Resonating with nature: Cultural representation of nature relations

Recent research points to societies’ fading “connectedness” to nature as one of the factors impeding the transition toward more effective attempts to mitigate the climate crisis. However, the conditions affecting human–nature connectedness are still little understood. Building on Rosa’s Theory of Resonance and the Cultural Consensus Model, we conceptualize the climate crisis as a culturally contingent crisis of relatedness. With this novel approach that exceeds individual, local scales, we conceive nature and nature relations as collective mental representations and offer a distinct understanding of how nature and experience of resonance and alienation in nature differ across cultures. A mixed method, cross-cultural research design is used, combining free-listing exercises and in-depth interviewing. Ten informants were selected, five from a Western (Bodensee) and five from an indigenous (Māori) culture, because both cultures show an affinity toward the natural environment but have different cultural belief systems. Consensus and inductive thematic analyses revealed that mental representation of “nature” and “nature relations” differ across (local) cultures and are contingent upon physical and socio-historical contexts. We found that Bodensee informants show strong consensus regarding what members do in nature and low consensus concerning how members feel in nature. The opposite holds for Māori informants. For people from Bodensee, relaxing in “untouched” nature by withdrawing from alienating daily life is the main source of resonance. In contrast, for people rooted in Māori culture, resonance requires the knowledge about cultural heritage, where one comes from and the memory of the colonial past. Implications for interventions geared to improve the sustainability of human–nature relations in different cultural settings are discussed.