The ubiquity of nature: Climate and culture

✍ Scribed by Nico Stehr

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 669 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6696(199604)32:2<151::aid-jhbs3>3.0.co;2-z

✦ Synopsis

This is an essay in intellectual history that is relevant to the contemporary discussion of the relationship between society and its changing natural environment. It is, in particular, concerned with those aspects of the work of Willy H. Hellpach (1877-1955), a prominent German psychologist and social psychologist, that were designed to explore, despite already existing strong proscriptions in social science discourse against such an approach, the direct interrelation between climate and culture. Noteworthy is that his work on the impact of climate on human culture was published both during the Nazi era and after the second World War. Hellpach's efforts constitute a useful exemplar of the considerable intellectual pitfalls and difficulties that can result from uncritical endeavors to join natural and social phenomena under the umbrella of a single discursive approach.