Ecological Competency in a Modern Age: a Role for the New Information Technologies

Abstract

A recent comparison of hunter-gatherer and modern societies by the anthropologist, Tim Ingold (1996), is a useful starting-point for this chapter. He compares the views of nature and of society held by these types of civilisation. The knowledge of humans and nature treated (and in the few still remaining cases still treat) the physical and social universes as part of a whole. For them there is no systematic conceptual division between humans on the one hand and physical items such as rocks and plants on the other. This extends to humans too. There is no division between humans as part of nature and as a social being. They are one and the same person. This contrasts markedly with the ways in which modern society treat people and nature (see Figure). Deep at the heart of modern Western culture is a dualism between society and nature. It is one which leads to one set of understandings about humans (one reflected in the arts and social sciences curriculum in schools and universities) and another set of understandings about ‚nature‘. Never, or hardly ever, do the twain meet.