Abstracts

Sunday, February 25

2:15 – 4:10 Session 2

2A. The Rhetoric of Biodiversity and Sustainability

Maple Room, Erb Memorial Union

Chair: Jim Crosswhite, University of Oregon

Evaluating Sustainability Projects

John Baldwin, Sociology Department, University of Oregon

Former President Eisenhauer liked to state that “the uninspected atrophies.” Of course, he was referring to WWII troops, but the message should not be lost. Certain sustainability claims of private, government and NGO’s should be periodically analyzed for their validity by independent assessors.

This study undertook just such a task. In essence, we evaluated the “words” (development principles) and the “works” (implementation criteria) of several prominent sustainable development projects in the Pacific Northwest. The analysis was modeled after the conventional scaling/weighting checklist (1-10 with 10 the best) used in environmental impact analysis. The following were used as model sustainable development principles (derived from the Global Tomorrow Coalition):

1. Long range planning and intergenerational responsibility

2. Carrying capacity

3. Anticipation and prevention

4. Full cost accounting

5. Economic, environmental and social integration

6. Efficiency, innovation and continuous improvement

Implementation criteria were derived from “total quality management” criteria of successful businesses. These included:

1. Stakeholder involvement

2. Leadership

3. Information and interpretation

4. Planning

5. Human resource development

6. Results and indicators

7. Review and feedback

8. Stakeholder satisfaction

Seven sustainable development projects were analyzed with the Pacific Rivers Council, Applegate Partnership and the Willipa Alliance rating the highest in both categories of “words and work.” The full matrix of the analysis will be presented along with conclusions on insights of how to develop and implement successful sustainability programs.

The Linguistic Construction of Nature Through the Term Biodiversity

Catherine Collins, Department of Rhetoric and Media Studies, and Susan Kephart, Department of Biology, Willamette University

Discourses of Sustainability and Biodiversity: Scientific or Social Norms?

Scott Denton, Department of English, University of Arizona

This paper investigates the deployment of the rhetoric of sustainability and biodiversity in the ongoing debate surrounding the San Pedro River in Southeastern Arizona, USA, and Northern Sonora, Mexico. This transnational watershed, hosting the border area's largest intact riparian forest, is threatened by groundwater pumping by a rapidly growing municipality and a

U.S. Army base as well as other water users on both sides of the border. Thus it provides a useful case study of how the discursive regimes of sustainable development and biodiversity (Escobar, 1996) reflect the cultural assumptions of particular stakeholder groups. These terms belong to a growing group of ill-defined normative concepts circulating in and influencing environmental discourse (Callicott et al., 1999). Yet the concepts of biodiversity and sustainability are being increasingly institutionalized in regional, national, international, and multinational policy and law.

In 1998 the tri-national Commission on Environmental Cooperation (formed as a side accord of NAFTA), commissioned an expert to study the problem and recommend solutions for sustaining habitat. Here I examine the rhetoric of sustainable development in this report, showing how metaphor and personification reflect cultural assumptions and how scientific and social norms interpenetrate one another with respect to the concepts of sustainability and biological diversity. Not surprisingly, the inherent contradictions that become evident indicate tensions between competing interests such as environmental protection versus economic growth. Additionally, and perhaps even more important in light of the increasingly global nature of many environmental problems, the report displays tension between locality--whether growth or conservation oriented--and the global importance of the resource.

Brownwash: How the Fraser Institute's Environmental Indicators Report Misrepresents the State of the World

Hilda McKenzie and William Rees, University of British Columbia

Each year for the past four years, the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based right-wing think tank, has published an annual report titled Environmental Indicators. The Environmental Indicators report asserts that "contrary to public opinion, in most instances objectives for protecting human health and the environment are being met, pollution and wastes are being controlled, and resources and land are being sustainably and effectively managed" and that "even as polls show that people think the environment is getting worse, by most measures environmental quality has dramatically improved over the last generation and is continuing to improve." It purports to show that anxieties about ecological change are unfounded, that risks are low, that the facts indicate overall improvement, and that further regulations are therefore unnecessary. It asserts that economic growth is both desirable and inevitable and that concern about ecological effects is misguided, caused partly by a lack of clear indicators that could function analogously to the indicators used in conventional economics. Why does this report diverge so markedly from the growing consensus that ecological problems are serious and the risks of inaction increasing? In this paper, we present a critical analysis of the Environmental Indicators report from a perspective informed by ecological economics. Our analysis reveals the report's inadequate framing of its subject, analyzes the rhetorical means by which it supports its position, exposes its underlying assumptions and values, identifies flaws in its logic and analysis, and points out serious omissions. We conclude that publications such as the Environmental Indicators report represent a new category of hazardous waste.

