Nature, culture, and natural heritage: Toward a culture of nature

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 339-354

  Heyd, Thomas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

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EID: 26044469036     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20052742     Document Type: Review

References (61)

1. In this paper I do not specifically distinguish between conservation and preservation (and so use them interchangeably) mostly because the discourse regarding the protection of natural heritage is generally carried out in terms of conservation. The interchangeable use of these terms in this context is harmless, moreover, since here I am not concerned with the motivations for interacting with nature in a certain way (for our sake vs. for its own sake) but with the kind of cultural fabric that will bring about, or maintain a certain state.
2. Certain kinds of inheritance, as well as certain kinds of heritage, however, seem rather to be borne than enjoyed, if they involve a disagreeable condition. This may be for a variety of reasons. We speak of the weight of history as a kind of "heritage" which brings on physical as well as psychological burdens, which later generations have to bear, as, for example, after a war or after a disaster of some sort. But even ostensibly positive things can be hard to bear if the obligations that they bring along issue in hardships for those involved, as, for example, when the artistic or natural goods passed on are expensive to maintain or to protect. Here 1 do not address this issue further, primarily focusing on the idea that both heritage and inheritance concern some thing or things that are identified as valuable by some person or group of persons at some point in time.
3. World Heritage Convention Mission Statement, issued May 2000, updated 1 June 2000, http://www.unesco.org/whc/5history.htm.
4. World Heritage Convention Mission Statement, 2000, Ibid. (emphasis added).
5. The present criteria concerning cultural landscapes are to be found at http://whc.unesco.org under "Operational Guidelines," chap. 1, pt. c,
6. "Criteria for the Inclusion of Cultural Properties in the World Heritage List," secs. 35-42.
7. For discussion, see Mechthild Rössler, "The Integration of Cultural Landscapes into the World Heritage," World Heritage Newsletter, no. 1 (1993): 15,
8. "Conserving Outstanding Cultural Landscapes," World Heritage Newsletter, no. 2 (1993): 14-15,
9. and "Protecting Outstanding Cultural Landscapes," World Heritage Newsletter, no. 3 (1993): 15 (http://www.unesco.org/whc/news/index-en. htm).
10. See also Bernd von Droste, Harald Plachter and Mechthild Rössler, eds., Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value: Components of a Global Strategy (Stuttgart and New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1995).
11. Rössler, "The Integration of Cultural Landscapes," p. 15 (emphasis added).
12. See, e.g., Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
13. Gary P. Nabhan, A. M. Rea, K. L. Reichardt, E. Mellink, and C. F. Hutchinson, "Papago Influences on Habitat and Biotic Diversity: Quitovac Oasis Ethnoecology," Journal of Ethnobiology 2, no. 2 (1982): 124-43.
14. See also Tim Peschel, Vegetationskundliche Untersuchungen der Wiesen und Rasen historischer Gärten in Potsdam (Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag 2000), who reports on hundreds of species found within these parks but not generally outside.
15. But see Holmes Rolston, III, "The Wilderness Idea Reaffirmed," Environmental Professional 13 (1991): 370-77,
16. in critique of Nabhan et al., "Papago Influences on Habitat and Biotic Diversity."
17. For discussion see Val Plumwood, "Toward a Progressive Naturalism," in Thomas Heyd, ed., Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), chap. 2.
18. See, e.g., Tim Ingold, "Culture and the Perception of the Environment," in Elizabeth Croll and David Parkin, eds., Bush Base: Forest Farm: Culture, Environment, and Development (London: Routledge, 1992).
19. For discussion of the role of parks, see, e.g., Thomas H. Birch, "The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1980): 3-26.
20. Regarding the relation of wildness and certain human activities, see Mark Woods, "Ecological Restoration and the Renewal of Wildness and Freedom," in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, chap. 10.
21. But see, e.g., Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), who argues that "the very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off. Cultures - different or universal - do not exist, any more than Nature does. There are only natures-cultures. . ." (p. 104; emphasis in original).
22. See also Yrjö Haila, "Beyond the Nature-Culture Dualism," Biology and Philosophy 5 (2000): 155-75.
23. See Tim Ingold, "Introduction to Culture," in Tim Ingold, ed., Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 327-49.
