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Talking Up Country: Language, Natureculture and Interculture in Australian Environmental Education Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Hilary Whitehouse
Hilary Whitehouse*
Affiliation:
James Cook University
*
†Address for correspondence: A/Professor Hilary Whitehouse, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia. Email: hilary.whitehouse@jcu.edu.au
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Abstract

Australia is an old continent with an immensely long history of human settlement. The argument made in this paper is that Australia is, and has always been, a natureculture. Just as English was introduced as the dominant language of education with European colonisation, so arrived an ontological premise that linguistically divides a categorised nature from culture and human from “the” environment. Drawing on published work from the Australian tropics, this paper employs a socionature approach to make a philosophical argument for a more nuanced understanding of language, the cultural interface and contemporary moves towards interculture in Australian environmental education practice.

Keywords

naturecultureenvironmental educationAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander historydiscourseslanguage
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 27 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The “ness” of Environmental Education , 2011 , pp. 56 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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