Comparing "Arts of the Contact Zone" and Animism and the Alphabet"

While reading different essays addressing the topic of nature, I came to the conclusion that they all shared the idea that being outside can make an impact in everyone no matter if you believe you only belong in a city or forest because it can bring you serenity and show you all the amazing things you wouldn't be able to see anywhere else. In Wendell Berry’s essay “An Entrance to the Woods,” he states that people can use the quiet of the woods to forget all their problems. Berry wrote “One is that, though I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies can be transported.” Nature has a way to transport ones mind and spirit elsewhere while the body is left behind on earth as we travel deep into thought. Adding on to that idea, the essay “A City Person Encountering Nature” by Maxine Hong Kingston the author explains that nature is a giver of peace and patience with its slow cycles that may frustrate people, but help keep a sane mind. Society is fast paced, making everyone feel that they need to keep the same pace in order to get things done, but we don't realize that although our bodies are moving and pushing, our minds are exhausted and cannot keep up with the fast pace. Kingston wrote “Preferring the city myself, I can better discern natural phenomena when books point them out; I also need to verify

Nature is an entity that persistently progresses to be overlooked. When I was home one day for the long weekend I went down to the beach, then observed the sunrise overlooking the view of the Boston skyline. As the sun rose little by little It came to me that I saw a parallel with my life. As the sun rose I associated it with my life and with each experience I endured in my life I grew as an individual analogous to the sun rising higher up in the sky. As soon as the sun rehabilitated colors from a pinkish rosy color to an archetypal yellow sun it symbolized the transformation a person encounters growing up from being a kid to a man. Consequently, as the sun crept over the skyline it was

Nature is the playground for every human. It is essential that we include nature in our lives; it keeps us on our correct path. However, if we dismiss ourselves from nature, we begin to stray from our correct path. We become engulfed in the distractions from the modern world . The only approach to appropriate this quandary is to break our pervicacious ways and return to peaceful serenity known as nature.

Nature affects people the most because genes and hereditary factors in which influence people to become who they are. Plato and Descartes, philosophers, proposed that certain things are inborn and regardless of environmental influence they occur naturally and many other philosophers believed that all of our characteristics and behaviors are the result of evolution (Chemy 2). People learn new information every day; as soon as individuals are conceived their brain starts to learn and understand things around them. Newborn babies are accustomed to the mother’s womb and as a human being individuals are born oblivious to everything that appears to be around them. Each individual needs parents

Throughout “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Pratt uses many real life situations to exemplify how contact zones create conflict and separate people and cultures; but she also examines ways to use the contact zone to our advantage in order to unify society. Sometimes people are led believe their differences are too great to overcome, so they remain isolated from the rest of society. People shouldn’t be trying to isolate themselves, but rather incorporating their culture into the community around them. This incorporation of cultures can often cause conflict, but Pratt explains that conflict can be avoided if people abandon their biases and pursue knowledge about the cultures around them. This idea “will read very differently” to people on opposing sides of the contact zone

Nature is the accessible feature that brings an individual back to his center of life.

Throughout today’s society there are several different cultural perspectives which form theoretical and practical understandings of natural environments, creating various human-nature relationship types. In this essay, I will describe and evaluate different ways of knowing nature and the impact of these views on human-nature relationships. From this, I will then explore my own human-nature relationship and reflect on how my personal experiences, beliefs and values has led me to this view, whilst highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each and reflecting upon Martin’s (1996) continuum.

According to Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone, an autoethnographic text can be defined as a text where the author describes himself or his people using mechanisms provided by others. Such texts are almost always the product of a “contact zone” or a place where cultures meet and clash. In other words, autoethnographic texts are those in

Nature is not altered by humanity and instead is pure, creating inspiration for people to be original. Nature is “the greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, in the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable” (Nature 221). People who believe in transcendence see the importance

The beautiful blossoms that bloom in Californian spring, the summer daisies alongside the cooling lake, long after the summer the trees have lost their leaves entering autumn to fresh white snow out in the mountains. Nature is able to show us its true beauty without any falseness and modifications. After all, is it not ironic how people go to museums to look at paintings of colorful flowers, green hills, and clear water streams; those are beauties that can easily be observed in real life outside of the urban environment which are surrounded by them, or how people buy recordings of the calming sounds of nature, similar to what you would listen to at night in the woods or smell nature aromas of the candles. What we are doing is trying to mislead our minds and pretend to think that we are in the woods but are instead cornered inside our small, well-furnished, and full -with-technology apartment.

The two articles help readers understand that when man and nature are together they create knowledge and emotions. Both writers describe feelings that one might feel when in touch with nature; in different ways, both elaborate on the fact that if man and nature were to disconnect then an imbalance would occur. “The river was

When she stated that we are not fixed on our identity, it brought out the ideas of a fixed and growth mindset. When one believes they cannot change who they are, they are focusing on a fixed mindset but when we have a growth mindset, we know we can do better. It

In this text, William Cronon analyzes the perspective of nature in today’s society. The author elaborates on the concept of nature and the environment; Cronon challenges popular ideas related to these concepts. According to the text, there are many perspectives of nature throughout society. These different perspectives influence how we react and view the environment. A prominent view that is mentioned in the text is nature as something that is “out there.” In short, this perspective perceives nature as something separate from humanity. For example, a person might take a trip into nature and return back to their home that is separate from the nature they experienced. Cronon challenges this perspective by implying that nature might not be disconnected

2. Chief Purpose: To encourage researchers, psychologists, and therapist to utilize information within the article to promote involvement with nature upon the human population. To help the human race to develop an eco-friendly environment.

Nearly everything that a human does is in response to the environment. Our lives are defined by what is around us and what we find in front of us, whether this means accepting, dealing with or changing it. This has been the pattern since primates first stood up and became Homo erectus, and has continued until we considered ourselves doubly wise. The shape of the land affected where humans moved. Weather was something with which to contend. Fire affected humans until they conquered it – and herein lies the core of the relationship. The earth affects humans, and humans affect it back, viewing characteristics and patterns as problems and challenges, and finding a solution.