Nutrition, Nurture and Nature
Based on a critical approach to outdated debates about the so-called ‘Nature-Nurture’ dichotomy, this paper identifies how people use the objective of biodiversity - along with related concepts such as conservation and sustainability - in different ways to defend their pursuit of diverse aims for th...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Laboratoire Éco-anthropologie et Ethnobiologie
2013-11-01
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| Series: | Revue d'ethnoécologie |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/935 |
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| Summary: | Based on a critical approach to outdated debates about the so-called ‘Nature-Nurture’ dichotomy, this paper identifies how people use the objective of biodiversity - along with related concepts such as conservation and sustainability - in different ways to defend their pursuit of diverse aims for the management of the countryside. Situations in Scotland, Ireland and England are described to exemplify this in regard to differing conceptions of, and political debates surrounding, the use of land. The paper was presented at the 26th ICAF conference in December 2008 and is based on material prior to that date. It has been briefly updated in 2013 only where a situation has changed significantly.After identifying the contradiction in the phrase ‘nature conservation’, the paper argues that it is important not to equate biodiversity solely with the conservation of rare or native species but to bear in mind that innovation also increases biodiversity. The paper draws out the importance of social factors in determining how different people view nature and the environment, and thus their behaviour towards it. An important conclusion of the paper is that although the term biodiversity is much used in opposing arguments about countryside and often has an elastic meaning in popular discourse, in ecology it has a more precise meaning which must be situated in a specific temporal and geographical context. |
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| ISSN: | 2267-2419 |