ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part discusses some of the misconceptions about culturally informed work on social-natural relations. It is concerned with the development of new approaches to the design of environmental policy. The part outlines a project completed with the Environment Agency that was and is based on new discursive, collaborative and reflexive strategies - new forms of inclusive and consensual decision making - for the fashioning of environmental policy. It also discusses the solutions posited to deal with the 'pauper problem' in the US and deals with quite different empirical issues. Investigating the relationships between the natural and social realms has been an abiding preoccupation for geographers. The schism between 'physical' geography, 'human' geography and their myriad practitioners has only increased since the discipline's inception in the early years of the nineteenth century.
