IART  Ingrid Katrine Amundsen /

KEYWORDS: CULTURE • NATURE • INTERDEPENDENCIES

The way we expirience nature and culture are quite similar, why not use this knowledge to help save the Planet? This essay will adress this cut to the core knowledge, and by acknowledging this, we might find a solution to the environmental crisis. We are not lost, we are found. All we need is to look around and see that culture and nature have evident similarities. It is time to connect these two joint powers, and to help save the Planet. Is this too mystical?  In the abstract bellow, the author will try to sort out this claim of coherance between nature and culture.

Work in progress...

ABSTRACT

System changes in favour of humanity and nature, must put culture and nature, on the same team! Only through nature and culture interdependencies, can we start to talk about real system changes, in order to save the planet and humanity, jointly. We must find places in the system, in which environmental matters converge or intervene with cultural matters. This may create interdependencies that may accelerate innovations towards a system change, that is more environmentally friendly. Collaborations and social connectivity between agents of culture, and agents of nature, must be emphasized, enhanced and encouraged, to fix our climate crisis and environmental challenges. It is, however, crystal clear that being faced with the grandness and greatness of nature or culture, can evoke extreme and similar emotional and spiritual experiences, such as catharsis and transcendence. These two notions are the core terms in understanding the interdependences between nature and culture in this brief essay, and both notions will be clarified in the theoretical sections bellow. The interdependencies of nature and culture is, however, already present to us all: we experience nature and culture interdependently. Why do we experience nature and culture as interdependent? It is because we have learned through being a human, that culture and nature gives us similar emotional and spiritual experiences. But, the actors in the two domains; nature and culture, have to learn to connect socially and organizationally too, to emphasise on mutual experiences and tasks of common interest, through an exchange of knowledge and experiences, that will unite those who are in love with nature, with those who are in love with culture, with those who are in power. Power lies in the vast number of followers in both camps, and in the key actors of power in both domains through intersecting networks, since most of us are tied to both cultural and natural experiences. When the interests and power of the many, converge with the power of key actors, system changes based on nature and culture interdependencies, is possible. Nature and culture interdependencies, therefore, consists of two tug of wars or collaboration: a tug of war and collaboration between the two suggested domains; nature and culture, and a tug of war or collaboration between key actors of power in both domains, jointly. To have an impact on the environment, these actors and domains, have to co-work, co-evolve and co-create, through social connections and social cohesion. In short, a change in the overall organization and new connections between all actors within the domain of nature and culture, must take shape in order to have an impact on the environmental crisis.

THEORY

What is Nature?

What is Culture?

What is Catharsis?

What is Transendence?

DISCUSSION

What does Nature and Culture have in Common?

Why are Nature and Culture Interdependent?

How can Nature and Culture Interdependencies help Save the Planet?

CONCLUSION

Collaboration Between Nature and Culture as the First Aid Kit to solve Environmental Challenges

EPILOGUE

A Change in the Overall Organization Socially, to Connect Nature and Culture, and to Emphasis on an Already Exsisting 'Infrastructure' of Social Ties

REFERENCES

Brousseau, E., Garrouste, P., and Raynaud, E. (2011). Institutional Changes: Alternative theories and Consequences for Institutional Design. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 79, pp. 3-16.

Daniels, P., Bradshaw, M., Shaw, D. and Sidaway, J. (2012). Geography, Culture and Global Change. An Introduction to Human Geography (4th Edition). Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited, pp. 272-291.

Gertler, M.S. (2010). Rules of the Game: The Place of Institutions in Regional Economic Change. Regional Studies, 44:1, pp. 1-15.

Khalil, E.L. (1990). Natural Complex vs. Natural System. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 11-31.

Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage Points – Places to Intervene in a System. [pdf]. Available at: http://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_Points.pdf [Accessed: 05.06.2019].

Nelson, A. (2013). Radical Interdisciplinarity and Other Ingredients for Innovation: Andrew Nelson at TEDxOregon. [online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXRrNXK4zE [Accessed: 04.02.2019].