Backyard anthropology #1: Culturally Defined "Bad Plants" Edition

Bad plants, you ask?  I'm talking about weeds, people.  You know, those resilient botanical "pests" that pervade gardens, lawns, and yards and require the intervention of the lethal products designed by Monsanto.  Plants that are so bad, so terrible, so pernicious that we need to poison them with all of our industrial might.  Ya, those plants.  The funny thing, though, is that the very definition of what is and what is not a weed is very much a matter of social learning.  Nobody is born with the automatic knowledge that dandelions are not pretty flowers; we have to learn that they nothing more than evil little plants that only want to suck the life out of the putting green that is the front lawn.  At least, that's the so-called "common knowledge" about weeds, and many of us simply go along with it.  We follow the instructions and advice of the plant gurus who tell us which ones are "good" and which ones deserve nothing more than the botanical death sentence.

The irony is that the definition of what is and what is not a weed is certainly a matter of social learning.  That's right: what we think of as weeds all depends on how we were taught to categorize and value certain plants.  Some plants are weeds because they are not "indigenous," an argument that gets more slippery as you go further back in time.  When, after all, do we set the botanical boundary for indigeneity  One hundred years ago?  A thousand?  Ten thousand?  As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered."  

Just the other day I was looking over a nice selection of acceptable and unacceptable plants at my mom's house in California.  One that caught my attention is the notorious "spurge," which sounds like something that floods into town and devastates everything in it's path.  Watch out!  The spurge is coming into town.  I mean, it's a weed after all.  But what do I know?  I thought it looked kinda cool, and might be suitable as a cheap, resilient ground cover or something.  But, alas, numerous online plant and gardening sources informed me that spurge is little more than an evil plant that deserves only the treatment that companies like Monsanto can dream up.  That's right: it's in the botanical category of plants that requires THE DEATH SENTENCE.

All of this leads me to a recent NPR segment "'Weeds': In Defense of Botany's Cockroach."  If you have ever wondered why some plants get such a bad rap, this is a great piece to check out.

A walk in the park (with spatial matters on the brain)

Over the past year or so I have been reading a lot more work that focuses on issues such as space, place, and nature.  More anthropologists have been looking into these issues in the past ten years.  Setha Low and Teresa Caldeira are two really good examples.  I have also been reading a lot of work by geographers--Neil Smith, Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja, Doreen Massey, and others.  Soja argues that while many researchers in the social sciences and humanities take consideration of things like culture and history as fundamental, they often neglect concerns about space.  This is an important point.  Regardless, the more I read along these lines, the more it infects my thinking.  This is a good thing.  Take, for example, this set of images.  They were taken during a recent walk in a nearby park, when I was working on some geographical readings.  Parks are pretty fascinating places.  People go to them to experience "nature," but it's a very ordered, constructed, bounded, manicured, and ultimately human induced sort of nature.  We like to make "nature," in essence, with our gardens, walls, pathways, and such.  Anyway, here's a few of those images, with some captions for good measure.

This one is technically on the way to the park, but the strange spatial matters are already apparent.  Grass plays an interesting role in our landscaping and understanding of nature.  This is the theme that runs through all of these images.  Grass is everywhere, but it's very much shaped by our ideas and actions.  What I like most about this one is the fact that the grass is clearly creeping it's way back across the sidewalk.  Nature requires constant attention to keep it looking pretty and in check--otherwise it runs rampant and we might lose our way.

Here is where the flower garden ends, cut into an unmistakable corner to separate the planted area from the surrounding field of grass.  What is most striking is how geometric this is, and how it reflects an explicit way of thinking about and arranging space.  The flowers go here.  And the planter ends, here.  Notice, once again, the invading weeds that seek to undermine all of these great designs.

We often think about what we can see on the surface, not what exists below.  Imagine all of the roots and passageways that exist below places like this.  This image is particularly Deleuzian/Guattarian for me, and I am not trying to be obtuse.  Deleuze and Guattari talked a lot about rhizomes, and this image is a fascinating example of a human induced rhizomatic system that runs underneath the leisurely and "natural" park system.  These two metal covers are just a hint of what lies below.

Another curving pathway, with trees places in pleasing locations alongside the path.  Here is a clear division between where the pedestrian is supposed to walk and where most do not.  But some cross the threshold and march across the grass.  Why?  What makes someone want to wander around through the grass?  Better yet, what makes the vast majority of people follow the pre-planned asphalt path?  Why, when faced with this situation, do many of us simply go along with the order and routine of the space?

We often think that there are clear boundaries between nature and non-nature.  But look closely at the edge of this walkway--one bleeds into another, and the division isn't even static.  The grass keeps pushing and growing, and has to be beaten back by machines with spinning blades and such.  The battle to define and bound nature is endless, and violent.  No matter...the asphalt keeps cracking, and the grass will probably win out eventually.  Regardless, both are products of human intervention.

