ABSTRACT
It’s now time to focus more squarely on an important subject that’s been left rather (too) implicit in the previous chapters. In Part 1 of this book, I sketched out the links between epistemic communities, epistemic dependence and the many communicative genres in which references to nature and its collateral terms occur. I observed that, while a great many epistemic workers seek to represent everything from human genetics to anthropogenic climate change to the rights of whales, they don’t enjoy an equal ability to capture our attention. What’s more, I suggested that we can, depending on the circumstance, actively choose to pay little heed to (or ignore) various epistemic communities and their representations (including very socially prominent ones). Even so, I argued that those representations that do capture our attention are, over time, involved in a slow, relatively uncoordinated, complex but nonetheless efficacious process of shaping our sense of self and world. Their effects can run deep, solidifying – though sometimes unsettling – our beliefs, values and sentiments. Our ‘individuality’, ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are not sui generis. Rather, they’re the products of social relationships, institutions and a panoply of associated discourses, signs and references.
