Definitional and Responsive Environmental Meanings: A Meadian Look at Landscapes and Drought

• Published in: Journal for the theory of social behaviour Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 65 - 91
• Main Author: Weigert, Andrew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 01.03.1997; Blackwell; B. Blackwell
• Subjects: Definitions; Dualism; Environment; Human Ecology; Human ecology and demography; Interpretive Sociology; Meaning; Natural Environment; Phenomenology; Social Constructionism; Sociological Theory; Sociology; Symbolic Interactionism; Contructionism; Landscape; Natural Environment; Ecological change; Realism; Natural disaster; Event; Perception; Drought; Meaning
• ISSN: 0021-8308; 1468-5914
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-5914.00026

Current conceptual frameworks differ deeply on the meanings of human‐natural environment relations. One is a monist social constructionist frame: meaning is only in human definitions, and natural events are meaningless. The other offers dualist perspectives that locate meaning both in definitions and in realist indications of environmental events such as global environmental change. After discussing ‘landscape’ as a bridging concept, I suggest an ordering of the two perspectives through a metatheoretical distinction between definitional and responsive meanings with primacy in the response. Finally, I apply a metatheoretical schema based on the work of George H. Mead to meanings of natural environment implicated in a discussion of an official pronouncement, ‘The drought is over’.