Ecological Imaginaries

Ecological imaginaries are ways of conceiving nature with attendant but often unacknowledged social and cultural implications. These visions typically foreground purportedly neutral ideologies of nature while displacing often contentious political, social, and economic relations. Geographers seek to identify how seemingly durable conceptions of nature such as “rain forests” or relationships to nature such as “sustainability” attain their taken-for-granted status, that is, how they come to be accepted uncritically among large sections of the public. Articulated through material, social, and discursive practices, dominant ecological imaginaries reinforce ideologies of nature and society and naturalize particular conceptions of space, place, and landscape so that they appear inevitable, impartial, or cyclical. In short, they often function to make human relations with ecosystems appear to lie outside the capacity of people to change them. The term emerged from the common academic focus on meaning making and the consideration of nature in social theory and has been applied to purportedly apolitical concepts currently in vogue within urban planning, governance, redevelopment, and [Page 829]environmental politics, as well as attempts to “green” capitalism in response to ecological crises. These linked ecological narratives frame policy discussions that are about more than just nature, throwing into question the neutrality of claims for ecological preservation and conservation. Instead of a singular nature, ecology, or public, investigators of environmental imaginaries argue for the recognition of multiple natures, ecologies, and publics but have been criticized for relying on explanations located primarily within discourse and not in material processes.