2B. Inquiry, Action, and Muddling Though: Multiple Scientist-Community Collaboration at ISIS

Ben Linder Room, Erb Memorial Union

Chair: Mike Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Discussant: Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS) was founded in 1992 as a multi-pronged approach to addressing the relationship of contemporary science to other kinds of knowledge as well as the applications of science to social problems and policy. ISIS fosters scientific inquiry and social projects that are open-ended, respect uncertainty, and recognize the need for tentative solutions always in need of re-evaluation. From laboratories to seminar rooms to town meeting halls, ISIS encourages the kind of critical scientific literacy that can drive democratic action in messy, ambiguous situations in which scientific uncertainty, social disagreement, and the impossibility of simple solutions are the rule rather than the exception. Diverse ongoing projects at ISIS connect scientists with communities to collaborate on such complex and pressing problems as environmental degradation, toxic waste disposal, sustainable agriculture, sustainable development, and critiques of the epistemological and social foundations of quantum physics and molecular genetics. These collaborations are models of the new kinds of partnerships capable of dealing with those difficult scientific and social problems which stand between us and a more equitable world.

This panel presents three active projects at ISIS that each work “on the ground” at entirely different but equally complex intersections of scientific inquiry, technological change, and multiple communities – citizens, scientists, government officials, and others. Together the projects represent the range of challenges presented by the technosciences today – difficult combinations that confound the usual distinctions between theory and practice, abstract and concrete – and how such challenges can nevertheless be met.

What is Sustainable Development?: Indigenous Aquaculture in Ecuador

Jim Oldham, ISIS

Since the 1970s aquaculture (fish farming) has been promoted as a potential solution for food and protein shortages, yet aquaculture has also been a cause of environmental disasters ranging from the destruction of mangroves for shrimp culture to the destruction of native fisheries through introduction of disease, parasites, and exotic species. Aquaculture in the Amazon region involves additional dichotomies: the region has the richest freshwater fauna in the world yet it is also one of the least understood by scientists. High biodiversity is matched by the complexity of species' relationships, involving long migrations and annual floods. Destructive development threatens both the Amazon environment and the indigenous cultures that know it best, yet efforts to develop alternatives often ignore indigenous communities: national parks are established without consideration of traditional land use and "sustainable" development promotes technology transfer from industrially developed areas. This is the context within which ISIS and the Secoya Indigenous Organization of Ecuador are partnering to develop an indigenous aquaculture, using native species and local resources. The collaboration unites scientists with local hunter and fisherfolk to develop new food sources for a community whose traditional territory has been reduced by the entry of new settlers and industries to the region. We are combining indigenous knowledge and cosmopolitan science in participatory "fish-farmer" research that will address both the development needs of indigenous Amazonian communities and the need for new approaches to environmental protection and sustainable development.

What is Responsible Physics? Quantum Teleportation and Quantum Cryptography

Herbert. J. Bernstein, ISIS

Quantum mechanics is that domain of physics where the physicist-observer’s responsibility for the “construction of reality” has long been the subject of passionate philosophical questioning. Today, in part as a result of new technological capabilities, the question of how experiments in quantum physics may actually produce rather than simply represent a world becomes especially urgent in the new research areas of quantum cryptography, quantum computation, and quantum teleportation. The social implications of this nominally “pure” or “basic” inquiry are potentially profound: unbreakable military or commercial codes, quantum computers capable of hacking any existing security system, and even (perhaps) teleportation of objects (at sub-light speeds). Bernstein will summarize the current state of theory and experiment, in which he is a leading participant, and what we can learn about how quantum physics is entangled with science fiction and the imagination, history, culture, and organizations such as the National Security Agency. He will also discuss how, through ISIS, he has been experimenting with ways to foreground questions of the social responsibility of physicists within the communities of scientists, students, and others with whom he regularly works. These have included writings, formal and informal colloquia, and placing himself and his work on public trial.

