Issue 2, Vol. 104 (2017)

Revisiting the complex dynamics
of nature-culture relations should take into
consideration the juxtapositions between
multiple spaces, times and meanings that
constitute the current anthropological
understanding of the concept of
‘environment’. As digital technologies
were progressively incorporated into
the ways in which the influences of the
environment are perceived and reimagined,
a new type of places appeared: the ‘virtual
heterotopias’. They typify contemporary
conceptualizations of the environment
by simultaneously connecting and
differentiating multiple spaces and times.
In my paper, I draw upon the theoretical
groundwork developed by Michel Foucault
(1967) regarding heterotopias. I focus on
how nature-culture relations are mirrored,
signified and reimagined in virtual worlds
(i.e. MMOG worlds). I consider the virtual
worlds to be multileveled heterotopias
where the digital counterparts of real
elements from the environment seem
more ‘real’ and ‘compelling’ than the
originals.

This paper reflects upon the nature/culture dichotomy while focusing on mountain landscapes understood as ideal places for a better life. Taking as example a region in the Swiss Alps, it analyses the motivations that lead mostly urban people to settle in mountain regions for the last three decades. Drawing on long-term multi-sided fieldworks in the Swiss alpine villages, it highlights new forms of migration, not directly for economic reasons, as well as the representations of mountains as a trendy ‘culturalised’ natural place for living, especially for middle and upper urban classes. While giving voice to the research participants to understand the change in values and preferences towards mountain areas, this article enlightens the underlying factors behind amenity-led migration, lifestyle migration and multi-locality. It demonstrates how the nature/culture divide is being reshaped in the contemporary Swiss alpine context, where nature has become a cultural project.

This article examines the practice of Land Art in the United Arab Emirates as a way to negotiate natural and cultural heritage discourses prevalent in the Arab Gulf. It thereby views artworks as
cultural statements that possess the enunciatory power to make visible the negotiation and ambiguity inherent in art production. Since heritage and art industries in the UAE have been closely intertwined, heritage discourses have permeated art production and influenced artists’ assumptions about the ways in which nature has been, or should be, equated with the nation. The article argues that Land Art can reveal the ambiguities in artists’ negotiation of the relation between nature and nation – regardless of the artists’ prior intentions for the artwork.

This article examines whether well-known dichotomous concepts may be of use for understanding social and cultural processes in an era where neoliberal economies and global movements of people, matters and ideas are prevalent. The study focus is on villagers with Bedouin background on the desert outskirts of Dubai Emirate. The rapid development they have been exposed to during the last decades has caused increased movements between different locations. It will be examined how the Bedouin, and especially younger women, experience and relate to these locations. This encompasses in particular how they interpret the desert and how they interrelate to different types of actors in each space.

Today, many European cities are still struggling to reinvent their development model in response to the effects of deindustrialization. It is in these contexts that nature, landscape and heritage are gaining more and more importance within leisure and tourism based urban models. This is the case of Cadiz, a small city in southern Spain where La Caleta, a little beach located at its downtown, has become one of the main touristic icons of the city. Due to its particular location, history and morphology, this tiny cove boasts a vast diversity of ichthyofauna, being also an important local heritage site which, alongside, functions customarily as one of the city’s most emblematic, active and dynamic open public spaces. Drawing from the results of an ongoing doctoral thesis, this presentation deals with the local fisher’s notion of nature, in order to understand how do they make sense of the symbolic and material reconstruction the beach has undergone, and the position they’re assigned in the process. By doing so, I show how this discourses are percolated by urban conflicts derived from the adaptation process taken by the city on its transit, from an industrial to a tourism based development model.

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