Natural History
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Natural History

Heritage, Place and Politics

Ross J. Wilson

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eBook - ePub

Natural History

Heritage, Place and Politics

Ross J. Wilson

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About This Book

The concept of 'natural heritage' has become increasingly significant with the threat of dwindling resources, environmental degradation and climatic change. As humanity's impact on the condition of life on earth has become more prominent, a discernible shift in the relationship between western society and the environment has taken place. This is reflective of wider historical processes which reveal a constantly changing association between humanity's definition and perception of what 'nature' constitutes or what can be defined as 'natural'. From the ornate collections of specimens which formed the basis of a distinct concept of 'nature' emerging during the Enlightenment, this definition and the wider relationship between humanity and natural history have reflected issues of identity, place and politics in the modern era.

This book examines this process and focuses on the ideas, values and agendas that have defined the representation and reception of the history of the natural world, including geology and palaeontology, within contemporary society, addressing how the heritage of natural history, whether through museums, parks, tourist sites or popular culture is used to shape social, political, cultural and moral identities. It will be of interest to scholars and practitioners within heritage studies, public history, ecology, environmental studies and geography.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781317089797
Subtopic
Geography
Edition
1

1 Introduction

This work is a study of natural heritage and its representation in museums, parks, tourist sites and popular culture, to assess its definitions, its values and its uses within the contemporary western world. The central focus of the assessment is how sites of natural heritage in Europe and the United States have defined and shaped the ideology of the ‘modern’ age (Coates 1998). The representation and reception of this history has developed from the Renaissance, which saw the emergence of humanist ideals that placed nature as a subject of study rather than as a part of God’s creation (see Morton 2007). This brought the study of the natural world to greater attention as evidenced by the formation of showcases, cabinets and botanical gardens of the gentry of the sixteenth century. These developments served as precursors to the collections of specimens which developed in Europe from the seventeenth century (see Oelschlaeger 1993). By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the museum served as a means of exhibiting distinction as the arrangement of objects and displays evidenced both the advancements of the age and the order of animal society (Asma 2003). Sites of natural wonders also developed from the eighteenth century onwards as places where ‘natural history’ could be observed became locales of aesthetic, political and social reflection. This response can also be noted in the development of the conservation movement and the creation of national or regional ‘parks’ where ‘nature’ is preserved and protected for wider society. These specific sites, which were initially formed within the United States during the nineteenth century, offered another vision of natural history as a place which had to be saved from humanity’s unceasing appetite for advancement. Therefore, from this perspective, the representation of natural heritage has been key in the formation of the modern world. Indeed, western society has defined and defended its status as ‘modern’ through its relationship with history of the environment (see Wilson 1991). This legacy has shaped the current status of natural heritage across contemporary western society. If it is through natural history that society has made itself then it is also through this heritage that individuals, groups and communities can be transformed for the future (after Harrison 2013; 2015). As the degradation of the natural environment gathers pace in contemporary society, increasingly it will be within the context of natural heritage that we ensure the continuation and enable the redefinition of humanity.