What is Responsible Science Studies? Genomics in Iceland

Mike Fortun, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

In an effort to capitalize on the nation’s supposedly unique genetic and genealogical resources, a new corporation, deCODE Genetics, was recently formed in Iceland. The new enterprise has promised jobs, the re-patriation of scientific talent, creative contributions to science and medicine, and a stake for Iceland in a competitive global bioeconomy. At the same time, it has sparked intense controversy over democratic processes, the contradictions of individual privacy and the privatization of medical databases, questions of informed consent in genetics, and the conflicts between intellectual property and not-for-profit biomedical research. Fortun will discuss his field visits to Iceland in 1998 and 2000, presenting Iceland as a window onto the larger world of genomics as globalizing science and business involved in the “data-mining” of individuals and populations. He will also discuss some of the productive tensions that have arisen in his work as a social science researcher: his experience with the corporation deCODE and his relations with a group of Icelandic scientists and physicians critical of deCODE; his experience of giving several lectures in Iceland to a broad public audience; and his experiences with the Icelandic and U.S. media. Each of these experiences has offered important lessons for ISIS’s work in fostering critical scientific literacies toward questions of the sciences, their truth claims, and the promise of their democratic transformation.

2C. Teaching Ecological Citizenship

Walnut Room, Erb Memorial Union

Chair: TBA

Collaboration as a Path to Multicultural Perspectives on the Environment

Steven Gloss, Department of Zoology and Deborah Mathew, University of Wyoming, and Marie Reyes, Southwest Institute for Research on Women, University of Arizona

This panel will explore opportunities and curricular tools aimed at legitimizing and broadening the field of expression for students interested in environmental issues. Expression for students from diverse backgrounds can be achieved through active and collaborative teaching strategies whose learning goals include the appreciation of the intersection between cultural and natural systems. Three courses, their content and goals, as well as the experiences of faculty with these courses will be discussed: General Ecology, Art & Ecology and Gender and Ethnicity in Science.

Offering Ecology in a team taught format and bringing concepts of gender and ethnicity into a cooperative learning environment, has allowed students to gain an appreciation of the science, and to examine the ways in which feminist science scholarship has contributed to the contextual placement of environmental science. Students from environmental sciences and humanities focus on the intersection of contemporary art with ecological concerns in 'Art and Ecology'. Readings present ecology as biology, sociology and as a spiritual practice. Ecological art/artists are studied and then, in collaborative groups, students investigate local sites/problems, and propose or create artful solutions for the environment. Gender and Ethnicity in Science uses feminist scholarship to investigate science as a social construct. How would our perceptions of the natural world be transformed if we considered what each individual brings to the study of science due to biography, gender, and ethnicity?

Informing, Teaching or Propagandizing? Environmental & Science Studies for Undergraduates

Sean Johnston, Science Studies Department, and Mhairi Harvey, Environmental Studies Department, University of Glasgow

This paper discusses recent experiences in the integrated teaching Environmental Studies and Science Studies in a new University campus in Scotland. Environmental Studies, forming one of five ‘pathways’ (or ‘majors’) for the bachelor’s degree, is taught largely from a scientific perspective, reflecting the academic background (physical geography/geomorphology) of the teaching staff. Science Studies is taught as a core first-year course and via optional second and third year courses, dissertations and projects. The central themes for the Science Studies courses are history, sociology (e.g. interest groups and cultural beliefs) and philosophy of science (e.g. epistemology and moral philosophy).

There are several points of contact between the two subject areas. The teaching argues that an understanding of the inter-related technical, social and philosophical aspects provides a strongly positive approach to solving real-world problems, promoting an understanding of multiple viewpoints in the technical and cultural issues at the center of modern scientific debate.

This critical approach to knowledge has required a broadening of the teaching of environmental science to incorporate many of the issues tackled in Science Studies. It is equally true that the general themes addressed by the Science Studies courses are illuminated by examples from Environmental Studies. The complementary academic stances of these subjects have been synthesized in a course on Environmental Ethics, co-taught by lecturers from both subjects. The challenge is in elucidating the social dimension of the environment, while maintaining scientific integrity.

2D. Whales’ Tales: From Eco-Tourism to Environmental Citizenship

Fir Room, Erb Memorial Union

Chair: Catriona Sandilands, York University

This session turns on the question of how, and even if, a practice of democratic, cross-cultural and cross-species citizenship can be wrested from the predominant practices through which “nature” is constructed, represented and negotiated in Eurowestern social formations. Using whale-human relations as an organizing and situating trope, the panel considers that science and spectacle significantly orient both Eurowestern popular and “expert” knowledges of whales, that these knowledges are historically, culturally and sensually partial, and that a thoroughgoing practice of understanding their partiality is a basis from which to begin a more reflexively cross-cultural and cross-species conversation than has generally been the case in ecological politics.

