A large part of environmental politics is interested in protecting place authenticity against the ‘disenchanting’ effect produced by the advent of modernity. It adopts a rhetoric of nostalgia by regretting the loss of primeval relations between humans and nature, and endorses an essentialist, foundationalist and exclusivist definition of locality and the locals.
In order to overcome the problematic political consequences of this (widely accepted) classic approach, the paper proposes to differently outline modernity, by adopting a heterogeneous geography standpoint and postmodern hybrid networks theory. As a consequence, place is regarded in terms of heterogeneity, porosity and non-exclusivism; authenticity is reshaped in terms of throwntogetherness; and environmental politics is reconsidered in the structuration of a thing-oriented democracy.
AgrawalA.2005. Environmentality. Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
2.
AugéM.1995. Non Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso (original edn Non-Lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, 1992).
3.
BackhausN.2007. “‘Non-place jungle”: the construction of authenticity in National Park of Malaysia’. Indonesia and the Malay World, 31: 89.
4.
BennetJ.2001. The Enchantment of Modern Life. Attachments, Crossing and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
5.
de la BlancheVidal. 1926. Principles of Human Geography (original edn Principes de la géographie humaine, 1922).
6.
Borrini-FayerabendG., PimbertM., Taghi FarvarM., KothariA., RenardY.. 2004. Sharing Power: Learning-by-Doing in Co-Management of Natural Resources Throughtout the WorldTeheran: IIED and IUCN/ CEESP/ CMWG, Cenesta.
7.
BraunB., and WainwrightJ.2001. ‘Nature, poststructuralism, and politics’, in CastreeN. and BraunB. (eds.), Social Nature (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), p. 41.
8.
BrosiusJ.P.1997. ‘Endangered forest, endangered people: environmentalist representation of indigenous knowledge’. Human Ecology25: 47–69.
9.
CastreeN.2003. ‘Geographies of nature in the making’, in AndersonK., DomashM., PileS. and ThriftN., Handbook of Cultural Geography (London: Sage).
10.
CastreeN.2006. ‘The future of environmentalism’. Soundings34: 11–21.
CastreeN. and MacMillanT.2001. ‘Dissolving dualisms: actor-networks and the reimagination of nature’, in CastreeN. and BraunB. (eds.), Social Nature (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing).
13.
DobsonA.2003. ‘Environment and ecologism’, in FinlaysonA., (ed.), Contemporary Political Thought: A Reader and Guide (New York: New York University Press).
14.
DrenthenM.2009. ‘Ecological restoration and place attachment: Emplacing non-places?’ Environmental Values19: 285–312.
15.
EscobarA.1999. ‘Gender, place and networks. a political ecology of cyberculture’, in HarcourtW. (ed.), Women@Internet. Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace. (London: Zed Books).
16.
EscobarA.2001. ‘Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization’. Political Geography20.
17.
FabianJ.1983. Time and the Other. New York: Columbia University Press.
18.
FoaleS.2001. ‘Where is our development? Landowner aspirations and environmentalist agendas in Western Solomon Islands’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology2.
19.
FoaleS. and MacintyreM.2004. ‘Fujichrome green: The photographic fetishization of biodiversity by environmentalists’, Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Working Paper no. 54. Canberra: Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program, The Australian National University.
20.
GeertzC.2000. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books (original edition 1973).
21.
General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization1972. Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, UNESCO, last update 28 May 2007, http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/.
22.
GiddensA.1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
23.
GroveRichard H.1995. Green Imperialism.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24.
HallS.1995. ‘New cultures for old’, in MasseyD. and JessP. (eds), A Place in the World? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
25.
HarawayD.1992. ‘The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others’, in GrossbergL., NelsonC. and TreichlerP.A. (eds.), Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge).
26.
HinchliffeS.2002. ‘Inhabiting: Landscapes and natures’, in AndersonK., DomoshM., PileS. and ThriftN. (eds.), The Handbook of Cultural Geography (London: Sage Publications Ltd).
