Environmental Values and Social Change
(Kulturbaserte holdninger til miljø og utviking)

Programme area description

På norsk

Main objectives
Study of social perceptions of and attitudes to nature and the way these are created and changed in various cultural, political and institutional contexts.

Areas of research
1. Study of narratives about natural environment ranging from literature, philosophy and art to popular culture and media;

2. Exploration of the relationship between human experience of place, identity and quality of life;

3. Studies in environmental philosophy and environmental ethics;

4. Studies of the relationship between environmental discourse and practice, especially with regard to the use and abuse of natural resources;

5. Investigation of the impact of cultural institutions and power structures on attitudes to nature;

6. Studies of the formation of public opinion on the environment in situations of the conflict of interest;

7. Elaboration of methodology and theory re. social constructions of nature.

International Master programme
Culture, Environment and Sustainability,
starting August 2003.

Contact person
Nina Witoszek

Dynamics of the relationships between wildness and identity.

In a previous research on the South West of France I have studied the evolution over four centuries (XVIIth-XXIst) of the semantic field of the adjective “wild” attached to a “local” breed of cows. In the progress of that study, the notion of localness itself (and the correlated notion of identity ) appeared to have been much affected by the variation of meanings and values attributed to the cattle's “wildness”. For some of the stakeholders, those changes in meanings and values were clearly spurred by non-local knowledges, practices and representations.

In another research, I have shown the lability of identitarian territories and group solidarities. Their parallel evolutions proved remarkably rapid at two periods : the imperialist conquests of exotic lands in the XIXth century and, recently, the construction of Europe. Both events occasioned a greater awareness of the rest of the world and initiated a reflection on identities.

My hypothesis is that the problems of global warming, growing scarcity of some essential resources and biodiversity conservation are today's stimulus for new enlargement of world consciousness and re-organisation of that part of identities which is hinged on representations of nature.

I now want to concentrate more thoroughly on the dynamics between wildness, collective identities and growing consciousness of the interplay between local and global levels.

The object of this research is then to reconsider the notion of wildness in the light of recent evolutions of the relationships between urban and rural dwellers as to the environment, on the one hand, of the scales on which environmental problems are thought about by laypeople and dealt with by corporal bodies (shift from local to global), on the second hand, of the reflexion upon the sustainability of development, finally.

The priviledged area under study remains the South West of France as it offers a rich variety of situations where those points are at stake. Attention will be focused on the social groups which constitute or re-define themselves in contexts which entail collective rethinking of relations to nature in general and of wildness in particular. I will just mention a few examples below.

South West bird hunters confronted to Europe's ban on some of their traditional practices have succeeded in promoting themselves as indispensable civilisers of wildlife, heralds of a rural cultural identity threatened by european agricultural policy. But, the need to gain support to press their point has engaged them to build nationwide support networks and even create a national party. However, in the context of avian flu – a concrete transborder problem – the very nature of the practices they defend tends to blur the image. There are signs that they are turning towards scientific knowledge in order to maintain a positive image : what aspects of external knowledges will be retained ? The process is all the more interesting to study that they had always, until then, rejected scientific critics about the impact of their activity over wildlife.

Bullfighters and aficionados confronted to protests (mainly from northern urban dwellers) have elaborated discourses on the need to voice man's wild side through bulls' “wildness” and to respect cultural identity. But, in order to defend their passion more efficiently within the european framework, they now endeavour to inscribe local identities within a vast Iberian ensemble through various manipulations of historical facts and construction of relations with French South East aficionados and Spanish ones. In the meantime, they have developed more and more elaborate breeding technics to construct a suitable wildness in bulls and cows generally imported from Spain while disregarding, until recently, local rare breeds of “wild” cows originally used for bullfighting. Will they switch to those breeds ? Doing so would reinforce the credibility of their discourse on wildness and tradition but would differentiate them from South East aficionados. I then wonder what has become more significant today : legitimacy of identity components or lobbying efficiency ?