Following the three presentations – representing conversational threads from political theory, marine biology and environmental education – the session will ask participants to consider and thematize their own “whales tales,” with the agenda of collectively problematizing both the specific (and emotionally-charged) dynamics of whale-human relations in late capitalism and the more general problem of nature and ecological citizenship.

Whalewatching: Political Speech, Political Appearance and Multispecies Citizenship

Catriona Sandilands, Environmental Studies, York University

This paper opens by outlining the significance of citizenship to a renewed ecological politics. In the context of dominant identitarian, consumerist and rights-based ecopolitical models, a practice of cultivating citizenship suggests a non-apocalyptic, conversational and interrogative politic through which particularly located individuals may consider the social organization of nature in addition to more immediate questions of ecological degradation or survival. In addition, however, ecological citizenship suggests the need for an orientation to conversations that lie outside the realm of intra-human speech; an idea of multispecies citizenship – necessarily studded with uncertainty – suggests a critical practice through which different (human) modes of knowing nature can be rethought in terms of their conversational strengths and weaknesses. Using whales as a particularly rich example – both for their own particular conversational abilities and because of their diverse social histories within human cultures – the paper suggests that a careful interrogation of even such overdetermined practices as whalewatching shows conversational forms and flows that exceed, problematize and reorient dominant whale knowledges. Thus, multispecies citizenship should be understood as a potentiality that resides within the everyday world of whale-human relations, and is thus also part of struggles around ecological degradation and survival.

Echolocating an Ethical Way Toward Multi-Species Citizenship

Leesa Fawcett, Environmental Studies, York University

Whales roam the oceans of the world, appearing sometimes unpredictably off all coastlines. For this reason, whale scientist Roger Payne (1995) has called them creatures of “omnipossibility.” As a marine biologist, I have helped to “make” knowledge about and with different whale species.

By witnessing and researching moments of conflict and empathy between humans and whales, I will examine what these stories tell us about communities of knowers, cognizant that all biological narratives arrive coated with ethical and political questions. En route to contemplating ecological citizenship, it is important to expand the common and public world beyond empathy and beyond human speech. I fear that even the rich ecotones of the human imagination limit the vast possibilities of democratic multi-species communities. If sensory knowledge gives us insights into the world, what worlds do senses like echolocation, which we can barely imagine, lay claim to?

Many whales and bats (and some shrews and sightless humans) use echoes to "picture" and know their environment omnidirectionally. I will explore echolocation (biosonar) as a form of embodied, locatable (hence accountable), and very situated knowing (Haraway, 1991) to hear what it might offer to conversations about multi-species ecological environmental citizenship.

Superwhales, Intimates and Spectacle: The Educational Implications of Whalewatching

Constance Russell, Department of Curriculum, OISE/University of Toronto

In this presentation, I will examine whalewatching's potential as a form of critical science and/or environmental education; my inquiries are grounded in a case study of whalewatching in the small town of Tadoussac, Quebec. Although there was a diversity of responses, overall themes emerged. First, many whalewatchers were dissatisfied with the learning opportunities available during whalewatching and most desired more emphasis be placed on holistic, critical and/or activist-oriented interpretation. Second, many were concerned that whalewatching, despite its educational potential, was harming the whales. Third, the whalewatchers constructed whales in exceedingly positive and general ways (Superwhales), were moved by the opportunity to closely observe whales (Intimates), and were in awe of their size and behaviors (Spectacle). The educational implications of these results will be interrogated. Further, I will situate this research in the context of community-based efforts to regulate whalewatching in the Tadoussac area and public discussions of what constitutes appropriate human/whale relationships.

2E. The Rhetoric of Risk

Library Browsing Room, Knight Library

Chair: Shannon Martin, Temple University

Radiation, Tobacco and Illness in Point Hope, Alaska: Approaches to the "Facts" in Contaminated Communities

Nelta Edwards, Department of Sociology, Alaska Pacific University

In the 1950s the Atomic Energy Commission planned to build a harbor using nuclear bombs near the Inupiat village of Point Hope, Alaska. The Point Hope people and others objected to this plan, and by 1962 the Atomic Energy Commission cancelled the project. Before they cancelled the project Atomic Energy Commission authorized a radioactive tracer experiment in an established subsistence area near Point Hope. After completing the experiments left the site without informing the local people about the contamination. Thirty years later people in Point Hope learned about the tracer experiment and believed it explained the high incidence of cancer in the village in the preceding years. Scientists dismissed the relationship between the cancer rate and the tracer experiment maintaining that the amounts of radiation were too small to increase the cancer rate and that any perception of an increased cancer rate could be explained by personal habits such as tobacco use and diet.