27.
HinchliffeS.2007. Geographies of Nature: Societies, Environments, Ecologies.London: Sage.
28.
KatzC.1988. ‘Whose nature, whose culture? Private productions of space and the “preservation” of nature’, in BrawnB. and CastreeN. (eds.), Remaking Reality (London: Routledge).
29.
LatourB.1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheat-sheaf (original edn Nous n'avons jamais été modernes, 1991).
30.
LatourB.2005. ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to make things public’, introduction to LatourB. and WeibelP. (eds.), Making things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
31.
LatourB.2004. Politics of Nature. How to bring the Sciences into Democracy. Harvard: Harvard University Press (original edn Politiques de la nature).
32.
LefebreH.1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, (original edn Production de l'espace, 1905).
33.
MarresN.2005. ‘Issues spark a public into being: A key but often forgotten point of the Lippmann-Dewwey debate’, in LatourB. and WeibelP. (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmosphere of Democracy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).
34.
MasseyD.1995. ‘The conceptualisation of place’, in MasseyD. and JessP. (eds.) A Place in the World?. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
35.
MasseyD.1991. ‘Global sense of place’, Marxism Today, June.
36.
MasseyD.1999. ‘Spaces of politics’, in MasseyD., AllenJ. and SarreP. (eds.), Human Geography Today (Cambridge: Polity Press).
37.
MasseyD. and JessP.1995. ‘Places and cultures in an uneven world’, in MasseyD. and JessP. (eds), A Place in the World? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
38.
MasseyD.2005. For Space.London: Sage Publications Ltd.
39.
MasseyD.2006. ‘Landscape as a provocation: reflections on moving mountains’. Journal of Material Culture, 11: 33–48.
40.
MiltonK.1996. Environmentalism and Cultural Theory. London: Routledge.
41.
MouffeC.2005. ‘Some reflections on an Agonistic Approach to the public’, in LatourB. and WeibelP. (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmosphere of Democracy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).
NortonB. and HannonB.1998. ‘Democracy and sense of place values in environmental policy’, in LightA. and SmithJ.M. (eds.), Philosophies of Place (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc.).
44.
OlwigK.R.1996. ‘Recovering the substantive nature of landscape’. Annals of the American Geographers86: 630–653.
45.
OlwigK.R.2005. ‘Law, Polity and the Changing Meaning of Landscape’. Landscape Research30: 293–298.
46.
PimbertM.P. and PrettyJ.N.1995. ‘Parks, people and professionals: Putting “participation” into protected area management’, Discussion Paper UNRISD, Geneva, n.57, Feb. 1995.
47.
PredA.1984. ‘Place as historcally contingent process: structuration and the time-geography of becoming places’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers74.
48.
RoseG.1995. ‘Place and identity: a sense of place’, in MasseyD. and JessP. (eds.), A Place in the World? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
49.
RougerieG.2000. L'homme et son milieu. L'evolution du cadre de vie. (Paris: Nathan).
50.
SachsW.1993. ‘Global ecology and the shadow of “Development”’, in SachsW. (ed.), Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, (halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Books).
51.
Stengers, 2005. ‘The cosmopolitical proposal’, in LatourB. and WeibelP. (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmosphere of Democracy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).
52.
TaylorC.1992. The Ethic of Authenticity. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
53.
TaylorC.2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.
54.
ThriftN.1999. ‘Step to an ecology of place’, in MasseyD., AllenJ. and SarreP. (eds.), Human Geography Today (Cambridge: Polity Press).
55.
VallegaA.2003. Geografia Culturale. Torino: UTET.
56.
WhatmoreS.2000. ‘Heterogeneous geographies. Reimagining the space of N/nature’, in CookI., CrouchD., NaylorS. and RyanJ.R. (eds.), Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns (Harlow: Prentice Hall).
WilliamsC.2003. Creating cultural landscapes: an ethnographic case study of nature conservation in the sheep/wheat belt of New South Wales, Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne.
