Displaced in Nature: The Cultural Production of (Non-)Place in Place-Based Forest Conservation Pedagogy

Abstract

This study examines spatial practices in a forest conservation education program that incorporates place as a tool to teach environmental and forestry issues to schoolchildren and connect them with nature. By analyzing educational forests, “talking-tree trails,” classes taught to children, and how visitors move throughout the sites, this paper argues that people and practices within the forests employ a rhetoric of spatial and temporal transience that can enable a displaced experience. Human-nature dualistic tendencies that foster environmental alienation are produced culturally and spatially and are experienced in ways that can promote disconnectedness. Instead of re-placing students with nature, as place-based environmental education promotes, forestry and pedagogical systems can practice nature as non-placed.

Keywords:

• Place
• Human-nature Dualism
• Place-based Education
• Forests
• Non-place

Acknowledgements

This article was derived from a PhD dissertation (2010, University of New Mexico, Department of Communication & Journalism, Karen A. Foss adviser) and was written in Carole Blair's graduate seminar on Rhetoric of Space/Place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This paper received First Place Top Competitive Paper in the Environmental Communication Division at the 2011 Western States Communication Association conference in Monterrey, CA. The author thanks Karen Foss, Tema Milstein, Carole Blair, Jan Schuetz, Jonathan B. Hill, Stephen Depoe, and the reviewers for their assistance and support.

Notes

1. There are multiple ways of being with/of nature that promote a sense of place and deemphasize human centeredness. Throughout this paper, by being “with nature,” “of nature,” or having a “sense of place,” I mean engaging in understandings and practices that minimize anthropocentric conceptualizations of the natural world, increase a sense of co-presence, and help bridge the human-nature divide.

2. For a helpful discussion of space and place terminology within the social sciences, see Agnew (1993). Also important to note is that foresters, educators, and curricula use space and place in a variety of colloquial ways.

3. Also called the “constant comparative method,” analyses and theory are generated by going back and forth between, or “comparing” data, research questions, and analysis. Generative criticism uses rhetorical analysis to examine research (Foss, 2009). The method incorporates rhetorical tools, such as cluster method, and frequency and intensity of words, images, tones, language, and themes. Procedurally, when combining these methods to collect and analyze research, I first used open, analytical, and focused coding to develop and analyze codes and categories that emerged from the research (Strauss, 1987). In this step, I developed and generated broad schemas and themes and paid attention to how members saw and experienced the events (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). Next, I went back and forth between the research and the coding to ascertain whether the schemas reflected what I observed. After generating, clustering, and confirming the schemas, I chose core themes that appeared to be the most frequent, connected, striking, and salient.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Dickinson

Elizabeth A. Dickinson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Salem College