To undertake this work, this study applies an analytical perspective to the sites of natural history. Drawing upon the work conducted within the framework of critical heritage studies, it addresses how natural history, whether through museums, parks, gardens, tourist sites or popular culture, is used to shape social, political, cultural and moral identities (after Harrison 2013; Smith 2006). The study will assess how these sites, whether physical or ‘media-ted’, transforms individuals into witnesses who are called upon to testify to the significance of the object or event they observe (after Bird Rose 2004). The concept of the ‘witness’ is firmly embedded with Abrahamic cultures as a figure who is called upon to record the occurrence of an action. As such, the ‘witness’ is accorded a particular place within society as figure of importance, one who can provide insight, guidance and direction (see Hatley 2000). This is preserved in the legal system of western societies which regards witnesses with special distinction in the assessment of the burden of truth. This act of witnessing the natural world has been cultivated during the modern era as perceiving the detail and development of geological, climatological, botanical and faunal specimens has been a tool of difference and separation. To be a witness in this respect was to serve as a member of a select group where status was assured through this act of observance. However, the role of the witness is not one-dimensional, affirming the position, power and authority of the few. Whilst the witness can serve to support and affirm existing social and cultural structures, the witness can also possess a means by which hegemonic structures are undermined (after Haraway 1997).
The witness, in their role in recognising ‘truth’, can act as the centre of resistance and through their testimony give voice to alternative perspectives and agendas (Haraway 1997: 15). As such, recent scholarship which stresses the manner in which ideas about ‘heritage’ are constructed and contested through hegemonic systems of discourse will serve as a guiding principle for this investigation (see Smith 2006). Therefore, the historical, contemporary and future experience of the witness to natural history will be explored within this work (Harrison 2015). Sites of natural heritage provide distinct locales where witnesses are formed; individuals can observe the extent, beauty, difference and detail of the environment and then testify as to its meaning. It is these acts of witnessing which have become essential in the definition of the modern world and in the relationship between the past, the present and the future.
The recent recognition within critical heritage studies of a multidisciplinary approach is of particular importance for this work (see West 2010). A feature of new scholarship within this area of research is the extent to which ‘heritage’ encompasses a range of methodologies and theories (see Winter 2013). Therefore, to address these issues of place, politics and identity, this book utilises approaches from museum studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and environmental studies to assess the tangible, intangible, linguistic and intellectual relationships that contemporary society develops with the past to form an examination of the use of ‘natural heritage’ (after Harrison 2013). Through the use of visual, textual and spatial analysis, this study will focus its analysis on the formation of identities and ideals through the representation and reception of natural history within contemporary society. In this manner, aspects of natural history, the study of the geological and biological past and present, will be assessed as a system of ‘witness’ perspectives that are employed by institutions and used by individuals to define ideas about society, politics and culture. In this manner, the ‘natural heritage’ in Europe and the United States forms a means by which societies construct a sense of self and represent themselves to others. Far from being a remote and alien past, this heritage is made present through exhibitions, displays and popular representations; increasingly, it also serves as a means to impart a set of social norms upon society to address the risks and responsibilities that we may face in the years to come. This examination of natural heritage will detail how the past is represented but it will be focused on how this shapes the direction of individuals, communities, nations and the wider planet (see Harvey and Perry 2015).