24. As noted, this way of characterizing the natural is a matter of convenience or pragmatism. Also see John Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature (London: Duckworth, 1974), who makes a similar proposal (p. 5, n.). Although we cannot broach the topic here, the distinction becomes more problematic once we incorporate the notion that, in some fundamental way, human beings are also natural. One may, however, perhaps speak of the contrast between human artifacts and artifacts made by other beings since ethologists tell us that a number of other animal species make simple tools, shelter, etc.
25. I am thankful to several colleagues, especially to Bob Bright, who helped me get clear about this point.
26. By the term spontaneous I mean the expression of a being's own way, i.e., the expression of its specific qualities.
27. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom (London: J. Murray, 1871);
28. cited in Lee Cronk, "Is There a Role for Culture in Human Behavioral Ecology?" Ethology and Sociobiology 16 (1995): 181-205; p. 182.
29. Cronk, "Is There a Role for Culture?" p. 182.
30. J. H. Barkow, Darwin, Sex and Status: Biological Approaches to Mind and Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1989);
31. cited in Cronk, "Is There a Role for Culture?" p. 182.
32. Jerome Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "The Psychological Foundations of Culture," in Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 19-136;
33. cited in Cronk, "Is There a Role for Culture?" p. 182.
34. This explains why we may feel that to speak of culture as the culprit of depravity, war, or environmental devastation contains a contradiction.
35. In a related vein, Jules Pretty, Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature (London: Earthscan, 2003), reminds us that originally "agriculture was interpreted as two connected things, agri and cultura" (p. xii).
36. This heavily debated topic is often studied under the rubric "social learning." See, for example, Cecilia M. Heyes and Bennett G. Galef, Jr., eds., Social Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1996).
37. But see David Premack and Ann James Premack, "Why Animals Have Neither Culture Nor History," in Ingold, Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, pp. 350-65.
38. See A. Whiten, J. Goodall, W. C. McGrew, T. Nishida, V. Reynolds, Y. Sugiyama, C. E. G. Tutin, R. W. Wrangham, and C. Boesch, "Cultures in Chimpanzees," Nature 399 (999): 682-85;
39. Carel P. van Schaik, Marc Ancrenaz, Gwendolyn Borgen, Birute Galdikas, Cheryl D. Knott, Ian Singleton, Akira Suzuki, Sri Suci Utami, and Michelle Merrill, "Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture," Science 299 (2003): 102-05;
40. Hal Whitehead, "Cultural Selection and Genetic Diversity in Matrilineal Whales," Science 282 (1988): 1708-11.
41. But see Luc Ferry, The New Ecological Order, trans. Carol Volk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), who maintains that culture is an exclusive feature of humans, which distinguishes us from nature, in particular animals: ". . . man is the antinatural being par excellence" (p. xxviii).
42. The term culture of nature has been used by others in a variety of senses, which only partially overlap with the meaning I give the term here. Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991), for example, titles his book this way. His title is to highlight that nature is not separate from humanity. He intends to show that "nature is part of culture" insofar as "humans and nature construct each other" (pp. 12-13). I tend to agree but think that the term culture of nature should be reserved for the more specific notion that I propose here.
43. Andrew Light, "Restoration, Autonomy and Domination," in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, chap. 9, also uses the term culture of nature, but to refer to the relationship of humanity with nature in general.
44. Also see Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, esp. chap. 2, where he discusses a tradition in European thought that posits the possibility of human "cooperation with nature" pursued for the joint good of human beings and nonhuman nature. He points out that "to 'develop' land, on this way of looking at man's relationship to nature, is to actualise its potentialities, to bring to light what it has in itself to become, and by this means to perfect it" (p. 32). Passmore (chap. 2), moreover, gives a historical account of the idea of cooperation with nature, pointing to its mostly Pelagian origins, and refers to further development of it in modern times by J. G. Fichte, P. Teilhard de Chardin, and Herbert Marcuse.
45. Various authors have taken this viewpoint, for example, Beat and Beatrix Sitter-Liver, "Preface," in Beat and Beatrix Sitter-Liver, eds., Culture within Nature: Culture dans la nature, Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (Basel: Wiese, 1995), who speak of the necessity of "an understanding of culture within nature" (emphasis in the original) leading to "practical ways which may lead to a sustainable dwelling of human beings, [and] of all living beings, within the realm that nature offers" (p. 13). The idea of working with and within nature has a long ancestry in some cultures and subcultures. Passmore argues that the culture of cooperation with nature exists in European cultures at least since the time of the Stoic Posidonius (p. 33). He, like others, also points out that "the ideal of 'conforming to nature' of working with, rather than against, its grain, has been tremendously powerful in Chinese thought. . ." (p. 26).
