Changing conservation goals and strategies: A succession of failed metaphors?

Background/Question/Methods

From its nominal inception ecological science has relied on cultural metaphorical framings to describe its objects of study, their interactions, our reactions to them, and our desires for them. Most ecologists learn at some point that even the term ‘ecology’ is a metaphor combining the Greek terms oikos (οίκος) and logos (λόγος), traditionally rendered as “the study of the household”. “Studies” as varied as descriptive autecology and landscape-scale mathematical modeling claim affinity under ecology’s expansive aegis. Metaphorical constructs (including both rhetorical and mathematical models) have arguably facilitated ecologists’ incipient conceptions of phenomena for which no prior names or definitions exist, but has it facilitated controlling, conserving or protecting them? Has the succession of metaphorical framings served its ostensible purposes? This presentation addresses these questions by comparing ecology’s accomplishments with its aspirations as recorded in ESA publications and related media reporting.

Results/Conclusions

Despite occasional warnings and admonitions from Cassandras in the ranks, ecologists seem committed to axiomatic, teleological, metaphorical explanations of how nature should be configured and function, and how humans are supposed to behave in (or in relation to) it. As subdisciplinary development divides us into “concurrent sessions”, we build coalitions on nostalgic dismay grounded in metaphorical imagery. Metaphors remain necessary to ecological conceptualizing and communication because ecology’s contingencies are inherently difficult to address “scientifically” but they can ossify so as to permanently constrain and even constitute our thinking. Metaphors facilitate advocacy and activism in ways “objective” framings cannot because they are intuitively appealing by definition. But their power is always limited by the extent of the relevant resemblance, which rarely carries us beyond framing problems—and generating dissatisfaction—to actually formulating effective interventions.