..for us humans (and this includes life scientists and ecologists) nature is always constructed by our meaning-giving and discursive processes, so that what we perceive as natural is also cultural and social; said differently, nature is simultaneously real, collective, and discursive — fact, power, and discourse — and needs to be naturalized, sociologized, and deconstructed accordingly. (..) our own beliefs in nature as untouched and independent are giving way — with molecular technosciences from recombinant DNA to gene mapping and nanotechnology—to a new view of nature as artificially produced.
It is necessary to strive for a more balanced position that acknowledges both the constructedness of nature in human contexts—the fact that much of what ecologists refer to as natural is indeed also a product of culture—and nature in the realist sense, that is, the existence of an independent order of nature, including a biological body, the representations of which constructivists can legitimately query in terms of their history or political implications. It is thus that we can navigate between‘‘ ‘nature-endorsing’ and ‘nature-sceptical’ perspectives’’ in order ‘‘to incorporate a greater awareness of what their respective discourses on ‘nature’ may be ignoring and politically repressing’’. (..) For constructivists, the challenge lies in learning to incorporate into their analyses the biophysical basis of reality; for realists it is examining their frameworks from the perspective of their historical constitution—accepting that .. the natural sciences are not ahistorical and nonideological.
//Escobar, A. 1999. After Nature: Steps to an anti-essentialist political ecology. Current Anthropology 40, no. 1
It is necessary to strive for a more balanced position that acknowledges both the constructedness of nature in human contexts—the fact that much of what ecologists refer to as natural is indeed also a product of culture—and nature in the realist sense, that is, the existence of an independent order of nature, including a biological body, the representations of which constructivists can legitimately query in terms of their history or political implications. It is thus that we can navigate between‘‘ ‘nature-endorsing’ and ‘nature-sceptical’ perspectives’’ in order ‘‘to incorporate a greater awareness of what their respective discourses on ‘nature’ may be ignoring and politically repressing’’. (..) For constructivists, the challenge lies in learning to incorporate into their analyses the biophysical basis of reality; for realists it is examining their frameworks from the perspective of their historical constitution—accepting that .. the natural sciences are not ahistorical and nonideological.
//Escobar, A. 1999. After Nature: Steps to an anti-essentialist political ecology. Current Anthropology 40, no. 1
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