States and Natures: An Introduction

Before continuing to read this book, stop, place this volume back on the shelf and take a moment to look through the pages of an illustrated atlas of the world. At least half of this atlas will probably be given over to illustrating one of the dominant political ordering principles around which our world continues to be constructed and conceived—the nation-state. If your atlas is similar to ours, however, you will also notice that nation-states are not only represented and recognized according to their territorial shape and official political nomenclature. Skimming through the glossy colour pages of our atlas, a continual cross-referencing appears between the political, ecological, and geological motifs of nation-states. The political map of the US, for example, is surrounded by images of the forests of New England in the fall and the spectacular geological strata of the Grand Canyon. Turning the page you find an immediate association being made between Iceland and the volcanically heated Blue Lagoon Lake, the Bahamas and its golden sandy beaches, Belize and banana trees, Peru and the cloud-laden Andes. Further into the atlas the fjords are deployed as an icon for the Norwegian state, barren deserts are used to denote Western Sahara and Mauritania, and a dramatic picture of Victoria Falls is carefully positioned below a map of Zambia. These images are, of course, as with so much of what is routinely produced within the visualizations of state and nationhood, crude stereotypes of complex geographical entities. However, we want to argue that this collection of ecological and geological imagery does reveal an interesting relationship, a relationship that is central to the ways in which our worlds are constructed, ordered, and reproduced—the relationships between states and natures. This book is premised upon the exploration of a paradox. While contemporary discussions of global environmental change, trans-boundary biological communities, and systemic ecological threats routinely emphasize the irrelevance of state systems and boundaries as means for understanding and addressing questions of nature, everywhere you look nature is continually being ordered and framed by nation-states.