THE ECOSYSTEM HEALTH METAPHOR IN SCIENCE AND POLICY

Ecosystem health' is an increasingly common metaphor in the langauge of science and policy. Given the prominence of both the ecosystem and health concepts within geography, this paper examines the meanings generated by the adoption of the metaphor for scientific research and for environmental policy on the North American Great Lakes. 'Ecosystem' can be characterized as an entity, an abstract concept, or a perspective. As perspective, ecosystem shares many features of postmodern science, emphasizing complexity and holism and calling for the inclusion of human beings in our considerations of nature. The ecosystem health metaphor is politically powerful in its ability to evoke action and concern for the environment with an appeal to the universal experiences of human ill-health. The organismic ecosystem health metaphor provides a new, relevant way of thinking about the natural world. In policy discourse, however, metaphor can be problematic in that there is potential for the author or speaker to hide behind the nonliteral language. Moreover, the acceptance of the ecosystem health metaphor which can draw upon widely held beliefs and norms implies that other ways of knowing the world are necessarily omitted. We highlight some of these issues in a case study of a policy document prepared by the Ecological Committee of the Great Lakes International Joint Commission. To continue to know how to study nature in new ways, metaphors must be encouraged, but their meanings must also be widely explored     

WHOSE WOODS ARE THESE? COUNTER-MAPPING FOREST TERRITORIES IN KALIMANTAN,INDONESIA

This paper examines the politics of land and forest rights in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Forest mapping by government forestry planners allocates rights of resource use and land access according to forest types and economic objectives, only rarely recognizing indigenous occupancy rights or forest territories customarily claimed or managed by local people. As maps and official plans based on them ignore, and in some cases criminalize, traditional rights to forest, forest products, and forest land for temporary conversion to swidden agriculture, indigenous activists are using sketch maps to re-claim territories - a process that requires re-defining many traditional forest rights. The paper considers the political implications of mapping and the implications of a focus on land use rather than forest use.     

Taking a hike: exploring leisure walkers embodied experiences

This paper uses ‘walk-along’ interviewing to investigate embodied experiences of walking on the South Downs Way, a long-distance trail in southern England. Using a qualitative methodology – encompassing 93 walk-along interviews and auto-ethnographic reflections of two walker/researchers – it explores how walkers conceptualise their own walking experiences and captures this information while they are walking. It contributes to and extends the emerging body of literature which explores people’s experience, specifically aiming to develop a deeper understanding of leisure walking experiences in the dynamic space of the walk. It examines a range of bodily sensations and emotional states associated with the leisure walking experience in the context of temporal and environmental aspects, identifying those feelings that are innate and those which are mediated by external conditions. Current experiences intertwine with memories of other places and times in a process where connections are made between mind, body, the immediate physical environment, self and others, and disconnections from everyday life and the wider environment. These connections and disconnections create a sense of perspective, achievement and well-being.