• Academic Homepage
    • Educational Development Portfolio
      • Statement of Educational Development Philosophy
      • Artifacts and Evidence
    • Teaching Dossier
      • Statement of Teaching Philosophy
    • Multiple Acts of Birding: PhD Research

Gavan P.L. Watson

A website proudly muddying the line between my private and public persona.

Politics

The possibility of naturalists

May 12, 2010 by Gavan 2 Comments

John James Audubon
Creative Commons License photo credit: cliff1066™

Being a naturalist is something that I’ve been thinking about personally and academically for a while now. Now when I say naturalist, images such as this painting of John James Audubon may come to mind. Being a 19th century naturalist was one of collecting and cataloguing, attempting to create order out of the perceived chaos of the natural world. While this work did manage to order the natural world in a particular way, it was undertaken in places like North America by Europeans without regard for value of local knowledge. In this way, it was an extension of the colonial act of “settling” an empty land. As we can now acknowledge, North America was anything but empty.

Significantly, scientific knowledge left the practice of natural history behind as the official way of coming to know the more-than-human. And, if we look at Audubon with his rifle — his instrument of collection — perhaps that fine. Because when I speak of being a naturalist, I am not interested in reproducing this violent, romantic and gendered way of coming to know the more-than-human. But I do think that our personal, intimate and material understanding of our lives is impoverished. And I think that a certain practice of natural history can offer opportunities to discover the networks of material relations that we have between the many actors implicated in our lives. Today, being a naturalist means attempting to broach the divide between human and non-human.

Barry Lopez echoes this (or I echo Barry Lopez) in a 2001 article published in the autumn issue of Orion magazine. In short (and I encourage you to read the whole thing because he is saying many things), he sees naturalists who are attentive to the mystery of nature (and I acknowledge that this does have a bit of a romantic ring to it, so I would say attentive to the more-than-human and in firm grasp of the limitations of what and how we know ), as a new kind of political actor.

And this is key. Naturalists from every era, whether stated explicitly or not, have always acted politically in this world. In the case of 19th century white men coming to the new world, it was a particular kind of politics that they were rendering — it did not deviate much from the larger cultural script of ordering and expansion. Today, however, naturalists have the opportunity to enact a kind of politics that does deviate from the larger cultural script. As witnesses with understanding fostered by skills of observation and reflection, they can say meaningful things about our cultural relationship to the natural world. Words and actions that rough up the flat perspectives and shallow moral obligations that currently are the status quo. This is the naturalist re-cast.

Posted in: Natural History Tagged: Natural History, naturalist, Politics

I out-Gandhi Ghandhi and pretty much every other world leader that has ever made an impact

September 11, 2008 by Gavan 1 Comment

No political leader, either historically or currently, seems to be as left and libertarian as me. I guess there goes my future in politics…

Thanks to The Political Compass.

Posted in: It's all about me Tagged: gandhi, Me, personal, political analysis, Politics

About me

Gavan Watson headshot Work life? Director, Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning & Associate Vice President, Teaching and Learning at Memorial University with a Ph.D. in environmental education. Home life? Father, naturalist, photographer, husband, philosopher, & member of a hybrid human-dog pack.

Latest tweets

My Tweets

Three Teaching Things

Add your email below and subscribe to an email newsletter I author.

Flickr Photos

At the eastern edgeGolden light on Topsial BeachWinter light on the Topsail BluffsVOR-DMEFrost brocadeFirst freeze
More Photos

Keyword Cloud

Academia Academic Alaska birders Birding Birds blog Conference cupe 3903 Dissertation Environmental Education ethics Flickr goals handwriting higher ed house sparrow How-to learning map migration Natural History Nature note taking ontario photograph Photography presentation reflection research Review rondeau solution spring strike Support Teaching teaching assistants Technology Toronto twitter upgrade wordpress york strike york university

Archives

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2021 Gavan P.L. Watson.

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall