly advocate the practice of fieldwork as a
means of allowing students systematically and critically to make their own experiences
of spatiality and exploration of an area. They should be trained to conduct this
independently and be able to combine a multitude of probe samplings and triangulation
strategies to understand complex correlations in their contextuality (Interview 2012).
One of the major recurrences in the interviewing material is that the education of
geographers would be impoverished if fieldwork were eliminated. Even for those
geographers who said that one could in principle become a geographer without
fieldwork, they also contemplate that one miss an dimension, even if this missing
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dimension remains undefined. To the question ‘Can you become a geographer without
doing fieldwork during your education?’ 23 answered ‘no’, 1 answered ‘yes’ and 7
answered ‘yes’ but it will be an impoverished education (Interview 2012). This missing
dimension is not at all easy to capture and hold an element of tacit knowledge or
cultural schooling that few of us reflect upon in our daily practices as geographers. Yet,
fieldwork as a learning methodology holds a strong position and only one geographer
did not find fieldwork necessary in becoming a geographer, which corresponds to the
findings by Scott, Fuller & Gaskin (2006). This missing dimension is represented in
many forms and connotes a mysterious experience. It involves being visually
confronted with the field and thus to ascertain synchronously different and liveable
geographical representations: ‘students always become more enthusiastic after being in
the field; one suddenly just understands matematical formulas much better having seen
the natural laws at work right in front of you’ (Interview 2012). The mysterious learning
element represented in the interviews corresponds to the findings of a British review:
‘fieldwork gives opportunities for learning which cannot be duplicated in the classroom.
It greatly enhances students’ understanding of geographical features and concepts, and
allows students to develop specific as well as general skills’ (HMI 1992, here quoted in
Fuller et al. 2006:199).
Knowledge and processes of realization are mutually associated with a given
learning environment. Realization is often recognized as something tacit and is actively
influenced by the learning environment (Illeris 2012). In the following, we view
fieldwork as a learning methodology, which demonstrates a multitude of leaning
processes that take place as a hybridity between different ‘kinds’ of information. Tacit
knowledge experiences, we argue, are important learning outcomes of fieldwork.
This shared and tacit knowledge are difficult to define, yet learning to codify
knowledge in the interaction with the field and understanding the different spatiotemporal dynamics and processes give rise to experiencing the richness of the learning
process during fieldwork. The following sections use Zelinsky’s (2001) categories of
fieldwork to capture and elaborate the different traditions regarded as important by
Danish university geographers in the ‘tacitity of becoming’ a geographer through
fieldwork. As mentioned, according to Zelinsky, there are three general categories of
fieldwork: fieldwork as a commercialised practice with the normative agenda to support
the interests of a client; fieldwork as a scientific activity to solve a research question
with reflective rather than commercial ambition; and fieldwork as an adhoc, impulsive
and informal practice (Zelinsky 2001). Only the two latter conceptions of fieldwork
were identified in the interviewing material. We discuss Zelinsky’s categories by
condensing three subordinate categories of fieldwork into a learning methodology.
These are: fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory, fieldwork as sensuous realisation and
fieldwork as a meta-theoretical practice (as shown in Table 1).
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Table 1.
Three categories of fieldwork as a learning methodology found among Danish
geographers in higher education.
Fieldwork as an outdoor
laboratory
Fieldwork as a sensuous
realization
Fieldwork as a metatheoretical practice
Characteristics
Characteristics
Characteristics
The transference of the
laboratory to the field is
more than merely
upscaling the laboratory.
Fieldwork as an outdoor
laboratory offers an
approach not possible to
duplicate at home. The
contextuality of the field is
actively beeing involved in
data sampling, processing
and analysis. From spatiotemporal ‘aha’ erlebnis
towards erfarung.
The flaneur fieldworker is
an archetype to read spatial
representations. An
approach in which senses
and experiencing the place
are actively involved in the
fieldwork, not only the
intellect. İntuition and
imagining the field as
active information carrier
is possible when schemes
and control are set aside.
Fieldwork as a dialectical
approach to involve
actively relations
between theory and
practice. Fieldwork is a
process of learning how
to operationalise theory,
qualitatively or
quantitatively, as a
standardised, schematic
analytical approach,
though sometimes
revised under fieldwork.
Example by quotation
Example by quotation
Example by quotation
‘Much can be learned
theoretically from books,
classes and so on, but to
develop theoretical work
into understandings, it be
climatological, geological
or hydrological processes
in nature, one has to be in
the field to understand the
full potential of spatial
analysis’
‘To be able to actively
involve the field as
information carrier, and to
understand the interactive
proces between field,
practice and theory’.
‘The fulfilment of theory
and operationalisation of
theoretical concepts in
the field’.
In the following subsections, we explore the three categories of fieldwork as a learning
methodology (shown in Table 1).
Fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory
Fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory is expressed in two forms. The first is a one-to-one
constellation of the laboratory, meaning that the laboratory is simply transferred to the
field. The second form conceives of fieldwork as a methodology that offers the
scientists an approach that is not possible to copy or upscale in the laboratory. Some
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sort of contextual element is catalysed into the data. It is necessary to understand under
which contextual and geospatial circumstances the data are collected in order to be able
to interpret the spatiality and contextual elements in analysing such data (Interview
2012). Fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory is a widely used metaphor in the interview
material. Further, it is most commonly, but not exclusively, mentioned by geographers
with an inclination towards physical geography. Two main configurations can be
identified. One presents fieldwork as a method that gives access to objective field data.
Fieldwork, in this respect, is associated with the act of objective and concise data
collection; to know how to measure correctly and set up your instruments, while
considering space, time and scale (Interveiw 2012). The second characteristic assumes
that scientific objectification also becomes an internalised personal process to be able to
collect data objectively; to learn how to address difficulties in data collection can only
be learned through analytical trials and experiences. Here, an element of ‘Aha erlebnis’
is involved in the fieldwork process that somehow allows the fieldworker to explore
observations and insights simultaneously that would not have been expected (Interview
2012). Thus, fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory suggests that fieldwork actively brings
into being the context dependent elements into constructions of context independent
elements or general laws: ‘One just better understands natural laws at play when
standing out there’ (Interview 2012). What comes into play is some sort of scientific
sensuousness in experiencing the field and understanding relations between wholes and
parts.
Fieldwork as sensuous realisation
Fieldwork as sensuous realisation corresponds to Zelinsky’s last category of fieldwork
as an ad hoc based pratice (Zelinsky 2001). It is the most difficult category to grasp, but
also the most intriguing in that the realisation process holds a huge amount of tacit
knowledge. This perception of fieldwork is also widely present in our empirical material
both from geographers inclined towards human geography and towards physical
geography. In this regard, fieldwork is simply an ad hoc, impulsive effort, an adventure
into unknown places. The flaneur fieldworker is an archetype used by Zelinsky to
characterise fieldwork: ‘altogether informal, sometimes hovering on the margins of
consciousness, a sensibility ecumenically attuned to all innovations in the sensed
environment, to every manner of loss, gain, and the unexpected, dedicated to absorbing
a dynamic world without a set agenda’ (Zelinsky 2001:7). The flaneurial fieldwork most
readily comes into our minds when new countries, cultures and places are visited for the
very first time. However, we may as well be in our own neighbourhood. It is how
geographers record the field through the senses, and where the senses are actively
involved in the fieldwork, not only the intellect. This enables the fieldworker ‘to be able
to actively involve the field as information carrier, and to understand the interactive
process between field, practice and theory’ (Interview 2012). What we suggest here, is
that the informal learning environment produce a sensuous realisation in which sociospatial imagination becomes a constitutive force of representing the field visually in the
nexus between everyday knowledge, tacit knowledge and professional knowledge: ‘The
landscape is perceived differently for people who live and work there, e.g. as spaces of
production, whereas visitors may explore it as a space of recreation. To understand such
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very different interpretations of the very same space one needs to concider how I myself
read space through senses. When I try to understand how I myself understand the field,
and how I myself absorb and read space all my senses are actively involved. I also hear,
smell and feel space so to speak’ (Interview 2012).
Fieldwork becomes an intuitive, simultaneous and continued process in bringing
together all these differnt forms of socio-spatial information. Some may claim that
fieldwork as sensous realisation is neither methodologically systematic, stringent nor
objective, but fieldwork as sensous realisation begins where scientific standards end,
where it is no longer possible to argue objectively for all the dexterity and skills the
scientific work is based upon.
Fieldwork as a meta-theoretical practice
Zelinsky’s second cateogry describes a fieldwork approach applied to solve a scientific
problem. Although the two previous characteristics of fielwork also suggest different
meta-epistemological assumptions of ways to learn the scientific practice of conducting
fieldwork, they do not grasp the duality of theory and practice. Among the interviewed
university geographers, such a duality is grasped in the inherent notion of fieldwork as a
constant search for new ways of understanding the problem and associated methods. By
way of example, this involves learning to observe detail and wholes, in realising how
things are interconnected, reconnected or detached under different circumstances: ‘the
fulfilment of theory and operationalisation of theoretical concepts in the field’
(Interview 2012). In other words, ‘in fieldwork you learn to operationalise theory, and
to critically scrutinise your own or others’ quantitative and qualitative representations of
an area’ (Interview 2012). However, it is also to synthesise, as others metioned, using
the senses of hearing, seeing and feeling: ‘geography has in its identity that you learn a
whole lot of your understanding of the world through fieldwork’ (Interview 2012). This
notion of fieldwork is the less represented in our empirical material.