Heritage, rights, responsibilities and natural history

The human impact upon the natural world over the last few centuries has been so drastic that it has radically transformed the global environment. The effects of industrialisation and rapid population growth have diminished natural resources, reduced and in cases removed wildlife and has increased levels of harmful pollutants, particularly the ‘greenhouse’ gas Carbon Dioxide (Sawyer 1972). Whilst the extent of climate change has been fiercely debated, an academic consensus was apparent by the 1980s which was reflected in the successive international treaties organised by the United Nations to limit the changes within the natural world caused by human activity. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN 1992) was negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 which agreed to stabilise the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Further discussions led to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 (UN 1997) and the Paris Agreement of 2015 (UN 2015), which called for a reduction in greenhouse gases to prevent significant and potentially catastrophic climate change. The rapidly developing concern of how to manage the environment represents the acceleration of these issues for contemporary society. Political groups and activists urge individuals, communities and governments to take action immediately to prevent irreversible damage to the earth’s ecosystem. Therefore, this necessity for action, rapidity and advancement on these issues appears to be current across natural history and current environmental issues. These are the values that are placed upon this heritage by communities.
With the current environmental issues affecting people in every single society and nation state, this particular heritage stands as a vital component in understanding the direction of humanity and how it relates itself to the wider world (see Howard and Papayannis 2007). Whilst the popular engagement with natural history forms a significant component in the formation of the modern world it remains a highly understudied field within contemporary heritage studies (see Dorfman 2011). Indeed, even though a number of prominent assessments on preservation, management, legislation and protection of the natural world have been provided by scholars, a critical examination of the use and value of this specific heritage has been noticeable by its absence (Goudie 1981; Melosi and Scarpino 2004). This perhaps stems somewhat from the equation of natural history with a sense of ‘natural resource’ which is assessed on the basis of management, access and usage (Hutt, Blanco and Varmer 1999). This particular absence of concentration is replicated across similar fields and cogent disciplines, as whilst the development of heritage, tourist and museum studies have addressed how individuals, groups and communities respond to human history the critical heritage of natural history remains relatively unexplored (Barthel-Bouchier 2016). By examining how natural history is represented through media, political and public discourse alongside the contemporary displays and exhibitions that detail the evolution of plants, animals and the formation of minerals and the planet’s climate, a new agenda regarding concerns for the environment, sustainability and the future within cultural heritage will be developed (see Lowenthal and Olwig 2006). It is through all these media that we witness our natural heritage as a constantly altering set of values rather than a ‘natural’ environment (Harrison 2015).
The way in which heritage sites shape and inform identities regarding power, place, rights and responsibilities has been expertly examined over the past two decades as scholars have argued that exhibitions and displays can engage audiences with progressive and affirming ideals (Sandell 2016; Sandell and Nightingale 2012). These concerns have largely been focused on a concern for human rights both as a transnational issue as well as at a local level with communities encouraged to accept and acknowledge difference within society (Murphy 2016). Such objectives have resulted in alterations within museological practice and a commitment from heritage sites to develop more inclusive displays which do not alienate or exclude the diverse audiences which constitute modern western nation states. Indeed, museums, galleries or heritage centres that focus upon transforming society, by addressing issues of prejudice and intolerance, are frequently regarded as ‘sites of conscience’ (see Aspel 2015). From former places of repression and torture, locations of inequality and injustice, to spaces of hardship and suffering, institutions based at these spaces use these historical associations to seek to provide education and guidance on how ‘we’ as individuals and ‘we’ as a society should live (Kidd et al. 2014). These sites assert the role of heritage as an object to think about the present and future rather than an object of the past to reflect upon. However, despite the increasing role that natural history museums, heritage parks and popular culture have had in recent years in addressing social and political issues, the study of ‘sites of conscience’ has remained firmly embedded within a modern ‘human’ experience (Cato and Jones 1991; Davis 1996). Scholarship on ‘sites of conscience’ has not been extended to natural heritage perhaps because of the very different relationship that is formed between humanity and the environment. However, in the context of a world which is increasingly beset by problems of climate change, an alternative paradigm must be formed to come to terms with a seemingly rapidly changing planet.
One area that has provided a means to extend this application of ‘conscience’ within this particular area of heritage studies is the formation of an approach within environmental and ecological thought which posits the significance of ‘non-human’ participants within society (Morton 2007; 2010; 2013). Within this method, human agents cease to be the sole participants in the world but instead take part in an ‘object-centred democracy’ where other agents operate alongside human counterparts (Latour 1993; 2005). The implications for a critical natural heritage studies of such an approach is that the decisions on preservation, access and display are more than processes determined by humans but objects and events formed by the relationships society holds with a host of other non-human agents. The designation ‘non-human agency’ does not confer identity and being onto inanimate objects but rather takes into account that non-human actors exist and exert an influence on the world. It requires humans to take greater regard towards the wider environment and to move beyond the assumption of a superior role. In essence, this approach also requires a reorientation of the social to encompass ‘non-humans’. This does not remove power from human communities; indeed this approach strengthens those communities as it facilitates the emergence of an ‘object-orientated democracy’ (Latour 2005). This comprehension of society in an alternative way enlarges what is included within that ‘social’ sphere and it also provides greater points of collaboration for human communities as discussions become focused on shared concerns rather than particular objectives. It is on this basis that sites of natural history can be regarded as places of ‘conscience’; not necessarily where visitors are instructed with fundamental ideals but where values and ideals are presented, debated and defined. Natural heritage serves as a place where identities are formed and where societies can engage with issues that have implications beyond their own immediate concern.

