Conservation as Human-Nature Relationship: Art or Science?

Posted on April 5, 2011

We need a fundamental change in the way that conservation and environmental issues are put forward to the public and a dramatic change in the visual culture that is such a dominant part of today’s conservation message.

This was the message from a recent guest lecture given by Joe Zammit-Lucia to a wide and varied academic audience at Michigan State University. Arguing that progress was in danger of stalling, he put forward a different vision of how to conceive of environmental issues and how to portray them to the wider public.

A short summary of the main points of the lecture can be found  here.

Dr Zammit-Lucia was invited as a guest lecturer to MSU where he currently has an ongoing academic collaboration. His visit was hosted by  Professor Linda Kalof and sponsored by Animal Studies at MSU, the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability , Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Department of Sociology, Department of Philosophy, and the Lyman Briggs College .