In celebration of the shortlisted papers for the Rachel Carson Prize 2023 for Early Career Ecologists, we’re delighted to introduce you to some of our shortlisted individuals and papers.
Metaphors to live by.
Marc Tadaki (he/him). Social Scientist, Cawthron Institute, Nelson, Aotearoa New Zealand. marc.tadaki@cawthron.org.nz
About the paper:
What is your shortlisted paper about and what are you seeking to answer with your research?
When we talk about water in hydrological cycles, wetlands as kidneys, or ecosystems at tipping points, we are using metaphors to describe the environment. We use metaphors all the time. They help us simplify communication, highlight what parts of a system are important, and convey a sense of what is at stake or what we should do. Metaphors help us convey meaning; but metaphors also produce and shape meaning by encouraging us to understand one phenomenon in terms of another.
Metaphors have the power to help us reform our relationship with the natural world, and increasingly, we see metaphors shaping people’s claims and aspirations for societal relationships with nature. Metaphors are more than just representations of the world, they are proposals for how we should know and act in the world. This is what motivated us to look at freshwater metaphors with this paper.
Our paper looks at how metaphors shape freshwater science and policy. For the metaphors of ecosystem health, invasive species, and legal personhood, we wanted to know: what social and natural features do these metaphors draw attention to, and which relations do they obscure? Furthermore, and uniquely, we asked: how have these metaphors have been given specificity, permanence, and force in environmental policy? And finally: what roles do scientists play in generating and applying metaphors in environmental governance?
What is the broader impact of the research?
Our paper helps scientists understand their roles in generating and shaping the use of metaphors. As scientists we don’t only generate metaphors, we also take existing metaphors and reshape their meanings by selectively building knowledge within these frames, by developing knowledge tools, and by informing regulation. Our paper also helps policy makers (e.g. government bureaucrats) think about how the specific wording and form of policies can embed certain meanings of those metaphors.
What is the next step in this field going to be?
The field of ‘environmental metaphor studies’ is vibrant and has helped to situate the work of science within the wider values and processes of society. It has done much to elaborate the potential meanings of metaphors, but where I would like to see the field go, and where our paper encourages the field to go, is to look at the social processes that constrain and direct the dominant meanings of metaphors. You can spend all day finding conservative and radical ways to interpret ‘ecosystem services’ or ‘planetary boundaries,’ but in the end some meanings become more dominant than others. This can be because some meanings get into policy, because some meanings are promoted in the media, or some other reason. I think we need to look more at how the meanings of metaphors are distilled from something quite amorphous and potentially radical into something quite specific. We need to look at these processes with urgency, because often we find that in the process of implementation, a potentially radical metaphor has been stripped of its radicalness. How does this happen, and how can we prevent it from happening? How can we ensure that the radical meanings we want from our metaphors are realised and sustained?
About the author:
How did you get involved in ecology?
I came to ecology through physical geography. After two years at university struggling to figure out what excited me (it definitely wasn’t electromagnetism or inorganic chemistry), I saw the 2006 Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth and was both horrified and intrigued about how the earth system was changing. I switched to physical geography to study environmental change and became fascinated with rivers as complex and dynamic systems. Of course, studying rivers immediately confronts you with things like dams, channelisation, infrastructure, water extraction, anglers, harvesters, and Indigenous and other communities who derive meaning from these systems. To understand rivers and how they change therefore requires understanding society, so through my graduate studies and since I have been very interested in how society relates to rivers, including through creating science and policies regarding rivers.
What do you like to get up to in your spare time, hobbies etc.
Movies are my jam. I have a BA in film studies, I wrote a screenplay at university, and would love to one day teach a course on environmental politics in film. Since we are talking about metaphors, here’s three recommendations:
Gojira (1954) – the original Godzilla film holds massive power for me, as a metaphor for Japan’s trauma from the atomic bomb and the perils of failing to hold science accountable to human values.
Wolf children (2012) – a beautiful metaphor for the challenges and joys of motherhood, exploring the different ways that children want and need to be loved.
Princess Mononoke (1997) – a troubling and profoundly nuanced metaphor for humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Humans and the forest spirits are literally ‘at war’ with each other, though ‘good’ and ‘evil’ exist on all sides and even within every character. How should we act in such a morally complicated world?
Have you continued this research, what’s your current position?
I am currently a social scientist at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand, where I do research on environmental values, freshwater management, and the social basis of environmental science and policy. In a current project, as part of an interdisciplinary team we are looking at metaphors of ‘belonging’ for introduced and native species – how is it that a species comes to ‘belong’ in a place, and what types of science are produced to shape thinking about belonging?
One piece of advice for someone in your field…
Find good mentors and build your community of care ASAP. No person is an island; we need others to sustain ourselves emotionally and intellectually. Wherever you take your career – whether through a university, government department, private company, non-profit, consultancy, community college, or something else – you will surely encounter situations that challenge your values, question your value, and your sense of self. I have found that a helpful way to endure such strains is to build wide and deep networks of care. Find and cultivate your community, lift up and care for others, and if you do so sincerely, this will be reciprocated.
To illustrate, I’ll end with a metaphor from one of my favourite films, The Boy and the Beast (2015). The film is a rich metaphor about the teaching and learning process, and it always warms my heart – I highly recommend it!
A key theme of the film is that you need others to succeed. An orphaned boy, Kyuta, wanders into a magical realm where, to make ends meet, he becomes a student of the gruff warrior Kumatetsu. Kumatetsu is extraordinarily strong but is unable to improve further because he has never had a teacher to help him excel. Kyuta wants to become strong so he can survive without parents or relying on anyone else. Trying not to spoil the film too much: both Kyuta and Kumatetsu learn that neither can overcome their greatest challenges without help from the other. Kyuta, who later struggles with an affliction of ‘darkness’, learns that it is not individual strength that will enable him to endure, but the care and love of others.
When Kumatetsu initially describes the secrets of his natural strength to Kyuta, he says: “just grab the sword that’s in your soul. Got it?” While initially Kyuta doesn’t understand Kumatetsu, by the end of the film Kyuta, drawing on the sustenance of friends and his adopted family, holds his sword firmly as he confronts the darkness.
Relational Thinking 