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Geography 2412: Environment and

Culture

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/

class_homepages/geog_2412_f09/

An introductory survey of the ways that

people and nature interact.

One of the three main tracks of academic

geography:

• Physical

• Human

• Environment and society

Academic/Research Geography

Physical

• Climatology

• Geomorphology

• Bio-geography

Human

• Cultural

• Int’l Development

• Demography/

migration

• Political

• Urban / economic

Academic/Research Geography

Environment and

Society

• Human and Political

ecology

• Human dimensions of

global change

• Natural resources

• Natural hazards

Tools and Techniques

• GIS-cartography

• Remote sensing

• Spatial and inferential

statistics

Course Structure:

• Lecture and Recitation

• No Textbook, Content Sources:

• Lecture Notes on website: recap of key concepts, facts, and arguments (no substitute for your own notes)

• Readings: Specific content areas linked to lectures, two sources:– Articles

– Web reports (links on syllabus)

• Recitations: discussion, expansion and exercises

• http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homep

ages/geog_2412_f09/

• What's New?

• Syllabus (with links to readings)

• Lecture Notes

• Recitation Exercises

• Teaching Assistants and Recitations

• Sample First Exam Questions

• Sample Second Exam Questions

• Study guide and sample FINAL EXAM questions

• Further Reading, Background, Links, etc.

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• Recitations: small group discussion/exercises,

led by a TA, 6 written exercises (print from class

website). Attendance, exercises, and participation

in discussion count toward recitation grade. (50%

of final grade)

• Exams: Three “quizzes” during class and at final

time” Dec. 18. 1:30 pm. 40 minute multiple

choice, matching, and true-false computer-graded

exams. (50% of final grade)

• 10% grade increments with +/-, may be “curved”

after first and second quizzes

What’s going on in this photo?

Where taken?

When taken?

Nature–Society Models:

Ways of Thinking about the

Relationship

• Anthropological

exceptionalism: the

paradigm we’ll use in this

class; obvious on its face,

best descriptive view.

– Technology, language, awareness,

etc.

[What about beavers, dolphins,

dogs? Discuss in recitation: are

we Part of or Apart from

nature?]

•Descriptive vs. prescriptive concepts

Environmental Determinism and

Natural Limits models

•Determinism:

Environmental factors

determine cultural

characteristics and

fates ---- from early

Greek scholars to 20th

Century American

and European

Geographers.

Fredrich Ratzel:

Anthropogeographie

(1882 & 1891)

Ellen Churchill Semple:

Influences of Geographic

Environment (1911)

Natural Limits, or “Limits

to Growth” ---a

Neo-environmental

Determinism (1960s---)

Mostly biologists, especially Paul

Ehrlich, The Population Bomb 1968.

Biafra, 1967

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The Malthusian Dilemma (Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798): pop tends to grow faster than

resource output. Ehrlich: a crash

is inevitable.

“Tragedy of the Commons” (Garrett

Hardin, 1968): too many people will

degrade the global commons,

bringing down even those who were

below local carrying capacity.

But also in the 1960s

and 70s………

Techno-Optimism, or “Cornucopian” views

• Dominion models / Techno-optimism:

humans have dominated and can / should

shape nature--a “techno-optimistic” or

“cornucopian” view: technology and human

ingenuity trumps limits

Julian Simon,

The Ultimate Resource, 1981:

“Resources are becoming cheaper and

more abundant, not scarcer, and over the

longer term the environment and the human

condition grow steadily better, not worse.”

(James P. Hogan.com)

Interaction models: human, cultural and

political ecology: nature offers options,

people transform nature, and economic

systems adapt to limits and changes.

Precautionary models / Sustainable Development / Sustainability: humans should develop; meet needs and desires, but must recognize limits and mitigate environmental problems.

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“Peak Oil”

I wish I had his

PowerPoint ©

technician!

Global Warming as ultimate

threat: Maybe there is plenty

of fossil fuel (carbon) still in

the earth, and the problem is

we might use too much of it?

Who does this conceptualizing?

• Collective, institutionalized, and personal

“models”

• Academics: economists, sociologists,

anthropologists, geographers, natural

scientists, etc.

• Interest groups, advocates, policy analysts,

writers, commentators, clerics, etc.

• Every individual

• Why? Intellectual pursuit; beliefs; advocacy;

persuasion; politics; greed; etc.

Three Themes

1: Perception of the Environment, and of Our Role in It.

2: The Human Transformation of the Earth.

3: Interacting with the Environment as Resource and as Hazard

And now, for the first our three themes

Theme 1: Perception of the Environment,

and of Our Role in It.

• How do we perceive nature?

–Analytical: process, events; cause/effect

–Affective: good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, threat/resource, etc.

• How do we see our role? good/bad, part of, or apart from; steward/improver,

destroyer; transformer.

Principles: Individual Perception

• Mental images of environment formed through:

– Experience / information

• Filtered through:

– Attitudes

– Culture (e.g., Beliefs and Values)

• Affected by limits on information and cognitive

information processing

• Observed through: self-reporting, surveys, overt

behavior

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Problems with Env. Perceptions• Often wrong!!!!

• Selective and flavored by attitudes and beliefs----cognitive dissonance (disagreement between information received and beliefs or values)

• Deformed by cognitive limits

• Damiel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky– See patterns in randomness

– Attribute cause/effect with little justification

– Base perceptions on short windows of observation

– Fix or “anchor” perceptions on notable events and take them as exemplars of whole genres (one hurricane or wildfire used on what to expect from future cases)

• See Kahneman’s Nobel Prize lecture (2002): nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/kahnemann-lecture.pdf

• How do we measure WRONG???

• Scientific monitoring (climate records, wildlife behavior and demography studies, soil erosion calculations, all the rest of env. science)

• There are different “Ways of seeing” nature---here’s an example from wildlife studies in which the researcher compares the perceptions of hunters and ranchers to park officials and wildlife biologists in the emotionally-charged issue of elk and wolves in Yellowstone Nat’l Park (and does it with a catchy phrase):

“The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledge and power in greater Northern Yellowstone” Geoforum 27 (2006): 185-199.

Paul Robbins , Department of Geography and Regional Development, HarvillBuilding, 437A, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States

Census counts, Elk, YNP Northern RangeRobbins compared responses to a survey among hunters and outfitters, who “know”

elk through their actually hunting as well as through their advocacy for keeping elk

numbers high and keeping land available for public hunting, vs. wildlife managers

who “know” elk thru studies of population and impacts of things like drought and

wolves. The phrase “barstool” biology is the managers’ informal term for the

criticism offered (sometimes in the bar in Gardiner, MT where they all see each

other) by hunters of the managers’ census counts, and other scientific ways of

measuring and managing the elk herd.

Lowenthal’s Themes

• Historical beliefs about environment, env.

change and the impact of humans

• Evaluation and Explanations for change

• Turn to more negative assessments of

change

• Attitudes in recent times--environmentalism

Lowenthal

• He fixes the roots of modern awareness of human transformation (degradation) of environment in mid-19th century observations by naturalists and others.

• But they do go back further, in most ancient religious traditions environmental events were divinely ordained, but linked to (brought on by) human foibles and behaviors (the biblical flood; Luther: Adam’s fall caused decay of nature—the loss of Eden).