As a Gregory Bateson scholar, I have long been fascinated with the notion that art and science might complement one another in the effort to bring forth, understand, and represent the “wholeness” of our more-than-human worlds. Far from pantheistic, Bateson’s notion of wholeness refers to the complex, nonlinear, multiscale relationships by means of which organisms, ecosystems, states of mind, cultural predispositions, and the socio-natural worlds we live in continuously unfold into being. Alas, the tenets of modern science that dominated many disciplines for most of the twentieth century were characteristically reductionist, thus inhibiting scientists from acknowledging and understanding the entangled nature of “natural” and of social phenomena. Even in light of the epistemological revolution that systems thinking portends, the representation of complexity and patterns that connect itself posed—and continues to pose—challenges to scientists and science communication experts.
The latest Environment and Society featured article is now available! This month’s article, “Contradictions in Tourism: The Promise and Pitfalls of Ecotourism as a Manifold Capitalist Fix,” comes from Volume 3 (2012). Robert Fletcher and Katja Neves review an interdisciplinary literature exploring the relationship between tourism and capitalism focused on ecotourism in particular.
Visit the featured article page to download your copy of the article today before it’s gone! A new article is featured every month.
Photo by Whit Welles (CC BY 3.0)
ROBERT FLETCHER is associate professor in the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has conducted ethnographic research in North, Central, and South America concerning the practice of ecotourism as a strategy for environmental conservation and sustainable development in addition to working for many years as an ecotourism guide and planner in a variety of locations. He is the author of Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism (Duke University Press, 2015).
KATJA NEVES is associate professor of Sociology of the Environment at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She has recently completed two research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada (a Standard Research Grant and an Insight Development Grant) to investigate the contemporary reinvention of urban botanical gardens around the world as agents of biodiversity conservation. Results of this research will appear in her forthcoming book, Post-Normal Conservation: The Re-Ordering of Biodiversity Governance and Environmental Subjectivity, which accounts for the emergence of urban socio-natures and the establishment of multistakeholder governmentality within the context of post-2008 austerity discursive economic frameworks. In 2016, Dr. Neves began a new five-year SSHRC-funded project (an Insight Research Grant) titled Botanic Gardens and the Politics of National and Transnational Environmental Governance. It tackles newly emerging systems of environmental governance while going beyond extant accounts of neoliberal biodiversity conservation. Additional information can be found here.
Botanic gardens are often perceived as quaint institutions that host and display exotic plants for public education and entertainment purposes. Many people think of botanic gardens as living plant museums that attest to earlier times of botanical exploration and scientific discovery. Others see them as sites of respite from the hectic pace of modern living. Ironically, given the highly objectified characteristics of botanic garden natures, many seek these landscapes as a conduit for overcoming human alienation from “nature.” Perhaps for these reasons, for over a century now botanic gardens have become increasingly popular tourist sites, attracting millions of visitors each year. In fact, Dr. Richard Benfield’s research shows that visits to botanic gardens constitute a large percentage of the garden tourism industry, which is, in turn, one of the largest and fastest growing tourism sectors in the world. In the United States alone, “there were an estimated 78 million visitors to U.S. public gardens in a recent year—more than to Las Vegas and Orlando combined.”