This paper discusses three approaches common to activists/scholars: doing better science, investigating the distortion provided by scientific language and treating scientific language as the construction of reality. Rather than a synthesis of these approaches this paper suggests an "ironic stance" toward the "facts" through a conceptual tool called "mobile ontologies."

Struggling toward a Common Ground: Citizens’ (Re)Shaping of the US Army’s Chemical Weapons Disposal Program

Robert Futrell, Sociology Department, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The presentation will focus on citizen protest toward the U.S. Army’s Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program (CSDP). I’ll use the case to explore the broader issues of environmental democracy and decision-making for risky technological projects. My focus is on the grounds for conflict between citizens and the Army and the barriers to citizen involvement in decisions on the CSDP. A central issue is how the scientific context of the controversy and government policy have shaped responses of both citizens and the Army. Citizens attempted to interject a normative claim for democratic choice and values into a decisioning process dominated by technocratic arrangements. It has not been an easy marriage to make. The Army’s failure to account for many of the citizens’ questions and anxieties about risks posed by the project led to sustained protest. Their emphasis has been to call for more collaborative decisioning processes to craft a publicly acceptable and technically feasible approach to chemical weapons disposal.

This research highlights issues involving possibilities and prospects of participatory environmental democracy. Citizens can play an important collaborative role in environmental and technological decision-making. Constructing strong, participatory processes is crucial for substantively effective decisions regarding environmental and social risks posed by complex technological projects. Discursive deliberation and collaborative learning among citizens, experts, and government officials is needed. Collective action by citizens can significantly reshape environmental decision-making in ways that put the democratic spirit of environmental policies into practice. This dispute is a case in point.

Privileging Process: Participation as Performance

Stephen Healy, School of Science and Technology Studies, University of New South Wales

The technocratic 'predict and control' mindset that dominated late twentieth century planning and decision making is giving way to one cognizant of the uncertainty and indeterminacy of the contemporary condition. From climate change to health provision, waste management to infrastructure development both current activities and potential ameliorative strategies are increasingly understood to have uncertain and indeterminate outcomes. More intimate public involvement in decision making is one means identified to better manage this condition. Prompted originally by democratic ideals, a more recent emphasis has been upon the functional value of community involvement. These functional rationales emphasize the constructive compliment that lay knowledge provides to expert technical knowledge and how the enhanced levels of trust that accrue act to promote more sustainable and robust outcomes.

However the 'predict and control' mindset is reflected in the instrumental basis of these functional rationales. Community insights and understandings are conceived as a lay analogue of the materialist insights of science and valued on similar terms. Analogously trust tends to be valued in narrow instrumental terms as a matter to be managed and optimized. This perspective readily lends itself to a focus upon participatory mechanisms conceived as a 'bolt on' to existing institutional structures, central to much current debate on participation. This paper will argue that by failing to engage with the phenomenological nature of community understandings and the significant relational dimensions to matters such as trust they both undervalue and constrain effective participation. By failing to engage the community at the level of meaning and behavior instrumental approaches are compromised at a fundamental level. Viewed from a 'relational' perspective it is the processes of participation, the means by which people are engaged and empowered, that takes precedence over materialist concerns. This paper argues that this 'process' perspective illuminates a potential for more creative outcomes better able to manage contemporary uncertainty and indeterminacy. This perspective is elaborated using an example from current environmental management practice and by reference to its broader political implications.

But Who Speaks for the Children? Scientific Discourse in Environmental Justice Advocacy

Jennifer Peeples, Department of Speech Communication, Utah State University and Kevin DeLuca, University of Georgia

Louis Blumberg and Robert Gottlieb, in their article “Citizens Take on the ‘Experts’”, maintain that non-government professionals are “being called upon to evaluate risks, play down uncertainties and provide the scientific and economic rationale for unpopular projects. They have become decision makers by default, as public officials hide behind the guise of ‘objective assessment’ to avoid making tough choices on problems as difficult as waste disposal.” To counter the co-opted experts, Blumberg and Gottlieb argue that community activists have begun to familiarize themselves with the scientific language and use it against the arguments of the hired experts.

