Environmental Imaginaries

The term environmental imaginaries is used to explain how the natural environment shapes the attitudes, discourses, and practices of the people who dwell there. Derived from the broader concept of a spatial imaginary by Richard Peet and Michael Watts, an environmental imaginary describes how people draw on the familiar elements of their surroundings to understand natural and social processes and to inspire creative ways of shaping those [Page 933]same processes. It has a strong regional component because of how the natural environment differs from region to region, and it is also closely tied to political ecology with its focus on economic and political institutions.

The environmental imaginary concept has a lineage that can be traced back to spatial and social imaginaries. Developed within sociology, a social imaginary describes how a particular society conceives of itself as well as how it explains both the world around it and its own characteristics. It can be thought of as a bridge between doctrines or discourses and embodied practices. The term imaginary can be interpreted in three ways. First, there is the fact that social imaginaries are implicit rather than explicit, so they exist within people's heads. Second, individuals use them as jumping-off points in their own ways of coping with the world and forming their own identities: Imaginaries spark creativity. Finally, imaginaries are used to apply processes that are already understood to the unknown future. An “imaginary” therefore does not only explain what has already happened but also provides a framework to conceive of the future.

In addition to factors such as political structures, existing institutions, and social makeup, all social imaginaries are shaped by the places in which they are developed and in turn shape those places. Spatial imaginaries describe how a society understands the spatial processes that it creates and encounters, as well as how spaces and places are constructed and made meaningful. Globalization is one of the best-known spatial imaginaries, with lively debate ensuing about whether it is an external force being imposed on helpless local places or constituted by millions of individual or local places and practices. At other scales, businesses use their spatial imaginaries to determine the best places to site a production facility or understand why their goods and services are or are not selling in a particular market; governments at all levels promote economic and social development with regard to their understandings of how processes occur across space; and individuals arrange their lives around spatial patterns of work, home, and recreation. These spatial imaginaries are all fluid and flexible as the actions taken lead to new or changed understandings of how spatial processes work.

The environmental imaginary, as developed by Peet and Watts, is even more explicit about the role of place, arguing that a society's concept of relationships between humans and the environment—and therefore how people act on their environment—varies based on the characteristics of that environment. Interactions between the human and nonhuman shape ever-changing environmental imaginaries. Because of the influence of political ecology, environmental imaginaries are often conceptualized as being about access to and the meaning of natural resources based on political structures as well as biophysical characteristics. Differentiations based on race, class, and gender also enter into the potential creation of multiple environmental imaginaries within the same space.

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