Why Representations of Nature Matter in the Real World

Abstract

Why Representations of Nature Matter in the Real World Gabriela Valdivia (bio) Candace Slater, ed. (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press, 2004. 320 pages. ISBN 0-8223-3218-3. Not long ago, I received a “RainForest” aroma candle as a gift. Made from “pure natural ingredients,” this candle promised to transport me to a luxurious and invigorating rain forest with its spicy and crisp aromas of clover, coriander, and peppermint. Whether these particular spices are native to rain forests, or not, is not as important as the powerful sensations of relaxation and rejuvenation promised as a “RainForest” experience. The articulation of bodily sensations and place made me wonder: What exactly is this rain forest I am experiencing? What notions of place and nature condition the ways in which a rain forest is captured and marketed as an entity to be experienced? Through what kinds of practices does something like an aroma or candle stand in for or depict a rain forest? What are the implications of these kinds of images on political and environmental actions shaping the future of rain forests? The contributors of In Search of the Rain Forest insightfully and provocatively tackle these kinds of questions on the material and symbolic aspects of knowing rain forests. In Search of the Rain Forest is a thought-provoking collection of essays examining the varieties of representational practices (oral, written, and visual) and contexts through which people come to understand rain forests, and the consequences of such representations for forests, forest inhabitants as well as outsiders. Candace Slater describes the goal of the search as a collaborative quest for understanding the rain forest as a “natural entity and a social history, an inhabited place and a shifting set of ideas” (p. 3). The ‘search party’ consists of authors in the humanities, social sciences, and law with research sites in the Amazon, Yucatan, India, and Borneo. Two conservation biologists and a radio science correspondent provide commentaries from a ‘natural sciences perspective’ and share their views on the roles of science researchers within specific forest settings. To investigate and compare struggles for control over images of forest peoples and resources, the authors employ themes of icons, spectacles, and bioscripts. Icons refer to “pure, immediate, and real images, simplification with concrete qualities” (9) that stand in for the complex ways in which places and people interact. They are stylizations of particular aspects of tropical nature (virgin forest, jungle forest, wild forest, forest library). Spectacles are “icons in motion,” that is, concrete ways in which icons are acted out (e.g., the fight to preserve, transform, or destroy the Rain Forest) and conditioned by specific economic, political and cultural interests. Bioscripts are rhetorical strategies scripting the ways in which nature is represented, for instance, as wilderness, local/global knowledge, or vulnerable paradise. The search is organized in three parts, each paying careful attention to popular representations of rain forests and society-environment interactions. The first three chapters, under the section “Rain Forest Icons,” explore common features shared by portrayals of tropical forests in the Americas. Slater compares bioscripts of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon and in Florida to examine the ways in which the icon of a burning forest is played out in quite different ways in media representations about these two places. She argues that not only are there striking differences in depicting Brazilians and Americans in relation to nature, but also distinct attitudes toward nature-society relations in these different places have significant effects on national and transnational environmental policies and actions. For example, while fire in the Amazon may put pressure on the Brazilian government to call in international support or restrict land uses in order to protect forests, fires in Florida are understood as a struggle for balance between nature and civilization, one that requires the financial and moral support of the state, and the country at large. Suzana Sawyer continues with an analysis of petroleum giant ARCO’s operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She argues that ARCO’s portrayal of the forest as an exclusively biophysical and geophysical realm negates the rain forest’s deep social character, and consequently, also obscures the ethical, political, and...