Nature as a constellation of activities: Movement, rhythm, and perception in an Italian National Park

Paolo Gruppuso

doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12783

Nature as a constellation of activities: Movement, rhythm, and perception in an Italian National Park

Paolo Gruppuso^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Anthropology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

8 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Drawing on the concept of taskscape, the paper explores activities of environmental interpretation in an Italian national park. Taskscape is the array of rhythmic movements, tasks and activities that humans and nonhumans perform in the process of dwelling. Accordingly, the paper presents environmental interpretation as particular mode of action and perception that shapes conservation areas as environments understood as realms of nature. By extending the concept of taskscape, and adopting a performative perspective, the paper also sheds light on ethical and cognitive considerations. Ethics emerges along with the activities interpreters carry out within the landscape; it is performed, hence it is constitutive of a taskscape of conservation as a process in which particular ways of moving, hence perceiving, generate particular ways of knowing, hence understanding, and vice versa. The conclusion suggests that nature in conservation areas emerges as a constellation of activities resulting from a particular way of dwelling and performing a certain environment according to a specific rhythm, and framed within a particular ethics.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	629-645
Number of pages	17
Journal	Social Anthropology
Volume	28
Issue number	3
Early online date	30 Sept 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12783
Publication status	Published - 30 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
I want to thank the environmental interpreters I worked with during fieldwork, who gave me the opportunity to join their activities. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their insightful and helpful comments. When drafting this article I also benefitted from stimulating discussions with colleagues of the Art of Judgement working group in Department III at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, that I joined during fall 2018. Special Thank also goes to the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, that provided a comfortable environment for finalising the article, and to the University of Aberdeen for funding Open Access fees for this article.

Keywords

environmental anthropology
environmental interpretation
conservation areas
performativity
Agro Pontino
anthropologie environnementale
médiation environnementale
espaces protégés
performativité
marais pontins

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10.1111/1469-8676.12783Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Grupposo_etal_SA_Nature_VOR
© 2020 The Author. Social Anthropology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Social Anthropologists. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Final published version, 131 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND
Gruppuso_SA_Nature_as_constellation_VOR
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Final published version, 131 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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abstract = "Drawing on the concept of taskscape, the paper explores activities of environmental interpretation in an Italian national park. Taskscape is the array of rhythmic movements, tasks and activities that humans and nonhumans perform in the process of dwelling. Accordingly, the paper presents environmental interpretation as particular mode of action and perception that shapes conservation areas as environments understood as realms of nature. By extending the concept of taskscape, and adopting a performative perspective, the paper also sheds light on ethical and cognitive considerations. Ethics emerges along with the activities interpreters carry out within the landscape; it is performed, hence it is constitutive of a taskscape of conservation as a process in which particular ways of moving, hence perceiving, generate particular ways of knowing, hence understanding, and vice versa. The conclusion suggests that nature in conservation areas emerges as a constellation of activities resulting from a particular way of dwelling and performing a certain environment according to a specific rhythm, and framed within a particular ethics.",

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Nature as a constellation of activities: Movement, rhythm, and perception in an Italian National Park

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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