Nature and Culture

This article relates the theoretical concept of ecological habitus to the specific context of radical environmental movements. I begin by examining how the term “ecological habitus” has been interpreted by sociologists to date and identify two evident tensions in relation to Bourdieu’s original notion of habitus. I then expand the concept of ecological habitus by considering field and capital(s) within radical environmental movements. I suggest that two broad streams of environmental concern, reformist environmentalism and ecologism, shape ecological habitus in different ways. I also advance that these same theoretical frameworks interact with organic and built habitats in particular ways that can in turn connect and shape ecological habitus to immediate landscape. Finally, I deal with the complexity of transferring ecological habitus (single field) to contemporary society (multiple fields) and propose an alternative term, green habitus, to describe an ecologically relevant habitus that occurs within contemporary society.

This multispecies ethnography of red-tailed hawks and of the humans who observed and cared for them investigates everyday engagement with nature and culture in an urban setting. The proliferation of anthropogenic biomes and their attendant human-animal relations is one of the defining social-ecological features of our day. This transformation has caused many ecological disasters but has also created some opportunities, including for thinking more imaginatively about what it means to protect urban nature. Through their activities, interactions, and travels the hawks questioned where belongings are drawn, prompting humans to debate how the city does, can, and should include other animals. And by monitoring the hawks’ activities, the hawk watchers learned to imagine how things might be different if people acted as if the hawks had chosen to live in the city for reasons that made sense to them, if not necessarily to humans.

Ongoing climate change has led to an increase in extreme temperatures, which influence both the environment and human beings. However, not everyone is affected by heat stress to the same degree. This article analyzes who is affected by subjective heat stress. Individual and social indicators of vulnerability and exposure—mediated by conditions of housing and living environments—are considered simultaneously, from the sociological perspective of social inequality influences. Using local data from an empirical survey in Nuremberg, Germany, the article shows that age, individual health, and social contexts all explain variations in how people experience heat stress. It is further hypothesized and confirmed that heat exposure due to disadvantaged housing conditions or distance from green space increases the levels of subjective heat stress. When looking at differences in levels of subjective heat stress, the consideration of heat exposure due to social vulnerability and socioeconomic reasons offers some explanations.

Scientists need narrative structures, metaphors, and images to explain and legitimize research practices that are usually described in abstract and technical terms. Yet, sometimes they do not take proper account of the complexity and multilayered character of their narrative self-presentations. This also applies to the narratives of ecotechnology explored in this article: the treasure quest narrative used in the field of metagenomics, and the tutorial narrative proposed by the learning-from-nature movement biomimicry. Researchers from both fields tend to underestimate the general public’s understanding of the inherent ambivalence of the narratives suggested by them; the treasure quest and tutorial narratives build upon larger master narratives that can be found throughout our culture, for instance, in literature, art, and film. We will show how these genres reveal the moral ambivalence of both narratives, using two well-known movies as illustrations: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1940).

Studying the socio-ecological systems which produce food highlights the entangled nature of humans, other species and ecosystems near and far. The three texts discussed in this essay have this awareness in the foreground. Participants in the solidarity economy and artisan cheesemakers know this, and the three authors do as well, demonstrating an integration of ecological awareness in their research and the pursuit of new knowledge. Cristina Grasseni, Heather Paxson and Anna Tsing trace connections and describe flows of organisms, food, skills and ideas, from the microbial community on the surface of a maturing cheese to global trade networks shaping mushrooms, mushroom pickers and forests. Each demonstrates the tight synergies of human culture and more-than-human nature that shape ecosystems and produce food beyond increasingly fragile capitalist industrial food production systems.