ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the contributions that cultural geography can make to the development and implementation of environmental policies. It explores how cultural geographers working in fields dominated by the natural sciences and economics can articulate an alternative way of shaping society–nature relations. Differing opinions on the comparative value of particular management practices are commonplace as reserve and land managers try to adapt the universal knowledge of science to the range of circumstances provided by different localities and institutional contexts. The foundation of the cultural turn has been a recognition of the fundamental significance of language and other signifying systems in the formation of knowledges. Some key characteristics of the cultural turn are important in rethinking how environmental decisions and policies can and should be made in the time of post-normal science. Recognition of heterogeneity in social groups, of the pluralism of values, and the significance of difference mark the second dimension of the cultural turn.
