ABSTRACT
For as long as I can remember, I have been surrounded by people who take an active interest in the protection of nature and natural things. During the past fifteen years, when environmentalism has been my main research interest, I have spent many hours reading reports, policies and campaign literature produced by nature protection authorities and NGOs, and engaged in debates about these documents. I have attended many formal and informal gatherings at which nature protection has been discussed, and had many conversations with nature protectionists about their activities. I have also, in the pursuit of work and pleasure, been an enthusiastic consumer of books, magazines, television programmes and, more recently, websites, aimed at increasing public concern for nature. One of the clear impressions gained from all this exposure is that nature protectionists relate to nature in ways that can be described, broadly, as ‘religious’ or ‘scientific’. These two idioms do not, by any means, exhaust ways of relating to nature, but they are prominently expressed in discourses about nature protection. This observation creates an interesting possibility. Debates about the differences between religion and science have arisen repeatedly in anthropology and related disciplines throughout the past century. Perhaps this academic discourse could provide an appropriate vehicle for thinking about how nature protectionists relate to nature, a way of identifying key ideas that might help us to understand how people engaged in the protection of nature come to think, feel and act as they do towards the objects of their concern.
