Environmental Politics and Place Authenticity Protection

Author: Certoma, Chiara

Source: Environmental Values, Volume 18, Number 3, August 2009 , pp. 313-341(29)

Publisher: White Horse Press

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Abstract:

A large part of environmental politics is interested in protecting place authenticity against the 'disenchanting' effect produced by the advent of modernity. It adopts a rhetoric of nostalgia by regretting the loss of primeval relations between humans and nature, and endorses an essentialist, foundationalist and exclusivist definition of locality and the locals. In order to overcome the problematic political consequences of this (widely accepted) classic approach, the paper proposes to differently outline modernity, by adopting a heterogeneous geography standpoint and post-modern hybrid networks theory. As a consequence, place is regarded in terms of heterogeneity, porosity and non-exclusivism; authenticity is reshaped in terms of throwntogetherness; and environmental politics is reconsidered in the structuration of a thing-oriented democracy.

Keywords: modernity; critical geography; hybridity; environmental thought; material semiotic

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.3197/096327109X12474739376497

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