Mediating Nature

Offering a cultural history of the present forms of imagining nature and the environment, this fascinating book focuses on the relationship between the emergence of environmentalist practices and the development and consolidation of a variety of forms of mass-mediation.

Informationen zum Autor Nils Lindahl Elliot is a researcher in cultural and environmental studies. His research specialism is in the social semeiotics of nature. Klappentext Mediating Nature provides a history of the present nature of mass mediation. It examines the ways in which a number of discourses, technologies and institutions have historically shaped the current ways of imagining nature in the mass media. Where much of the existing research treats mass mediation as a matter of media technologies, texts, or institutions, this text adopts a somewhat different approach: it considers mass mediation as a historical process by means of which the members of audiences and indeed the public more generally came to be incorporated as observers in, and of mass culture. This approach allows the book to investigate the roles that a wide range of genres relating to nature played in constructing senses of nature but also of mass culture itself. The genres include landscape paintings and gardens, modern zoos, photography, early cinema, nature essays, disaster and 'animal attack' films, as well as wildlife documentaries on television. The investigation develops what Lindahl Elliot describes as a 'social semeiotic' approach that combines the semeiotic theory of Charles Peirce with a historical sociology of cultural formations.Topical and timely, this fascinating book will be of great interest to students and researchers in the fields of media, sociology, cultural geography and environmental studies. Zusammenfassung Offering a cultural history of the present forms of imagining nature and the environment, this fascinating book focuses on the relationship between the emergence of environmentalist practices and the development and consolidation of a variety of forms of mass-mediation. Inhaltsverzeichnis Nature. Mass Mediation. Modern Environmentalism. A History of the Present. A 'Propedeutic' Approach Part 1: 1. The Nature of Nature 2. The Nature of Observation Part 2: 3. The Nature of Mathesis 4. The Nature of Commodification 5. The Nature of Industrialization 6. The Nature of Sublimation 7. The Nature of Incorporation 8. The Nature of Environmentalism. Epilogue: Climactic Change ...

Autorentext

Nils Lindahl Elliot is a researcher in cultural and environmental studies. His research specialism is in the social semeiotics of nature.

Klappentext

Mediating Nature provides a history of the present nature of mass mediation. It examines the ways in which a number of discourses, technologies and institutions have historically shaped the current ways of imagining nature in the mass media. Where much of the existing research treats mass mediation as a matter of media technologies, texts, or institutions, this text adopts a somewhat different approach: it considers mass mediation as a historical process by means of which the members of audiences and indeed the public more generally came to be incorporated as observers in, and of mass culture. This approach allows the book to investigate the roles that a wide range of genres relating to nature played in constructing senses of nature but also of mass culture itself. The genres include landscape paintings and gardens, modern zoos, photography, early cinema, nature essays, disaster and 'animal attack' films, as well as wildlife documentaries on television. The investigation develops what Lindahl Elliot describes as a 'social semeiotic' approach that combines the semeiotic theory of Charles Peirce with a historical sociology of cultural formations. Topical and timely, this fascinating book will be of great interest to students and researchers in the fields of media, sociology, cultural geography and environmental studies.

Inhalt

Nature. Mass Mediation. Modern Environmentalism. A History of the Present. A 'Propedeutic' Approach Part 1: 1. The Nature of Nature 2. The Nature of Observation Part 2: 3. The Nature of Mathesis 4. The Nature of Commodification 5. The Nature of Industrialization 6. The Nature of Sublimation 7. The Nature of Incorporation 8. The Nature of Environmentalism. Epilogue: Climactic Change