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English summary
The present paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of how different Danes relate to nature. It was carried out as a sub-project under the project "Public attitudes and wishes regarding nature in Denmark" (Befolkningens holdninger og ønsker til naturen), funded by the Danish Parliament via the national budget in 2001.
The purpose of the qualitative study was to clarify relations between the respondents' everyday lives on the one hand and their attitudes and wishes regarding nature on the other. As such, it proposed to clarify how the lifetime experience of the individual and the role nature in everyday life is reflected in the character of such attitudes to and wishes for nature features. Moreover, by studying individuals with greatly varying everyday lives, we also intended to clarify the
significance of these differences when it comes to the relations to nature.
In conceptual terms, the study has two major premises:
- An inclusive and open definition of nature was applied - as "everything out there - our physical/sensuous natural environment".
- Everyday life is perceived as not restricted to routine actions, to Monday-to-Friday living, or to leisure or home life. As in other analyses in social studies, the present study applies the concept of everyday life as an analytical approach focusing on how each individual perceives the world, and what holds it together, based on his or her experience and actual living context.
With its analytical approach to everyday living, the present study stands apart from other qualitative studies of man's relations to nature. Some kindred studies are more concerned with people's fundamental concepts of nature, rather than with the living context that colours their attitudes to and wishes for nature features. Other studies consider particular types of everyday living, or how conflicts regarding nature use are connected with different cultures/ forms of
living. Whenever relevant, the analyses of the present study include knowledge from such kindred, yet different theoretical approaches and studies.
The study was based on 2-4 hour interviews with 11 Danes, the selection of which was based on a number of demographical criteria, with a view to obtain a wide range of living conditions. Unlike statistical surveys, this study did not propose to provide representative statements on how Danes relate to nature. Instead, the aim was to identify and describe modes of awareness and behaviour, dilemmas and other dynamic relations of overarching relevance in that they provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between people's everyday living and their relations to nature.
Our interviews were analysed in part separately and in part across the group of respondents. Chapter 2 introduces the 11 respondents and our analyses of their everyday lives and relations to nature. The chapter serves to offer a glimpse into the set of interacting conditions that play into each individual's relation to nature, and also to provide an overall picture of the individual respondents' everyday lives and nature relationships prior to the more fragmented references made to them in the subsequent cross cutting analysis.
In the cross cutting analysis, we arrive at five essential issues with bearing upon everyday life - and in relation to which people's nature relationships can also be meaningfully considered, since this relation is not separate from but forms a part of everyday living. The five issues are:
1. The relation between the routines of everyday life and "out of the ordinary" events.
2. The management of time and space in everyday living.
3. The relation between experience and desires evolved over a person's life so far and his or her present conditions.
4. The relation between social intimacy and distance.
5. The relation between a person's own, concrete 'little world' and society/'the big world'.
For each issue themajor points are cited below:
Attitudes and wishes regarding nature viewed from the perspective of everyday life routines and 'out of the ordinary' events:
- The kind of nature we come across while carrying out everyday life routines tends to become so self-evident that it is hard to express its significance to us.
- The significance of such 'routine nature' can be, for one thing, to support our emotional stability (as something nice, comforting, and homelike). Particularly so, perhaps, to someone who has lived in the same locality - or in the same type of natural environment - for a lifetime.
- Extraordinary nature experiences can make our 'routine nature' stand out, thus making us aware of its value or lack of qualities.
- Extraordinary nature experiences are linked up with the urge to grow. Nature desires can be about visiting the thrills of exploring 'unknown nature'.
- We can have extraordinary nature experiences both in our familiar environment and in unfamiliar ones. They can be of such intensity that they transform our views and appreciation of nature. The intensity of such experiences is even more important than their number.
- Extraordinarily intensive nature experiences can differ in terms of character. One type is the mysterious-supernatural experience. Another type is the flowing experience.
Attitudes and wishes regarding nature from the perspective of the management of time and space:
- Time management issues and divergent requirements within the family make prioritisations necessary in modern everyday living. The need to step into nature may be well integrated in a lifestyle, but can also be disintegrated, which feeds people's wishes for their nature use.
- Spatial management of everyday life implies variations in terms of closeness/distance to nature. Our survey indicates that closeness can encourage the appreciation of contemplative experiences in familiar nature, while distance - e.g. city life - can feed the appreciation of intensive, poignant nature experience in an unfamiliar nature.
- There is little to indicate that divides in people's relations to nature follow the compartments of everyday life. We found instances, in which working life involved a professional and close relation to nature. But apart from that we rather found that the different compartments of everyday life give us various impulses that synthesise into more complex nature relations.
Attitudes and wishes regarding nature from the perspective of the meeting of lifetime experience and actual living conditions:
- Our analysis indicates that a person's childhood landscape/nature does have a particular and lasting significance, yet that it constitutes merely an ideal/a yardstick if the person is still living in the same area. Such a stationary life helps to create a profound relation to 'the dearly familiar nature', while a rather more mobile life trajectory will promote a broader, more facetted nature relationship.
- Examples from our material indicate that a person's nature relationship will not necessarily last or deepen throughout life. It can also be sated and dwindle.
- Our analysis indicates that youth generates a discontinuity between the nature relations of childhood, resp. adulthood, because a lot of energy is put into social relations during this phase.
- The older generations in our survey see a considerable difference between their own nature education and that of the present children. They fear that the younger generation will end up with a rather more alienated and consumerist nature relationship because they are not allowed to play in nature unattended by adults, and because they do not learn how to move around in nature.
Attitudes and wishes regarding nature from the perspective of regulating the needs for social intimacy and distance:
- Nature's significance to us is not separate from our social life. To some respondents, nature is significant as a social outdoor space, while others find it to be particularly valuable as a recess from social life.
Attitudes and wishes regarding nature from the perspective of the relation between 'the little world' and 'the big world':
- Our position/role within the social system fabric influences yet it is not the single factor to determine our attitudes to and wishes for nature.
- There can be, though not necessarily so, a connection between a person's own experience-based nature values and his or her attitudes to nature management and policy.
The third and final section of Chapter 3 places the approach and findings of the study into perspective. In this, it is emphasised that the study makes a difference by:
- Replacing a simple causal logic in how we understand attitudes to and wishes for nature with a more complex, dialectical understanding.
- Taking a new perspective on attitudes to and wishes for nature rather than departing from the nature conception approach. Unlike the latter approach to nature and to people's fundamental
thought patterns about it, our study considers attitudes and wishes in relation to the context, practices, and experiences of everyday living.
- Going beyond the prevailing 'nature-centeredness' and dualism of the culture/nature relation that is typically seen when experts and professionals handle issues concerning nature. In a real person's life, nature is intermingled with the other circumstances of living. Greater esponsiveness to that fact would open up new possibilities and could increase public participation on issues of nature.
- Pointing to the risk that quantitative preference studies of attitudes to and wishes for nature could activate views that are severed from the composite experience and views of everyday life.
And finally, by:
- Underpinning the need for developing the efforts to empower people with regard to nature matters, in order to bring about a dialogue between people's own everyday experience and the
viewpoints of scientists, civil servants, and other professional stakeholders.
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