I am not going to say a lot about this one because if you look at it in a certain way it speaks for itself.  This is a clearly defined space for "being in nature."  Fascinating.  The concrete pad is the best part.  Sit here to view nature.

I am going to end with this one, which shows how intertwined humans are with the environments they produce.  These places reflect ideas about space and the so-called natural world, and they are also places full of memories.  Parks are often marked with memorials like this, so that new people who pass through can remember others who came before them.  Notice, once again, the role that the grass plays in all of this.  It not only frames the tree, it also rings the marker itself.  Gardeners have to work to maintain this aesthetic segregation.

Cross-Posted at Plurality Press.

Nature versus Culture

So I am getting back into the rhythm of being in seminar classes again, which means complete inundation in books, articles, films, and INFORMATION GALORE. That's life in graduate school. This semester already has a decidedly environmental focus, since I am taking a seminar about culture and environment, and am also a TA for a course that covers very similar ground. And the recurrent issue that has been cropping up all over the place: the whole idea of nature versus culture.

Should we continue to think of human culture and behavior as something that exists outside of the so-called natural order? The nature/culture binary is not only an old theme in anthropology, it's an old theme in western thought specifically. But, the more that I think about this division, the less it makes sense. Yes, of course, the ways in which people think about or even conceive of the environment in which they live is culturally and socially mediated. But here's my point: If culture (or socially learned behavior) is a defining aspect of what it means to be human, then how can it be something that is somehow "unnatural"? Add to this the fact that primatologists have been showing us for years that there is evidence of culture in many primates, and this notion of culture as something that we should contrast against nature breaks down.

So why the division? Why do we talk about this idea of "nature" as something that is separate from human behaviors and actions? What purpose does this serve? Is it a convenient way to label one as ideal and the other as undesired? What kinds of effects does this sort of discourse have on how we think about contemporary environmental and political issues? If we continually think of "development" as something that is "unnatural" how can this affect our inclination to do something about the ways in we think about development as a social and political process?

I think that we can become somewhat blinded when we only think about human activity as something that occurs unnaturally. This separation of what humans do from some sort of natural condition or state may create a division that only impedes how we think about human-environment relationships. As David Harvey writes, "Energy flows, shifts in material balances, environmental transformations (some of them irreversible) have to be brought thoroughly within the picture. But the social side cannot be evaded as somehow radically different from its ecological integument. There is, as I argued in Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, nothing unnatural about New York City" (in Spaces of Global Capitalism, 88).

Many people (Harvey included), argue for the need to move beyond the nature/culture dichotomy and instead see nature and culture as co-created through a dialectical process. Recently, however, I am leaning more toward ditching the whole division altogether. What explanatory value is there in saying that the urban development of Los Angeles is unnatural? Clearly, humans have been modifying their environments from the get go, so I don't see how calling something unnatural actually explains anything. It is, in fact, quite natural for humans (and many other species) to shape the environments in which they live. Now, it's an entirely different matter as to how we should assess or evaluate those effects. What would be a lot more effective, at least in my view, would be sidestepping vague philosophical debates about what is natural vs what is cultural, and instead focusing on the particular characteristics (positive and negative) of specific environments--whether we're talking about the Kalahari desert or New York City.

Just Stay Home

Off exhibit, 2002. Photo by Ryan Anderson.

I have a subscription to The Sun, which is a great magazine that's published out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sometimes, during the madness of trying to keep up with all of my reading in grad school, I forget to take the time to read this magazine. But every time I do, I'm glad I did.

I just read an article from the November 2007 issue by Derrick Jensen. It's about zoos and why people are compelled to visit them. It's also about conceptions of "nature", and how zoos represent a particular way of thinking about the world around us. This is a really important question to ask--what is nature and where can it be found? Is a city natural or unnatural? What do zoos have to do with "natural" animal habitats and behaviors? Is nature something that can be accessed on a daily basis, or it is a rare experience that requires the money and time to visit zoos--or better yet, the actual exotic locations around the world where NATURE still exists? Can nature be found in highly urban environments like Los Angeles and Detroit? Or is that a ridiculous idea?

How should people learn to explore the natural world around them? Should they rely on SeaWorld and Busch Gardens to provide unfettered, yet costly access to the rarities of nature? No. Jensen says people should just stay home:

IN MY WRITING, I don’t often present tangible solutions to the problems we face. This is because, for the most part, these problems are symptoms of and endemic to deeper psychological and perceptual faults, which means “solving” a problem technically without addressing these underlying faults will simply cause the pathology to present itself in a different way.