Fieldwork may be standardised, e.g. in understanding plant succession as climate
change. Sometimes the field turns out to be different than was assumed in the field plan;
this why new ways need to be integrated into the existing schema (Zelinsky 2001). A
number of the interviewed university geographers mention field diary as an important
process of realisation. Keeping a field diary is an important way of being aware of how
new knowledge develops and becomes internalised during fieldwork. Looking back at
the first field notes sometimes make the first field experiences simple, obvious, or selfevident. The diary, however, captures the tacit learning involved in fieldwork, and can
reveal the significance of students’ learning processes during fieldwork (Interview
2012). The field diary metaphor in the interviews becomes a manifestation of
continuous interplay between theory and practice.
Conclusion and Discussion
Based on an empirical study of university geographers involved in the education of
geographers in higher education programmes in Denmark and their perception of the
role of fieldwork in the education of future geographers, we found three subcategories
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of fieldwork as a learning methodology: fieldwork as an outdoor laboratory, fieldwork
as sensuous realisation and fieldwork as a meta-theoretical practice.
Interestingly, the three empirical perceptions of fieldwork were not allocated to
different academics or traditions, meaning that the individual researcher often
encompassed more than one view of fieldwork either in relation to his or her own
research or in relation to the education of future geographers. For this reason, the
categories of fieldwork presented among university geographers at Danish Universities
do not support the often claimed dichotomy between physical and human geography.
This points towards the openness of geography as a synthesis discipline even though not
realised in the individual researcher’s own research practice – an openness that is also
included in the teaching practice of fieldwork. Thus, when we tend to devide geography
thematically into either human or physical traditions, in human-nature, earth science or
spatio chronological orientations, these dichotomies express contested ideas of
fieldwork that do not necessarily concide with the perceptions of fieldwork among
university geographers educating future secondary school teachers. This has bearings
not only on the education of geographers at the universities but also the Danish
secondary school where geography is presently taught as physical geography with a
significant amount of geology. In such a context, we find that fieldwork has a role to
play in understanding geography as a subject that can transcend the gap between science
and social science subjects. In this way, fieldwork demonstrates that real world
problems can be addressed by using both physical and human geography, and that the
whole is greater than the individual parts.
In our findings, one perception of fieldwork seems to align with such notion of
fieldwork as transcending: ‘One just better understands…..when standing out there’
point of view. This perception of the value of fieldwork includes quite different
sensitivities for the outcome of fieldwork. As regards moving the laboratory outside,
‘something just happens’ that change the perception towards the view that the meaning
of fieldwork is to co-construct meaning in interrelation with the field; the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts and the understanding transcends the particularity of
the situation. The whole spectrum of these views acknowledges that being in the field
adds something and that this something is important in the education of future
geographers. In this way, the fieldwork learning objective goes beoynd what can be
promulgated in curricula constructs, and becoming a geographer is also actively being
involved in space.
If we turn to the literature, Scott, Fuller & Gaskin (2006) find that lecturers’
perception of fieldwork was that of a pedagogical application that supports students to
contextualise theory and actively helps them to carry a problem-based approach.
However, while none of the respondents in Scott, Fuller & Gaskin (2006) related
fieldwork to experimental learning, this is the case for the three categories of fieldwork
as a learning methodology developed in this paper. Also, in the studies of Stokes,
Magnier & Weaver (2011) and Wall & Speake (2012) the perception of fieldwork
among university research staff is found to vary. This point to the importance of
conducting studies of perceptions of fieldwork among staff in different cultural settings
because as we started to address in this paper, different cultural settings give precedence
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to various elements of geography also within the use of fieldwork. This is important if
we are, as argued by Hill and Woodland (2002), to substantiate its place in higher
education.
Acknowledgement
We thank all full-time associate professors and professors in the geography department
at Aalborg, Copenhagen and Roskilde universities who were interviewed for letting us
explore their views on fieldwork and, not least, how they perceive the role of fieldwork
in the education of future Danish geographers. Further, we thank Associate Professor
Henrik Gutzon Larsen for his contribution to the historical section of the paper.
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Additional list of references
Study regulation for geography at Roskilde University (2006), Bachelor and Master,
Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University (2009a), Bachelor, Department of
Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Copenhagen University (2009b), Master, Department of
Geography and Geology.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2010b), Master, Department of
Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography at Aalborg University (2011), Bachelor, Department of
Development and Planning.
Study regulation for geography with specialization in physical geography at Aalborg University
(2010c), Master, Department of Development and Planning.
Study regulation for integrative geography at Aalborg University (2010a), Master, Department
of Development and Planning.
Interview with 31 professors and associate professors allocated to geography education at
Aalborg, Copenhagen and Roskilde universities, Denmark.
Biographical statements
Thomas GRINDSTED is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental, Social and
Spatial Change, Roskilde University, Denmark. His area of expertise is the production of nature
in educational policy, curricula and campus management in relation to climate change.
Dr. Lene Møller MADSEN is Associate Professor in the Department of Science Education,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research is within science education in relation to
students’ experiences with higher education science programs, with a special focus on GIS and
fieldwork.
Dr. Thomas Theis NIELSEN is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental,
Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University, Denmark. His research focusses on critical
cartography and the production of knowledge through maps and GIS.
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ISBN 978-87-7349-900-9