The women activists of Environmental Justice are no exception to community activists’ skepticism towards “scientific” truths and government “experts”. For example, Charlotte Bullock, in her fight against the Los Angeles municipal waste incinerator sited for her neighborhood, argued, “In the 1950s, the city banned small incinerators in the yard, and yet they want to build a big incinerator . . . The council is going to build something in my community which might kill my child. . . I don’t need a scientists to tell me that’s wrong”. The question we explore in this paper is how the women of Environmental Justice reframe and deploy scientific discourse and the notion of the “expert” in their response to locally unwanted land uses.

2F. Knowing Nature: Whose Knowledge?

Gerlinger Lounge, Gerlinger Hall

Chair: Heidi Grasswick, Middlebury College

Why Not Cognodiversity?

David Alethea, Humanities, University of Hawaii, West Oahu

The thesis of this presentation is that, just as we have come to recognize the intrinsic value of a rich and varied fabric of species and ecosystems, so recognition of the value of a variety of knowledge systems and practices should be sought. By investigating the knowledge structures of indigenous peoples we can begin to understand the variety of ways in which human groups have ordered their experience and mapped it onto the environment in order to survive and thrive under often difficult and precarious conditions. To support this contention I analyze the case of ancient Polynesian navigation throughout the Pacific showing how, without employing any of the elements usually considered essential to Western science (e.g. quantification, documentation, instruments, universalized concepts), the Polynesians nevertheless constructed and transmitted a coherent and cohesive structure which allowed them not only to discover all of the habitable islands of the Pacific, but to make regular return voyages carrying people, seed crops, domestic animals, and other supplies. Furthermore, this structure was not a closed or static paradigm, as it often maintained, but allowed for the progressive development of equipment and for extension into a variety of unknown environments. The presentation investigates the epistemic basis of this kind of knowing and attempts to show its relation to prevailing cultural and spiritual traditions.

Ecological Naturalism, Epistemic Responsibility, and the Politics of Knowledge

Lorraine Code, Department of Philosophy, York University

This paper outlines the potential of an ecologically modeled epistemology to close the gap that separates theories of knowledge from the epistemic practices of people who need to know well, yet derive scant guidance from the formal principles of Anglo-American theories of knowledge. Ecological thinking can generate a conceptual apparatus for a theory of knowledge able to engage with feminist, multicultural, and other postcolonial issues, and to expose the environmental harms that the epistemologies of mastery have enacted. I will show this conceptual apparatus at work in an example where corporate sponsorship and scientific inquiry clash, with complex implications for physician-patient relations, and for the role of trust in knowledge. The question “whose knowledge are we talking about?”, central to feminist epistemology, becomes more pointed when it asked both about the provenance and about the ownership of knowledge, as knowledge becomes a commodity zealously guarded by its purchasers. The issues are about epistemic responsibility, collective and individual, not about “necessary and sufficient conditions” for knowledge.

My larger project is to show that despite the profusion of ecological discourses across the academic and social-political landscapes, and despite the contested nature of the politics of ecology, the restructuring possibilities of ecological thinking for epistemology have yet to be articulated. Ecological naturalism will have the resources to interrogate the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism, reductivism, and exploitation of people and places that orthodox epistemologies help to legitimate, while generating a social-political imaginary sensitive to human and geographical diversity.

Who is implicated and where are they engaged? Re/constructing social agency in the diagramming of social-natural processes

Peter Taylor and Chris London, Program in Critical & Creative Thinking, University of Massachusetts

Making "Nature" Meaningful for Environmental Scientists

Michael Urban, Department of Geography, University of Missouri

While the complexity of the concept of nature has generated a great deal of scholarship and discourse in the social sciences, these debates all too often are seen as esoteric and meaningless to physical scientists whose object of study is the “real” or “physical” world. From the perspective of geomorphology, a subfield of physical geography, I will argue that conceptions of nature are critically important to the environmental sciences in that they underpin and orient our definitions of reality, our considerations about what we consider to be appropriate ways to conceptualize that reality, and our approach to scientific inquiry. The ways in which we conceptualize what science is and what the goals of geomorphology are as a science “conditions” our practice. This conception affects not only how we go about obtaining, evaluating and accepting new knowledge about the world, but at a more basic level, mediates the questions we ask and type of knowledge we seek. To make nature meaningful for environmental scientists the philosophical repercussions of the nature debates must be transposed onto the practical implications of “doing” science. In order to illustrate the practical importance of these philosophical questions the integration of humans and human agency into biophysical environmental systems and stream restoration/naturalization will be used as tangible examples of the effect of the nature debates on the science of geomorphology.

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