That said, I think I see a straightforward solution to the problem of children needing encounters with wild animals and zoos providing only parodies of these encounters. The solution is to let your child explore nature. I’m not talking about getting in the car to hang out with all the other tourists at Yosemite, effectively exchanging your city-based traffic jam for a nature-based one. To drive through nature is not all that different from being surrounded on four sides by movie screens as the visuals of a road rush up to greet you. Throw in the rocking of the car and some pine-scented freshener into the air vents, and the simulation will be more or less complete: you might even think you’re there.

Hiking is not all that much better. You’re still a tourist. No matter how spectacular Yosemite and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are, they’re still spectacles unless you live there. Unless you call it your home. Unless it says it’s your home.

I’m talking about staying home.

I have thought about this a lot, since I have spent my fair share of time wandering around zoos and thinking about what they mean (to me, or others). Why do we have these spaces? What function do they serve? I do think that there are plenty of positive possibilities with some of the ways in which zoos operate. So I'm not arguing that they should be dismissed entirely--but I do think we should take the time to look deeper into what they really tell us about ourselves, and our ideas of the world around us. Jensen's call to stay home makes a lot of sense. Sometimes people feel like their local wildlife or environment is "boring," and that there is really nothing to see. I mean, zoos have tigers and elephants! Who cares about some weird little crab on the beach or a mule deer? Right?

Absolutely wrong. This is the heart of the problem. A concern for the abstract "nature" that's presented in many zoo displays can create disinterest in local ecological and environmental issues. I grew up in San Diego County, and I'll be the first to admit that the San Diego Zoo looked a lot more exciting and exotic than the local lagoons and deserts--at least when I was a kid. I think when I was younger I also fell victim to the idea that the local landscapes and environments were somehow unnatural, corrupted, or less "natural" than the idealized images of nature presented at places like aquariums and zoos. The irony, of course, is that these kinds of places are completely constructed environments--and there is really nothing wrong with this as long as we don't confuse a zoo display with reality. I think zoos can be both productive and inspirational--as long as they balance their representations of "nature" to include the local environments and ecologies that zoo patrons drive past day by day. Otherwise, the "education" at zoos provides little more than an idealized fiction about the supposed natural world. Zoos have to about something more than just consumerism.

As Jensen argues, zoos (and other nature-based destinations) provide instant access. We can pay money and see everything we want, anytime we want. Kind of like TV or the internet. We can see snakes, bears, lions, elephants, giraffes, and Tasmanian devils within minutes. Outside of these kinds of regulated spaces, well, things take a little longer. Sometimes, this is a good thing. Yes, zoos can be educational and fun. Of course they can. But it might also be important to learn how to take the time to watch and learn about the biological world around us according to a schedule that isn't dictated by the limits of the standard business day.

Managing Coastal Image in La Paz

I took this photo while I was down in La Paz, Baja California Sur, earlier this summer. I was walking along the boardwalk when I saw this big tractor drive across the sand. "What the hell could they be doing with that," I wondered. Really, I did wonder. So I walked over and I saw these guys scooping up green moss from the sand and putting it into the tractor to be carted away--who knows where. It was apparently* an effort to clean up the beaches and provide the white sand that tourists, whether national or international,** expect. Ok, so I understand WHY they're doing this. This is something that is pretty common in coastal tourism areas--they're always trying to make the beaches look just like the magazine and TV ads, which all feature luxurious white sand beaches (preferably with no footprints). But I was wondering about the biological results of this practice. What does the moss do? Is it common for moss to accumulate on the beaches, or is this something that has come about because of all the harbors? How does the moss fit in with the larger ecosystem? Sounds silly to some, but these are the kinds of questions that go through my mind. Sometimes these little details matter.

*Ya, I really should have walked over and asked these guys what they were doing and why. That would have made sense. But for some reason I really didn't feel like getting in the way at that moment. Maybe there is a way to find out a little more about this.
**La Paz, unlike Cabo San Lucas, has a large percentage of domestic tourists in Mexico. I have not checked the official numbers, however.

Human Landscapes

This photograph was taken in late May of this year, over near La Brea avenue in Los Angeles. I took it after stopping by to visit the Fahey/Klein gallery right around the corner. For some reason I really like taking pictures of landscapes that have been heavily shaped by humans. Maybe this comes from my archaeological background...who knows. But the whole idea that there can be such as a thing as a "natural" and an "unnatural" landscape is absolutely fascinating. What makes something unnatural or fake? It seems the general idea is that human-altered landscapes are somehow unnatural, but there is really no reason why this actually makes any sense, especially since plenty of species alter their habits/environments. I tend to agree with David Harvey when he writes that there is nothing unnatural about urban environments such as New York City: "The circulation of money and of capital have to be construed as ecological variables every bit as important as the circulation of air and water" (in Spaces of Global Capitalism, 2005: 88).

This moves beyond mere architecture and creative hedge trimmings (although these are of course elements of human socio-ecological systems). The human environment includes practices, ideas, buildings, habits, and tendencies that cannot simply be seen as unnatural intrusions upon some idealized natural human state.