Ecology, environmentalism and epistemologies

To develop a critical natural heritage studies requires engagement with the well-developed areas of research of ecology and environmental studies (Scheiner and Willig 2011; Worster 1994). These approaches have examined the relationship between human societies and the natural world to develop frameworks of management and to raise awareness of pollution and resource depletion (Keller and Golley 2000). The roots of these areas of concern are within the emergence of the conservation movement within the late nineteenth century where fears regarding the advancement of civilisation upon ‘nature’ saw the development of preserved and protected areas (see Taylor 2016). Within the United States, the development of state and national parks was based on the premise that a distinction existed between the ‘human’ and ‘natural’ worlds (Wellock 2007). The former was regarded as the artifice whilst the latter was unsullied by the deleterious effects of humanity. Indeed, it is within the work of the American transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) that this sense of nature as a separate entity is best expressed. Emerson (1836) accorded nature with a redeeming quality whilst Thoreau (1854) defined the natural as a sanctuary against the incursion of the modern world. The marked division between humanity and nature which emerges during this formative period for the conservation movement forms a structuring device in the succeeding works on environmentalism throughout the twentieth century (Crane 2013: 219). However, whilst this initial separation was based upon a religious sentiment which placed an understanding and experience of the divine through engagement with nature, by the late nineteenth century the same point of difference is made but it is legitimated not through an appeal to God but to scientific endeavour. Indeed, it is during the course of the last one hundred years that humanity and the natural world have been cast as binary opposites on the basis of classificatory schemata.
Sites of natural history and the representation of natural heritage have been key in this process of dislocation as the environment became an object of the naturalist’s gaze. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, specimens of fossils, minerals, plants and animals within museums and private collections were interpreted as evidence of development, order and progress. As such, natural history served as the basis for demonstrating the indubitable and inevitable character of a positivist, western, patriarchal and imperial knowledge system (Bennett 1995). The environment, separated from human experience, was catalogued in order to present it as an objective fact which could then assert contemporary social values and norms. Environmental and ecological science developed on this assumption throughout the course of the twentieth century. Indeed, this approach expanded from the 1950s as threats from industrial pollution, depletion of resources and climate change appeared to further justify the division between humanity and nature in order to preserve, protect and manage (see Carson 1962). By the 1960s, the emergence of environmental movements across the western world emphasised the need for an alternative relationship with ‘nature’ while serving to reinforce this division rather than ameliorating it. In this political, social and cultural movement, the environment and the natural world was still presented as distinct from humanity. Organisations such as Friends of the Earth (founded in 1969) and Greenpeace (founded in 1971) situated themselves as guardians of ‘nature’ against the threatening incursions of humanity. However, this division found its most distinct expression within the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ which emerged in the 1970s as a means of explaining the Earth as a complex system which regulates itself and thereby fosters conditions for life on the planet. Whilst such an approach forwarded a holistic understanding of the environment, where geological, climatological and organic processes were entwined, it still maintained a divide between human agents and the wider ecological system (Lovelock and Giffin 1969; Lovelock and Margulis 1974). Whether as religious inspiration, scientific classification or environmental ethics, it is the separation of nature as an unassailable object, beyond interpretation. However, whilst the ‘natural’ is presented within these studies as neutral and objective it nevertheless has been framed entirely by cultural values (see Næss 1989).
As a means of addressing this divide between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ which has been at the forefront of the environmental and conservation movement, the idea of nature as a social and cultural construct needs to be made prominent (Cronon 1997). Instead of assuming the environment exists as a stable entity, it can instead be regarded as an interpellated subject, already defined by ideology in the moment of its recognition (after Althusser 1971: 126). It is in this definition that an alternative mode of engagement can be formed within our understanding of ‘nature’ which examines the values we identify within nature and what the environment represents within society (Latour 2004a). Abandoning the division between humanity and nature is not a proclamation of an ecological or holistic mode of assessment where life on Earth is part of a system, for this is to assert a particular vision of the environment at the outset. Rather it is to acknowledge that our environment is constructed by humans and non-humans as a process of meaning-making, of a dialogue that shifts and alters as we seek to clarify not the nature of things but what these things mean to us (after Guattari 1989). Therefore, the ‘natural’ can be a place where we discuss how we might be rather than derive essentialist notions of what we are.
It is in this respect that ‘natural history’ becomes part of this process as its representation has been so integral in defining the character of humanity during the modern age. From the seventeenth century onwards the study of this topic has been central to understanding the self and the state (Descartes 1998). ‘Nature’ was equated with irrefutable claims to knowledge; concepts that were true in all times and in all places (Locke 1836). Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), within his ‘Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, defined the act of observance and the appearance of nature as evidence of humanity’s innate sense of order:
We ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity that we call nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it there if we, or the nature of our mind, had not originally put it there … (Kant 1998: 241).
Such notions of nature and the natural provided for the distinction between humanity and the wider environment. The imposition of humankind’s will on nature demonstrated a desire not to be confined by nature but to ensure its rational use (Bentham 1823). The British Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) affirmed this relationship as the ‘natural’ was regarded as significant only through its mobilisation by wider society (Mill 1874). As such, beyond the human definition and utilisation of the environment, ‘nature’ possessed no inherent value in itself:
Whatsoever, in nature, gives indication of beneficent design proves this beneficence to be armed only with limited power; and the duty of man is to cooperate with the beneficent powers, not by imitating, but by perpetually striving to amend, the course of nature – and bringing that part of it over which we can exercise control more nearly into conformity with a high standard of justice and goodness (Mill 1874: 65).
This concept of defining nature through use was also explored within th...

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