In parallel, conservationists resort to highly sophisticated technics to save those very same rare breeds and renaturalize the environment of a reservation to allow the cattle to live in liberty, liberty being what qualifies the cows as “wild”. In the natural reservation, the distance between visitors and cattle is carefully maintained so as to foster the image of wild animals, an image which suits native inhabitants and hunters. Local political authorities though, urge reservation managers to present a tamer image which they think more attractive for non-local tourists. Paradoxically, in the name of tradition, conservationists have imported from the Pyrenees a management method so radically different from the genuinely traditional local method that it contradicts the image they seek to enforce.

Since the mad cow problem and in a context of growing defiance towards industrial cattle raising, some farmers who raise cattle for meat have expressed interest in the experience wondering whether old breeds (automatically considered as more natural) and their “wildness” could offer a profitable alternative. My hypothesis is that the symbolic value of wildness is essential in a context of disarray about development. There remains to understand what wildness is compatible with development.

In the French Pyrenees, shepherds and farmers activists faced with massive reprobation from all over Europe after the killing of the last native female bear now staunchly resist the reintroduction of Slovene bears on the grounds that they are not native and that they threaten the survival of pastoralism. They receive support from hunters. On the other hand, promoters of tourism maintain that more bears would favour tourism thus offering an alternative to the decline of pastoralism in a context of severe international competition.

On the other hand, local mythology, practices and discourses reveal that the possibility to be confronted with wild bears is essential to the construction of manhood. One may then wonder what will become of this representation if native bears are finally eradicated and/or replaced by foreign animals wearing radio trackers which could allow scientists and tourists to observe them at leisure. The question is all the more complex as the relation Slovenes entertain with their own bears at home is more and more presented to Pyreneans (by conservationists and tourism promoters) as an example to be followed. This would induce a radical change in the local perception of man's relationship to wildness. My hypothesis is that the growing influence of neo-rurals farmers – relayed by medias, conservationist NGOs and non-local institutions – may eventually prove decisive for the change. An analysis of the grounds on which the raging battle is being fought at the moment will no doubt clarify the stakes of the agitation around wildness, identity and development.

Foresters of the Moors of Gascony's artificial monospecific pine forest are, for their part, confronted with the growing wilderness of a forest which had been explicitly set up as a symbol of progress, civilisation and development at the end of the XIXth century. The 1999 hurricane wrought havocks which have left the forest – until then perfectly trimmed and homogenous – quite dishevelled. The brutal modification of the environment provoked a spectacular increase in the number of wild big mammals which damage the remaining standing trees and the newly planted ones. Foresters relied on hunters to rid them from the pest trusting hunters' word that they are wildlife best experts. But, the local tradition of hunting is focused on birds and hunters lack both technics and interest in big mammals. Hunters' failure to cope with boars, deers and stags (which they introduced in the 1950s) is resented as a breach of the old tacit agreement between foresters and hunters. Hunters are presently juggling with the two images they have laboriously tried to combine into one and which suddenly appear to be incompatible: experts of wildlife in general and guardians of traditions.

Besides, in the region, the hurricane stimulated a debate on the urgency to diversify tree species. The debate finds fuel in the worldwide discussions on biodiversity. Foresters hesitate between, on the one hand, replanting pines and uprooting all other spontaneous trees as they used to do or, on the other hand, leaving some oaks and arbutus : allowing wild trees to grow would harm their own identity as foresters but could improve their dubious image. 1) To solve the dilemna they may opt for controlling the distribution and growth of non pine trees, that is to say for a domestication of wildness.

Lately, they have hesitatingly started developing a discourse aimed at positioning the pine forest as a valuable element of biodiversity not at the local scale though – since the pine forest is dramatically poor in that respect– but at world scale. My hypothesis is that the shift in scales may be exploited to neutralize local controversies, to gain some of the cultural legitimacy foresters still lack (in spite of the pact they originally signed with hunters for that purpose) and to avoid questioning their responsiblity in wildlife imbalance.

All those situations show that hunters play a central part in the re-definition of identity and wildness. They also illustrate the severity of contemporary distraught as well as the variety and complexity of the procedures stakeholders resort to to position themselves in the general debate over man's relationship to nature.

Contact : marie-dominique.ribereau-gayon@laposte.net

1) Most of them are foreign to the region. They are still resented as accomplices of the French State that took over common moors to sell them to foresters.