Kurt Jax – författare

This book provides a review of the multitude of conservation concepts, both from a scientific, philosophical, and social science perspective, asking how we want to shape our relationships with nature as humans, and providing guidance on which conservation approaches can help us to do this.

Nature conservation is a contested terrain and there is not only one idea about what constitutes conservation but many different ones, which sometimes are conflicting. Employing a conceptual and historical analysis, this book sorts and interprets the differing conservation concepts, with a special emphasis on narrative analysis as a means for describing human–nature relationships and for linking conservation science to practice and to society at large. Case studies illustrate the philosophical issues and help to analyse major controversies in conservation biology. While the main focus is on Western ideas of conservation, the book also touches upon non-Western, including indigenous, concepts. The approach taken in this book emphasises the often implicit strategic and societal dimensions of conservation concepts, including power relations. In finding a path through the multitude of concepts, the book showcases that it is necessary to maintain the plurality of approaches, in order to successfully address different situations and societal choices. Overall, this book highlights the very tension which conservation biology must withstand between science and society: between what is possible and what we want individually or as a society or even more what is desirable. Bringing some order into this multitude will support more efficient conservation and conservation biology.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars studying nature conservation from a variety of disciplines, including biology, ecology, anthropology, sociology, geography, and philosophy. It will also be of use to professionals wanting to gain an understanding of the broad spectrum of conservation concepts and approaches and when to apply them.

This book provides a review of the multitude of conservation concepts, both from a scientific, philosophical, and social science perspective, asking how we want to shape our relationships with nature as humans, and providing guidance on which conservation approaches can help us to do this.

Nature conservation is a contested terrain and there is not only one idea about what constitutes conservation but many different ones, which sometimes are conflicting. Employing a conceptual and historical analysis, this book sorts and interprets the differing conservation concepts, with a special emphasis on narrative analysis as a means for describing human–nature relationships and for linking conservation science to practice and to society at large. Case studies illustrate the philosophical issues and help to analyse major controversies in conservation biology. While the main focus is on Western ideas of conservation, the book also touches upon non-Western, including indigenous, concepts. The approach taken in this book emphasises the often implicit strategic and societal dimensions of conservation concepts, including power relations. In finding a path through the multitude of concepts, the book showcases that it is necessary to maintain the plurality of approaches, in order to successfully address different situations and societal choices. Overall, this book highlights the very tension which conservation biology must withstand between science and society: between what is possible and what we want individually or as a society or even more what is desirable. Bringing some order into this multitude will support more efficient conservation and conservation biology.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars studying nature conservation from a variety of disciplines, including biology, ecology, anthropology, sociology, geography, and philosophy. It will also be of use to professionals wanting to gain an understanding of the broad spectrum of conservation concepts and approaches and when to apply them.

As concerns about humankind’s relationship with the environment move inexorably up the agenda, this volume tells the story of the history of the concept of ecology itself and adds much to the historical and philosophical debate over this multifaceted discipline. The text provides readers with an overview of the theoretical, institutional and historical formation of ecological knowledge. The varied local conditions of early ecology are considered in detail, while epistemological problems that lie on the borders of ecology, such as disunity and complexity, are discussed. The book traces the various phases of the history of the concept of ecology itself, from its 19th century origins and antecedents, through the emergence of the environmental movement in the later 20th century, to the future, and how ecology might be located in the environmental science framework of the 21st century.

The study of ‘ecological’ phenomena has never been confined solely to the work of researchers who consider themselves ecologists. It is rather a field of knowledge in which a plurality of practices, concepts and theories are developed. Thus, there exist numerous disciplinary subdivisions and research programmes within the field, the boundaries of which remain blurred. As a consequence, the deliberation to adequately identify the ecological field of knowledge, its epistemic and institutional setting, is still going on. This will be of central importance not only in locating ecology in the frame of 21st century environmental sciences but also for a better understanding of how nature and culture are intertwined in debates about pressing problems, such as climate change, the protection of species diversity, or the management of renewable resources.