Buried Epistemologies
The Politics of Nature in (Post)colonial British Columbia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8098845 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bruce Braun (corresponding author), Bruce Willems Braun |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-31 |
| Publication date | 1997-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Annals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306 |
| Publisher | American Association of Geographers (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1111/0004-5608.00039 |
| OpenAlex | W2093140817 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 245 |
| References cited | 13 |
Postcolonial theory has asserted the need to carefully consider how present-day social and cultural practices are marked by histories of colonialism. This paper explores representations of the 'rainforest' and 'nature' in British Columbia, Canada, and traces a series of 'buried epistemologies' through which neocolonial relations are asserted in the region. Drawing upon recent representations of the forest proffered by the forest industry and the environmental movement, and the historical writings of a prominent nineteenth-century geologist and amateur ethnologist, the author shows how 'nature' ('wilderness') has been constructed as a realm separate from 'culture.' He locates in this the possibility for contemporary practices that abstract and displace the 'forest' from its cultural surrounds and relocate it within the abstract spaces of the market, the nation, and, in recent ecological rhetorics, the biosphere and the global community. By so doing, the author contests assumptions that colonialism is only an 'ugly chapter' of Canadian history and argues instead that colonialist practices and rhetorics remain present but unthought in many of the categories, identities, and representational practices that are deployed today both in public debate and scientific management of 'natural landscapes' and 'natural resources.' Thus, amid the current popularity of notions like sustainable development, biodiversity management, ecosystem restoration, and so on—which risk abstracting natural 'systems' apart from their cultural surrounds—it is essential to recognize the colonial histories and neocolonial rhetorics that continue to infuse 'commonsense' categories and identities like 'nature' and 'resources'. Keywords:: cultural politicsenvironmentalismnaturepostcolonialism
Amateur · Archaeology · Colonialism · CONTEST · Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Realm · Sociology · Wilderness · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Ecology · History · Law
Ecologia política
Contending Geo-Logics
Inquiring Minds and Postcolonial Devices
The Virtuous Circle of Facts and Values in the New Western History
The Social Construction of Nature
On “Buried Epistemologies
Making Nature/Marking Humans
A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas
Isms and Schisms
Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas
The Aestheticization of the Politics of Landscape Preservation
Thinking “Postnationally”
Roots of Our Renewal
Simians, Savages, Skulls, and Sex
Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia’s Forest Zone.
Beyond Ecoliberal “Common Futures”
Environment, Nation, and “Race”
Indigenous Media and Postcolonial Pedagogy
Nature
The Challenges of and from Indigenous Geographies
Men in Paradise
The urban growth machine, central place theory and access to open space
Thinking Through Seawater
Polyvocal articulations of climate justice and the commonality of loss
‘Feeding the world, byte by byte’
Nature, Work and ‘the Environment’
‘Inhabiting’ - Landscapes and Natures
Cultural Survival, Tribal Sovereignty and River Restoration on the Central Northwest Coast, North America
“On the Raggedy Edge of Risk”
Intimate Publics
“The More You Kill the More You Will Live”
For the Love of a Good Dog
After the Great White Error … The Great Black Mirage
Inventing the Heterozygote
Pulp Fictions of Indigenism
“There Is a Land Where Everything Is Pure”
Recent Geographical Research on Indians and Inuit in the United States and Canada
A Nationalist Metaphysics
Intimate Publics
Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier
Toward thick legitimacy
Rights of Nature in the United States
“We'll never go”
Imaginäre Naturverhältnisse
‘Singing acts’ from the deep North
Critical Reflections on (Post)colonial Geographies
Amphibious Land Repair
Terracentric Visions and the Domestication of Aquatic Spaces
Colonizing landscapes/landscaping colonies
The political ecology of hazard vulnerability
From colonial fortresses to neoliberal landscapes in Northern Tanzania
How regions do work, and the work we do
Corporate social responsibility and the reproduction of (neo)colonialism in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Belleza escénica y conflicto territorial
Pensando Geograficamente
Absence as an affordance
Pipelines, permits, and protests
Laughing at northernness
Wilderness and tolerance in Flora MacDonald Denison
Fishing Lifestyles
Conflict in Common
Nature, Conflict and Biodiversity Conservation in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve
Political ecology
Nature, race, and parks
Material worlds? Resource geographies and the `matter of nature
Reconsidering 'regional' political ecologies
Cultural geography
Doings with the land and sea
Practices of assemblage and community forest management
Common Roots and Entangled Limbs
Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia's Forest Zone
L’enseignement des sciences et le politique
Beyond foodscapes
Power and contestation in collaborative ecosystem-based management
The legal relations of “private” forests
Le sens du lieu et les revendications territoriales contemporaines des Salishs de la Côte
Sustainability’ in ecological economics, ecology and livelihoods
Genealogy of mining territories in the Atacama Desert
Aboriginal values and resource development in Native Space
The love of nature
The curse of the gold
Picturing environmental risk
Green and White Space Invaders
The Regulation of Environmental Space
The educational work of a National Museum
Picturing the pipeline
Formation of Finland's National Parks as a Political Issue
Beyond Leave No Trace
Tonkin's uplands at the turn of the 20th century
Winter’s Topography, Law, and the Colonial Legal Imaginary in British Columbia
It’s who we are’
The Razing Tide of the Port of New Orleans
Contested moralities
State as Socionatural Effect
From Wasteland to Wetland? Nature and Nation in China's Tibet
Methodological refinement and cartography of environmental history scholarship
The Localized and Scaled Discourse of Conservation for Wind Power in Kittitas County, Washington
The 100th Meridian, Ecological Boundaries, and the Problem of Reification
Reconciling risk and responsibility on Indigenous country
Rural restructuring in the American West
Aboriginal Peoples and Politics
Discipline and Punish
The city as text
Geography and empire
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Nietzsche, Genealogy, History
The nature of metaphors in cultural geography and environmental history
Crosscurrents, crosstalk
Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
Geography's Empire
Landscape and Surplus Value
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
| Unique citing works | 245 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,45 |
| Citation span | 1997 - 2026 (30) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 233 |