Shaping Environmental Attitudes — How Identify Influences Ideology
No matter who you are, be it defined by your profession, hobbies, economic status or any other criteria used to sculpt one’s identity, everybody has a relationship with the environment. For some, this may be a difficult concept to grasp. How could a city dwelling CEO or a suburbanite factory worker possibly be connected to the environment? These sentiments stem from a phenomenon known as the nature-culture binary, the idea that nature and culture are fundamentally separate and divided. Such beliefs are the beginnings of an environmental ideology, or “a way of thinking about the natural world that a person uses to justify actions towards it” (Corbett, 13). These beliefs are a result of both cultural and personal elements influencing the ways we perceive and interact with the natural world. Generally speaking, environmental ideologies are determined by three major components: one’s childhood experiences, sense of place, and historical & cultural contexts (Corbett, 14).
During our earliest developmental years, our interactions with nature and the environment around us drastically affect our physical, cognitive, and emotional development (Corbett, 15). Such experiences are carried with us throughout our lives, and directly impact the way we understand the natural world and the role we play within it. There are of course several ways of experiencing nature, each with their own value and place in a child’s development. Direct experiences involve physical, tangible contact with the natural world and its inhabitants. These experiences are largely spontaneous and unsupervised, manifested by exploring local woods and streams, observing flora and fauna in their natural, untamed state. Indirect experiences indicate physical contact with nature in a restrictive and managed context, largely controlled by an adult supervisor. Such experiences include visits to the zoo, contact with domesticated animals and the exploration of manicured, tamed recreational parks. Vicarious experiences lack any physical contact with nature and occur entirely through representation, relayed to an audience via movies, books, photographs or other forms of medium. Looking onto our own experiences, most of us can recall several instances in our early life involving each method of experience, with each having shaped our perception of the natural world in one way or another. This perception however is largely linked to where we grew up and developed, relating strongly to our sense of place.
Understood as a highly subjective encounter with nature, sense of place can be described as “the rich and often powerfully emotional sentiments that influence how people perceive, experience and value the environment” (Corbett, 17). In essence, place describes not just the physical attributes of a location, but the societal norms and cultural meaning associated with that specific space. For example, a farmer and a contractor will view the same piece of land very differently from one another, valuing the land differently for explicitly different reasons. A person’s sense of place is largely connected to their identity, shaped by their upbringing, peers, professional environment and political affiliation. The one one interacts in a given space will shape one’s identity within that space (Corbett, 18).
The environmental beliefs of an individual are influenced immensely by the history of the area in which they occupy. For example, American environmental ideologies are strongly influenced by their history of European colonization, and the religion brought to the area by settlers (Corbett, 20). The European attitude towards the environment was largely antagonistic, using the Judeo-Christian hierarchical view of the world to justify their actions towards nature. If God is over man, and man is over nature, than it is man’s god given duty to tame the beastly wilderness and harness its potential for our own personal gain. This sentiment has persisted throughout history, and over the centuries has lead to the disastrous industrial practices of factory farming, offshore drilling, deforestation and so on.
An individual’s environmental ideology is shaped by the factors of their surroundings. The circumstances of their upbringing, the cultural history of their environment and their personal relationship with that space all play key roles in shaping the way that individual will concern themselves with the environment. In case of western societies overuse of plastics and water, an individual’s actions will be largely shaped by their environmental attitudes. A corporate CEO, having grown up in the inner city and holding protestant religious views will likely concern themselves far less with these pressing issues, as their relationship with nature has been largely impersonal and indirect. As a result, their actions will continue to perpetuate these problems and feed into them. On the other hand, a pacific north western suburbanite, having grown up playing in the woods and directly interacting nature is far more likely to be concerned with these issues, altering their behavior to affect their personal sphere of influence and advocate for the search of solutions.
Everyone has a relationship with their environment, and a person’s beliefs about and actions towards the larger natural world are profoundly influenced by the factors that shape their identity. Having grown up in Colorado Springs, with a nature photographer mother and environmental engineer father, my perception of the environment has always been a broad one, distinctly aware of the effects of the actions — both my own and of others — taken towards our environment at large. Environmental stability is the most important issue — political and otherwise — of our generation, and I look forward to changing the societal perception of our environment, shifting from one of rampant utilitarianism to one of respect and balance.
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