nature culture

National Geographic Magazine Covers

A quick scan of National Geographic Magazine covers, both the image and lead stories provides us preliminary insight into of nature and culture promoted within its pages visit photostream at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkfeelgrow/sets/72157619144070502/show/]

1. Nature reads in terms of flora and fauna and pristine, geographically distinct areas, whereas culture reads in ethnic, low-technology, geographically isolated humans.
2. The intersection of nature and culture shows cultural artifacts in remarkable natural landscapes, or romanticized geographically isolated peoples engaged in their daily activities in what NGM construes as natural areas.
3. National Geographic Magazines conservation and sustainability ideals center on what Arturo Escobar (1999) terms western or modern society’s technonature, that is technologically modified [read: enhanced] nature.

Myths of Nature in post-WWII National Geographic Car Advertisements by Shwandel N. Fraser is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Timeline of American Environmentalism and Car Culture

A work in progress, I created this timeline as a research aid and data storage tool. It lists what I understand to be key events in the development of American environmentalism, car culture and related policy, and of course some of the ads you will find on this blog. It is my hope that the ads will serve as cultural and visual markers whereby it is made more apparent they way the auto industry engages with the environmental movement by confusing consumer perceptions of nature and the role of automobiles in environmental degradation.

As the discourse unfolds and my research deepens, I will continue to populate this timeline with various media. It will serve as an a [linear] companion to this blog. It also foreshadows the additional software containing supplemental information that I will include at a later date. My hope is to provide you with multiple ways of engaging with this historical information, my literature base and visual data so as to sparking interesting conversation between us.

Any mistakes on this timeline are completely unintentional. If you happen to note a glaring omission or mistake, please do let me know. If you have a reliable or helpful source that you think I should refer to, please do not hesitate to send me the information to thinkfeelgrow@gmail.com.

Onward!

Myths of Nature in post-WWII National Geographic Car Advertisements by Shwandel N. Fraser is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.