46. Also see John L. Hammond, "Wilderness and Heritage Values," Environmental Ethics 7 (1985): 165-70.
47. We are involved. To deny that we are would be a form of bad faith (in Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist sense).
48. This is not to say that advocates of parks and reserves are not aware of the need for a wide-ranging, nature-respectful approach to all of human interactions with nature, of course. (I thank Philip Cafaro for reminding me of this point.)
49. See Antonio Carlos Diegues, "Recycled Rain Forest Myths," in David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus, eds., The World and the Wild (University of Arizona Press, 2001), pp. 155-70; p. 165.
50. For further information on the possibilities of protecting human communities together with natural environments, as made evident in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking America, see Thomas Heyd, "Themes in Latin American Environmental Ethics," Environmental Values 13 (2004): 223-42.
51. Also see J. Baird Callicott, Larry B. Crowder, and Karen Mumford, "Current Normative Concepts in Conservation," Conservation Biology 13, no. 1 (1999): 22-35, on two contrasting schools of conservation philosophy, one of which treats human beings as separate from, and one of which considers human beings as part of, nature.
52. As noted, since this perspective allows for the supposition that the natural contrasts with the artifactual and that the contrast may come in degrees, we may legitimately designate an area as natural heritage if its degree of artificiality is low and the designation foreseeably will serve to preserve it from further artificiality. Christopher Preston has pointed out, however, that, in order to make such distinctions in practice, one would need to develop further an epistemology for distinguishing degrees of artificiality and politically defensible cutoff points for areas to be protected from further intervention (Christopher Preston, personal communication, 2003).
53. Also see Thomas Heyd, "The Case for Environmental Morality," Environmental Ethics 25 (2003): 5-24, and After Nature: Encountering Nature in Hybrid Spaces (Ashgate, forthcoming).
54. I am supposing that there is not just one way of acting toward any part of nature that may be considered appropriate to the task of allowing for the actualization of the specific qualities that it potentially has, although, up to this point, I have been speaking of culture of nature in the singular. Rather, such culturing of nature may be carried out in a diversity of ways even if some may be more appropriate to the goal of allowing for the spontaneity of nature than others. (As has been reported, indigenous people have not always managed to find nature-respecting ways before certain species were hunted to extinction, but although many have not, it does not mean that people with long residence in place have not generally found ways of sustainably living on the land.)
55. See Thomas Heyd, "Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories About Nature," British Journal of Aesthetics 41, no. 2 (2001): 125-37, where I argue that a diversity of cultural perspectives can be useful in aesthetic appreciation, and hence protection, of nature;
56. see also Thomas Heyd, "Indigenous Knowledge, Land Ethic and Sustainability," Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History (2000), http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/.
57. See Thomas Heyd, "Rock Art Aesthetics: Trace on Rock, Mark of Spirit, Window on Land," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57, no. 4 (1999): 451-58, for an argument that links the aesthetic appreciation of rock art with the development of respect for the natural environment.
58. For discussion see, e.g., Harald Plachter and Mechthild Rössler, "Cultural Landscapes: Reconnecting Culture and Nature," in von Droste, Cultural Landscapes, pp. 15-18.
59. There is considerable literature out on how to put this idea into practice, beginning with the work of authors such as Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1969),
60. or E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), and continuing presently with diverse proposals on living sustainably. Also of interest in this context are the essays by diverse authors contained in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, which engage the question whether the spontaneity of nature may be understood in terms of autonomy, and, if so, what such an understanding implies for human action (such as agriculture or restoration) that affects nonhuman nature.
61. In this paper, I did not seek to give an argument for respecting the integrity of natural environments, entities, or processes. My intention was, rather, to set the stage for such arguments by sketching the cultural preconditions required for the practical effectiveness of such arguments. See Heyd, "The Case for Environmental Morality," and After Nature: Encountering Nature in Hybrid Spaces, for further thoughts on these matters.