Kate Soper, ‘Nature/’nature’, in FutureNatural, 1996 pp.22-34

I always struggle with Soper and the way in-which she writes, but this chapter really honed the fact that, landscape is a ‘construct’ of cultural activity, the quote I felt most relevant was right at the end and captures the quandary of how to re-sensitize and re-connect with nature, she says it is not until we feel a pain that is close to loosing a loved one will there be any change, and I have to agree as life is now is about convenience, financial worth, time, political spin.     

Landscape is a ‘construct’ of cultural activity upon the geological framework of the region, furthermore landscape has been shaped by man’s determination to dominate, which in turn is reliant on capitalist structures.

Not referencing landscape within a historical framework disallows the measures that need to be taken to alter perception.

The sense of rupture and distance which has been encouraged by secular rationality may be better overcome, not by worshiping this nature that is ‘other’ to humanity, but through a process of re-sensitization to our combined separation from it and dependence upon it. We need, in other words to feel something of the anxiety and pain we experience in our relationships with other human beings in virtue of the necessity of death, loss and separation. (Soper, 1996)